I've said it before and I'll say it again, my son's are such opposites and I understand one completely and the other, not so much.
I was able to homeschool Nick and it was fairly easy because I understand how he thinks. Michael is completely different; his interests, the way he speaks, the way he does things are all a complete mystery to me.
This year Michael has a teacher that gets him - really gets him. She is a history buff and so is he and apparently her teaching style reaches him. We have had a very good year, so far.
Until yesterday.
Several weeks ago his teacher assigned a fairly big social studies project AND a science project. The social studies project required research, writing up index cards of said research, cause and effect sheets, bibliographies and paragraph writing along with some sort of visual aid. The majority of the project was going to be done in school.
Wednesday, Michael comes home from school and tells me that he hasn't been able to do a lot of work at school because he can't concentrate so I let him stay home from our weekly Wednesday night bible study so that he could get caught up and I thought he had.
Until yesterday.
I was on my way to the supermarket around 5 yesterday afternoon when Michael called me to ask for some poster board. Okay, fine. I get home, give him the poster board and the boy worked diligently until ten. When we told him to get ready for bed, he had a meltdown. He was no where's NEAR close to being done with the project. When we asked him how much more he had to do, we were appalled at how much more had to be done.
There was yelling, screaming, crying, carrying on - and that was just from ME! It turns out that all the while he was telling us that he had no homework, he did. All of the times he was playing video games, he was supposed to be working on this project! He is totally grounded right now and is just pitiful.
So how could we know that he wasn't doing the work in school? No idea. How could we know that he was supposed to be doing this stuff at home? Again, no idea. I mean, all we heard on the weekly reports was that it was being worked on in school. Now, we have to tackle the science project.
God, give me strength!!!
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2 comments:
My son does this sort of thing, but his hangup is usually History. He actually got a 40 on a test once! His school sent home a notice ages ago that the kids have homework in at least two subjects every night except Fridays, and he'll still tell me he doesn't have any. His newest trick is the old "I did it at school" trick. Oh really? Isn't it called "home" work?
Ugh, that is my son (age 14, freshman) to a "T"! He has been grounded from friends and video games for a month and the only way he gets his priviledges back is if he does all that I am NOW requiring of him.
He's a smart kid, but he slacks if you don't stay on top of him. Lying about having homework, tests, etc so he can game instead.
Now I am forcing him to use a planner to write his assignments in and he must show it to me daily. Homework happens in the dining room, not his bedroom and I make him clean his backpack out weekly so that papers don't get lost in the abyss, lol!
We've seen a drastic improvement, I hope it continues. Good luck with Michael, I hope you guys figure out a system that works for you!
(sorry for the giant novel of a comment!)
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