These are the days I question myself and my decision to
homeschool.* If you've been reading this
blog, you've read about an exceptionally good day in our homeschooling
life. Now, to provide some reality and
perspective, I’ll tell you about what a bad day looks like in our household:
Before school even starts, the J-Rex takes over an hour to
complete her morning chores that, on good days, can be completed in 10 minutes
with ease. Even then, the hubs and I find
ourselves giving her yet more time to finish the parts she neglected, like
cleaning up after herself in the bathroom, despite the fact that every single step
of her chores are typed on a list and posted in multiple places throughout the
house.
We have breakfast and the parental units can’t enjoy our own
food because we constantly have to tell the J-Rex to eat, despite the fact that
it’s one of her favorite breakfasts.
Now two hours after getting up, we finally get started on
school and the J-Rex begins her (routine at this point in the year) Calendar Time,
which typically takes about 15-20 minutes.
Today, it takes over an hour and when I check her work, significant
parts have not been completed, so I give her more time to finish.
We go on to our word of the day and, as I’m discussing the
meaning of the word “foray” and explaining how to work through a brain-teaser
question about the word, the J-Rex starts playing with some hair that was stuck
under her eye patch and completely tunes me out, leading to her first time out
of the day. We talk. I explain how I
need her attention, she apologizes and we go on to have a fun time completing
our word of the day brain teaser, quote of the day, and quiz question of the day.
I feel relieved and have hope for a good
day despite a rough beginning…
Then it is time for an assignment she’s not too
enthusiastic about: copying and correcting her rough draft of a writing
assignment from the other day into a neat final form. The J-Rex is visually impaired – legally blind
with her glasses, she can see but has no focal point and is extremely myopic –
so copy-work is a major challenge for her.
We try to avoid using copy-work when we can but when you are teaching
the writing process, copying is a necessity for writing a final draft. Since I
know this is something that’s tough for her though, I remind myself before we
even start to practice patience and understanding.
She has a tough time and ends up adding new mistakes to her
final draft, so I calmly explain (Go me! I followed through and remembered my
patience!) where she’s making mistakes and have her start over, giving her tips
that might make it easier. I keep
checking on her progress so that we can catch the mistakes quickly and end up
having to re-start her several times. If
you have a special needs child with perfectionism issues, you might have an
idea of how high the J-Rex’s frustration level was getting at this point… If
you don’t, count yourself lucky and know that she was getting pretty darn
frustrated.
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| Maybe we need this poster in our home! Image courtesy of The Graphics Fairy |
In the J-Rex, frustration leads to distraction very
often. I realized what was happening and
saw she was starting to do better, so I gave her a little more time before
going in and checking on her progress again (10 minutes to be exact). When I check, she’s slowed down exponentially
and has only written one word. It was
neat, though, so I praised the good, reminded her she needed to work more
quickly, and left to check on her again in ten more minutes. When I check again, she’s written three words,
but they’re so messy they’re almost unintelligible – the draft she was copying
from was 10 times neater – and for some reason there are drips of water all
over the page. So, I made her start over again checked back in a couple of
minutes to find her just doodling on the new blank page.
At this point, I admit I was starting to lose that carefully
planned patience, but I tried my best to stay calm and to explain that the more
time she wastes during her assignments, the less play time she gets in the
afternoon, so she needed to get moving. Next thing I know, she’s having a
seven-year old crying, screaming version of a temper tantrum and I’m putting
her in time out until she can calm herself and talk to me about what’s going
on.
That time-out lasted an hour and a half. An hour and a half!
I had to go outside and close the door because my sensitive ears couldn't handle the noise for that long!
When the J-Rex finally calmed down, we ended up having a
talk about what she needed to do to turn her day around and do you know what?
She did it. She has now whipped through that final draft and a handwriting
assignment in about thirty minutes total, is now eating lunch, and is acting
like the kind, funny, respectful J-Rex that I know and love again.
I still don’t know what was going on with her this morning
and I’m not sure that I, as her parent, will ever get the privilege of that
insight. I do know that I’m more emotionally exhausted from all of this than
she seems to be and, if I were more of a drinker, I’d probably be three sheets
to the wind right now. As it is, I’m
dealing by smoking more cigarettes than I should, writing a highly frustrated
blog post, and promising myself an early bedtime for the J-Rex so I can watch a
disaster movie tonight to remind myself how much more stressful my life could
be.
*When I do question this path we are on as a family, which
is often, I always come to the same conclusion: It isn't perfect, but it’s the right one for us right now, and the good does always outshine the bad.
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