What are the consequences for his not turning in his homework (other than poor grades from his teachers, obviously)???

Does your wife discipline him at all?

SS13 is the same way. He rarely bothers to do his homework, and when he does, somehow he "loses" it between home and school and it doesn't get turned in. He's failing 4 classes right now mainly due to missing homework. This seems to be more common in middle school. ADD/ADHD aside, he's to the point where he should be taking more responsibility for himself while his parents step back. If he fails, he fails. Sounds harsh, but that's the route we had to start taking with SS13. He's the kind of kid who simply doesn't learn unless something drastic happens. He's looking at either summer school or being held back for the second time, but hey, that's on him.

As far as you taking on so much responsibility...STOP. Your skid, custodial or not, is NOT your responsibility. He has at least one parent who SHOULD be stepping up and taking that responsibility. You should absolutely NOT quit your job to take care of your skids. And just because you work from home doesn't mean you should be taking on the majority of household responsibilities. If both you and your wife work, you should be splitting the household tasks and she should be doing the parenting of HER kids. All you'll do is become more and more resentful.

My ds13 is in middle school and he is a 4.0 student. He is completely self motivated-I never tell him to do his homework or monitor him ever. So, yes, it is certainly possible for boys this age to organize and take care of these sorts of things.

A couple of thoughts-if he does have adhd-have you thought of meds? I have no interest in turning this into some sort of raging debate on meds for kids, but if you and the wife are not opposed, sometimes meds can allow a child to focus and reach their full potential. Another thought, it that perhaps your wife's "techniques" of yelling and berating and trying to control his schoolwork have actually backfired. Perhaps the kid thinks to himself that this is something HE controls (which he is right) and that he is bound and determined to NOT do his work just to be defiant with you and his mother. As far as discipline, I would simply try removing all privileges until homework is done-no tv, no cell phone, no computer, no outside play time,no friends-nothing. Staring at the wall day after day after day gets pretty damn boring and perhaps doing some homework would break the monotony. No need to yell or get upset-simply calmly take everything away.

My BD is 9 and does the same thing, so it's not a stepkid issue. She will sit at home and spend literally hours on her homework, complete it, then "forget" to turn it in. This last time I made her write 100 times "I will remember to turn in my homework." She hated it, and she hasn't forgotten since, so we'll see. BUT, the very next week she "forgot" to bring home the teacher's weekly newsletter that tells me what the class is doing, so...

I was a totally scatterbrained kid as well, so I try to cut her some slack while also reinforcing her responsibility with regard to schoolwork.

My son did the same thing. We first had a meeting with his Guidance counselor and the classes that were an issue, and we came up with an action plan - one in which he had a say and a stake. I also had long talks with him about his future, and how doing poorly in MS would affect his options/choices in HS, which would affect his options/choices afterwards. This was after I realized that yelling at him and berating him was not a productive way of dealing with the situation.

Yes, this is Mom's job. But... Both you and Mom need to consider how your poor attitudes towards and perceptions of the kid are affecting him. You've made it clear that you both believe he's stupid, so why should he make any effort to prove you wrong?

I feel sorry for the kid. Hard enough for him to deal with ADD/ADHD. Even worse to deal with adults who think he's a stupid PITA.

Oh, greystreet, I SO understand. We've tried rewards, restrictions, and grounding my SS15 from everything. We've had sit downs with the teachers and school leaadership, had discussions about what he wants to do with his life and thought we had his buy in on how he would take steps to reach those goals. Nothing. He won't do homework unless you sit with him and walk him through every step of every problem. This includes word search puzzles, the cakewalk of all homework. BM says this has been an issue since 2nd grade, though she just told us this last week. His counselor thinks he has a "learned helplessness" issue, and his psychiatrist and therapist are trying everything to get through (so far with no results). He's seeing a neuropsych next month. I'm going to suggest the sentence writing to my husband and see if that works. After that, I am going to try to get my husband to just let go and let his son feel the reprecussions of his failing work. Maybe repeating the 9th grade will get him to wake up. I wish you lots of luck and patience!

Why don't you take him to a homeless shelter, or let him sleep on the streets for a night? Let him see, first hand, what a high school flunky gets out of life. Thats what I want to do to my SS15.