Is it a Mortal Sin when homeschooled teenager consistently refuses to do his schoolwork

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I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to let me know about your personal experience and I am very sorry for what you lost in terms of close friends/ family ties. I do not take your (name removed by moderator)ut as disrespectful at all.
Our situation is not like that; other than his not doing his schoolwork, he is ‘engaged’ in all other family activities; we, none of us, have social media accounts (except my husband who rarely uses it).

As for removing his privileges, we have tried speaking with him several times, diplomatically, about his situation, and to no avail. Even though I hate to see him not able to watch tv or get on the computer to play or play board games, I also do not want to give him the impression that it is no problem with us to decide not to do his schoolwork.

I believe my job as a parent is to teach my kids to be capable adults who accept responsibilities for their decisions (good or bad). I feel I would be doing my son a disservice to NOT give him consequences. This world is a far harsher place that he will have to face. We are not unkind to him and treat him with the same respect and love as we do to our other children.

At this point, we have begun a novena to St. Thomas Aquinas for Struggling Students. Thank you again for sharing. God Bless!
 
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is that novena prayer on line somewhere? are you able to post a link to it please?
 
Have you considered how your situation could appear to an outsider? You have an obviously deeply unhappy child on your hands yet you are making him sit at a table doing nothing for hours at a time, depriving him of all outside contact and threatening him with hell. If he were to report himself to social services I think they would question whether he was suffering from emotional abuse.
 
Maria7377 said:
And as for public school, he, as well as my other children have never expressed a desire to go there, it is quite the opposite.

My son gets very uneasy around a lot of strangers…
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The bolded part especially concerns me. You need to help your son work through his social anxiety or else he will never have the desire to develop a life for himself outside of the family home. It is not surprising for a young man that has anxiety problems to withdraw and not have any motivation to better himself.
 
Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut and your concern.
I never threatened him with hell. I did suggest speaking to our priest about his situation to make sure it wasn’t a mortal Sin (my son could have given the priest his particular reasons of which I don’t know) but he didn’t want to so I thought I would ask other Catholics for their perspective.

I am not perfect but I do my best not to talk down to my children or belittle them. I understand emotional abuse as I was a frequent victim of it growing up, which is why I never want any of my children to experience that.

But I am not going to just let my son do whatever he wants during school hours while his other siblings are working.

He chooses to not do his work. I am doing no different than a regular teacher would in his/ her class: the teacher cannot make the students work but she expects them to remain in their seats during class time.

Normally, he would go to the library with his older sister to work on his assignments but if he is telling me he is not going to do his work, I don’t see how taking him there and letting him wander around for 5 hours is a good idea.

If that is emotional abuse, then I guess nearly every teacher is guilty of it.

As I have tried communicating from my earlier posts, he is very engaged in our family life, i.e. he often participates in our conversations at home and with others at church and other activities (Mass, adoration, etc )and does not behave withdrawn.

The problem with posting these kinds of questions I’ve quickly realized is that none of you know our family and no amount of information will adequately give any of you a good understanding of our unique situation.

I have begun a novena with my husband and his parents, and as for now, all I know to do is to put it in God’s hands as to what to do next.

Again I appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut and will refrain from asking any other questions on social media, Catholic or otherwise.

God bless you all!
 
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Over half the 14 and 15 year boys old in the US avoid homework. They are not in mortal sin. That would be absurd.

With that being said it is not good he doesn’t do homework. As I remember 15 or 20 years ago, I did not do homework at 14, but around 15 I realized it was something I could succeed at in my public school. At least I could win at doing homework and taking tests. Sometimes young men need different kinds of unique motivations.

I would personally avoid equating not doing homework with sin. I would strongly advise not doing this. I think equating sin with not doing homework would seriously mess up your relationship with your son and his understanding of Christianity .
 
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Maria7377 said:
But I am not going to just let my son do whatever he wants during school hours while his other siblings are working.

He chooses to not do his work. I am doing no different than a regular teacher would in his/ her class: the teacher cannot make the students work but she expects them to remain in their seats during class time.
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I think most normal teachers would suggest that a kid who suddenly stopped doing his work go visit a guidance counselor or otherwise get some outside intervention. Especially if after a few days of the same penalty there was no change. What you’re doing (punishing the kid) clearly isn’t working, so why believe that doing more of the same is going to produce different results?

You are right that we don’t know your family. But a lot of us do know families who tried exactly what you’re doing, doubling down on punishment until they got the desired result. Except it never worked because there was an underlying issue that the parents weren’t getting, so all it did was create frustration on the part of the parent and resentment on the part of the child.
 
It isn’t s warning it’s an endorsement. Seton is very faithful to the magesterium. It is authentically Catholic and a wonderful curriculum to help shape future saints. Not to mention some excellent academics.
 
“Getting ideas” is a good thing. Ideas may raise questions. The key is how does mom answer the hard questions?
 
TheLittleLady said:
“Getting ideas” is a good thing. Ideas may raise questions. The key is how does mom answer the hard questions?
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You make a good point.
If you have a kid who brings their questions to parents and they can discuss the pros and cons of it, that’s wonderful, and it’s the outcome every parent hopes for.
But, if you have a kiddo who decides ahead of time their parents will “freak out” if they have questions (and kids are fully capable of coming to wrong conclusions, which is why they’re kids and not adults), then they’ll sit and mope and brood over these things until the ideas get more ingrained and harder to dislodge.
 
But what does your son do for “fun”? All the activities you mention - schooling, going to the library with his sister, discussions on morality, Mass and adoration - seem to be exclusively centred around family and church…Does he have friends of his own age? Does he take part in sports? He sounds to me as if he is depressed…
 
I had the same thoughts.

I really hope our OP is still reading.

Depression and despair in teens is serious.
 
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