daughter's attitude to 11+

[Waiting_For_Godot]

To the OP, my strategies would be:

1) get cross so she does it!
2) bribe her if that doesn't work
3) if 1 and 2 fail then she is bright enough to pass the tests or even too bright for grammar school!

[DC17C]

Some children are just too difficult to do the DIY option with - my dd was a complete nightmare with me last yr and I was at the stage of giving up but I am sorry to say a tutor made all the difference grrr. She now has her GS place and her attitude to homework is very different now she is in yr 6 she loves most of it and spends hours typing out pages for literacy home work. Can't belive how much more grown up she is.

DS this year is completely different and wants to go down the DIY route but has a friend working with him - so we sit down once a week and do a session with me as the "tutor" and then i give them homework to do which they both get on with.

[katel]

How can you be too bright for grammar school?

[mystery]

My son prefers to get on with it as soon as he gets home and I give him a drink etc which seems to soften the blow ! l:

What kind of drink works that well?

[katel]

I find vodka helps. Oh, wait- ds failed. Maybe it should have been me drinking it, not him.........

[yoyo123]

I couldn't teach my own children...*shudder* I haven't the patience with them. My last attempt was chemistry revision with my son, but he had to check with the teacher whether or not " My mum knows what on earth she is talking about.."

[Reading Mum]

I couldn't teach my own children...*shudder* I haven't the patience with them. My last attempt was chemistry revision with my son, but he had to check with the teacher whether or not " My mum knows what on earth she is talking about.."

To this day my Mum still remembers the pain of a particularly nasty bit of Physics homework involving a polar bear on an iceberg.

I am going down the DIY route for a couple of reasons:
1. DH is unconvinced about her moving from Indie to GS, although he will now at least discuss it.
2. We are trying the little and often approach so that DD doesn't have to give up any long established activities and so that I can fit some work in here and there.

[Waiting_For_Godot]

How can you be too bright for grammar school?

Quite easily! Do you think grammar school is the pinnacle of intellectual rigour? No school is!

[Belinda]

.

[faitaccompli]

Every child is different. It worked for our 2 month sojourn into tutoring to do a mix of outside tutor and home tutoring. The home tutoring was mainly doing tests, me marking them and giving the papers to the tutor, so she could go over the areas that were causing difficulty rather than wasting time during the tutoring session doing test papers. They could then work on the problem areas rather than the things he was finding easy.

My son found it easier to learn from someone who was well versed in all the tips and techniques than from me (who was clearly nowhere near as well versed in how to attack some of the questions).

Being over such a short timescale, the cost was way less than it costs for a month of his current indie and was (I believe) money well spent. I did spend in excess of £300 on test papers etc though. These have now been passed onto a slightly younger child that my DS used to consider a friend ...

By the way - at 9 years old he had to be chained to a chair to do his homework. At the beginning of year 6 he was very much the same - slapdash and never read anything properly. After his two months of intensive tutoring, his teachers ALL told me that his work ethic was 100% improved, attention to detail was above average, his interest and understanding of all subjects was greatly increased and (best of all), he just comes home and gets on with his homework with no input from me at all!

So anyone who tells you that if your child at 9 years old hates doing homework is not grammar school material, has either forgotten what their 9 year old was like, or just had a very unusual and amazing child!