oh, now what?

So Friday was the letters from school to say that Ignatz is often without the necessary materials? Right. German schoolkids all have to have these little zipper-cases where they keep their pens, pencils, scissors, eraser, etc. On Monday afternoon he lost his. And so he returns to school without the proper materials immediately after we got the stupid letters. Why? He decided to take a different way home from school Monday afternoon, one that did not involve much in the way of sidewalks, slid/fell down a steepish hill, and didn't notice that his pen-case was missing until this morning.

You see? You SEE? Of course he doesn't do this stuff on purpose, but he still manages to do something several times a week.

This is just so depressing.

So we Talked about it, scarily, after dinner. Because there are two things going on here. Firstly, he has trouble focusing. Secondly, he doesn't see any reason why he should. He thinks homework is stupid, he doesn't want to grow up and get a job. I don't know what alternative he thinks there is, but he doesn't like the path that the rest of us follow.

For the first, there are things we can do. Therapy. Maybe medication. Mnemonics and lists and coping strategies. But we can't put any of them into effect without his cooperation, and this is where the second problem comes in. If he doesn't want to do it, we can't help him much. We don't know what to do about that.