Name: Spreading the Feast Gathering
Start: 2025-07-11T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-07-12T23:59:59-05:00
Location: LaGrange, KY

Tagged: attitude, Orderliness, struggling with dd HELP

This topic has 11 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 8 months ago by art.

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

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October 10, 2016 at 5:27 pm
jill smith
Participant
Hi all,
I am at my wits end with teaching my dd 11. Her attitude stinks and I feel like she doesn’t give 100%.
I ask her to retell me what the story was about or write it on paper and she has a melt down. I understand that she wont remember all of it, but come on this is ridiculous. She doesn’t write at all and she is in 5th grade I guess. (lol) SHe is amessy person and wont clean her room up daily. I finally today took everything away, including all her extra blankets and stuffed animal. Tears as I write. I feel like an absolute failure as a home school mom. I don’t have any help from my ddh because he works 65 hr or more a week. Is Charlotte Mason not for us? I wonder how we from 9 am start time to 11:30 we are finished with our day including my high schooler. That’s Bible, History, Math Science (on Tuesdays) copy work, spelling wisdom. AM I doing it all wrong? We have a lot of ages 18 down to 8. Thanks for listening.
October 11, 2016 at 6:28 am
Sue
Participant
You say you feel like a failure as a home school mom. Let me tell you, you would be a failure if you didn’t take action and simply ignored the problem. As far as her room is concerned, you might want to work on the habit of orderliness for awhile. If you haven’t read Laying Down the Rails, that would help explain habit training.
I’m not sure if you meant school began at 9 a.m. and ended at 11 a.m. or p.m. If it’s a.m., then you are not doing badly at all, except I would imagine that the high schooler would take a little longer on most days. For the rest, 2.5 hours is probably fine.
I don’t have time right now to give you any specific help with the 11-year old, but I just wanted to give you a word of encouragement.

October 11, 2016 at 7:58 am
jeaninpa
Participant
Dear overwhelmed mama,
You are not a failure. Attitudes and relationships are the most important aspect of homeschooling. Forget curriculum goals for a bit and focus on those things. Sometimes for me, I find that my attitude has to be changed first. Remember, you’re not drawing up battle lines — it can feel that way with kids sometimes!! You are on the same team. Find ways to walk beside her and encourage her. Our kids need to know that we are on their side and even though their emotions drive them (and us!) crazy, we will calmly anchor them and get them through.
1. Pray with her. Pray for her.
2. I’d put aside all school work that she is struggling with and focus on what she is doing well.
3. Do a read-aloud that she would enjoy and that encourages good character traits. Spend lots of time snuggling on the couch.
4. Spend time together — rake leaves, bake cookies, organize her room,
5. Find things to praise her for.
6. One thing at a time, add back the schoolwork that she struggles with.
I have ten children. I know that sometimes it is hard to find the time to help the strugglers, but often, just taking five minutes to work with them and help them succeed at one thing ends up saving so much time later and avoids meltdowns.
October 11, 2016 at 12:46 pm
Claire
Participant
@jeaninpa !!! You are amazing and I thought your response here was so beautiful. It’s so easy to forget that the RELATIONSHIP we have with our children is the most important thing we reap from homeschooling. The emphasis on building confidence and encouraging what she is doing well is very very important. A child who feels defeated, misunderstood, frustrated, stupid, etc. will not learn well and tends to exhibit more troubling behaviors too. Thanks for inspiring me!
October 11, 2016 at 8:25 pm
jill smith
Participant
Thanks ladies,
I have a dear friend that does CC with her kids and they have tons of school work and they seem to be very smart. I asked her today about writing and my dd putting words on paper, her advice was to make her do it. Have her tell me and make her write it. She is very classical minded as well.
Thanks for the encouragement too. I guess I just don’t want her to fall behind and look like a uneducated child around her peers. She is 11 and here she would be either 5th or 6th grade depending on when I would want her to graduate.

October 11, 2016 at 8:59 pm
alphabetika
Participant
“I guess I just don’t want her to fall behind and look like a uneducated child around her peers. ”
I just want to respond to this, very gently, to say that your relationship with her is much more important than how she appears to others. Please don’t make the above the basis for parenting her in ways you wouldn’t otherwise. I truly say this to encourage you, not scold you, from the viewpoint of one who had a very hard time with one of my girls. It’s not easy, especially if you are constantly comparing yourself and your daughter to other homeschooling moms and students (i.e. your friend who does CC), but in ten years, you won’t care whether she appeared to be as smart as her peers if the two of you don’t have peace between you. She can always gain academic strides, at any age. But repairing a relationship is not an easy task. My heart goes out to you – many of us have been there and feel your pain.
October 12, 2016 at 6:25 am
jeaninpa
Participant
I love what alphabetika said, and I will repeat, very gently, that I don’t think your CC friend was giving you good advice. True confesssion: I used to be a smug, homeschooling mama because my oldest kids were “smart” and motivated and appeared to be doing great. Then, along came some kids with learning disabilities and suddenly I didn’t think I was such a stellar homeschooling mama anymore. I received a dose of humility and had to do a mountain of relearning — on my knees.
Back to your daughter’s writing phobia — honestly, 11 is young to make them write. Some kids can do it, many can’t. For my reluctant writers, I start at about 10 or 11 encouraging them to give me just one sentence from a narration. If it’s hard for them to write it, I write it for them. Gradually we transition to me writing the first part and they finish the sentence. Confidence will build and she will improve.
Remember, everything in homeschooling is the same as teaching them how to walk. First, you model it for them. Then, you allow baby steps and eventually they run.
October 12, 2016 at 8:39 am
alphabetika
Participant
One thing you might try to help writing skills is to remove the “school” from writing. One thing I did with both of my older daughters (and will do with my youngest when her skills are ready for it) was to keep a journal that was basically a place for letters back and forth. Full disclosure: neither of these two were struggling writers. For my difficult student, writing was a natural skill. But being open and receptive emotionally was not, especially when she was your dd’s age. It’s a hard age for a girl – hormones rage! So, my standard for the journal was that she could write anything she wanted to, whether positive or negative. My standard for myself was that I would write only positive things, no matter what she wrote. We wouldn’t write daily, sometimes not even weekly. But it was there when she needed it. We’d put them on each other’s pillows when we’d written. I did this with both girls for years. I don’t know if this is something that would be effective for you, but just wanted to put that thought out there.
October 12, 2016 at 9:29 am
jmac17
Participant
The game changer for writing around here is that my kids type all their written work. We do copywork and dictation as well, so my kids do learn to physically write, but all written narrations and creative writing is done on computer. All three of my children have learned to type at age 6. My 11yo daughter is working on writing a series of novels and she and my 9yo son write stories together (currently working on a modernized version of Romeo and Juliet.) I KNOW they would not be writing much, if anything, if they had to do it by hand, particularly my son. My son even prefers written narrations to oral because it gives him time to think about what he wants to say and organize his thoughts, instead of feeling under pressure when he narrates orally.
As for the messy room, that’s one that I’m still working on with my 11yo. She is such a creative type person, with dozens of ideas and projects in some stage of completion. When she gets a new idea, she will literally drop everything (on the floor!) and move on to the next thing. I have to be super diligent about requiring her room to be cleaned up everyday, with consequences if it isn’t, for her to be able to even find a path to her bed.
And for yourself, remember, just because your children struggle at something doesn’t mean that you are failure or that you have done something wrong. If it did, then every public school teacher with a special needs student in their class would be considered a ‘failure’. Which is every one of them. All students have strengths and weaknesses. If there is a struggle, you just keep exploring options and working toward progress. You can do it. She can do it.
October 12, 2016 at 5:32 pm
anniepeter
Participant
Just want to share/add a couple of quick thoughts. I’ve been there, and now my daughters and I are great friends (16 and 23). So, take courage! Just this year I started doing something that has been possibly the best relationship-building thing I’ve done. Each of my children has a regular “Special” day or time. Weekly when I can manage it, monthly when I can’t. It’s a little hard with seven kids, but one of them is too little yet… She gets enough attention?!? right now at almost two years old. And two of are grown and gone from home, so for them I try to have a largely uninterrupted phone call, or write a letter… And honestly, that hasn’t been happening much since school started in earnest this year! Anyway, I let them choose what they’d like to have me do with them at home, just the two of us. Often it is after everyone else goes to bed. It has done a lot to bring trust, closeness and enjoyment back into our relationships. And we needed it. The thing I love most about homeschooling is that we can set about to win their hearts back when realize we’ve lost it without having to compete with peers and everything else to do it. That’s what I identified to be the root of our problems. I’d lost their hearts because of having high expectations with too little training, too little fun, and too little praise. Best to you!
October 12, 2016 at 9:19 pm
mrsmccardell
Participant
I come from a different perspective having a child with special needs. So I could be way off basis with my thoughts but I wanted to share in case you found something helpful.
My first thought was that it appears she has organizational issues: organizing her thoughts, her room, etc and then the meltdown that follows. My daughter struggles with these (and many other things) and they fall under the category of add/adhd and/or executive function disorder. As an example, my dd (10) cannot sort her laundry and put it away. She struggles with organizing her thoughts, projects, etc. At first I thought it was laziness but the more I learned about the above mentioned disorders I realized her meltdowns were truly her way of saying I need help. If I walk her through the steps she does not meltdown.
So even if your dd doesn’t have a disorder of any sort, you may glean some insight on how to help her through this after you read up on those things. Just a thought!
October 14, 2016 at 6:19 pm
art
Participant
First, let me say you are not a failure!
I haven’t had time to read all the other responses in detail, but I wanted to see if I could help a little. I’ve had kids that are like yours–melt downs and tears, messy too. When I started homeschooling, people told me that I had to get obedience under control before I could expect to make them do what they’re supposed to do for school. I didn’t know it then, but there’s something missing in that. In my 18 years’ homeschooling, I’ve realized that when there’s crying there isn’t any learning. You could force your daughter to write, but that could teach her to hate it. I also feel like there isn’t any learning by force. I have a 14 yr old son that struggles with writing, and I know if I made him do more of it than he can do, it would not get better.
What I love to do instead is have a lot of great conversations, because it’s not about what he can get on paper. It’s really about helping him organize his thoughts, and conversation is a great way to do that. Also, my son loves writing when it’s something like putting a review on the lego website or sending an email to his brother. You know, real reasons to do it that are personally motivating. When I have my kids write about a book, I like to ask them to do something interesting like draw the scenes with captions, rewrite a scene from a different person’s point of view or write a journal entry for the main character–depending on their age.
Also, have you asked her gently what’s wrong? It took me years to realize I needed to ask. Sometimes they can’t really say, but they knew I cared about how they felt about it. And we could figure it out together. I hope you and your daughter figure it out together.