Ten-Hut!!!!

One of the unforeseen obstacles in homeschooling was the fact that my children would not always be excited to sit and do lessons. The discipline required to learn and complete academic concepts requires attention, willingness, and cooperation.

This can be a challenge for the teacher (especially the "mom sort"). Sometimes the dynamics of the parent/child relationship come into play. If you tend to butt heads with one of your children, your time with him/her while doing school could get very interesting (and frustrating!).

Here are a few suggestions to ease those issues:

1) Develop a good relationship with your child. This is so paramount! Smile at him/her, laugh with them, play with them. Take the time necessary to facilitate this mother/child bond.

2) Establish good habits (see post below) and make them a daily routine. If your child knows what will be expected, it will become more habitual. Don't let them get lazy! This is not to say that you can never be flexible. I'm sure you get the idea.

3) Make school a daily habit. Try to order your subjects and tablework if possible. Example: we do our morning school this way: journals, spelling, English/writing, math. In the afternoon we do free-reading, Latin, and history/science. My children know what to do automatically without me nagging them (too much :o). Usually they begin their work independently.

4) Encourage leadership and independence by allowing your older children to instruct and teach the younger ones. If your older children are still somewhat young and unable to teach, have them read books aloud.

5) Establish the fact that bad attitudes and disrespect are not acceptable. Recently, I noticed that we were getting out of the habit of regular schoolwork, and I wasn't reinforcing our attitude standard. What a mess. This can dismantle a whole day and create certain chaos. Simply go back to square one and work on attitudes. *My definition of a good attitude involves eye contact, decent posture, and replies to directives ("yes, mom" if they are asked to do something).

All of this takes such work. Real life will often get in the way, and we are constantly training and re-training. It feels like Marine Corps boot camp, over and over (at least as much as I know about Marine Corps boot camp!).

I'm right here in the trenches, serving with ya! Hang in there :o).

Ten-hut!!!

Blessings.