Help

Not sure if this is the right forum … please forgive me if it should go somewhere else!

As I went to bed last night, I told my husband that our second oldest had nothing to look forward to … and I knew how he felt. 🙁 We have 6 children ages 16, 14, 12, 10, 7, and 4 that we have homeschooled from the beginning.

Since we multiple ages, I’ve tried to do as many things as possible together – like Bible time and history. I’ve always used an eclectic mix: history – Mystery of History and Notgrass (highschool) plus living books and God’s World News; science – Christian Kids Explore series, Apologia (highschool), projects like gardening; math – Miquon, Saxon, Jacobs (highschool); language arts – lots of reading, First Language Lessons, newly discovered Queen’s Language Lessons, dabbled with different spelling curriculum, etc. I’ve loved the idea of CM schooling ever since I heard about it, but I just can’t get my brain around the whole concept.

As I went to bed, I remembered from reading that CM stressed that the children (and I would assume the mom?) always have something to love, to think about, and to do. My youngest 4 still love learning and enjoy life and each other. Praise God! My oldest is intellectually advanced, is pretty much doing his own education this year, and will graduate in May (accepted to Patrick Henry, etc.). If he can’t raise the money to go to college, he plans on rewriting John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government – For the Modern Reader and a book entitled “Thus Far and No Farther” about the 10th amendment.

But I have 2 main concerns – my second son’s lack of interest in anything and his apparent inability to stay focused on tasks. And my own lack of excitement over anything. My son is in 8th grade and just wants to be outside. He doesn’t want to really DO anything out there. And if you ask him what he wants to do when he grows up, he’ll say, “I just want to run around in the woods.” He is not interested in learning about what grows there or lives there. And he has an aversion to anything he considers work. I’ve started giving him assignment sheets each week so he will know what needs to be completed, but he doesn’t complete anything that we don’t do together. I think he might really benefit from CM short lessons and focused work. But I don’t know how to actually do that. I want him to have something to love, to think about, and to do – things he can get really excited about. We are involved in NCFCA Speech and Debate, which he moderately enjoys, but it’s more of his older brother’s thing. And he likes to shoot guns (to hear them go bang), so he’s on the 4H BB gun team, but he doesn’t really care about that either. I would also LOVE to see him get involved in something where he feels he is making a difference.

I’m not sure why I’m no longer excited about school. It used to be so fun and exciting with little people. Everything was new, colorful, interesting. When I think about picking up our history, in my brain I just think “sigh, one more lesson”. It’s like that for every subject. Maybe I’m just burned out. But I feel like I have nothing in life to look forward to either. Nothing seems fun – everything seems like work. As much as I try to cover up this feeling, I’m so afraid that my younger children will be affected by it. Lord, please change me!

That brings me to the point of thinking it’s time for a change. With my oldest graduating out of how we’ve always done things, it seems like the perfect time to jump in and make that change. But I feel like I’m stuck. I’m tired and weary of fighting the battle. I’ve read the “Making the Transition to the CM Method” series, but I just don’t get it. And I’m still a little bit afraid of the whole idea. If I put in all the work to “get it”, will my son actually begin to enjoy life? Will I? We’ve been “successful” at preparing our eldest for college/life using our own eclectic method … will the CM method work? Does it really work for highschool? If we started with the Bible, what would life really look like?