Dorrie, who had successfully homeschooled her very bright son for kindergarten and first grade, had just 30 days before removed the same child from a 5th grade class to homeschool again.  She wrote:  "...Should I just send him back to school?  Academically, he's doing fine but how do I get him to focus on the mundane aspects of life we all need to deal with?"

I replied:

    Should you send him back to school?  Only you can decide what is right for you, but remember you gave the schools many chances and many years to try to get it right, please give yourself the same chance.

    Think of all the parents who can't say, "Academically, he's doing fine."

    I too have an older boy and a tiny toddler.  Here are some of the things that I have found that help me.
 

1.     There are 365 days in a year, and Texas public school laws only require that the kids be in school 180 days a year.  So, I think to myself, "We only need to homeschool every other day."  Some how that seems less intimidating.

 
2.     I asked myself if a institutional school teacher were to do "x" with her 32 kids would it be considered a field trip?  Then we do "x" and I call it a field trip, such as: 

I send him into the post office, let him weigh the package, purchase the proper postage and mail the package.  I allow myself to feel smug, knowing he didn't have to use toy money.  Besides, if he does not write home while in college, it won't be because he doesn't know how to mail a letter.
 
3.     I try remembering that if he learned nothing from this point forward, he is already better off then a lot of the kids that graduate high school not to mention the ones who will never graduate. 

 
4.     He has to keep roughly the same hours as his sister and I.  In the rare instance my daughter takes a nap, my son may have to switch gears and work on whatever subject it is where he may need my help.

 
5.     When I'm feeling any "Mommy Guilt" because I can't spend the time with him like I could before the baby, I try to think of all the individual time he would get with his teacher if he were in an institutional school. 


    There have been different studies on the subject, but I've never read one where the time was placed higher than 8 minutes a day. 
 

6.     I don't have to read everything he reads.  True, in an institutional school, the teacher has probably read the three or four books he assigns to his students, but probably not the same year his students read them. 


   There are many book reports graded by teachers who have never read the book reviewed. 

    There is intrinsic value in reading - the more the better.  To try to read everything my student/child does is setting myself up for failure.  I don't even try. 
 

7.     I accept that houses which have children in them 24- hours-a-day, are going to be messier than ones where the children are away at school.  I say to myself, "I'll have plenty of time to clean once they've gone away to college," although they will take with them my best excuses.

HUMOR HELPS!!!

    This means even though your son knows that it is his job to take out the trash, and it has taken him more time to restack things carefully so that he can get just one more item precariously balanced on the trashcan, than it would have taken him to take out the trash in the first place; don't expect him to take out the trash without being asked.

    This is hard for me, but if I try to see the humor in it, then I am
much more successful.  As I watch the incredible feats of  engineering that are happening just to place one more pizza box and a empty milk jug on/in a trashcan that was more than full when he started, I try to think, well at least they aren't still on the table.  Unfortunately I hear myself asking, "Was that difficult?  Don't you think that the trash needs to be taken outside?  If you can't get anything else into the trash why would you think think it will be easier for someone else?  Don't you think the trashcan is full when you can no longer shut it, or there is more on top of the can than inside it?"  I say all these things even though I know it would be easier just to say, "Take out the trash, now."  I'm getting better, though.  At least he's not the only one cringing when I say these things.

    Another thing that helped me was reading about asynchronous intelligence.

   The young gifted child may appear to be many ages at once. He may be eight (his chronological age) when riding a bicycle, twelve when playing chess, fifteen when studying algebra, ten when collecting fossils and two when asked to share his chocolate chip cookie with his sister.

From GIFTEDNESS AS ASYNCHRONOUS DEVELOPMENT by Stephanie S. Tolan, TIP NETWORK NEWS, Spring, 1994. http://members.aol.com/discanner/asynch.htm

    During trying situations, if I say to myself, "Don't expect
anything...asynchronous development...testosterone poisoning...," and if I still find myself getting upset; then I resort to stepping outside the situation and seeing it as an author might. 

   I find myself thinking, "I've got to write this down.  Who would believe it?  I couldn't make up this stuff."  In other words, authors get their material from somewhere.  So, this isn't a problem.  This isn't a situation.  This is "free" comic material, for the book of my life.  Even if I never get the chance to write it down, it still makes me chuckle which is much less stressful than getting upset about it.

    I can see my children years from now saying, "We homeschooled so that Mom would have a good laugh at least once a day." 

Here are two examples:
 

Things I thought I'd never say:      Two-year-old, "Mom, can I have a strawberry?"      Me, "Yes but you will have to take off your dress first, honey."      Which really meant, "Yes, but the last time you ate a strawberry in your ballerina dress, it took me forever to remove the stains.  So please, when you talk with your future therapist about your compelling need to take off your clothing every time you eat, well...just leave my name out of it will you?"

 

Things I thought I'd never hear:      After every meal, the mess under my 2-year-old daughter's highchair was only rivaled by the mess under my teenager's chair.  Believing that a positive comment much more powerful than a criticism, I waited.      Then one day it happened.  I said to my son, "Hey, I've noticed there isn't as a big a mess under your chair lately.  That's great."      He quickly responded, "No, I've found that if I kick and spread the crumbs around, it doesn't look as bad."      Oh, conflicting emotions...should I be proud that my son feels he can tell me these things, or should I be mortified that he's crazy enough to feel he can tell me these things?  Should I say, "A simple 'Thanks for noticing,' would have sufficed"?  Should I teach him that the omission of the truth is, or is not, a lie?      All that seemed to escape from my mouth is, "Oh."      Then I think, well at least I have something to e-mail Mom and Lu.  Ha.

Engela
Engela@homeschoolkids.freeservers.com
http://homeschoolkids.freeservers.com