Whine About It

Don’t mind if I do!

…Homeschooling is hard. Why doesn’t he just do his work? When I get home after spending the day at work, I’m tired. I don’t want to do math. I don’t like math. And, common core math is icky. When the directions tell him to write a paragraph, why do I get a sentence or two? Is the word ‘paragraph’ invisible to him? Or worse, did they not teach him what a paragraph is? Why is the 8th grade math familiar to him but the 7th grade social studies material is not? …

Oh, I could go on but I’ll spare you. I’m a silver lining type of girl but I have my days where I cannot be Miss Mary Sunshine all day. I have a good day at work to come home to find the boy has had a reasonable day of homeschooling but the psychologist is holding me accountable for him socializing.

No, my whole day is not ruined with this news. I’m an adult. Although, truth be told, I’m resentful of the psychologist’s insinuation that my child isn’t socializing.

Is he socializing as much as the psychologist would like? No, because he’s not in public school. But, it’s not like the child doesn’t ever leave the house. He talks to people. He can order his own food when we go out. He has a good friend he hangs out with when they both have time and he has a group of boys he games with every month or so. He spends a lot of time with his brother and he also spends quality time with his grandmother which is good for him. The word ‘socialization’ gives me hives (a topic for another day) so I digress.

I have to keep in mind that whining about it isn’t a bad thing as long as I don’t do it in front of my son. Homeschooling has taught me a lot in the past two months. I worry I’m screwing him up but there is an ‘unschooling’ period that we have to go through. I mistakenly thought we’d be through it by now but I have my eye on the prize.

My prayer for this experience is that my son learns to love learning and retains the information he’s presented with. I did what I was supposed to in school – I read the material so I could take the tests then I moved on (again, a topic for another day). I want him to learn and retain and I’m doing my best to figure out how to make that happen for him.

So far, so good

Hmm, hope I didn't just jinx myself with that bold statement.

Yes, we've have some bumps in the road but I think, overall, it's going well. The beauty of homeschooling is that it's flexible. On the other hand, that also makes it difficult.

What??

Yes, it's wonderful to have a flexible schedule. I don't have to rush home every Friday to give a spelling test. If I want to give it the following Monday because we have stuff going on, that's fine. But (ah, the but), it's hard to get out of the structured frame of mind. I blame public school. :)

There needs to be structure. I work full time but he's old enough to manage himself and he does. He starts school around the same time every day and is done around the same time every day (I can see what he's doing on the portal of the program I picked for him. I can also tell how many minutes he spent on a assignment, test, etc.). The goal is to keep him on this schedule during the week and when it's necessary, to work on school work at night or on the weekends. This might prove to be a fight but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The part that is not good? The psychologist. Since my son attended the anxiety program he sees a psychologist to help him deal with the social anxiety he has. As you can imagine, homeschooling is not an option he agrees with. I like the doctor and so does my son but I feel like my parenting is being questioned by offering the homeschooling.

To reiterate - I suggested homeschooling to my son in January of this year because he was having trouble with his asthma and I thought it would be better for his health to be in a controlled temp environment for a year to see how it went. This was before he was diagnosed with the social anxiety.

Truth be told, I am not liking where the school curriculum is going and that was also part of my decision to homeschool him.

I agree that he needs to be able to walk into an unfamiliar situation and deal with it but I'm positive we can achieve that while giving him the best education possible.

I'm loving homeschooling so far! I wish I had chose to do this when my oldest was in middle school.

Bump in the road

The month of April was not a smooth road in our house.

Easter was spent cleaning and disinfecting since I was the only one in the house not sick. My youngest had a stomach bug and my hubby and oldest had bad colds. Easter dinner at my house was canceled. I missed Good Friday and Easter Sunday services at church. Our Pastor emailed me the following week because he was worried about us. If you can't tell - we normally do not miss Easter.

My youngest spent 8 days at home with that stomach bug and missed 6 days of school. Went to school for two days then never went back.

Yep, he refused to go to school.

We had 29 days left.

The anxiety and depression got the better of him and he couldn't face it. My baby couldn't make himself leave the house.

This whole school year has been a fight to get him to go to school. If he's having problems breathing, he doesn't want to leave the house. He leaves after I do so he has 40 minutes to dwell on the fact that he doesn't want to go before he needs to leave and that's enough time to make himself too anxious to move.

After we discussed homeschooling in January before 2nd semester started, he was going to school regularly. It was short-lived but really exciting while it was happening. I praised him by telling him how proud I was that he was going to school without complaint. He told me he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Only a few more months left.

As the weather turned, his allergist changed his medicine which made it hard for him to breathe so had to change it back. He missed some days there and then it started again like it had earlier in the year. After spring break, the bullying was taken care of but who knows how long he'd suffered before he said something to us.

This has been a long school year for both him and for us.

We made it through but he attended a school refusal/anxiety program at a local hospital and that helped a lot. As you can imagine though, they were not on board with the whole homeschooling idea. The outside psychologist he sees is not on board either but we have to do what we think is best for our son.