60-day returns • free shipping on USA orders $129+
Not progressing, hit a wall
- This topic has 16 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by
.
- Posts
I haven’t been on the forum in a long time, but I knew when I finally felt overwhelmed that I could look for advice here.
We have been using CM methods for 4 years now. It has been nearly honeymoon like at times. I have really enjoyed it. But this year I have a major problem with my oldest. He is 9 and in the 4th grade. He has always been very bright, loves to read, and loves nature/outdoors type stuff. He has always hated writing.
I feel like I just woke up this year and realized that he is stuck. Last year we started memorizing multiplication facts. It just dawned on me that in spite of daily flash cards, various computer games, paper drills, etc he still doesn’t even know his 3’s and 4’s tables.
He is still only doing 2-3 sentences for copywork and when I crack down and require more he becomes upset. We have not started dictation. He gets extremely upset if he is required to do any kind of writing more than once a day. For example, if he does copywork the. He doesn’t want to also do his English lesson in writing (we usually do it orally), and we also incorporated notebooking pages for narration and he gets so upset if he has to write more than one or two sentences.
According to our math progrAm (Math Mammoth) he should do 2 pages per day, but again, he gets overwhelmed. Today it took him 1-1/2 hours to complete one page. He says it’s just so hard. I purchased the copywork book for boys from Queens and he balks and wants to break the lessons they give into two parts.
We just moved to another state this year. It’s been a really tough 9 months. I let things coast a lot. We are extremely broke and living in a place where we knew absolutely no one before moving in.
But today I realized that he is behind. And while he loves to read he does protest reading whole chapters when they are long. He only wants to read half. (But he will read for good chunks of time on his own.) He also writes beautiful cursive but whenever he writes something non-school related he prints. His printing is awful and he reverses letters. I don’t know if. I should make him practice printing now or not. He says he likes doing his copywork in cursive.
I don’t know how to step out of the K-3 mindset with him and into the higher level he needs to get to. He should be doing dictation, beginning written narrations, a foreign language, a Book of Centuries, etc.
I know I can’t jump ahead too fast but how do I go forward without ruining his love of education? He already seems to hate “school” more and more this year.
Has anyone else had difficulty increasing the workload from the idyllic younger years to the more rigorous 4-6 level?
Thanks,
Tara
Hi Tara – I wish I had some advice – but honestly it sounds almost exactly like here – except my 10yo son likely has dyslexia, so doesn’t do much reading. He does a lot of his schoolwork with audiobooks (reading along – he can read some…)
My son does know some of the times tables, but doesn’t yet have all the addition/subtraction down… His writing is good if following a model in that “font”, but atrocious otherwise. His math can take forever if I let it… (I don’t know how many problems are on a math mammoth page – but I doubt my son would happily do one.) I called RightStart (the program we use) because recntly the number of problems expected have greatly increased – and they advised I cut the number WAY down. (They suggested one column – which would be 4 to 6 questions depending on exercise – out of about 40. I have my kids do about 12 problems now… a few more if they get some wrong…).
His writing is good if following a model in that “font”, but atrocious otherwise. Writing anything original has generally been an impossible request – he will attempt a small amount now since doing the first level of All About Spelling….. his spelling was so horrible before we started AAS that the words he wrote had NO resemblance to the words he wanted to write usually.
All that said – this year I’ve noticed a growth in maturity in working to get his work done… (but it is an AO Year 3 – so meant for an 8yo without all the 9+ subjects…) – maybe it is noticable from the push-back his sister usually gives me.
Is there a possibility he has “stealth dyslexia”? It has most of the symptoms of dyslexia, but the child is able to read at or above “grade-level”…. difficulties in spelling, math facts, writing…. even the reversing letters (at age 9) indicates to me there might be something going on making it harder for him….
Or maybe it is just the increased expectations…. I don’t know.
don’t know if that helps or not….
Tara I really admire your honesty! Thank you for sharing your situation without apology. So many times we share on here, but we are quick to qualify it or downplay it rather than to just spit it out and be humble when asking for advice.
My son went through many of the same things you describe. And yes, it was after those “warm and smooshy” years! I now look back and think that boys mature much, much later than girls. In general of course. Or rather in our specific case this has been true. My son hated writing and did not put effort in to learning to type. He writes much better and much more now, but it was a long and arduous road for both of us. He didn’t have trouble with Math facts. I’m not sure why except that Math seems to come to him naturally. Now, don’t mistake that for the notion that he willingly and joyfully completes his Math work … because that would not always be true. His frustrations with school and his “not so grand days” with lessons seem to stem from maturity issues. His need to accept (because he understands) that he needs to learn things; he needs school. I think that if he had some passion that he was serious about I’d be able to be supportive of that and not so adament about my choices for lessons/school. But I think that even that scenario would have to happen in later years. No one can do much of anything without the basics.
I think there is always a sense that a CM child will have their will so well tailored and manicured that they won’t experience these major rebellions toward academics. I just don’t find that to be true. I have two extremely strong willed children. Not bad chiidren. They are not poorly mannered, nor are they out of control with rudeness and disobience either. They have always been well behaved in public, done a lot for themselves, been helpful around our home, etc. etc. But they have both always had very strong feelings, had high emotions and had strong opinions about their educations. It’s both a blessing and a curse at times. As they get older and more mature I think I’m going to like this more and more. It seems so for my older daughter at least.
I’m just saying that because it helps to sort of examine the *why* as it pertains to your child before you think about what steps to take next. Maybe you can see things that he loves and find ways to make that work in his lessons. That was what i did in times that were particularily tough with my son’s lessons. I often let my own ideas bend to meet him where he was and to get the best work out of him that I could, instead of what I’d planned or expected. Eventually those small chunks of good work got better and then it seems to have just blossomed from there.
SHORT LESSONS I would advise to keep lesson with him very short – power bursts – if that makes sense. Don’t go anywhere in math without those facts down cold. It makes such a difference. And no one is going to judge you or him. We homeschool. We can take the individual time necessary with each child to do what’s best! Yeah for us!
SIMPLY LANGUAGE I would do very simple introductions to foreign language … basic vocabulary, simple verbs through songs that are catchy. (I still find myself singing Que Tiempo Hace Hoy?) There are alot of them on YouTube but you will need to spend the time to preview them first. I used to write them down with the translations, becuase once you catch the tune you can sing them anywhere. Make fun flash cards to label things around the house … Be silly with it to make it stick “Hey could you hand me the *insert foreign language noun here*!” And don’t sweat it. You have time. You are setting a feast before him. Not force feeding him.
Math Mammoth is just like that … and I loved it. I wanted so badly for my kids to love it! But it was too much for them. Even my son who didn’t find it hard just too much everyday. Just go at your own pace? Maybe set a time for Math and let that be it as long as he’s working for that time?
DICTATION Why not make it funny? I am a firm believer that sometimes you have to get weird to get it down as a routine. My son just suggested trying selections from things that your son likes – magazines, books, etc. He says it helps you relate to it better. Then he said that what made him better at dictation was, and I quote “…you making me do it over and over all the time” … hee hee.
GO CURSIVE Why not let him write in cursive all the time? My son did not want to even learn it and so did not. His printing is not beautiful. At least you have something beautiful that he enjoys. Just think: he’ll be the only doctor writing scripts in cursive!!
We still do a lot orally. I have finally transitioned him to writing more narrations now. But the road was long and not always pretty. What helped most was me finally sitting with him and saying “ok tell me what you would orally narrate … STOP, now write that sentence down … ok, now what would say next? … STOP, write that down … now keep going like that …” I’m not where I wish I was either (5th) but I am on my way and I can see where I have come from and we still love eachother and all is going to be ok! 🙂
Whew! Sorry. I sure hope some of this helps. I think there is a need for more on the middle school years and then the high school years too. The transitions are not always so seamless. I’d love to hear more from wiser parents on the nuts and bolts of it all.
taking notes Claire…
we are using Math Mammoth also and my son loves it. However, it took us a L O N G time to get through the additions/subtraction facts with hiim because he learns those types of thing so slowly. earlier this year we dropped school for a couple weeks to take care of something and when we reconvened he remembered the facts! Would you consider taking a week off from fact memorization to let his brain catch up? I do this deliberately now every couple of months to let his brain soak it all in.
We use Math Mammoth with dd8 & she gets frustrated at times. So I’ll say, “Let’s do just this first box.” (The instructions & problems are grouped into several boxes on the page.) If it didn’t take too long, we will do the next box. If it takes a while, I get her to do something else and come back to math later. My dd8 was resistant to her slightly heavier workload this year. She didn’t have a terrible amount; she just saw the difference between hers and ds6. She complained that hers was “harder” than his. So we talked about our need for challenging work so we can learn and grow. Perhaps a good heart-to-heart talk with your son will help him understand and be more willing. He may feel the strain of the move and life’s stress and thus not want to get out of his comfort zone. Try not to worry about being “behind.” We are not on “grade level” in several things. It is fine to take things slow so the child truly understands. I’ll be praying for you and yours! God bless you.
Tara – so sorry to hear you are going through this. Sounds a lot like my DS10.5 was when he was 4th grade 9 year old, so yes, to answer your last question, I think some kids probably just have a harder time with transitioning into the middle school years which feel so much more like “school”. My bet is that the transition hits eldest children (and BOYS) harder than children further down the sibling line.
Looking back, I truly think my son began to change himself (apply himself, display diligence, etc) when he started seeing (and paying attention to) more homeschooled children around his age and just a bit older in a couple of group activities that we did. When he started to see that they were all writing with so much more comfort, he began to apply himself. There was just this natural motivator suddenly in place. This moment of, “hey, I’m as good as everyone else…I guess if I start trying harder it will show”
Outside of this, with respect to your handwriting comments, my son also strongly disliked holding pencil in hand for long periods of time and certainly felt it was a rotten day if the copywork page was longer than 2 or 3 sentences. I don’t think I had a real plan in mind at the time to solve this, but looking back here are the things that definitely helped:
– he went full speed ahead on his typing program. No, this doesn’t mean that he started typing his assignments, but with all the typing his fingers and hands became stronger and soon he was able to write on paper without the constant complaint of hand-ache.
– on the same idea – he started writing with a pen. I had read that writing in pen is less taxing on the hand. Errors are handled with a simple stroke through instead of all the strength used to rub an eraser on the page. Outside of what this article said, it just made him feel more grown up and thus more accepting of the new expectations.
– a more serious effort and a change in approach on spelling. Whenever he did TRY to write (a short narration for instance), even when all the stars were aligned and his attitude was decent, it was usually a nightmare because he couldn’t write more than three words without being completely stuck on spelling. It seems in all the years of copywork, my child somehow managed to completely MISS paying attention to how words are spelled. (the spelling mess surprised me even more so because he’s such an avid reader). Anyway, when we changed up the spelling strategy and put a major focus on it, he began to remember his spelling with greater ease. Very shortly thereafter he became more confident in writing narrations, and even short stories once in a while (now THAT was a surprising day!) Now, I can’t say our new spelling strategies were truly CM…so won’t go any further on it, but just know that (for us) the lack of spelling confidence contributed to the reluctance to write or take school to the next level.
– we signed up for a subscription to Mark Kistler’s Online Video Draw Lessons. Suddenly my child – who NEVER wanted to hold a pencil – was sketching (both via the lessons and on his own) upwards of an hour or more a day. Mark Kistler’s approach is pretty fun and entertaining to watch; my son found him to be a pretty neat guy… Mark chats as he draws and says little comments in the video that really made my son feel encouraged; again, the confidence and comfort level in what one can doing while holding a pencil began to soar. It started with my son just adding titles in for his drawings, and then, here and there I’d see little captions or stories forming. I can’t say enough about how taking up drawing has changed his attitude on writing, longer lessons (like math) and the expectation to just sit with pencil in hand.
Of course, the change in my son (to diligence and longer work sessions) didn’t happen overnight, but I really think all these things helped and in a year and half, we are really through to the other side of the transition (most days!)
Hope this helps. Take comfort in knowing that you are not alone on this! Blessings, Angie
I haven’t read all of the responses, but two things popped to mind when I read. First, have you had your son’s eyes checked? My youngest daughter balked at reading much at all. When we had her eyes checked, we found that she had severe eye strain and now has magnification to keep the eye strain to a minimum. She couldn’t articulate it, had no idea she had eye issues, actually. Her attitude is much better now.
The second thing is that some children, especially boys, do not mature cognitively as quickly as others. My son was like this in reading and writing, but math skills came easily. To help keep things moving and give the brain a chance to recharge from the more draining subjects, remember Charlotte’s advice that subjects should be full of variety; if you’re doing math for 25 minutes, the next subject should be as unlike it as possible so perhaps 10 minutes of personal reading time or 15 minutes of family history. I mention this because I sometimes forget how important it is to change things up, and have to consciously think about it from time to time to make sure that I’m not weighing wearying my girls unnecessarily.
Praying for you as you work with your son to move through this valley back up to the heights. 🙂
The other ladies here have way more experience than me on just about everything, but I did want to throw out one idea. You mentioned starting a foreign language–look into some of the CDs out there that teach foreign languages with songs. Rock ‘n Learn and Song School are two we have and love (Spanish and Greek, respectively). It’s a fun, low-pressure way to introduce a language while you’re out on errands or whenever. For that matter, Rock ‘n Learn has math facts songs, as well… 😛 They’re kinda cheesy (in contrast to the Spanish ones which are really well done), but they’re fun!
I didn’t read all the responses either and I am sure it is good advice as usuall from this forum. My oldest son is also 9 and in the 4th grade. I do not have him writing dictation although I “feel the pressure” to have them doing so as soon as they hit the older grades. Actually my older daughter in 5th grade still isn’t doing dictation although she has started doing some written narration. I just keep trying to keep the impatient feelings away and know that small steps are good. My son hated reading anything I gave him so one day I ordered about 10 different books from the library that I thought he might be able to read and he went through them and picked out what he liked so I could get a better idea of what his interests were and this year he is doing better with the reading. My son is quick at math and is doing 5th grade math with his sister but (we use Christian Light Education math) it was taking them a REALLY long time to get finished and so I started crossing some of the problems off (at my sisters advice). They still are getting the new math concepts and as I correct their math daily I see what they need to review and so I make sure the next day those problems aren’t crossed off. HTH and good luck.
I’ve only skimmed some of the posts. I have three boys, one graduated and two graduating this year and then next. What you are describing seems very typical to me. One of my boys did seem farther behind than the other two and we did end up doing visual therapy. After seeing what visual therapy is, I could probably have done it at home. A search on the internet these days would probably give you lots of things to do. It helps w/ tracking. He is now my strongest reader. He goes after the hard stuff, but is still a horrible speller. He’s very thankful for spell check.
My 9yo dd does not like to write. I started her on dictation and we ended up w/ tears so I’ve moved her back to transcription. Transcription is in between copywork and dictation. I just learned about here, on SCM. She only will write cursive for school and prints the rest of the time. Her writing schedule right now is:
handwriting daily (hymns in prose right now- one page),
3x’s a week grammar (usually this is oral, RS level 3)
2x’s a week transcription (done on the days grammar isn’t)
1 history narration (usually just a few sentences)
About 1 science narration, (this is usually a drawing though)
She will take off in a year or two. Just keep moving forward and encourage him. Her multiplication facts are not memorized either. We will just keep moving forward in math. It will be fine. It will slow her down but eventually she will memorize them.
I also make sure I break her writing assignments up w/ other school work and I try not to give her but one break during school time, otherwise she really balks about the rest of the day’s school work. I keep her moving and try to accomplish it quickly.
I also think it is fine to give him short reading assignments for school if he is reading on his own for fun. I think I remember that right from your post.
I’m sorry I don’t have time for a lengthy reply, but just wanted to say a couple of quick things.
First and foremost, make sure that these things are not just laziness, rebellion, bad attitude,etc. I am not suggesting that any of those things are a factor, but you need to make sure.
My son is about to turn twelve and he is a wonderful student most of the time, but it was not that way when he was nine. He cried many days over his math or writing, couldn’t believe I actually had the gall to ask him to write more than two sentences per day, etc. So I laid off where I could and things were better. He didn’t do written narrations until he was approaching 11. And even now, he only does that for one or two chapters per week. I think this is fine because he gives very good narrations, just doesn’t like the physical act of writing. For math, I told him he could do part of the problem set and if they were all correct he didn’t have to do the rest. We did Sequential Spelling because it was short and quick. He hated learning french so we dropped it.
When he was around 10 and a half, I started seeing a lot more maturity in him. The complaining had stopped completely. At about 11, he expressed interest in Latin, so we have started that and he loves it. He chose to do some of the more challenging books that his older sister is doing when i gave him a choice. We have also transitioned to Spelling Wisdom.
I guess what I am saying is that you have to find what works for him and move forward that way. You don’t have to fit in with anybody else’s time table.
Tara, You might find my reply to be simplistic and very little help, but I do think it may still be a matter of readiness and maturity. Somewhere between 10-12 things will most likely CLICK.
SCM has a better way of wording simplicity. If you haven’t ever taken the time to read the older version of the free curriculum guide, I think you’ll find it encouraging.
http://simplycharlottemason.com/planning/curriculum-guide/old-scmguide/
While you use a different math program, if you’ll click on the math link, you’ll find the encouragement to take math at your child’s pace and gain the courage to wait to move on until the concepts are solidified.
Your son would land at the beginning end of formal writing, which suggests that he’s doing plenty for his age. If you’d like to stick to CM methods, I’d encourage you to rest and read through Lindafay’s blog series on composition.
http://www.charlottemasonhelp.com/2009/07/narration.html
As for spelling, again, you’ll find encouragement to rest and recognize the positive if you notice that he’s just at the suggested beginning age for studied dictation. http://simplycharlottemason.com/planning/curriculum-guide/old-scmguide/language-arts/
As for Book of Centuries/Book of Mottoes, here again, 4th grade is a suggestion for the youngest to begin these. I recall, in the All Day CM Seminar, Sonya mentioned that she waited until 7th-9th grade to begin these so that the children have the confidence in their handwriting and drawing skills to work on these successfully.
Have faith in this process. I know it’s hard to be patience. Two of our three boys were late bloomers, but once things click, there’s very little evidence of “lost time,” or “lost ground.”
Blessings,
Becca<><
I have been there several times with my older boys. Lots of prayer, fine tuning, and curriculum changes helped.
My dd is there in some areas, especially math. I switched to Ray’s Arithmetic, but also use parts of her former curriculum. Ray’s is free in e-book format. I did some of the + and – and skipped to the x intro. Right now, day 1 she builds the facts with coins while I say them from the book “4 times one are four”, etc. Next I read the story problems and she answers orally, using the coins to get the answer, if needed. Day 2 we play a math game. I got library books for the math games. Day 3, next lesson . I also gave her a list of ways to practice x facts, and have her choose one way to practice on her own each day. I use her other curriculum for a few review problems, etc.
It is slow going, but I see progress and am pleased with her efforts.
I should mention that with my son with dyslexia, etc. he hated almost every thing I tried, so I would ask him which approach or curriculum he hated least! At least he felt he had a choice:) He progressed too and now only complaints about a few subjects.
Be encouraged that many of us have been or are there, and your efforts are not in vain.
- The topic ‘Not progressing, hit a wall’ is closed to new replies.