I think one of the most frustrating things about homeschooling, and parenting in general, is how fickle kids can be!. It's not that I expect them to always like things, to never get bored of anything or change their mind. But it's those moments where 5 minutes ago, my child LOVED THIS, and now they HATE IT WITH THE UTMOST PASSION, that blow my mind.
Just some recent examples with my 6 year old....
Last week I was creating a color by number worksheet with the colors from Math U See blocks. My son came over while I was working on it and asked what I was doing. I told him and he get got all excited..."Can I do that? I love color by number!" (Inside I'm doing cartwheels! Yeah! He likes it! He'll DO IT! Woo hoo!) But I know I'm not going to be done before his bedtime so I tell him we'll do it tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes, and he'll have nothing to do with it. NOT INTERESTED.
Similar thing happened today. I am sitting trying to figure out how to put together a printable easy reader book about Zig the Pig so all the pages are in order. I've decided to try it in spite of the fact that he usually objects to new books (anything not a Bob Book is "scary."). He comes up, looks at what I'm doing, and says "Can I read this Zig book for reading today?" I am ECSTATIC...both that he wants to read the book, AND that he said Zig (he's never seen these so the only way he knew that was to read it! Go kiddo!). Of course I say, SURE!
But as we're putting it together he decides that it looks longer than his regular readers so he only wants to read the first page. I'm not having that...GRUMPS ensue. So, I try to show him that it's not any longer than his regular books by counting the pages on a Bob Book and counting this one. Turns out Zig is ONE PAGE longer...so I tell him I'll read the last page for him, so it's not longer.
"NO, I want to read THIS." he says, pointing to the Bob Book that we've read over and over before. " I don't want to read this book," pointing to the Zig book I've almost got finished for him.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!
It's like there's these moments of opportunity and I am rarely ever quick enough to catch them. And it's one thing trying to get him to do something I know will be a challenge, but when I think he'll love it then he hates it, or he shows interest in something but the interest wanes before I can pull it together, I feel like screaming and pulling out my hair.
Every feel like that?
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Yep! LOL
ReplyDelete6 is still young though. Mine are all grown. I think something that really helped me was to not put so much time into a particular learning tool. Then I wasn't as invested in making darn sure they USED it. Go more with the flow. Maybe, if I may suggest, read some about unschooling. I promise it will help!
ReplyDeleteI've read about Unschooling...and I don't think it would help. Because the changing his mind things would drive me even more crazy. My first born, who public schools, was not a problem motivating...but my problem was I couldn't keep up with him. He would want to do something, and by the time I got the materials and got it set up...he had moved on and now wanted to do something else. Drove me NUTS. I do give my child a lot of lee-way, and we'll change directions some days, but if there's other times where I just have to put my foot down and stick with something. I'll let him bring his stuffed animals, I'll try it during play school (school where he pretends he's one of his toys and I pretend another of his toys is the teacher--takes off some of the stress and we can be goofier during it), but he's the type who would not try, at all, without knowing he had to do some form of homeschool every day. And I'm the type who would give in and let him play on the iPad all day if we didn't set aside those times, and would resent having to stop what I was doing to catch those teachable moments when he was ready to try something, if I didn't know that I could have my own computer time at 2:00 (that's what we do...every day at 2 pm we both have computer time and it's such a relief). So even though we are both semi unstructured, just having the progression of a curriculum and the structure of knowing that "no homeschool" is not an option, save for a rare day off, keeps us moving forward.
DeleteBeen there, done that and it's so true. Now I'm going through it with grandchildren!
ReplyDeleteYeah....at least it does seem to get better as they get older.
DeleteOh my this is so true. Fun fun
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for sharing on Throwback Thursday. Your post is this week's Featured post.
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