Permission To Drop It

  Yesterday was a struggle with math so I told my son he only needed to finish up pre-algebra with the program we have and I would find a non-common core algebra curriculum for 9th grade. He counted up the amount of work he had to do and was bummed to find out how much he had left with only two weeks to do it. I mentioned he knew since the first day of school he had math to finish and he chose to only focus on science and leave all the math until last. He dragged his feet with the science too - can we say, Pro-CRAS-tin-ation (it's split up like that because I am hearing Sponge Bob in my head saying it like he said, "I-MAGE-in-ation" and yes, I am also picturing the hand movements in my head).

  I have a friend who is homeschooling all three of her kids, and has been for a while now; she is my main go-to person for homeschooling. I asked what math she uses - Teaching Textbooks. Pricey but she says they are worth it. I am going to look into other options but this remains my first choice because I know someone using it successfully. 

  Since my youngest went to bed early last night and was clearly down about math, I asked my friend her opinion on something that was bugging me - should I make him finish pre-algebra or move on?

  I was not sure what to expect from her because I really did not know what to do. Am I failing him in some way by not making him finish what he started? Am I missing the point of homeschooling by not allowing him to move forward and try something else when one thing is clearly not working for him? I was truly stuck! Her response? "Move on. If the program isn't working, don't fall down that rabbit hole. If he's frustrated, it is not helping him. He's not learning so it's time to be done." I looked at my screen in disbelief. She gave me permission to drop it even though it was not finished and there was no judgment there (not that I thought there would be from her).

  I read so many books on homeschooling and most, if not all, said to drop something if it was not working for you or for your child. Why I needed someone else to give me permission to do what I had read about and knew already, I do not know but it definitely gave me the confidence I needed to move forward. Homeschooling is not always cheap. And the thought of wasting money makes me itch so it is not odd that I wanted to stick it out even after all I have read on homeschooling. If he were in public school, he would have to finish. I have to get out of that mindset. I think what bothers me most though is my son does not think he is good at math when I know he is. He can do complex problems in his head and give the right answer. How is that not good at math? He is brilliant! Yes, I am partial but who can blame me? :)

  I have been struggling with the decision to homeschool since bringing it up in January 2015. I am a wife, a mom of two boys, a daughter, an aunt, a good friend to many, a church member, a crafter and I work full time - how can I possibly homeschool too? My list as I am thinking about it right now:

• Am I doing enough?
• Am I spending enough time with him through this?
• Is the education I am providing him good enough to advance him?
• What amount of space should I give to him?
• Is the documentation I keep sufficient?
• Would I nag him less if he was in public school?
• Am I letting him off too easy when I do not nag him?
• How much nagging is too much and can I call it something other than nagging?
• How does this change our relationship now that I am Mom and Teacher?
• Do I get him out of the house enough?
• Am I allowing him to turn into a hermit?
• Does my husband think I am doing a good job?
• What does he think of the decisions I have made?

  Given my list of insecurities and the fact that my child is struggling with something that I can fix easily (no more common core, thank you very much), it seems clear to me now that my struggle is not because he is homeschooled, but that he is no longer in public school.

  Let me explain - there are certain expectations for public school students. As a student, you need to memorize certain things in order to pass all the tests so you can move to the next grade level. Key word here is memorize. My goal for homeschooling is that my son learns and retains information for future use. What good is memorizing facts just to take a test? And who is to say that what the test is asking him to remember is the part he needs to or wants to? If he forgets what he has learned, what is the lesson? Right now, he is learning and retaining information that he can recall at a later time which was my goal.

  We have our good days and our bad days but he is learning and that is the main thing.

Year 2 Progress thus far

  Back to school!

  Since my son is not attending a class at the high school this year, there was no reason to start him based on the district's calendar so I pushed back the first day of school until the Wednesday after Labor Day. A coworker had the day after Labor Day off so I had him work on end of year tests that day to gauge where he was in math and English. On the 7th, we talked about goals for the year, his schedule for classes, etc.

  Since we did not actually finish 8th grade, I wanted him to complete the sections of science and math he was missing. He has until the middle of October. We will see where he is at then and go from there. So far, he seems to be focusing on science only which is fine. He is powering on through.

  I have seen good things so far from him already and I am excited for this school year!

 

 

Finally Finished (Sort Of)

  Ok, so technically, he did not finish 8th grade but we are done with school. He still has some math and science to complete but we will work on that in the fall. Since I had a kid in public school this year, I based the homeschool calendar on his school calendar to keep things simple. My oldest is done with school (he graduated - YAY!) so my youngest is done with school.

  It was a reeeaaaaalllllyyyy long year for both of us. Up until last month, I was not sure if he was going to public school for freshman year or not. Now that I know he is not going to public school ( I am OK with him being done. It has been so stressful not knowing what the ultimate plan was this whole time because I kept thinking I was not doing enough if he was going to go back to public school. What if he was not learning all he needed to learn? I was really worried about common core math.

  No need to worry anymore though because he will continue with home schooling. He is learning a lot and is retaining what he learns which is what I really like. The psychologist suggested that perhaps he should take a class at the high school just to get out of the house and get that experience and to our surprise my son agreed!

  I spent the better part of the last month in talks with the high school counselor and the vice principal discussing what my son would need while at school but was unable to get everything nailed down for fall (for future reference, it takes more than 4 weeks to get this nailed down especially toward the end of the school year). We'll try for 2nd semester. In the meantime, I am going to enjoy my summer. I know my son is too.

 

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.

Getting closer

After three full weeks of school, we're still trying to figure out our way. I'm not surprised though. I read a ton on homeschooling. I have books with links to other books. I subscribe to websites on homeschooling. I even found some (one article) information on homeschooling while working full time (yep, it's official - I'm crazy!).

Reading is nothing like doing.

Remember reading the book, What to Expect When You're Expecting? Yes, it was helpful but it wasn't anything compared to actually experiencing it. I read that book early on in my pregnancy when the things that were going to happen to my body hadn't happened yet. A book is nice. It's nice to have that edge but you still need to adjust once it actually happens. Plus, everyone is different so not everything in the book happened to me. That's nerve-wracking. Did I miss it? Is it supposed to happen? Will it happen later? ACK!

We're still adjusting and that's fine. I still like homeschool. I get to utilize my organizational skills and it's nice to have something that I have to do besides work.

I know what you're thinking. Why would you need anything else to do besides work?

Well, let me enlighten you. I'm a very organized person. At work, I know what I need to do and I tackle it head on. I've been struggling a bit with my sense of purpose at my job (another post perhaps) but I have a daily plan and it all gets done.

At home, I just want to sit and watch Castle on TNT.

I mean, I've been working all day and despite what my father thought, I do work every day. It's mentally and emotionally challenging and I'm tired when I get home. I have a bachelor's degree in psychology. I use it every day. Every. Day. Best money my parents ever spent.

Obviously, I have purpose when I come home. I have to clean, do laundry, etc. but if I don't do any of that, nothing happens except my house is a bit dusty, you might have to wash a glass or a dish before you eat and we have to wear those rarely worn clothes (you know, the ones you don't really like but keep in case you haven't done laundry yet and need something to wear).

So my house is messy, so what? I have a sign in my entry way with my disclaimer, "My house was clean last week. Sorry you missed it." :) My husband does all the cooking (yes, I hit the jackpot there) and the kids can clean if I need help. My husband cleans and does laundry too. Everyone pitches in. If I don't do my homeschooling job, my child suffers. That's a BIG motivator to get off the couch and get something done.

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.