Mimi Rothschild, Home School Advocate - The Homeschooling News Café

-by Mimi Rothschild

The beginning of the school year is so exciting! We have fresh new books, sharp new pencils, great new ideas, and lots of enthusiasm.

By now, there may be foot-dragging when it’s time to gather for lessons, staring out the window when there should be diligent work going on, and even a little bit of whining.

If it’s just a reluctant day or two, there might be occasions when you should take some time out and come back refreshed. A “mental health day” every now and then is okay. A constantly reluctant learner is frustrating for the home educator, though, and is likely to fall behind and fail to be prepared for future grades, college, or adult life.

Here are some ways to cope with the reluctant learner:

• Start your day with prayer. There may also be times when you need to stop during the day and have a prayer break before you go on. Ask God to guide you and your students, to give all of you the joy of learning, and to strengthen your discipline. Proverbs 23:12, “Apply your heart to discipline and your ears to words of knowledge,” is a good verse to remember at this time. Another is, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:23,24).

• Be an enthusiastic example. It’s so easy for us to lightly say, “I always hated science,” or “You’re like me. I just never liked to read.” Keeping guard over our tongues and sharing our own love of learning can make a difference in our children’s attitude. Let your students see you being diligent about your personal Bible study or your homework for Sunday school, reading for pleasure, and keeping to your housekeeping schedule conscientiously. Helping the kids seek out the interesting aspects of the things they’re studying helps, too.

• Recognize that we don’t always want to do what’s best for us. Choosing to go ahead and study even when we don’t want to is great practice for an adult life when we sometimes have to go ahead and work even when we don’t feel like it. With practice, making that choice will get easier. If we give in whenever our kids make a fuss, it will give our kids practice in refusing to work, rather than practice in discipline and diligence. Say, “I know you don’t want to study right now. However, I also know that you will enjoy having your free time when we finish the lesson, and you’ll feel good about what you accomplish, so we’re going to continue.”

• Be open to change. Having recognized that sometimes reluctant students just need to be more diligent, it is also true that there can sometimes be good reasons for learners’ reluctance. Are the lessons appropriate for the ability level of the student? Do they last the right amount of time for the age of the student? Do they work with the student’s learning style? Homeschooling allows us to accommodate the specific needs of our students, so we should take advantage of that freedom to tailor the lessons to suit our children. For some students, just moving to a more comfortable place, changing activities more often, or giving them more control over things like the order in which they study their subjects can make a difference in attitude.

• Prayerfully consider rewards. We’d like to think that intrinsic rewards like the satisfaction of learning are always enough, but our own experience will tell us that this isn’t true. As adults, we often work because we’ll be paid, or because we enjoy the company of the people we work with, as well as for the sheer joy of service. However, making rewards the center of schoolwork can backfire, causing our children to depend so much on rewards that they won’t study without them. Occasional, surprise rewards work best: free reading time when our students have made it through a tough math lesson, a special meal on Friday night when they’ve stayed on task well all week, or stickers on particularly good papers.

If all these things fail to solve the problem of reluctant learners, be sure to consider your students’ physical health. Sometimes an undiagnosed vision problem, allergies, or other physical problems can distract children from their studies. With good physical health, good habits, and time, our students can become enthusiastic learners.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

Children are all different. This is one of the reasons that homeschooling is such a blessing for so many families.

Teaching your children at home allows you to respond to the different needs, the varied interests, and the strengths and weaknesses of each child. But there are some things that we can expect of children at a given age. Our four year old child needs to change to a new activity about every ten minutes. This doesn’t mean that he has attention problems or that he is not focusing on learning. It means that he is four years old.

Our teenager may have trouble imagining the likely consequences of an action or understanding the feelings of other people, whether in history books or in real life. That doesn’t mean that she is on her way to becoming a sociopath.

It means that she is a teenager, and the natural reorganization of the brain that takes place at this time has left her less logical in her outlook that she was before or will be in the future.

This doesn’t mean that our children know naturally how to behave in all situations, and whatever they naturally do is correct. ”Train up a child in the way he should go,” Proverbs 22:6 teaches us, “and when he is old he will not depart from it.” This tells us that we have to teach our children how to behave appropriately. This is as much part of their essential learning as reading and writing.

How can we tell whether a child is behaving appropriately for his age, or behaving badly? If we have the child in a setting that is appropriate for his age, he should be able to behave in ways adults consider correct for that situation. So our young elementary age children should be able to follow the dinner table manners we’ve taught them at home well enough to enjoy meal in a fast food restaurant without raising any eyebrows. They should be welcome in movies, and able to play cooperatively with other children on a park playground.

But we shouldn’t expect them to behave the way adults do at a concert. They may need time to be able to listen appreciatively to sermons in church. They may find it difficult to sit quietly through adult conversation at a formal dinner party. They may not be ready for these experiences, and it may not be realistic for us to expect to be able to take them with us to these events.

When we make it clear that being able to go to “big church” instead of children’s church or to attend a performance of the symphony is a privilege that comes with growing up and learning how to behave, our children will work toward that goal. When we have realistic expectations for their behavior, they will be able to meet those expectations and become confident in social situations. Our children will continue, as 2 Peter 3:18 puts it, to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Their behavior will glorify God and be a credit to our families.

This is certainly a goal worth striving for.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

You love homeschooling. You love the closeness it develops in your family. You love the progress your child is making.

But sometimes homeschooling can also be stressful. One of the most trying times in many families is that moment when you clear the schoolbooks off the table, power down the computer, and put dinner on the same table where you’ve been studying all day.

That paragraph makes it sound easy, doesn’t it? You turn off the computer and the workspace is tidy. You close the books, and the dining room is a lovely haven, a place for civilized meals.

Really? Not always, at my house at least. Sometimes the computer is still surrounded with papers and pens, and maybe music is still blaring from it too. Piles of books sit on the floor and all the chairs are still gathered there.

The dining room table has a welter of books and papers, too, plus art supplies, science equipment, and maybe some insect specimens or leaves. And the chairs? Oh, yes – they’re still gathered around the computer.

Food? Maybe we got too caught up in the novel we were reading to get around to taking the chicken out of the freezer. We begin to think that pizza delivery sounds like a good plan.

How can you avoid this scenario? A few simple techniques will help.

A place for everything — and everything is more likely to be in its place.

If you have a shelf for schoolbooks, a file box or drawer for papers (and file folders to put in it) and containers for supplies and equipment, then it will be much easier to gather things up and put them away than if you keep things in piles.

Don’t forget the margin.

When you plan your schedule, include some time for cleanup. If the school day ends at 3:00, then studies should end at 3:30. Gather everything and put it all away, meanwhile reviewing and discussing the best parts of the day.

In the morning, too, have time at the beginning for setting up the study area. I like to ask my older students what they read last night and how they liked it while we get everything set up. It’s not wasted time, but time spent together practicing the habits of being prepared, cleaning up, and keeping a peaceful, gentle heart.

Have a plan. And then have a backup plan.

Plan your meals at the beginning of the week, before you do your grocery shopping. At the beginning of your busy day, you can check your plan and see what preparation is required, what can be done in free moments during the day, and how much last-minute preparation you need to plan for.

When you make that plan, have one day when you can double the recipe and freeze half. Then, when the day gets away from you a little bit – and we all have days like that – you’ll have that container of soup or pan of enchiladas to pop into the microwave.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.