Attitude Shmattitude

Hi there homeschooling parents! As promised here is Chapter 5 of 

I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU DO IT!

How to homeschool your young children without losing your mind

(And if you enjoy my writing, how about popping over to the "Books" page above? You might be interested in reading one of my Young Adult Christian Fiction novels for free!)

This will be the last chapter I'll be sharing on the blog. The other chapters will deal with topics like curriculum choice, how to keep going with a new baby in the house, the socialization issue, me-time, and a few others. The full short book will be available as an e-book on Amazon in September. 

Chapter 5: Attitude Shmattitude

Newsflash: Most kids don’t particularly like schoolwork. They want to play.  You are just Mom or Dad and they will let you know it.

There might be some little girls out there who love colouring and cutting out, who sit quietly while Mom or Dad reads them literary classics and remember to get their snacks when it’s break time. I never had any of those. My kids complained about Maths and Afrikaans and anything involving actually picking up a pencil to write. I have a child who desperately needs to go to the bathroom whenever we sit down to read, and is always ravenous the moment a workbook is put in front of him. My daughter, who is now happily writing fan fiction and entire novels on Wattpad, used to cry a river every time I gave her a creative writing assignment. “I don’t know what to write!” she would wail, rejecting every one of my suggestions as fast as I could make them. 

My kids all have their own ways of rebelling against schoolwork. One of my sons goes limp and silent when he has to do something particularly distasteful to him, and twenty minutes later all there is on the page are tears. Another one gets a scowl on his face and punishes me by jabbing his pencil onto the paper so hard that it rips, and the other one just flat-out refuses. “No,” he says, as if that is that. Teaching your kids school stuff is no easier than getting them to pick up their clothes and eat their vegetables. I admit it: the attitude battle is the hardest part of homeschooling. The tears that have fallen onto our dining room table … let’s just say that twelve is not too old to turn on the waterworks because your horrible parent thinks you should be doing something you don’t want to do. Yes, twelve. I know. I didn’t think so either.

I don’t worry about it these days as often as I used to. There are still times when I have to put my head in my hands and take a deep breath. The one who thinks he gets to say “No” to me is learning subtraction now, after all.

If homeschooling was the only thing in my life I might spend hours thinking of ways to make it all fascinating and fun. I could provide flour trays and playdo and kinetic sand every day and turn the seven times tables into a game that is so much fun they will choose it over playing Minecraft. That might happen every now and then, but contrary to what many may think, I am not a superhero just because I homeschool.

Staying up until midnight making puppets and mazes and treasure hunts would not be good for my family, my marriage or my sanity. Yes, there was that time where we wrapped up a teddy as an Egyptian mummy and the time I made up a song to teach them the provinces of South Africa. There was a day when we mapped out the distance between the planets in the Solar System with toilet paper in the garden, and once my son was in ecstasy when Science turned out to be a bug hunt. I have been known to print out huge maps and get out the paints, and once I even baked cookies to teach fractions. But most days are ordinary, and they have to learn things the good old way, by reading, thinking and actually picking up a pencil. I try to see it as a lesson in itself – there will be many times in their lives when they have to do things they don’t like, and they won’t get to moan their way out of it. There will be plenty of times where they don’t understand WHY exactly they have to do something, but they need to submit to authority and get on with it. It’s an important lesson, to do what your mom says and to do it without complaining. I won’t say my kids have learnt it yet, but we persevere! Homeschooling is part of parenting, after all.

But … there’s the kids’ attitude, and then there’s mine. I can’t control their moaning, but I can control mine. It is so important that I don’t get into a cycle of feeling sorry for myself and bringing everyone down. To a large extent, my attitude determines theirs. It’s the same in traditional school – an enthusiastic teacher who actually looks happy to see her class is more likely to have a good day than the one who clearly does not want to be there. Unfortunately that is true for the rest of family life too.

I believe there need to be consequences for bad behaviour. We probably all do, it’s just putting that into practice that is hard! For some kids, a stern word is all it takes. Others are bulletproof until privileges are taken away. For us, three chances and then an appointment with Dad when he comes home usually does the trick. “Do we need an appointment?” The instant effect of those words when my husband says them is almost magical.

If your kids are really struggling with attitude it may be worth looking at the amount of work they are doing. It might genuinely be too much for them. Many boxed curriculums provide a huge amount of work for kids who want or need more than others. In my experience, less is usually more, and I feel nothing for taking two years to get through a year’s worth if it’s working for us. I have been a teacher in a school and I know how little actual work gets done in a day. Younger kids do not sit for five hours straight poring over their books in traditional schools. There is assembly and lining up and homework-checking where they are not “working”. There are whole chunks of class time devoted to getting one unruly kid under control.

My kids spent about an hour or two a day on formal schoolwork in the first few years, and we never really did schoolwork past lunchtime. We read aloud and did lots of other things for the rest of the time and it worked well that way for us. When I had a fussy baby and a needy toddler I used to worry about my older kids and think I would have to catch up when we had more time, until I realised how much they learn in the rest of the day too. When one of my kids was learning to write, he hated sitting down at a desk, but on his own one afternoon he set up a shop and wrote out inventories and stock lists. He cut up paper to make into money and figured out the change when his siblings bought apples and peanuts and plastic animals from him. That is gold, people, the stuff of a teacher’s dreams! He was motivated and interested and he was learning like mad all afternoon without realising it. It’s called playing! Don’t give your kids so much work that they forget how to play.

That said, there are ways to improve the mood on a bad day when nothing is going right.

·         Turn on some music and have a dance party.

·         Switch things out. Put down the Maths and do some Art or baking or Pilates on the carpet.

·         Take a break. Call time out and give the miserable kid a hug and some non-school attention. Walk the dog, unpack the dishwasher, whatever. Stop and come back later.

·         Bring out the snacks! Hangry kids are no fun.

And if all else fails … cancel school for the day. Yes, I have done it. Sometimes finishing some work on schedule is not worth the fight and your own sanity. You will, however, have to do this in a way that does not make them think that they have won, and you have given in! So I wouldn’t suggest playing this card too often. It might come back to bite you!