Help
With Your Rule
Too Much To Do, No Time to Fit It In
Dear Holly,
I have 6 children between the ages of 1 and 17, and my youngest are twins. I have been homeschooling for ten years, but I am still trying to figure out how to get to everything I want to do with my children for their education. I have the pressure of getting my oldest through high school, while dealing with one child's dyslexia and another's emotional reactions to school work, while physically taking care of 3 small children and trying to make sure they aren't watching DVDs all day long.
I have a list of everything I must do for the morning, lunchtime, afternoon, dinnertime, and evening and still cannot get it all in. Today I planned to check my oldest's work, couldn't find the books and now here it is almost 11 PM and it still didn't get done. My oldest is very extraverted and finds it difficult to study alone. He is behind on his high school work because of the twins. He basically took care of the other children and the house while I was pregnant and then the first few months.
I think it is my personality that I find it very difficult to ride my older children about their schoolwork. I am very non-confrontational. That is why I made my checklists. My girls tell me that they are done now and I have a list of what to check. Very often I find that they are NOT done. I find it hard to impose consequences on getting things done. I am on a message board that is primarily Protestant, while I am Catholic. Many of them are very "training" minded and use physical discipline, which I do not. So whenever I post about difficulties within our home, I get advice that just does not fit - ie spank, make them do it, etc. That is why I decided to ask you.
I feel like I am constantly swimming upstream and losing ground at the same time. I don't know if what I want to accomplish is unreasonable or if I am just not organized enough or something. I have read MROL several times. I cannot commit to a timed schedule right now so that's why I have the checklist. I have thought of keeping track of my hours of homeschooling and trying to fit in a certain number per week.
I don't know if I have given you the right information to catch a glimpse of my life and make suggestions, but I would be very grateful for any you can make.
Labels: Homeschooling
posted by Holly at 2:53 PM
5 Comments:
Well, this is a challenge, and I want you to say a sincere prayer to the Holy Spirit to show you God's Will before you read my reply. Please keep in mind that, given the limits of "catching the picture" thru an email, and not knowing you well, my 'opinion' may not be God's voice to you. So you must maintain your own views throughout this reply.
#1. Primarily, I think the first person you really need to talk to about this is your husband. He is suspiciously absent from your email! :-) He has his role to play in your homeschooling, and you need to involve him as a KEY guide to your decisions. If he does not naturally get involved, you must call him to involvement through your questions and discussion with him. He must assume this responsibility as part of his vocational duties.
#2. God does not call us to the impossible. Those He calls he empowers. Those He calls He qualifies.
So , I have to suggest that at this phase in your homeschool, it might very well be time to re-discern whether the complete homeschooling of all your children by you alone is truly God's intent.
I say this especially in relation to your oldest boy. I do not believe it is fair to him to allow him to fall behind in his academic formation (and I am sure your heart grieves over this).
He is 17 and basically an adult. It is time for him to live his life and a good part of that life is for him to complete his studies and be ready to go out to assume his God-given mission. I am wondering if he ought not to go to the local high school - both for your sake and his.
And I say this from experience - as I have sent my 15 year old daughter to high school this year. First off, she wanted to go and suffered from motivation issues at home alone, without any peer contact. I also figured that we were getting into weighty material which I did not have the mental space and talent to teach, and in fairness to her, she could use a teacher. In addition, she needed to enter society and begin to live her own life. AND, I figured if she was not formed by 15 1/2, it was unlikely she would be formed by 17 either.
I suggest you discuss this with your husband AND your son, and place a strong weight upon your 17 year old's wishes and assessment of what he needs.
If he wants to go to school, let him. Children must enter their society too , as Pope Pius Xl once said. Circumstances seem to indicate this may be God's intent for him and you.
But if he does indeed desire to stay home (are his motives good here?), then at this late age, I would insist upon a correspondance course. He is too old to be waiting for Mummy to help him with his work, and if he won't work on his own, it is because he is being permitted to not work... even if not intentionally. I would place his schooling totally in his hands - he is a year away from legal majority. He must take over.
#3. As much as we want to do with our kids re: their education, we need to be picky and stick with essentials before adding all the extras. What are the essentials?
Religious formation
Mathematics instruction
English - reading, writing, communicating, understanding
After this has been scheduled and you are covering this well, you have a series of subjects which ought to be covered in basic form - history, geography, and science - it can be done informally as projects, reading , videos, whatever...
And then, informally, art, music, drama - and none of these latter can be considered 'essential'. They can also be allotted to music teachers, etc.
Foreign Language study comes after these.
However, from the sound of it, I say you have bitten off too much. When you cannot do all you want, you need to look at what it it you truly 'want' and see instead what your kids 'need' and what God 'intends'. If you go back to the top 3 essentials for 6 months, and things settle, then you will know this is the issue.
If it does not solve things, then you will need to look deeper. Perhaps it is a multi-level schedule problem, which I too suffered with for years and years - and I can help you if this proves to be an issue. Email me again.
Meanwhile! I do believe that a re-assessment of your present calling is in order, mostly in regard to your eldest son, in discussion with your husband. Schedule a parent/child meeting this weekend.
I do not believe God calls us to turmoil all the time... and that it is wise and just to re-assess what we can handle and what we can't. There is peace in knowing one's limits and being attentive to the voice of the Holy Spirit, who may in fact call us to something other than where we want to go.
I will pray for you especially tonight at my adoration
Thanks so much for your thoughts, Holly! I will answer your points one by one.
My husband: He acts primarily as a sounding board for me. When I am having troubles or can't figure something out, I do talk to him. But he is not at all involved in our day-to-day schoolwork, and does not teach the children any subjects. In the past when he has said that he will (like physical education) he has never followed through. In addition, the relationship between him and our oldest is somewhat difficult, so I try not to make that worse. My dh does not feel that he has much to offer the children in terms of their educations, but he is interested when I discuss it with him and usually quite helpful.
At various points in the last 2 years, I have considered putting my oldest into a nearby charter school. The local public school is not an option. I also doubt my dh would agree to putting him in school, and he seems to have no desire to go. But the deciding factor is that if he went to the charter school or a private school, he could not play the sport that he loves. He has to remain homeschooled to play. We figured out a plan to get him back on track so that he will begin his senior year in September, just as he would have anyway, and he is feeling much more confident about getting things done. Also, he is now meeting once a week with a friend who is tutoring him in math, so I don't have to do anything with that anymore except grade his tests. That also gives him an opportunity to be at a nearby college campus.
I have decided to begin phasing him out of our lives during the daytime. Primarily, this means that I will go back to making lunch, so he can work on school uninterrupted, and he will make dinner for me instead.
The only course now that I must directly oversee is his foreign language, which was my major in college. So I do think that we are basically to where you said that he must take responsibility for his education. He wants to finish early, and still may, but he was just bogged down. He also has decided that it works better for him to work on two courses at a time and finish them up instead of doing all of them at the same time. English and Religion are done through a correspondence school, so that is out of my hands as well.
I sat down with a friend this week and went over my checklist and told her what I am not getting to. Actually, it was less than I thought! I was pleasantly surprised.
Since I majored in languages, I do have a quibble with your putting them last! ;) Younger children are so much more able to learn languages than older ones. In addition, I know that God has clearly told me to teach my children languages. However, I do still need to make sure I cover your top 3 essentials. Math is going pretty well. Religious formation has been extremely lacking. We hadn't been praying our daily Rosary for some time, but I realized that last year it worked quite well to establish 11 AM as Rosary time. No matter what anyone was doing, I called them to the living room at 11. We would pray and then I would read about the Saint of the Day, and then we did German. So we'll be starting that again this week. This will also give them incentive to get their independent work done, so it doesn't take up their time in the afternoon. Our days have been a little too free-form.
The main thing, besides the Rosary and German, that I wasn't getting to was a time in the afternoon when I wanted to work with the 10 and 8 year olds on English and then do some fun projects. I think I will do the same thing for that and choose a time when the twins will hopefully be napping when we can spend an hour or so on that.
So after some input from others and prayer, I am feeling more confident that I can get done what I truly want to do with my children, working on establishing good routines with the younger 5 and beginning to release the oldest one to take responsibility for his own life. I will try it next week and see how it goes!
Another question for you: what is a multi-level schedule?
Thank you so much, Holly! Your calm words were like a balm to my troubled soul!
HI Anonymous!
I prayed for you last night at my adoration! And I am glad to see you are thinking these things out! Sometimes all we need is a chance to chat and get things out, and have someone else react - to realize we aren't is such a bad state after all! :-) And I chuckled at your foreign language major! :-)
You sound better today, and I think have a clearer understanding of what you ARE accomplishing, and your program with your eldest son looks like it will meet his needs to take responsibility. One note about lunches tho too - you may also have a couple of middle children who can pair up and make lunch in place of you.
So yes, keep talking to your husband, your friends , reading and seeking counsel, as this is what helps relieve the occasional pressure cooker feeling and gets our brain thinking when we hear everone's input. You have a big job on your hands, that is for sure. But God obviously knew you were up to it when he sent you all your lovely children! Rest in that with confidence! God bless you!
Holly
I just wanted to give you a little update. After a week of trying my new ideas, I am very happy with how things are going. We got to most of our subjects and prayed the Rosary at least 3 days. Having a set time for that is really helping to anchor our days a little bit more, and that is very helpful. I realized that I have to accept that not every subject or area will happen every day. It's just impossible right now. The one thing we never got to was the extra activity time I want to have with my girls - time for things like science experiments, cooking instruction, geography projects, etc. I think that since my oldest is out Friday mornings to meet his math tutor, that instead of them doing their regular work that morning, we can do projects then instead. They just won't fit into the other days, but I don't want to give up on them.
Also, my taking over lunch again has been going well, and it has been nice to have my oldest making dinner for me, since that is a time of day that things can be crazy and I am tired! I will keep in mind your suggestion to teach the middle ones to make lunch too.
Thank you so much for your help! God bless you!
I am so glad things are working out! Remember to stay in assessment mode, and to keep an attentive ear to the Holy Spirit as He shows you what you can and can not fit into your days. It is this attentiveness which will help you accept the limitations you are noticing, redefining them as God's Will for you in the present circumstances.
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