Homeschooling - Reality TV Style

Homeschooling is not always goodness and light. I think so often we homeschoolers want to portray everything as good. We are afraid that by telling some of the frustrations we are admitting failure. I fervently disagree with this notion, because I know from firsthand experience in a classroom that frustrations exist on the teacher’s and student’s side. Usually this is displayed in a child a child shutting down and failing out or a child acting out and having behavioral issues. At home such confrontations are more personal, the kids aren’t coming home to complain about a teacher, they are butting heads with you.

Today, DD and I are butting heads big time. She has been putting off and putting off math. Today, I put an end to it. I had her get out her math book. The problem is that when you put some of the harder subjects off for a while, it is very hard to recall where you are. Plus, she plays a game of push /pull which I must admit aggravates the daylights out of me. She doesn’t want me to help with her math, she wants me to do her math. I tried to point out to her how silly her question would sound in an 8th grade classroom, “Does 16 go into 84? Does 16 go into 84? Does 16 go into 84?” This isn’t a question of the process that we are working on, but a simple mathematical calculation. Then she starts with the little pushes – not enough to be a hit, just little defiant pushes. You would expect this behavior from a 3 year old not a 13 year old. Her behavior ended her up in her room as I am not going to waste my time teaching someone that doesn’t want to at least meet me half way. She did come out with an apology and we finished her math. But her time out, gave me time to think.

This little outburst wasn’t her fault but mine. I have been too lenient. I have not kept to a good enough schedule. Too much time is being spent on the computer by her. This I will need to change. The last time I had this melt down, a chore chart was devised. I think now we need to get back to a better school schedule with earned time on the computer. The hard thing about the whole earned time on the computer is that so much of their work is done on the computer, so how do you best control the leisure time while insuring the work is done? I find that our time homeschooling is constantly being tweaked to adapt to the issues that arise. The difference between this and traditional school is that I have the control over the tweaking and I know about the issues before progress reports.

So, I hope the depressing story of my math work with DD today makes you all feel like your little skirmishes are within the acceptable norm of homeschooling. Knowing that we all go through this is an important part of interacting with the homeschool community. Tomorrow, we will be factoring higher degree polynomials. I hope that it will go better.