help with my 8yo dd

[amis2girls]

This post is here, and not in parenting, because the real title should be 'help me to keep homeschooling my daughter and not send her back to public school.'    My oldest daughter is eight, will be nine in April.  This is our second year homeschooling.  In first grade her school experience went from ok to horrible.  Her separation anxiety went through the roof.  She worried and obsessed over every little thing.  Spelling tests on Friday had her in knots the whole week.  The classmates were superficial.  I had to force her to go to school every day.  The next year I did what I wanted to all along and kept her home.  She was in counseling for anxiety but stopped once she stopped going to school because that was what she was worried about.

My problem is in finding a way to teach her, or how to fill our days.  She would much rather just be told the answers.  'I don't like effort.'  No topic holds her attention for more than a morning.  When I ask her what she wants to learn, she says 'I want to learn about colonial times.'  It takes one morning and then she's done with it.  She now knows everything she wants to know about colonial times.  I put together a weekly schedule to have the day's lesson dismissed as too simple, too difficult, too much writing, takes too long, etc.  She wants to fly through her work, checking off boxes, so she can go to the bedroom and watch TV for the afternoon.  If I don't sit with her school doesn't happen.  She has no hobbies -- nothing interests her worth the effort.  I've tried every way of teaching: K12, unschooling (works great until I need her to do something or a favor), unit studies (no attention span to last more than a day on a topic), literature-based (this book is boring).

She is an extrovert.  The minute public school is out she's calling her friends to play.  I am an introvert.  I am not a creative, think-outside-the-box person.  She's a 'wise old soul,' and for years I've felt like she's just putting up with me.  She gets mad at her sisters for being, um, kids.  Her vocabulary is excellent and she can hold her own in a conversation with any adult. 

My husband says she needs to go back to school and be challenged in her work; someplace where she can't argue with authority.  I believe that's trading one set of problems for another.  I truly believe in homeschooling, but I don't know how to make it work here.

We live in a small town and we are broke.  The homeschool group meets once a week, if that.  There is nothing fun to go do.  Every day about 11:00 I get frustrated.  I stay home/put this work into planning for what?  So she can rush through school and then watch cartoons?  She's plain bored.

Sorry this is jumbled.  Ask for clarification... I'm tired.  :(  :(

[Lillian J]

The comment, "I put together a weekly schedule to have the day's lesson dismissed as too simple, too difficult, too much writing, takes too long, etc.," got me wondering whether the "lesson" part might be an obstacle.

What if you were reading together - you reading to her, her browsing interesting picture books on her own, the two of you looking at interesting websites together, the two of you making related crafts and foods together, going in nature walks, going on field trips (they can be pretty simple things), playing games, watching related videos, doing experiments and nature crafts, listening to good audio tapes, etc. In other words, not lessons but shared exploration as well as independent opportunities she's be interested in. Here's a website on Colonial children's games, as an example of a few things than might be somewhat interesting and educational - and it has some paper doll patterns you can print out.

Anytime there's some subject that comes up, try Googling for crafts, books, costumes, games, recipes, and anything that comes to mind that might be fun and interesting for exploring it a bit. But an eight year old is not usually going to be interested in an in depth study of a subject, and her education will not be adversely affected by leaving such studies for when she's older.

Remember that children in school are not really spending all that much time with their noses to the grindstone - there's no reason fro an eight year old to be spending much time in focused study, but she can gain an enthusiasm for learning that has been damaged by her schooling experience. If you didn't take time for decompression and deschooling after taking her out, that's something to consider. 

If she sees you not as a teacher of lessons, but a facilitator of interesting things, she may begin to relax and enjoy exploring more things together and independently. I'm not clear on what you meant about unschooling: "works great until I need her to do something or a favor," but if it "works great" to a certain point, maybe that's something you can explore some more and see about finding where and why things fall apart. 

You might be able to breathe some life into that support group if you come up with some activities that others would consider "educational" but that would really be for fun and social gatherings. It's amazing how much more motivated people get when they feel something educational is going on without their having to put a lot into it. 

Lillian

Edited by Lillian J - 2/23/11 at 4:00pm

[onyxravnos]

where do you live? try getting things going with field trips? museums ? art and natural history.... local history places? inexpensive kid classes? something just get get her creative juices flowing

[AAK]

I love Lillian's advice.  

I wanted to also suggest a couple tv free weeks.  We do have tv here too, sometimes the kids get in a rut and we need to turn it off all together for a couple weeks.  She will be bored at first and whine, cry, pout, and stomp her feet.  But by the end, she will be exploring something.  Show her basic finger knitting (youtube video for yourself first if you need to learn), or get some clay, make a volcano, cook, etc.  At first, you will need to provide things for her to turn to instead of the tv.  But, eventually, it shouldn't be as necessary.

Amy

[Lillian J]

The link to the colonial children's games somehow got lost during posting process - here it is again:  colonial children's games.

Lillian