We need another Eclectic thread! - Page 16

[Ruthla]

Originally Posted by LilyGrace

.......and now the bad news. Due to medical issues, I may have to put The Kid in school for the last half of the school year. I'm to be gone 3 months, and if they don't let The Kid and dh come with we have to come up with another plan. (I have to go to a place, any place, where there's actual medical services, unlike here on the island) We told The Kid over dinner tonight and he was a bit bummed but understands. If he could come with we'd only be taking a month break and wouldn't have to quit.

I hope it all works out for you, and you make a full and speedy recovery. The Kid will be fine whatever happens, even if it means a traditional school for the rest of this year.

Originally Posted by langdonslady

Oh, I have found my niche!
Now I just need to find enough of you in my area to find friends (like more than one or two and in less than an hour's drive away!) not only for my kids, but heck why not me while we are wishing!

Where do you live? I found a pretty good group here on Long Island. It's a slightly different group of moms now that I'm homeschooling my little one (and no longer HSing the big ones, and thus a slightly different group of parents even though it's officially the same HS group) but I've made at least one good friend and there's plenty of stuff for DS. We go to gymnastics class this afternoon.

I'm just feeling a little confused these days and I'm starting to doubt myself. I put a lot of energy into getting the girls ready for school, kind of ignoring DS in the process. Then DD2 needed tons of help with homework most afternoons. I've been thankful I had DS home with me during the day, so that he gets 1:1 time with me during school hours, otherwise he'd be needing my attention in the afternoons and REALLY acting out when I was busy with DD2 at that time.

Seeing DD2 blossom in school is doing two things to my brain. First of all, it's making me say "wow! She's thriving in spite of the fact that she's done very little formal academics- she's doing beautifully because she's ready for this now." OTOH, it's making me say "she's learning so much stuff, being so busy, yet DS is home and bored. Maybe I'm doing him a disservice by keeping him home, maybe I can't challenge him enough." Then I think "but if I push him he'll be miserable and not learn anything, be patient like I was with DD2 and he'll blossom in his own time."

He's starting to show signs of ADD, which I never noticed before he was home with me. Is it my fault that he's acting like this, because I'm not managing to get him to bed early enough so he's not getting enough sleep? Or has he always been like this, and this is part of why he struggled in school so much last year?

I just want to do what's best for him, but I'm no longer sure what that is.

[MyLittleWonders]

Ruth, I think you should stick with your second thought - "but if I push him he'll be miserable and not learn anything, be patient like I was with DD2 and he'll blossom in his own time." He is only 7; he has so much time to blossom. From what I can tell of your journey with your children, you have met each of them where they have needed you to meet them, and you have done beautifully. If you think he needs a bit more sleep, then slowly work on tweaking his bedtime to a bit earlier (I finally did that with mine - it didn't solve all our problems, but it does get them in bed by 9:30 at night so I can have even an hour without them up to de-amp myself, and we also tend to get started a bit earlier in the mornings, making our days go that much smoother overall).

Is your ds Feingold also? Even with Feingold, my oldest still has ADD/ADHD tendencies. I think he'd be a mess in school. At least at home, I can work with him rather than him being forced into a box because there are 29+ other students in the classroom. Your ds might have always been like what you are seeing now, which could very well be why he struggled last year. Now that he is home this year, you can work with him so learning isn't so much of a struggle (not that it is all peaches and cream here ... we have struggling days; my oldest is now 8, and I know he is maturing and it makes it easier most of the time). Personally, I think if you keep your focus on wanting to do what is best, and keep meeting him where he is and taking it from there, you will continue to do beautifully. He will blossom.

[LionTigerBear]

Well, *I* have ADD, and I am really struggling. I am so bad at this. I think I am going to have to go back on medication, but I am going to wait until infant DD is done breastfeeding, so I have a couple of years here in which to try to figure something else out. Basically, I can barely stay on top of the housework, let alone do school stuff. Ugh, I hate it. I know some people are at peace with some level of household chaos and clutter, but I can't handle. I need things to be relatively neat, I'm just not good at keeping it that way! Everything is disorganized. I can't even remember to remind the kids to brush their teeth. I struggle with going to bed early enough to feel rested enough the next morning. The children's bedtime is the only thing in the schedule that is more or less sacrosanct.

Thank goodness DS (5) seems to be unschooling himself just fine, as he always has. He loves working through his math book on his own and he practices writing out his letters and we play letter/word games throughout the day when we feel like it, too. (He is actually "ahead" in his math book.) He asks lots of interesting questions about everything and how things work. We talk about things, we sing songs together. Maybe it's just as well, maybe this is better for him than my original more schoolish plans. I don't know. But I feel bad that my original plan failed. Blah.

[LionTigerBear]

When it comes to ADD, I LOVE the book "The Call To Brilliance". The author talks about her educational journey with her kids, and her oldest son sounds very ADD to me. He was labeled "slow" by the schools and was a very late reader. He started college at age 14, worked at Warner Bros. on the movie Space Jam when he was 14, and went on to get his Ph.D. at a young age and start a couple of different successful businesses doing things he loves. All three of her kids got their Ph.D.s young. One of her sons is or was also a professional dancer, and her daughter got a doctorate in math, also very young. All of her children are well-rounded, travel the world, and are emotionally confident and secure. This woman's style of facilitating her children's education was very relaxed, very unschooly, very much about just meeting them where there were and always trusting them and never pushing them. That's kind of my inspiration.

[Ruthla]

I've had the whole family on Feingold since DD2 was in 3rd grade- so DS was about 3 at the time. Then last year, in school, he ate a lot of things that I would never have fed him myself- I never verified that the school lunches were free of artificial junk (since I thought only DD2 needed to be careful) and I know that the teachers gave out candy as rewards for good behavior (which then made him either act miserably for the next several hours as he reacted to the artificial colors, or he was mad that I didn't let him have the candy.)

I don't think he's been eating anything artificial in the past few months, but I'm not with him every second of every day.

I'll have to check out that book LTB. Are you sure you have the title right? My library's online catalog doesn't seem to have it.

ETA: I found it on Amazon.com and verified that my library doesn't have it- then I requested that my library purchase a copy.

[momtomine]

count me in! this is our first year, and i really thought that we were going to be all classical. but that is just not the way things are flowing. i just cant imagine taking time away from our math and reading time, which DD loves, to incorporate Latin, which i dont want feel we need to have a well rounded education. i never thought that we would go Waldorf, but every day i seem to be leaning more to a tv free home, and a few other Waldorf things. i also started out the year with visions of us sitting quietly at the table for hours out of the day, and that quickly changed. we now love reading in the big chair, and science on the front porch!

[Ruthla]

Welcome momtomine!

I had visions of a TV free zone during school hours, but that isn't happening here either. I can't get online during the day unless he's watching TV. And, if we wait until "after school hours" to watch, the girls have homework to do so the TV needs to stay off. Watching during the day just seems to make more sense. We've got a whole bunch of educational TV shows recorded- right now DS is watching Word Girl.

Yesterday, DS had gymnastics class, and he really enjoyed it. Then he rode his bike after we got back- I think he somehow got out of the habit of exercising and it was affecting his mood and focus. He went to bed very well last night, and woke up when DD2's alarm clock went off this morning. I'm hoping we can keep this up- plenty of activity during the day (balanced out with enough "down time" and then to bed at a normal hour each night.

I've also started a sticker chart- he gets a sticker per day for going to bed on time the night before, plus I randomly give him extra stickers if he does something good that I wasn't expecting him to do. When he gets 20 stickers, he gets a book. I've already ordered a set of 17 Dav Pilkey books on Ebay (Captain Underpants plus Ricky Ricotta.) Well, it's really only 15 because it duplicates the 2 CU books he already has, but I can try to resell those.

He seems to respond well to the immediate gratification of getting a sticker for each little thing he does. But I really don't like doing this, and hope we don't need to keep doing this forever. I'm also wondering if I should use one chart for everything, or one chart for bedtime and a second chart for everything else. And do I keep buying him more books as he keeps filling out charts?

[craft_media_hero]

Originally Posted by momtomine

count me in! this is our first year, and i really thought that we were going to be all classical. but that is just not the way things are flowing. i just cant imagine taking time away from our math and reading time, which DD loves, to incorporate Latin, which i dont want feel we need to have a well rounded education. i never thought that we would go Waldorf, but every day i seem to be leaning more to a tv free home, and a few other Waldorf things. i also started out the year with visions of us sitting quietly at the table for hours out of the day, and that quickly changed. we now love reading in the big chair, and science on the front porch!

This is me too! I want to do everything! And we do, a little at a time

I have this vision of Classical in a Waldorf atmosphere, loosely following the Waldorf sequence.....I like how Waldorf focuses in blocks (and lots of other things), but we're not postponing reading, and we use workbooks for math.

I do want to move toward a Latin/Greek-centric education, but I'm holding out til 2nd or 3rd. The great part about this is that DD is watching me do my Greek homework, will repeat words when I'm saying them out loud, and is starting to identify some of the letters (okay, 1 ) and she gets psyched when she "finds" the Greek language stuff on poissonrouge.com. So I have a sneaky idea that holding it out and not making her do it, she'll want to do it That's my little oppositional girl! Hee hee! I'm starting to figure this out

So I'm hoping to take Latin next Fall, and maybe introduce her to a Greek letter a week (kind of in the manner of form drawing) and try out Song School Latin. We do two foreign langs anyway (Spanish and ASL), which is standard in Waldorf elementary (from what I know anyways).

So hopefully it works out. We're hsing on a year-to-year basis. We're loving our homeschool, but it's challenging, lol. I feel like I can barely keep my head above water with the housework and my own school commitment; I can't imagine if I was trying to work a money job as well!

Anyways, momtomine, it's nice to see you on this thread, and I'm looking forward to hearing from more of you eclectic mommies.

[mangopassion]

I haven't been able to post in SO LONG! It seems like everyone is doing so great!

A huge welcome to all the newbies here on the eclectic thread.

Should we start a new thread since this one is getting so long?

[Ruthla]

Yes, I think we should- and then whoever starts the new one needs to post a link to the new thread on this one, so we can easily find it again.

[MyLittleWonders]

Originally Posted by mangopassion

I haven't been able to post in SO LONG! It seems like everyone is doing so great!

A huge welcome to all the newbies here on the eclectic thread.

Should we start a new thread since this one is getting so long?

I am glad you are back - I was wondering where you went and hoped everything was okay. And, a new thread would be great.

[Ruthla]

Ok, done!

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...9#post14557139

[mangopassion]

Originally Posted by MyLittleWonders

I am glad you are back - I was wondering where you went and hoped everything was okay. And, a new thread would be great.

Awww... thanks! Everything is OK now.