Why do i not care about school anymore

This is going to sound really "teenage angsty".

I don't care about school or my grades, but my teachers and family do. I don't want to be the bad kid, but I feel zero reason to do any work. It doesn't interest me in the least bit and the the consequences don't seem extreme to me. There is the argument that it's for my future, and that it's in my best interest to work hard. I don't care about my future either. I don't care if I get a low-paying job, or live in a tiny apartment alone, or if I'm not wildly successful. Truthfully, I'm very content with my simple life. I like my never-ending cycle of reading reddit content, watching movies, listening to music, playing video games, and talking to my friends. Is working harder at school going to change that? I don't think so. Is better marks going to make any of it a better experience? I don't think so. Therefore, why should I? I severely lack a 'why'. Everyone around me thinks its important. Do I just intrinsically lack the enjoyment of education? Is there anything that can change this? Have I lived too comfortable of a life? I don't want my family to be disappointed in me, but it's my life in the end, and I don't feel like using it on school.

Edit: a word

It is an act of resistance to rest.

For years, my daily schedule consisted of a 6 a.m. wake-up, joining meetings on Zoom, writing multiple articles, cooking almost all of my own plant-based meals, and getting straight A’s on all of my assignments. At the end of the day, I would either use my last shreds of motivation to mindlessly scroll on social media while feeling guilty or I would call friends just so that we could sit in silence and “co-work” on our extra credit assignments together.  

While I  may have appeared to be incredibly well put together, I was actually a teen that was constantly filled with anxiety. Being “productive” wasn’t fulfilling, it was distracting and complacent. I was using my filled schedule to ignore the fact that I needed to find actually healthy coping mechanisms instead of searching for academic and employment validation. 

Unfortunately, this grind and girlboss lifestyle is encouraged from a very young age. We are all told that our academic output will be what guarantees our success later in life. This “success” is defined as one’s ability to get a good-paying job that they will go to every weekday from 9-5 until they are old and (maybe) are finally able to retire from the workforce. 

People are worth more than what they are able to produce. You are not failing because you don’t go to the gym at 5 a.m. or you procrastinate on your homework. We have aestheticized and accepted this incredibly capitalistic concept of productivity to the point that we feel guilty if we don’t achieve above and beyond what is expected of us.

The entire academic system is built around incentivizing students to work hard, turn in assignments and get good grades. Your ability to do well within the confines of this system is reduced to a number because progress is equated to grades instead of growth. 

It is an act of resistance to rest. You deserve to take care of yourself and prioritize your own health and growth. If we convince ourselves that burnout is success, the only people we are supporting are our bosses. 

I have decided that instead of continuing to make assignments, meetings, and emails my priority, I am going to prioritize taking care of myself. So I don’t care if I miss an assignment or turn something in late anymore because making sure that I am okay will always be worth more than class.

Sometimes it feels like our kids and teens really don’t care about school. Even when they’re really smart and underachieving, or especially when they’re failing school, it’s not as simple as not caring about school. As Ross Greene says, kids will do well when they can. When they can’t, there’s definitely a reason. And that makes how you respond as a parent extremely important!

When School & Life Gets Stressful, Kids REACT

We’ve been seeing a lot of school challenges with kids of all ages in terms of school since 2020, and it’s not just coming from virtual learning. We’re seeing the impact of mental health issues, trauma, attachment issues, challenges with resilience, and more. As a result, we’re also seeing an uptick in concerning behaviors, such as kids who are:

• Refusing to attend school
• Refusing to do any schoolwork
• Reacting in intense ways (fear, anger, overwhelm, avoidance)
• Avoiding responsibilities at school and at home
• Engaging in power struggles
• Underachieving
• Hyper-focusing on “distracting” behaviors

On the surface, most of us see clearly what our kids are NOT doing. But sometimes, we forget to dig deeper, to get clear about why they are (or are not) behaving in a certain way. In the coach approach, we encourage parents to get CURIOUS – to ask in more detail when facing a concerning behavior: “What Is Going On” (WIGO)?

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What is REALLY Going On?

When we start to look more closely at what’s causing the kinds of reactive behaviors listed above, we discover that complex kids usually have an emotionally charged relationship with some (or many) aspects of school -- whether its social, academic, self-esteem or a combination of them. Very often, our kids are dealing with difficult feelings like:

• Perfectionism
• Procrastination
• Excitability/Irritability
• Unmanaged Triggers
• Feeling Out of Control
• Low Self-Esteem
• Isolation
• Disconnection from Self/Peers/Family
• Mistrust of Teachers and Parents
• Disempowerment
• Hopelessness

There are dozens of reasons why complex kids are struggling with these feelings, and many of them are captured by research suggesting that burnout comes from high expectations and low control. As Nir Eyal explains in his groundbreaking book, Indistractable, when people experience high expectations but do not feel that they are in a position to adequately control their role in achieving those outcomes, it can actually lead to anxiety and depression.

This is effectively what’s happening for many of our kids. If what's expected of them feels unachievable, they often give up even trying. As one of my kids said to me once, "don't you see mom? If I don't do it, I haven’t done it wrong!"

Counterintuitive TRUTH

Most people think that when kids struggle with school, the most important thing for us to do is to re-engage them… get them to do the work expected of them. But that’s generally not the path that leads to greatest success.

The counterintuitive truth is this: When kids struggle with school, the most important thing you can do is take the time to CONNECT with them… to build your relationship with them so that they’ll slowly begin to trust you. Talking about next steps can come later. Sometimes much later.

Diane and I have been working on developing a clear and simple way for parents to better understand their complicated role in empowering young people to independence. And while there are many steps on the journey, this pyramid is a good starting point.

Independence Pyramid

Start at the bottom and spend most of your energy focusing on building your relationship with your child, teen, or emerging adult. Connect. Play. Relate. Don’t worry about school for a bit. Just focus on being in relationship with each other.

Relationship is fundamental to developing trust, and trust is absolutely essential for any student to be available to learning. Literally. With cortisol (stress hormones) streaming through their body all day long, they’ll shut down. With oxytocin (happy hormones) taking more of a lead, they’ll have a chance to begin to see hope and possibility. And that all depends on trust.

Trusting you, their parent, opens up the door for them to trust themselves. From there, you can guide them, step by step, to their own success, moving up the pyramid.

As you improve communication, you can begin to collaborate more effectively, which leads you into problem-solving. Ultimately, going through this process with your kids, again and again, in the context of trust and open communication, empowers your kids to take ownership of their agenda for learning.

But notice how late ownership comes in this process. Once a student has shut down, they need you to do a lot of the heavy-lifting to go through the phases of parenting to help them get to the point that they are willing to trust themselves again, to re-engage in taking ownership of their education. It’s not something you can ‘tell’ them to do. You have to guide them to it, one step, one conversation, one day at a time.

Asking for Help

If you’re wondering why your kids won’t accept your help, well.. we wonder the same about parents all the time. It’s so frustrating to watch parents struggle thinking your kids don’t care about school, or worrying when teenagers are failing school and don’t seem to care, when we know we can do something to help you change that.

Now we understand that it is complicated, and it’s not going to happen overnight. We know that it takes patience, and calm, and support, and guidance, and some carefully placed tools to improve communication. No one expects you to know how to do this!

But you can do this! We promise. We’ve guided thousands of parents to reconnect with their kids and help their kids begin to care about school again. And if you want some support, we’d be overjoyed to help you, too! So if you’re ready for help, we invite you to download this free guide and let us start helping you connect with your child again, so you can help your child learn to care about school again. The change you want for your child starts with you.

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