Please help me...So completely frustrated!

[Ilovum]

I have been homeschooling our daughter for 4 years now. She is about to turn 12 in April. She has always had concentration problems and still does. This was a big factor in our choice to homeschool her.

Math is a challenge for us. She thinks she knows something and doesn't want to listen yet she really doesn't understand it.

An example was this morning. I stood beside her on a marker board doing example problems of something new she was learning. I did it 4 or 5 times, trying to make sure she got it right in her head. On the 6th time, she made a comment and sigh that she understood and basically was telling me to stop showing her because she got it! I got really frustrated because I know her and I know she didn't get it. I sat down and went to the 1st practice problem. I said, lets do this one, tell me your answer when you're done. She did it wrong. She didn't get it. This has been going on for 4 years and every time, I get all worked up because I know I'm right. I don't feel like I should have to tell her to be quiet and respect me and listen. She should just do it!!!!

I'm to the point where I want to put her in school and let someone whose more qualified handle her. I suggested to my husband that we put her in local Pentecostal school (we are catholic). It is a school that is kind of like homeschooling, they go at their own pace but there are instructors to help them. My husband said "over my dead body" he doesn't want her to be taught in that religion's environment. (No offense to anyone whose Pentecostal, that's just his opinion) I think this would be better than putting her in public school. I think it would be really hard on her and I'm afraid of how behind she'd be.

Please help me with any suggestions on what I can do...

[oceanbaby]

Well, my oldest is not yet 6, so I don't have experience with homeschooling an older child. But what jumped out at me while reading your post is that she is sending clear signals that the current approach to homeschooling is not working for her. Either she is bored with the material, or is having a really hard time processing it, or is feeling stressed/pressured/angry, or possibly a combination of the above. You say she has concentration problems, yet you are asking her to concentrate.

For us, one of the main reasons we wanted to homeschool was so that our son could learn in a way that worked for him, not for the teacher. It seems to me that it might be time to sit down with her and ask her what she would like to be doing, and what suggestions she has to make this better for her. I noticed in your siggy it says "child led ed" but this doesn't sound like child led to me.

[chaoticzenmom]

Are you sure you're right?LOL I've been called on my mistakes with my son beofre....just a thought.

It sounds like you're pretty frustrated. Maybe she needs some practice taking things step by step in some kind of project where she cannot move forward without messing up the whole thing. Maybe you can have her build something that has a lot of steps? Then you can help her organize her tools for each step (without taking over the project) and let her go.

I don't know if it's just math, or other things where you feel that she doesn't want to listen to the explanation. Record yourself somehow...how do you sound? Would you be interested in listening to you? Are your thoughts organized when you present the information?

Several people here have suggested the curriculum called "math you see" or "singapore math" Also, I've seen people buy math teaching videos and the children can watch them, pause, rewind and fast forward and work on the problems by themselves.

Also, you may want to just take a break from math for a month or so to let the frustration subside. In the long-run, it won't hurt anything and it could make a huge difference.


Good luck!
Lisa

[Ilovum]

With everything else we do, I let her lead. Some days she does spelling lessons, some days she doesn't. The same with reading, geography, astronomy, etc. The books are there for her. If she chooses to work in these subjects, she can, if she doesn't, that's okay, too.

Math is different though. I feel that it is really important in our lives and I want her to understand it.

I didn't mention it in the original post, but we were working on long division with remainders for the first time today. I may be wrong, but I think she may be behind for 11 years old. And I know that everyone has to learn at their own pace, but if she should have to go back to public school, what will happen??

[chaoticzenmom]

hmm, well, maybe you can use manipulatives and divide them. You could have some remainders left over and she could see the actual remainders.

I know you're not really wanting to know how to teach division, though, it's the bigger issue of being frustrated. I hope you can get some great advice about that today!
Lisa

[Ilovum]

Another thing I'd like to point out is that I'd love nothing more than to let go and let her do her own thing, but I'm so afraid of it.

She says for the past few years that she wants to be a real estate agent. She wants to go to our local college and play soccer. How can she do these things if she's not being taught material that will be on a college entrance exam or to be in a real estate course and not understand basic math concepts?

She and I also get a lot of pressure from my mother. My daughter was at her house recently and my 9 year old nephew was too. He was working on his math homework and my mother asked her to help him. She didn't help him because she, too was just learning this material. My mother made a comment to her that she better get busy with learning her math.

How do you deal with all of these obstacles and still feel like you're doing the right thing?

[Callimom]

I have just a second before I head out but I would suggest looking into learning styles. She may be getting what you are saying the first time, but that doesn't mean that your explanation makes sense to her from the standpoint of using that info to solve a math problem.
It's kind of like when people who speak different languages try to communicate. Just talking slower and more loudly, and repeating ourselves doesn't mean we're actually making ourselves understood.
There is an entire spectrum of solutions between what things are like now and school...a tutor, different math programs. group learning or a co-op class.

That being said, it doesn't really sound like the problem is math but rather a lack of understanding between the two of you about what you both need to make this a positive thing. I personally would set the math aside and work on that first. The math is likely to fall into place once you address the real problem.
Karen
sorry for typos - no time to check

[NoHiddenFees]

Can you take yourself out of the equation for awhile and try something like ALEKS? It sounds like each of your frustrations are amplifying the other's. She could self-pace, but still be following a traditional curriculum.

[elizam]

A couple of thoughts...


I am seriously considering Teaching Textbooks for future math if we continue hsing!


We are using Saxon now, which I've always liked, but my dc still have issues. I am not a very mathy person myself, which is a neverending source of guilt. I do find myself doing much better with math as a homeschooling mom than I ever did as a kid/teen, and I like how Saxon explains the why of things in a way that my PS teachers and books never did.

We wound up sending our oldest ds to PS for reasons similar to what you describe. And yes...he had a very hard time last year. He is still having a hard time, but seems to have a very good math teacher this year. last year, there were so many discipline problems, and I don't think he had a very good teacher. This year, there are still problems with the kids, but the teacher handles things better and seems to really want the kids to learn.

There is not a day that goes by that I don't wish things had worked out better in our hsing days. he just was not very teachable. he wanted to rush thru it and be done. now he's paying the price. Also, even with a good teacher, she doesn't have time to help everybody, so I still wind up doing a lot of work with him after school, onnly now it's harder for me, because I don't have the teacher's manual to help me, and I don't like the textbook he uses.

[paganmum]

I'm going to chime in and agree that maybe the teaching style and her learning style need to be looked at to see if maybe the approach to how you are teaching can be shifted so that it works better for her. There wouldn't be anything wrong with teaching her via manipulatives so that she understands the process before learning how to write it out on paper. I am one of those folks who I can tell you how to do it, but writing it out puts me in tears (literally at times!) I have to see it. The only time that math doesn't put me in tears is when I am working on a sewing/knitting project, cooking, moving things about a room or laying out a garden. I am a wiz in those areas because I can see and/or touch it, when it's just numbers on paper with nothing to correspond to those numbers it's all Greek to me.

Just thought I'd put that out there.

HTH

[Callimom]

Coming back to add
It sounds as though you have a whole lot of anxiety wrapped up in your daughter's performance in math - your concerns that she's behind and that it will affect her future, pressure from her mother, concerns about her respecting you, even concerns about how she would manage if she went back to school. It's not really surprising that you are running into problems. It sounds as though the whole experience is loaded for both of you.

Can your husband help her do her math instead to take the pressure off your relationship with her?
Can you look into a different math program? JUMP math is apparently quite good for kids that struggle with math. There is also nothing wrong with using manipulatives to help her get the concept. The mechanics/computation will come.
Good luck
Karen

[momto l&a]

I think you need to come up with a different way of teaching the math you are working on.

Theres a book titled The They way the Learn. There are so many ways we learn and finding the ways we do process info is crucial in teaching children and understanding they way we do things.

[alima]

Your dd sounds a lot like my ds, now 13. Math was a big reason why I put him back in school last year, and that absolutely didn't work, and mostly just convinced me that what I was doing at home was better than anything they'd do with him in school. I basically just let him explore math on his own, in a lot of different ways, when he was younger. This year ds requested a math program, so I got him Math-U-See, at a much lower level than his grade level (thankfully the levels are named, not grade numbered, so there's no perceived stigma to doing "grade 4" math.) What I liked about Math-u-see is that the levels focus on one major area, so we can fill in gaps selectively without going over everything all over again. He's working on the division level, slowly making his way through it, but still going much faster than if I'd made him do it in grade 4. He'll be "caught up" to his grade level in math by the time he graduates high school. I put caught up in quotations, because I don't think he was ever really behind, he just wasn't ready to learn the concepts until now, and now he's breezing through them and wondering why it was so hard in the first place:

Basically, my advice would be to let things go for a while, and focus on what her strengths are, and return to math after a break. It's surprising how much kids seem to learn when we're not looking

[Ilovum]

Yes. I know putting her back in school is not the answer. Today was just a bad day. We will work it out.

[Ruthla]

Well, a 12yo isn't going to have to take any college entrance exams just yet!!! And I don't think too many real estate agents are doing long division by hand on a daily basis- most of them use computers to calculate their commissions, mortgage rates, etc.

My advice would be to slow down on the math, or maybe even take a break from it. When she's ready to learn something, it will just "click" for her. When she's not ready, you can spend hours trying to drum it into her head and it's just not going to click.

Also, I agree with the PP who said that she might be picking up on your anxiety about math. Maybe she just needs somebody else to teach her this one subject, since it's so emotionally loaded for you. It might be worth hiring a tutor for this one subject.

[wonderactivist]

Dear Ilovum,

Take a deep breath, she's fine and you are fine. So math isn't where she flies ahead...big deal.

I just wanted to share that my former-math-teacher Mom shocked me last week. Shw is normally very critical of homeschooling. She asked about our 6th grader's math and I explained that we're doing Business Math and all is well except that sometimes he makes little errors with division and multiplication - he's semi-memorized the tables, but just gets mixed up sometimes.

Pause (I'm waiting for the usual criticism.)

Then she says that actually that's normal for that age - they just need regular practice on the division method and tables...and she suggested giving him a calculator to do the long division!
I was shocked, but relieved.

Anyway, I agree totally with the earlier post from Lisa 49...and our new math curriculum book suggests weekly math homework - just two sheets, once a week that take an hour or so - for ongoing practice outside of your work together. And yes, work on something else together for a while so you can both come back in a couple of weeks with a fresh perspective.

Best wishes for a brighter day!

Lucie

[Lillian J]

Lots of great suggestions!

Let's see if I can keep my own comments brief...

I agree with the idea of separating your teaching from her learning - and there are lots of good resources that can accommodate that. But I wish there were a way to help relax the concerns about her math. Here's something my son wrote for an article I wrote - maybe this will help - he did very well in the SAT after this was written, and is in college now:

"I'm going to be applying for colleges, so I'm studying for the SAT right now. I took some practice tests and found that I needed to do almost no work for the verbal section of the SAT, as it came quite intuitively. I always loved reading, and homeschooling provided time and freedom to pursue literature that interested me. Math is something I've been working on. I never concentrated on it when I was homeschooling, but you'd be surprised how much you can learn at my age in a few weeks compared to the few years it would take in your early teens - and I now find that I'm really enjoying it. That's partly because of age, but also because I care about it more now that it has some practical application." And maybe you can find some fun ways of participating in the exploration of math with her later - there are lots of ideas in the articles on this page: Go Figure!

- Lillian

[Lillian J]

Hey, I just thought of a funny story related to what my son said in that article:

Math is something I've been working on. I never concentrated on it when I was homeschooling, but you'd be surprised how much you can learn at my age in a few weeks compared to the few years it would take in your early teens - and I now find that I'm really enjoying it.

He told me some kids in his dorm were fooling around one evening and decided to Google names of their friends to see wht came up. They found his article and were laughing hysterically at the remarks above - they were telling everbody that he had been "on the Internet bragging that he's smarter than a little kid." He was laughing with them when they razzed him. But I didn't get it! He had to explain to me that it's perfectly OBVIOUS that someone his age should be able to learn something faster and easier than someone in his early teens - that was what was funny! It was so obvious that they thought it was hilarious that he should even compare himself at all. And yet the schools and many homeschool parents don't find it so obvious that things are learned so much easier later. Lillian

[Ilovum]

That is so cool. I never really thought about it but she could wait and learn this math in a few years. When she was in catholic school in 2nd grade, they were learning money, and she just didn't get that each coin had a different value. She thought one coin equaled one. A year or so later, it made perfect sense to her. I think we will wait a while on all of this. The only problem is my mother and my family (I'm the last of 7 children) questioning her about math, almost testing her. Even though she knows what they're asking her, it puts her on the spot and she freezes. This has happened to her twice. Once with my oldest brother and once with my Mom. My husband and I did let my brother know that he wasn't to question her, ever again, but my Mom doesn't give a sh*t. She'll just keep questioning her. Sometimes, I want to tell her to f^ck off, I swear.

ITS OUR LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!! Sorry...

[Just Me]

I agree with a lot of what was said above, but also, let me share about the pentecostal school like youa re talking about. I graduated from one. the religion and their beleif is in EVERYTHING. No offense to any of similar beleifs, but it went against the grain when I was SUSPENDED for trimming my bangs so i could see better. Also, we were told that Catholic, Baptists, etc were all going to hell because they did not believe the Bible properly. My mother is Catholic and she got mighty ticked off about it too, suposedly non denomitional, but trust me, they say it means just Christian, but they decide what that is. We did not know about HSing then and the local public school had already failed me, so we stuck it out. But I would NEVER send my own child there. oh yes, self paced...its workbooks. You even check your own answers. Dd I mention you sit in a cubicle facing a wall? The teachers are just women from church so if you get stuck, all they can do is look u the answer if they don't know it either. And we were told God made dinosaur bones for a joke. Ok, got that off my chest now.