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CM and attention-needy children
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I was going to title this CM and attention whores, but I thought that might look nasty. But that’s what I feel a couple of my kids are. 🙂
What do you do when your children become manipulative to get attention in your school day? I love CM’s approach. I love helping my kids learn. I love that they love to learn. But how do I know when their neediness is manipulation? All of the reading aloud and doing lessons aloud and gentle school work seems to get some of my kids into a very mommy-intensive mood
My DS 7 is about to drive me crazy with this. So, please, someone help me understand what is going on.
Let me explain:
We went on vacation for Christmas and he became anxious. The whole road trip was stressful for him, he was afraid we were going to get in a wreck while driving. We went to my in-laws and their house was very, very stressful. It’s a long story, but it affected other children, too.
Since we’ve been home, the 7 year old has been a terror. Massive tantrums, lots of anger, not wanting to do his school work, not wanting to sleep in his bed.
I’ve made adjustments in school. He is doing CLE math and I’ve been crossing out sections, but I stopped that because he seemed to think crossing out work should be a normal part of school. Instead, I’m just letting it take more days to finish a lesson.
I switched him from CTGE for LA to PLL. Again, I was crossing sections out to keep the lessons short. Switching to PLL means I’m active involved in the lesson, but nothing is being “crossed out.”
But when he’s so clingy and demanding, I’m tempted to leave him on his own for school. I feel manipulated with the clinginess and I don’t want to encourage that.
I think all of my boys have went through this at this age, but this child is my most strong-willed and it’s driving me crazy!
Any ideas? How do I do CM without creating extra-needy children?
Oh those parenting challenges! Here are my random thoughts. First, it sounds like a fresh start is needed. I know, you probably feel like taking some time off to reset is the last thing you want to do, but it may be the shortest road to change. I would probably scrap school for a couple weeks (2-3) other than reading aloud. I would focus in on resetting our home life routines. At my house that might be:
- Wake up time and breakfast.
- Getting ready for the day.
- Chores.
- Reading aloud.
- Play time or art material time (unstructured, just let them fill their own time).
- Lunch.
The key would be to dump any and all electronics before 3pm, and to allow boredom. You may already have very little electronics going on, but I want to mention it, because in winter I know at my house we always slide into bad habits of more screens and then the kids brains shut off and they can’t seem to entertain themselves or be creative anymore. They then whine more at me.
Add a few anchors to your routine. Maybe after lunch we pull out a game every day, or take a walk in the snow/cold.
Whining/complaining a lot gets kids exercise or chores because those are the only things I can think of when they whine. Exercise so they tire out eventually or chores because they are sucking my energy away with their whining.
Now, after a couple weeks of this reset it is time to bring back school. Start as you mean to go on, so if you plan to work together on math but have them do copywork independently, do that. Don’t cross off things if you don’t want that to be the new normal. As you saw, kids grab on to that and will try to hold you to it as the new standard. LOL! Have a list on a sheet of paper or a board of what subjects will be done that day, in the order you want to do them. Cross things off as they get done. He’ll see there is a finite amount of work to do. When we don’t give them a list it seems like we just keep adding work to their day when we tell them it is time to do another subject. School never ends.
Relating to the tantrums: We have a simple rule set at our house. 1. You may not have what you tantrum for. Period. 2. You may not have any ‘fun’ on days you tantrum. Meaning, they automatically are no longer able to go to outside activities like sports or music lessons or a friend’s house or youth group, watch dvds/play on screens, have friends over, etc. If we have no choice but to attend an activity another child is in, the tantrum child sits beside me the entire time and may not participate. You can choose to share anger in calm, polite ways, or you are not fit company to be with others.
Not sleeping in their bed – that is really up to you and what rules you want to set. Our rule is you must be in your bed from 8pm-6am. I don’t care if you sleep, but you may not have a light after 9pm and you may not make noise because others are trying to sleep. (I have 2 girls in one small room and 7 boys in the master bedroom. Baby is still in our room.) You can follow the rule or accept the consequences. (Which we spell out beforehand.)
One last note – please recognize you know your child best! I have found that my most difficult to parent children need more positive interaction with me to keep a balanced heart/relationship. We purpose to spend time together doing things to enjoy one another. I have one son right now who I play a board or card game with every single day. He doesn’t mind if siblings join us, but we need that positive activity where we are simply having fun together. I bite my tongue often and praise the positive instead. I invite them into my daily work activities like cooking and cleaning if they want more time with me.
Something you can do with CLE is grab your teacher guide and use the whiteboard or chalkboard for written and do some orally. Pull out various household items for manipulatives to demonstrate the math concepts, as needed. This is in the style Richele and Sonya did on the SCM Mathematics dvd. I date my TG and circle the problems we did together, for my records. This way, you can pick and choose your math problems without “crossing out work”. You work by the timer and do the most important problems first. In this way, you should be ready to do the next lesson the next day. And the one on one time with you may be just what he needs right now. Seven years old is still so young. Their needs are always changing.
https://simplycharlottemason.com/store/charlotte-masons-living-math-a-guided-journey-dvd/
Above link has a sample of lesson 1 from the Living Math DVD. Keep scrolling down to the bottom of that page for two more sample math sessions. I hope this proves helpful to you and your homeschool in some way. It really helped us.
Good ideas. I’ve never understood the Living Math stuff. It’s overwhelming for me, but they do so much better with living language arts!
Sounds like he needs a little more one-on-one time. Did something traumatic happen on the trip to make him so upset?
My oldest son developed a nervous tick on our trip and we realized it started after the kids were left with their aunt to make cookies. The year before they had a lot of fun with that, but after we noticed he was stressed out, we asked how the cookie making went and he said it was awful, that she basically micro-managed the cookie making and it wasn’t any fun.
My FIL is in declining health, their church is a mess trying to deal with his health (he’s the senior pastor but can’t give himself a bath) and the whole time was just super stressful. You could literally feel the stress in the house. The grandparents never really spent any time enjoying the kids. It was all just getting things done and just having meals together. But, it’s a huge house in another state and the kids mostly just played. But it was very stressful for DH and I and I concluded I will never spend another Christmas there. So, yeah, it might have been traumatic…plus, for some reason, the 7 year old was afraid of the big trucks on the highway. I’m not sure why, but he was.
But, my oldest and the 7 year old both tend to actually act worse if they get a lot of special attention….thus the comment about “attention whores.” Everything in my normal mothering says, “give them more attention, they feel insecure” but with these two it tends to backfire. So, I get lost as to what to do.
We have a 6yo child who the more time I spend with her solo, the more time and attention she demands. It really has me baffled and, yes, it is very draining and taxing to my nerves.
It’s comforting to know that someone else has a child like this. It is exhausting when I feel like I’m raising kittens. The more you pet them, the more they act like they are the king of the house!
https://www.handinhandparenting.org/2018/05/child-needs-constant-attention/ this may be of interest.
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