Questions & Answers

All your education questions answered by Brian Mooney

My eldest son started secondary school a little over a month ago, full of joy and expectation. Over the past few weeks he seems to be becoming moody and a little withdrawn. He has had far too much homework to do on a number of occasions, causing him to miss his football club training in the evening, but I have received a number of notes from teachers regarding homework not completed. This morning he claimed to be feeling unwell and said he did not want to go to school. Is this normal or should I be concerned?

The chances are that you have nothing to be worried about in the long term, but you do need to be supportive of your son, in the short term. As this is your first child to move into secondary school, the experience is new for you, your household and your eldest son.

Your child has only ever had one teacher per year until now. At primary school he went into his classroom at the beginning of the school day and apart from breaks and PE, never left it. He studied the same range of subjects, right up through the primary school, and his teacher balanced the homework given between subjects each day. He had a small number of textbooks to manage and his books were in the classroom in his bag. His teacher had a set of rules that he made clear to the class at the beginning of the year, and your son became familiar with them very quickly. He finished school in the early afternoon each day, and had any homework completed by teatime, thus freeing him up to participate in sport in the evenings.

In a matter of a few short weeks, he has experienced major changes to his life. Firstly, he has moved from having one teacher to more than a dozen of them. Each one has his or her own personality, class rules, patterns of homework and expectations. This alone is a huge change for a 12-year-old child to cope with. On top of this, he is no longer based in one classroom but moves around his new school every 40 minutes at the end of each class, as most secondary schools operate on teacher-based classrooms. For a 12 year-old remembering where to go by consulting his timetable can be very confusing at first.

He has also had to cope with a range of new subjects - languages, sciences, business, technology and others - on top of the subjects he was familiar with in primary school. Each of his teachers will set out homework according to the needs of their subject. Some of this will need to be completed overnight, some over a longer period, requiring your son to plan a schedule for his homework. Even adults find this difficult.

Because of the range of subjects, he has many books to carry so he has to plan which books to leave in his locker each day and which to take home. Even allowing for that, his bag is probably quite heavy most days.

He also has to manage the collecting and dropping off of text books from his locker in between class periods during the school day, always arriving in each classroom with the correct books and homework.

Because of the longer school day, and the fact that most schools operate after- school team sports, he is arriving home much later that he has been used too, with a number of hours of homework to do, thus causing him problems in meeting his out-of-school sport club commitments.

Given all of the above, it is not surprising that he is at sixes and sevens. For most children the period of adjustment passes quickly. You can help your son by creating some time and space for him to talk to you about all that he is experiencing each day. Helping him organise his homework - by ensuring that you read his homework notebook daily and ensuring that he has his school bag organised before setting out for school each day - really helps. Ultimately, he probably needs a little more TLC right now.

Brian Mooney is the former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors.

E-mail questions to bmooney@irish- times.ie