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how to teach a child that doesn't want to know!
- This topic has 4 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 9 months ago by
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My daughter (11) is a lovely and fun girl..but she just hates working at her schooling. As soon as we start I can feel her attitude turn, and it affects the whole family. She likes poetry, music, art and some science & history..but whe it comes to math and english, she hates doing it. Sometimes she even cries. She becomes nasty to me and short with her brother and sister. At the end of each session she is happy and plays with her siblings.
I find teaching her exhausting (emotionally).I’m at a loss as to what I can do to remedy this. She has learnt a lot since I began home schooling 15 months ago. Her reading has improved dramatically and her hand writing is lovely….now that we have changed to a CM way of teaching and I’m developing my own curriculum, she has begun stressing again, and today was really hard.
I’m always hearing stories of how wonderful home schooling is…please tell me that others have hard times too! Im feeling alone!
Thank You…
Oh, Mel… you are not alone. I have a child who seemingly would love to just play all day and not learn much either. She actually does want to know things, she just doesn’t want to put the effort into learning any of it.
So I have no ideas really except to plug along – obviously your daughter is improving in some areas, so you must be imparting something good to her!
Perhaps we will hear some grand suggestions for the largely unmotivated from some others who have trod this path before…..
In one respect it is nice to know there are others at there in the same situation as me, but I really do feel for you.I have a 12 year old daughter that has the same attitude about anything academic. She really likes nothing unless it is realted to fine arts. I have decided to just become very relaxed in the way we are handling her academic subjects to try and ignite a spark in her. I let her choose her history or science reading, it can be anything. We do history one week and science the next. I read aloud from two other choices each day, right now Anne of Green Gables and Heroes of America. I had her choose some projects to do from Keepers of the Faith. I’ve let everything else fall to the wayside. If anyone wants to read about how we are doing in this arena you can go to my blog http://www.cabininthewoods-diane.blgospot.com. I know that alot of people will not handle this situation the same as us but I really want her to want to learn. I don’t know if that will ever happen.
Blessings
Diane
I love Diane’s post. She is obviously comfortable doing what she knows to do for her child. That, to me, is home education. I have to admit that just reading the words “hates working at her schooling” makes me shudder. My children are 16, 13, 11, 9, and 6. If you were to ask me what our homeschool method or style is, I’d have to say we fall between Charlotte Mason and Unschooling (I hope that’s ok to say here 🙂 I do believe children need daily guidance, rules, and discipline, so many unschoolers would say we don’t fit with that method. I love CM but don’t push my children when it comes to narration or certain lessons because that all happens really naturally here anyway. We don’t “do school”, but we do have structure. I am extremely satisfied with the results I see every day from all of the reading and writing taking place to the excitement about every trip to the library (even the oldest children).
Please know I am saying all this to hopefully be an encouragement. This post touched my heart. I had to share. Home education honestly really can be so awesome if we lay aside some schoolish thinking sometimes and keep our minds open to all of the learning going on in our families. You will have hard times, good days, bad days, etc. no matter what. But, follow God and you can’t go wrong.
My thought would be to make sure her lessons in Math and English aren’t to long. I would cut them down to 20min. or less each. If she can give her best effort in that ammount of time she can be done with them. Don’t worry so much about whether she is going to finish a cirriculum in a specific ammount of time. Look more for her understanding and applying of concepts learned. I must admit that I too would consider myself CM and slightly unschooling. I had to unschool my brain so that I could effectively help my dd learn. Everything we use now for lessons are things that I can do on a mastery basis. We take every opportunity to make learning a hands on real life experience. We use specific cirriculums that are CM friendly, but we use them as guides and work at our own pace. Also, taking breaks to play math games that reinforce learning is something we enjoy too. HTH
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