My 18-year-old son has epilepsy and continues to have nocturnal seizures despite the various medications he is taking. Recently, we found out he has an arachnoid cyst, and this may be a factor as far as why the medications do not seem to help.
My son's current challenges are that his memory is extremely poor. He also requires a lot of extra sleep. I do not know if this is due to the medications or due to the epilepsy itself. He is also dealing with OCD, which is mostly controlled but still occupies a lot of his time, energy, and thoughts.
Not surprisingly, he is doing really poorly in school. He failed his senior year in high school and is going to repeat the year. He just started school this week and is already falling into the same pattern of sleeping all day long. When he does this, he has no time to study and inevitably fails his exams. It is so frustrating. He used to be an excellent student but has changed over the past two years and just cannot seem to concentrate enough to dedicate a certain amount of time each day to studying the minimum amount required in order to pass his classes.
I've sat down with him numerous times to talk about how we can organize the day and make sure he has enough time for studying, but nothing seems to work, and I am terrified that he will fail again. Although we are originally from the U.S., we currently live in another country and do not have much access to therapists and other outside resources that could possibly help.
If anyone has any advice at all as to how I can motivate my son in this situation, I would be grateful. I believe he definitely wants to succeed but is overwhelmed by whatever is going on with him internally.
My son's current challenges are that his memory is extremely poor. He also requires a lot of extra sleep. I do not know if this is due to the medications or due to the epilepsy itself. He is also dealing with OCD, which is mostly controlled but still occupies a lot of his time, energy, and thoughts.
Not surprisingly, he is doing really poorly in school. He failed his senior year in high school and is going to repeat the year. He just started school this week and is already falling into the same pattern of sleeping all day long. When he does this, he has no time to study and inevitably fails his exams. It is so frustrating. He used to be an excellent student but has changed over the past two years and just cannot seem to concentrate enough to dedicate a certain amount of time each day to studying the minimum amount required in order to pass his classes.
I've sat down with him numerous times to talk about how we can organize the day and make sure he has enough time for studying, but nothing seems to work, and I am terrified that he will fail again. Although we are originally from the U.S., we currently live in another country and do not have much access to therapists and other outside resources that could possibly help.
If anyone has any advice at all as to how I can motivate my son in this situation, I would be grateful. I believe he definitely wants to succeed but is overwhelmed by whatever is going on with him internally.
