All I can say is, "HELP!"

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  • September 2, 2010 at 4:16 pm
    birthjoy
    Member

    I am new to this forum but not new to Charlotte Mason.  I have two boys, 8 and 5.  I was drawn to Charlotte Mason early on and, for the most part, approached learning at home with my older boy with a CM spirit.  As he got older and more “of age” I took a bit of a turn and leaned more towards an unschooling approach.  My son was so motivated to learn everything that it was tons of fun to just have him point the way while I gathered up as much raw material (still living books, mind you) as possible and just let him have a go at it.  Along the way, we did pick up some regular things we did and I did dabble in some Classical approaches (without naming it,necessarily) but my overall approach was “child directed.”

    Well, to make a long story a little shorter… We are now hitting the wall.  What worked for us before is no longer working very well.  There is a great sense of feeling “lost” in our home right now, both on the part of my boys and on the part of their well-intentioned-but-ever-so-confused mama.  On a whim, I crawled back over to this website the other day and just started reading.  And reading.  And reading.  I slowly began to remember my earlier love of CM and I longed to make everything right again.  In my mind I guess I thought that what I really needed to do was just pull myself up by the bootstraps and reorganize how we did things.  Over the last week I’ve been sketching out some rough sketches of how we can stir things up a bit around here, CM style.

    Then it happened.  Again.  Everyone rebelled.  My boys didn’t want to have anything to do with “school” or anything that looked like work, even though, coming from my very loosey goosey background, what I was asking them to do was very gentle.  I feel like I have created these little monsters, not in terms of behavior, but in terms of how they perceive responsibility.  How do I even begin?  I am so frustrated b/c the way we did things for so long was such a good fit for us and my boys really thrived.  But everything seems to have changed and now I don’t know how to do anything.

    I believe that the very root of the problem is an accumulation of bad habits.  But beginning to undo all of that is so daunting and seems impossible.  I’m trying not to get bogged down in discouragement but I feel like I keep falling down into that pit.

    Has anyone else experienced what I’m experiencing?  How did you slowly make the climb out of your desperate place into one more hopeful?

     

    September 2, 2010 at 6:14 pm
    my3boys
    Participant

    All I can say is that you are not alone. 

    I’m hopeful others with more wisdom and experience will chime in and give you words of encouragement and a simple plan.

    One thought did just come to mind and that is: be patient with yourself and start small in whatever you choose to add/change in your home/heart:)

    God bless you for opening up your life and difficulties to others who may need to read this and who may read the responses.

    September 2, 2010 at 7:48 pm
    Misty
    Participant

    All I can say is HELP!  That’s my daily prayer! LOL  Not making fun of you at all just totally relating to you.

    I don’t have any words of advice either other than take one day at a time and remember why you are home schooling and try and keep that in perspective.  When I get like that I just remember that I would never be happy shipping my child off to “school” for the day to only see them at night and then also my worldly views would probably be much different and we’d spend our nights running to and fro.

    My only suggestion maybe take a few steps back and then slow into it again.  Start from the beginning.  I will keep you in my prayers. Misty

    September 2, 2010 at 7:54 pm
    Doug Smith
    Keymaster

    I think kids respond well to the concepts of short lessons and best-effort work once they understand it, so those might be good starting points along with working on one good habit at a time. The child then knows exactly what to expect and how long it will last. You’ll get much more done with 15 minutes of concentrated, best-effort, good-attitude work than with an hour of dawdling and complaining.

    Have you grabbed our free Smooth and Easy Days e-book yet? That’s a good start for habits. http://simplycharlottemason.com/books/smooth-easy-days-with-charlotte-mason/

    September 2, 2010 at 8:06 pm
    quietwatersmommy
    Member

    I can tell you the same thing happened here!

    We started out with Classical Homeschooling back 11 years ago. It was way TOO much and overwhelming (mainly for me!) but I continued on with it (loosely). During that time I stumbled upon CM’s original works in the library and began reading them. The internet was not what it is today, so I didn’t have alot of “how-to” info, but I knew I had found what resonated with my soul in CM’s methods.

    I did what I could with the info I had, mainly doing alot of living books. Although we haven’t always been strictly CM, I do consider us CM homeschoolers because it is the heart of our homeschool.

    I have 5 children (soon to be 6 any time now). Back 3 years ago (June 2007) after my youngest was born, I felt I needed to go back to CM more as I was getting overwhelmed. In October 2007 my now 11 yo was diagnosed with Asperger’s (High functioning autism). He had been having problems for years, but we didn’t know what was wrong. For him to keep on track, I had to use workbooks with him for many things. All this to say it was an extremely chaotic time in our household, especially with my oldest becoming a teenager at the same time. There was so much rebellion against CM style (especially narration!) during that year, I was crying out to the Lord all the time. 

    What I found for us, after a few months when things settled down a bit, my older children were able to articulate that it was just too much change all at once for them. I can see that looking back….new baby, suddenly autism was a part of our lives and I was forever on the computer researching how to help my son, PLUS I was changing how I was doing school for them. For changing the schooling back to more pure CM, I was thinking this would make things easier for us all, but they didn’t see it that way. They couldn’t “get rid of” the new baby or their brother with autism, so rebelling against school was all they had left.

    I didn’t push the narrations that year, but just did what we could. I spent lots of extra time with them, and things slowly changed. 

    Now they’ve been doing narrations with no problems and they don’t question my authority. And I have not had any more issues with rebellion.

    So long story short, I think it’s very common what you are experiencing. In our case we had lots of huge life changing events, but even without that children sometimes do rebel against what moms plan just because “folly is bound in the heart of a child” and they can’t see things from an adult perspective. And I had to learn to be firm but gentle with my decisions because I knew it was really best for them. 

    Keep on slowly plugging away and slowly introducing things. And keep coming here to restore your spirit. And pray for guidance constantly. Laughing

    Nanci

     

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