A fellow homeschooler and friend I really look up to mentioned that her child hates math, that it is often a battle. This is not something rare in the parenting world, many of us have a child that dislikes one thing or another and we find it exasperating to try and pin them down to get them to do the lesson or homework.
Parents share stories of kids crying, hiding under tables, even yelling and hitting their own parents in frustration over the topic. If your suffering with this situation your not alone, and there are options, though you might have to open your mind to consider them and that might not be easy.
My friend was told by an unschooler that it might help to let the child take a break for a few months from Math. The mom thought on this and is considering it, she worries though that giving in like that might be letting the child “win”.
This was my reply.
Why do you feel like your letting her win? I think it is a great question, and one unschoolers would have a better time with than I do. So the dilemma is that as parents we have to make sure our kids learn certain things. We have this expectation that they have to learn certain things at certain times. When a child doesn’t want to learn those things or is struggling, we feel like we have to push, because there are social expectations on us too. It is not socially acceptable to let a child choose to take a break or our biggest fear, quit. At least not the things we consider most important like reading and math. Thinking about things as winning and losing though, we do want our children to win, we do want to help them with what ever is best for them, and despite the social norm, maybe, just maybe, we need to listen to our children more and to expectations less.
Is the bigger issue our expectations?
Our job is to help them thrive and as homeschoolers I think one of our primary jobs is to help our children’s love of learning thrive. That might mean letting a subject rest for a while. I can promise the child will still be learning math the whole time (unless they are in a bubble), just not in ways one might see as math practice and learning from a school perspective. It might be such a gift to “let them win” and show them that you respect them. Of course one needs to frame it so that the child knows that it isn’t about quiting or giving up. The fact that your child has already finished her 2nd grade math might be a time to turn it around, celebrate what she did, and let her know that now she has time to learn about other things she loves because she did great finishing early. Try and turn this into a positive and side step the battle issues. Next I would bring in games, games she might not see as math and don’t include them in school time and don’t force them or even direct them at that child. One of the things I try and do is go at issues sideways, not head on. If I want the children to do something often I will sit and start myself, such as playing with neglected toys or learning projects. Sometimes I will sit down and start reading a kids book, the kids really react oddly when an adult sits on the floor I have to say, they swarm, and they are in the middle of it suddenly. You know how you can’t go pee alone? My 5 year old didn’t want to work on math with me the other day so I went into the bath room without telling any of the kids, sat down in the tub, and started putting math problems up on side of the tub, with tub crayons. All the kids ended up in there and doing math. Within 5 minutes I had to get out and my 5 year old finished the problems and then did some the other kids put up for her, and they helped her figure some out too! There are times when I am not sure a child understood a lesson or that review is needed, so rather than drilling them on it, I will grab my phone and call my a family member or one of my dear friends and go stand right next to the child and carry on a conversation about the topic, and about the child, and I will down right play dumb, saying things like “I can’t remember what solution (7 year olds name) used in his volcano this time, I am not even sure he would remember.” and “Oh, I don’t think he would try and blow anything up” and sure enough the 7 year old drops the video game and starts correcting me and then asks for the phone so he can explain and answer questions himself. Course I texted first and asked the person to play “dumb” with me. People are as it turns out, happy to help with homeschooling when you ask them to and give them a clear job! Sometimes our 13 year old will not be into a lesson or having a hard day, so when friends come to the door I offhandedly mention that we are still doing lessons and how I wish I had a helper. Her friends ask if they can help, suddenly the lesson has new life, dear daughter is happy, and I am teaching another kid as well. The lesson gets done and daughter gets “friend” time and thinks she “won” because she didn’t have to finish the lessons before friend time. Course we know that my goal was to just get the lesson done, so I won really even if I did have to be creative about it. Our child’s confidence is important though and sometimes she needs to WIN. The goal though is not if the parent wins vs the child winning, the goal is that parent and child be a unit and win together against some other force. I am not sure if any of this helps you, I know your most comfortable with traditional schooling and I think (I could be wrong and this is not a judgement) that structure and following outside expectations is what works best for you. It might now work best for all your children though, and so these concepts might be extra hard. I dare not even say the bad things I said and thought about unschooling before I opened my mind to it and researched it way back when. We don’t unschool, we have lots of structure and expectations, but some of the unschooling concepts have stuck with us for the best and we are still learning from unschoolers. (some of them, some are just down right mean to parents who are not unschoolers and choose a different path, makes me wonder how understanding and kind they can be to their own kids if they are so mean to some other adults!)
Your Not Alone
I hope this part of a conversation helps in some way other parents to know they are not alone in struggling with children and lessons. Take a deep breath, remind yourself of your true homeschooling goals, check your expectation, and don’t be scared to try different things. Often breaks help children learn even better in my experience and the experience of some other great parents. Find wants to take the battle out of the relationship. Lastly, be creative, you don’t have to attack things head on just to accomplish your goals.
I came to leave a comment to enter the flash $100 giveaway, and this post caught my eye. It’s a bit rare to find people discussing unschooling. 🙂 I am an unschooled “graduate” who is 27 years old. I was homeschooled (really unschooled, but we mostly called it homeschooling back in the ’80s and ’90s) exclusively from K-12. I did some math workbooks, probably up to about middle school level, before my mom allowed me to quit. I wasn’t BAD at math, but the pressure to complete the workbooks on a grade-level schedule was causing me a lot of stress and my mom decided I could have a break. After “graduating” from unschooling, I enrolled in college part-time, and at the same time I got some algebra books and taught myself the high school math I had never completed. It was a pretty simple process. I just self-taught myself with free resources from the public library. I went on to full-time college, got a straight A in my required college math course (Probability and Statistics), had no trouble with other college classes that also required math skills (like chemistry and physics), and I graduated from college suma cum laude (highest honors). Recently I stumbled onto Udacity.com and I started learning college algebra and trigonometry through their free online classes, just because it looked like fun.
So…all I mean to say is, I do think it’s okay not to sweat it. I think there are different merits to all the different educational approaches – public school, private school, homeschooling, and unschooling. I’m not an unschooling or homeschool “purist,” and I think attitudes and application of unschooling have changed somewhat since I was a student. However, my background is the only know I have. It’s the educational path my parents chose for me and I’m grateful for it because I thrived in it. With that said, I have an unconventional math background, but it didn’t hold me back in any way. I was fine in college and I’ve always been fine in life situations that required math (adding up totals at the grocery store, figuring my taxes, doing the budget and bills, etc.). I think unschooling is all about teaching the student HOW to learn, so that she can teach herself WHAT she needs to know WHEN she needs to know it. At least, that’s how it worked for me. 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I think it is a great gift to know that you can learn what ever it is you need to learn when you need to learn it. We no longer live in a world where someone starts a single career at 18 and does that job all their lives, people change careers often, their jobs demands change, and learning new things is not optional. Most people need to be taught, but the gift is that you know how to teach yourself and where to look for resources and help.
I wonder how your parents got over the fear many of the rest of us have that cause us to keep pushing children?
I do agree that these types of skills are important in our fast-changing world. Being able to adapt in the workplace (or any setting) and being able to teach yourself in new areas of knowledge is really helpful.
I guess my parents must be pretty unique, because I’m not sure even I would have the guts to make such a radical educational choice, and I have them as an influence. 😉 I do admire their out-of-the-box thinking. Also, I think it helped their confidence that my dad has an PhD in educational methods. I think they felt that they would be able to monitor the learning path of my siblings and me. With that said, it was my mom who really pushed for unschooling and did the majority of the research into unschooling (reading John Holt, etc.) and the hands-on learning activities with us. I don’t think that simply my dad having a PhD was the reason why unschooling was successful for me. Rather, my parents used a solid unschooling method and it worked for us. They always had TONS of educational resources available, they limited non-educational activities (there was no TV in the house until I was 18 years old – if you were bored you read a book, pretty much), they taught me a love of learning, took time to help me learn and research subjects that interested me, and gently pushed me along in areas where they felt I needed help. I think any parent can do that. 🙂 It’s a lot of hands-on work, but I think it can be a great educational path for many families.
Thank you so much for explaining! It sounds like they had plan and felt confident in it! I find it specially interesting that you mentioned they limited non-learning activities like TV. These days unschooler groups are filled with leaders that say parents should allow unlimited TV, Video Games, friend time and what ever else a child wants. TV is getting in the way here even though we have limited it in some ways. These days I commonly find my 13 year old curled up with the iPad or her Laptop watching shows or movies. While we have not had cable/satalite in years, we have netflix, hulu, Amazon Prime, and the kids all know how to get to shows online that they enjoy. At least with video games I feel like they are learning things, I am not sure I can figure out what positives my 13 year old can be learning from say vampire diaries….
I hope more people get to read about your experiences!
We are currently homeschooling but more unschooling. I’m bookmarking this to read again later and read the comments. It’s encouraging to see how others are handling the same issues! 🙂
We home schooled during the summer and had very high expectations..maybe that’s just us but our children are to excel academically…..rather at home or in school. Homeschooling is a tough thing to do when you have children “not interested” in certain school subjects but even if they were in a classroom setting they would have to be completed so either way those kiddos gotta keep going. lol the above comments add a bit more depth to the reg post so it’s nice that others have found ways to encourage their kiddos too!