Home Schooling Problems:
Could Your Calendar Be A Cause?

If you have been home schooling for very long, you have probably come to the point where you wondered if you might have made a mistake with the curriculum you purchased.

What seemed like the perfect product when you read the description is now seeming to produce a glazed look on the eyes of your child, or worse yet, groans and banging of the head against the open book.

But before assuming the problem is due to your home school curriculum, let's look at what I call The Four Big C's of Choosing Home School Curriculum:

• Calendar (what we'll look at here), and
• Character,
• Circumstances, and
• Curriculum.

There are several aspects of Calendar we'll consider. These are:

• Your Child's Developmental Calendar,
• Your Weekly Calendar, and
• Your Daily Calendar.

Each of these naturally has an effect on the atmosphere of your home school. How do you know which is the root problem? There may be several factors, so you'll want to read over each section to find out lots of helpful tips.

Home Schooling Problems Related to Your Child's Developmental Calendar

Your child could be having problems because she is just not developmentally ready to learn something. Much as we may wish to “make” our child more mature, immaturity is not something we as parents, or our child, can control. Spilling milk carelessly is usually a simple accident, a lack of coordination, not something done deliberately.

In home schooling, sloppy handwriting in a first grader is more likely due to developmental issues than it is attitude or character problems. With an older child, on the other hand, sloppy handwriting may indicate that your child doesn't care. One tip you may want to try is to talk with him about what would help him care more about his work.

Many things, like not being able to concentrate for extended periods of time, aren't a matter of the will. These skills can be developed, yes, but young children aren't born able to do them. Their bodies and their minds just aren't ready for hours of concentrated effort. They can, of course, as time goes by, learn these skills bit by bit.

The same is true for more complex reasoning skills. Before children understand about borrowing and carrying in arithmetic, they need to understand the concept of place value. Likewise, before they can write original ideas persuasively, they need to be able to make connections and put forth original ideas. Higher reasoning is an ability that children develop at different times and is related to how the brain has developed.

There may also be medical issues that are causing the learning problems, such as vision problems or dyslexia or a number of other things. For instance, when our then-first grader was having problems with learning to read, we hired a reading specialist to tutor her in reading and me in how to teach reading. Those few weeks made a world of difference for both of us.

Tips:

• Make sure the problem isn't physically based, such as a hearing, vision, or learning-based problem. Talk to your doctor or a learning specialist.

• Don't assume disobedience. Give your child the benefit of the doubt and check out the other possibilities first.

• Evaluate other areas of your child's life. If your child is having problems with a physical task, or with doing higher-level reasoning, first ask yourself if she is ready to do these things. For instance, is she able to do other small-motor activities in other areas, such as cooking or drawing? If she is having problems across the board, the problem may well be developmental.

• Let your child experience the joy of feeling successful. Demand less for a while. Build up gradually to harder assignments as her confidence increases.

• Praise progress. Remember to celebrate every tiny step in the right direction in terms of growing more in areas where you hope to see progress, whether that is 1 minute more of flashcards he can do, or slightly better handwriting. Praise works wonders.

• Try a new approach. This doesn't mean buying new home school curriculum. Rather, it means trying to find other ways to interact with those problem subjects. For instance, if your daughter is having problems with math, try reading more Living Math books. Living Math home schooling site has lots of suggestions and resources for using "living books" to understand math concepts. Doing math doesn't necessarily mean only using a math home school curriculum, after all.

  If handwriting is the problem, try having your child write a real letter to a friend. Seeing how subjects tie in to real life may give your kids more incentive to figure out things or try harder than if they just think of the schoolwork as just doing another page in a workbook.

• Wait. Sometimes, as a parent, you may just need to take a deep breath, trust in God's perfect timing for your growing child, and wait awhile. Experts can argue amongst themselves about when the optimal time to start various academic subjects, but you are the person who knows your child best. You may simply need to give your child some time or mental space before trying to tackle that problem area in that same way again.

Go to

Problems with Weekly Calendar

Problems with Daily Calendar

Back to Home Page