I have a son, who will be fifteen this week, and I have one major concern about him--he does not have any focused academic interests. Other than occassionally mouthing off, his behavior is pretty good. He doesn't drink, smoke, or do drugs. He has a large circle of really nice friends. He made excellent grades this year in school--for the second semester, he made 4 A's and 3 B's, with two of the B's being 89's. Still, focusing his interests on any one thing, outside of video and computer games, isn't happening. He sings in the choir and takes weekly voice lessons, but he NEVER wants to practice, and, honestly, voice is not exactly his "gift," if you know what I mean. His grades are good enough to be in some honors' classes, but he doesn't want "to stress out" during his first year in high school. He has absolutely no interest in sports, though he showed a lot of talent in sports and could have done well, if he had EVER wanted to--we tried soccer (three years), karate (three years), diving (one year), gymnastics (one year), and baseball (one season). He's taking ROTC next year, and he says he's going to participate in PT (physical training) with the ROTC after school. Suuuuurrrrrreeeee, he is! Let me tell ya, after two weeks of staying after school for PT, he will find a reason to quit.

Now, this is part of the puzzle and an important part--he's ADD/dyslexic. He's been through years of private remediation for his dyslexia, and, until recently, has attended tutoring without any rebellion. He's now willing to continue with the writing tutoring, but he's not willing to continue with the reading tutoring. Frankly, I don't blame him, which I won't get into here, but, let's say, the tutoring is, uh, boring? Ugh! As far as the ADD is concerned, we have tried six medications, and all of them have either not been effective or caused bad side effects, so he currently is not medicated and has not been for over a year. We saw absolutely no improvement in focused interests when he was medicated, either.

So, I'm at a loss as to what we should do. He's such a good kid, part of me says to let it go. Eventually, he will have to focus on something and devote time to it. It WILL happen, so don't worry about it. Another part of me says, "WHEN will it happen?" He's ALWAYS been this way. Just a happy, go lucky, funny kid with a great attitude towards life but no real interest in anything. Because he's a social animal, who is constantly bringing groups of teenagers to our house, I am around many teenage boys his age, and they all seem to have at least one interest in SOMETHING--band, a sport, a class in school. Not my son.

Should I be concerned?