Homeschool parents, your experience is valued

Homeschooling isn't what it once was. There are probably co-ops / groups in your area to be part of now.

 

Thanks E.

Mine is on the cusp of 13 and “those things” are happening here as well.

Yesterday was just a particularly taxing day for being Captain Amazing, many things that I shan’t discuss in the open coupled with some other social crises glued onto the side of a level of schoolwork that is both academically and logistically taxing pushed the poor kid into a cosmic meltdown…

And like that, she’s back to her more-normal self, just picked her up from the library where she went after school to get some homework done, updated me on some assignments she’s working through and was as happy as if she had a brain.

The petty side of me wants to gloat, but the sad fact is the poor kid suffers 50% of the time, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to improve that situation for her.

And it’s not fucking fair to her that her time is monopolized by catching up on schoolwork when she’s with me.

Anyways, the admin responded back and I’m working on setting a meeting with the folks who deal with these things to chart a course. One of them is her case worker, so I know there’s a strong ally for Cora’s best interests there.

 

FWIW...talk to the local homeschooling groups. Children are individuals and there are probably parents whose kids have similar issues. They will be far more conversant in options than a bunch of well intentioned chowder heads.

 

For sure there are, but I’m hoping to hybrid it to get her through a rough spot and quickly fill in some skills deficiencies so she can return to mainstream.

I don’t want to completely take over her education responsibilities indefinitely, while I’m sure I *could* do it, as others have said, there are social skills she needs to continue developing (including building up her distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and radical acceptance, for those familiar with DBT principles), that she can’t get in an insular environment.

 

You blithering idiots are always the first stop in the “is this a bad idea, or a REALLY bad idea” analysis.

I know none of you fuckers like me, so you won’t fuck around trying to spare my feelings.

 

The bullying should be easy enough to remedy once you have the names and addresses of the bully's parents. With that out of the way, I would think private tutoring would be a good compromise, rather than home schooling and all the social issues that can amplify.

Our just help her get her GED so she can get a job earlier in life and save up enough to put you in an old folks home sooner.

 

If I teach her to be a heavy equipment operator, I won’t even have to pay for the burial!

 

As a adult with recently diagnosed ADHD - I've benefited greatly from getting effective medication. It literally changed my life and opened up a perspective on my bad experience with school.
I've got no insight on home schooling but I encourage your efforts to find something that works.
I was trying so hard to be good, sit quietly, and do my homework and was just not able to.
They just kept punishing me more and more thinking I was being stubborn.
It almost broke me.
Good luck.

 

Track is a team sport, but you compete as an individual. Oddly enough, the ADHD brain seems to respond well to competitive running. I have watched girls just like her become team leaders by graduation. Just a thought, but mention it to her and see how she responds. A good coach absolutely can be a positive influence on a kid.

 

Thank you for sharing that.

She has much the same, but add on anxiety and you can well imagine how quickly a stumbling block gets catastrophized into the foothills of Everest.

Everything here is solutions-oriented. I recognize her limitations and I’m trying to learn how to overcome them as much as she is, and because she’s deathly afraid of her sole source of compassionate support giving up on her, she’s terrified to try anything new fearing it will be a failure, so she stays stuck in her bad habits and lack of coping skills because at least she’s familiar with them.

Jeezis, it’s almost like I’ve spent a lot of time working with this kid to try and understand and help her. Who knew?

 

Track. You mean running and jumping and shit like that?

Yeah, closest she’d come to that is running her mouth and jumping to conclusions, which she can do from a seated position

 

Alexandra doesn't have a killer competitive attitude. Rowing helped her integrate into team sports. Great conditioning and she got to be damn good at it.

 

Both of my sons were home schooled from a point in middle school.

My oldest was short and skinny. He was bullied to the point of head in the toilet and flushed. Multiple crap like that. School administrator support was complete crap. My youngest was also bullied. He was very awkward and overweight but very stout. Kids could not physically bully him. Also I could see how many adolescent kids are morally void.

My wife and I made the decision to home school with connections academy (you get a real State of Ohio diploma) but we only had to do it for like 3 years because they both started full time college as high school sophomore/juniors at community colleges. My wife drove them for a time and by the time they were 16, I gave them cars so they could drive themselves. They both got almost free associate degrees but both went on to other schools for science bachelors.

My wife stopped full time work to do this. She is hardworking and patient. I have a science degree and tutored both my sons in math and sciences.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing is we networked to see that both my sons had real childhood friends. They were not isolated. Some of these friends I believe will be lifelong like a bunch of bike riders. This was a full time labour of love.

Both of them are solid and happy adults.

THIS IS MY GREATEST ACOMPLISMMENT.

 

In particular, what subjects does she struggle with mostly. Wouldn’t happen to be math would it?

I struggled immensely in childhood. I was one of the first diagnosed cases of true ADD and then ADHD later on.

What they also found was that I have discalcula. It’s not dyslexia, it’s a specific issue with mathematics. For me, if you give me more than two double digit numbers to add, or do percentages, etc.. in my head, it turns into a plate of spaghetti against the wall. Can’t do it. But, I learned work around and out of the box ways of dealing with it.

 

10-4

 

She’s doing well in math this year. Just had a quiz today, 19 out of 20, and the only one she got wrong was because she absent-mindedly forgot to put the - in front of the answer.

I think I pegged it a few weeks back while helping her through one of her ambiguous homework assignment crises. She’s in advanced language arts, and the teacher is assigning homework to do analysis and opinion on short excerpts of books or poems. The one she struggled with a few weeks back was so absent of any usable information that there was nothing to work with to do the report.

Which aggravated her. How the hell can I write 350 words about these characters and this interaction when the only source they have is an excerpt of chapter 4, no character or plot baseline to gauge the characters on, so the entire assignment was essentially to assign your bias onto the characters and assign traits to them, and report on that.

Of course that’s not how he explained it, he just said “write 350 words explaining x and y and z.”

Last night she had to write 250 words on Poe’s “Annabel Lee”, including analysis of the religious overtones and implications.

So, in a nutshell, ambiguity and abstraction challenge her, and with as little certainty as she has in far too much of her life, it triggers the fuck out of her.

Then there was the assignment in post secondary skills to do a self-assessment and describe your character. This kid does NOT like opening herself up for the world to see, and last night she expressed just how stupid she found the idea of the assignment.

And while I wholeheartedly agree that being self-reflective and honest with oneself is a skill to develop, awkward tweeners with self-esteem and fractured family issues aren’t particularly keen on inviting the world in to root around in their dirty laundry.

So, as I see it, a lot of my job as teacher will be to make clear what is expected of her so she doesn’t find simply comprehending and analyzing the objective of the assignment to be so challenging as to put her off the whole thing.

 

=6

 

Both of my sons had to learn to play along with academic bull****.

It's a skill that adults can use also. Putting up with stupid BS.

 

Oh absolutely.

But I’m not willing to sacrifice her mental health for the lesson.

She literally can’t handle any more stressors.

 

Middle school can really suck. HS provides a chance to reset if kids from more than one MS feed the HS.

Also, what does the decree say about educational decisions? Mine has ot spelled out.