Homeschooling/parenting question

dstc_99

Well-Known Member
Ok so I signed easy child up for homeschool in the hopes of letting her catch up to her peers in Math. I was hoping if she could work at her own pace she would be able to handle the work better.

So far, not so much!

She has online work and offline work and once they are complete she is to take an assessment. The big issue is that she does the online work quickly and then takes the assessment and fails it, she never does the offline work unless I make her. Thankfully I can give her permission to take the assessment up to three times so she doesn't have to have a failing grade. But my thought process is that if she were in school turning in her homework (assessment), she would only be able to do it once and have to live with the failing grades. I wish there was a way for me to block her from taking the assessments, even the first time, without my permission. I can keep her from taking it the second and third.

Once she takes the assessment and failed she will swear she has done all the work and when I call her on the lie she gets angry. I have a teachers guide for each course so it only takes me a minute to go through the lesson for that day and point out what she hasn't done. Then I will tell her to do the work and let me know when she is done. I am adamant that she do all the work and then I will help her with the ones she misses. It is not uncommon for me to get her math work and find that 4 out of 8 haven't been done because they are too hard. I can't tell you how many times I have gotten the answer sheet and see answers like "I dont care." Then I find that she has missed 2 or 3 of the ones she did complete. In the end I wind up having to sit beside her while she finishes the ones she didn't do and then make her redo all the ones she missed which is well over half. 90% of the time it is because she refuses to use the Algebra rule of PMDAS or because she wrote the question down wrong. The same issue happens with Grammar. She refuses to do the work and then when she finally does it she misses 90% of the questions. At this point I feel like I am taking the class not her.

The second issue is that if she does pass the assessment with an 75% or better then she does not want to take it a second time in order to get a better grade. To my way of thinking a 75% is a C and she could do better so she should try. Most of the time she gets the 75% with little to no effort. A lot of the time it will be because she clicks on the wrong answer even though she has the right answer written down or she spells the vocabulary word wrong and the system doesn't understand that. In those cases I demand that she go back and do it again because she had the question correct and deserves to get the grade she earned on paper. But lets just say that she is not in the least bit concerned and she will fight me tooth and nail to have to put in the answers she already has.

One other issue is that she can review the questions and answers she gave to the assessment as well as the correct answers. So if I sign her in to review it it literally gives her the answers and the assessment doesn't change in any of the courses except for Math. I wish it would just let her review the questions and her previous answers without giving her the real answer. in my humble opinion that basically gives any kid with a brain an excuse to take the assessment once review the answers write down the right ones and then just retake the test to get a 100.

easy child has been told over and over again to do all the work and let me review it prior to her taking the assessment but she takes it anyway. She has also been told I will not sign her in to retake the assessment unless she shows me the completed work and redoes any questions that are wrong.

So if you made it this far in this post I have questions. What can I do to make this a better situation? I feel like we have given her very straight guidance on what we expect. We have told her to do all work before taking the assessment. We have told her I have to review it before the assessment. I have agreed to not make her retake an assessment as long as she passed it, unless I see she put the wrong answer in by accident. I have explained that by having to retake the tests and arguing with me about doing offline work she is spending three times the amount of time needed to pass the assessment. What else can we do?

PS: easy child is the laziest child on the planet. So advice on motivation and laziness is also welcome.
 
I homeschooled and my kids were similar! The "boring" redos were the worst as far as motivation. What I did is break it down and yes, I had to be there with her, she oculd focus maybe 20 min. at a time, sometimes more,esp, in rote things like algebra or grammar. I would probably try to "guide" her so she passes the assessment the first time and then can go on.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
She is in therapy, right?

I'd find out if she even thinks school is important because I didn't think so and nobody could make me. I was happy if I passed. A lot of that had to do with my fight with daily anxiety and depression and I barely had the energy to do the work, let alone do it good or do it twice. I would not call her lazy. I would find out how she feels about school, learning, her future and if she knows something is getting in the way to stop her from doing better. Unfortunately, mental illness can ruin your concentration. Most people don't know that depressed people have a terrible time with concentration. Some can't concentrate at all. The first time that I was in the hospital for depression (I was in three times), most of the patients were also in for depression or bipolar. Nobody could read. We wanted to. We were brought wonderful books from home. We couldn't even understand what we were reading. It was hard just to watch television. Depression/anxiety is terrible for concentration...worse than ADHD.

She may have to wait until she is oldern and more stahle to be better able to learn more. I'd explore it more and see what the therapist has found out. Your daughter has more going on than even I did as I didn't have to think about cutting or eating. She is fighting a daily battle to get through each one. School may be unimportant to her because she feels so crummy or she is so laden down with mental health issues.

If your daughter was dead tired sick with pneumonia you wouldn't expect her to be able to do as well as if she felt well. This is similar. I mean...I walked in your daughter's shoes in a way (all of us are different a little). Maybe I'm off base and you disagree with me and that's ok, but I wanted to offer my experience. I would have done far better in school if I had not been mentally ill. As it was, I did have mental illness and I did far worse than I should have, even with my learning disabilities. And I had no motivation, which is par for the course with any sort of depression. Hope this helped.

Can't hurt to see :) Good luck and keep us updated.
 

DaisyFace

Love me...Love me not
dstc_99--

Of all the parents I know that are doing the "online school at home" option, your story is pretty typical for a new student. It seems to take them several weeks to figure out that they *really do* need to do the work in order to pass the assessment.

I think you need to have a consequence for skipping the work and going straight to the assessment (that is, in addition to having to re-do the assessment!)

That seems to work for most kids. Then once they "get it", they get it....Know what I mean?? Once she gets into a proper work habit, she should do ok.
 

dstc_99

Well-Known Member
Compassion- I am working with her most of the time and in most cases thats why I feel like I am doing the work. She just says I don't know to everything and then gets angry if I don't just give her the answer. Plus if she would stop taking the assessments before I can check stuff she would not be having this issue of failing them.

MWM- She is in therapy of a sorts. LOL She went to a psychiatrist and he was horrible so we asked to be transfered back to her regular facility for care. Now she has a therapist who is not really there for talk therapy. He really just works with her on ways to handle situations. Basically he teaches tools. I need to get her back in to a psychiatrist and get her with a therapist who can help her with talk therapy.

As for lazy it wasnt just the homework or assessments that makes me feel that way. She is the only person I have ever met who can't manage to do even the little things. Her bathtub looks like a bomb went off in it. Everything is in the bottom of the tub with lids off. On top of that if she gets a candy out of the candy dish I can guarantee that she will take that wrapper off and stick in back in the bowl or leave it on the counter next to the bowl. It is like that with everything even toilet paper. She will throw things in the drawers all willy nilly and then refuse to wear them because they are wrinkled. I have to supervise everything she does like she is four years old. Whether it is a lack of concentration or just plain refusal to do the necessary things in life I don't know.

DF- now that is a perfect idea. I think we will have a nice long talk tonight and decide on a punishment.
 

TeDo

CD Hall of Fame
Dstc, I have one of those kids. difficult child 1 could care less about school and HATES doing the work. We have always had a standing punishment of grounding for 24 hours (friends, phone, computer) for every F on anything if it was "due to laziness" which includes not doing the work or not using the resources available (our school allows students to use their notes/worksheets). If they can't do what they're supposed to do, they don't get to do what they want to do. Period. In our case, they don't get a chance to retake anything so she is lucky that's even an option.

One thing does confuse me though. You said "I have agreed to not make her retake an assessment as long as she passed it, unless I see she put the wrong answer in by accident" yet she has to retake it if she gets 75% (a C). Those are contradictory to me.

Could it be that her Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), cutting, overeating are because of self-esteem issues? If that is the case, constantly correcting her or making her correct what is "wrong" may only make it worse. My personal feeling is that she is only 13 and this is new to her so let her sink or swim on her own for a little while. Otherwise you could do what I do. I sit with difficult child 1 and help him work through all the problems so I know if he really understands it enough to take the assessment. I have changed jobs and work hours to accommodate this because it is that important to me. It's our 3rd year doing online school and he's finally now doing ALL the work without as much complaint but he still says "their my grades and I don't care". I have to keep in mind that it's true but remind him that now that he's in high school, he just has to keep taking the classes he fails until he passes on top of the other ones he needs each year so at least passing is required.

As for the overall laziness, yea, he's that too. I dread what he and his house will look like when he leaves home. LOL
 
L

Liahona

Guest
What works for difficult child 2 is to take subjects very slow and he wouldn't get anywhere either without me right by him; even stuff he knows how to do. Many times I have to out wait him. He goes to time out until he decides to work. A lot of this is anxiety from the autism. He gets overwhelmed by very simple things. We've started him on new medications. Still waiting to see them take effect. This issue also makes getting him to do any chores very hard. To get him to do anything I have to be right beside him talking him through every step. So frustrating since sometimes he can do this independantly, but right now his anxiety isn't letting him.
 

dstc_99

Well-Known Member
TeDo- in the beginning I made her retake them all in order to make better grades. Now I only make her retake it if is is failing (which her school lists anything under a 75% as a fail). So now 75% and above don't get redone unless I realize she got it due to a failure to accurately transfer data from her answer sheet to the computer. Then I feel like she earned the better grade and should get it.

She does have major self esteem issues and thats why I feel this is so bad for her. My constant corrections are taken as insults but my directions to help her avoid the corrections are not being used. I definitely feel like some form of punishment needs to be enforced when she refuses to follow directions.

Liahona- Unfortunately I am in the process of getting a full time position and I can't devote all day to getting her to do her work. It seems to work for her but it makes me want to scream.

While she is doing better in school it is mostly because I refuse to let her fail anything. I just dont know how well our relationship is going to work if it continues to be so difficult to work together.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Dstc, you have my heartfelt sympathy. That is so hard for a parent when a child does not act his/her age and has to be supervised constantly. Again, I use myself as an example and I hope this doesn't get tedious but I was such a big difficult child. I was just like your daughter. My Mom used to find half eaten tuna fish sandwiches under my bed and I didn't understand why she thought it was such a big deal. I was a teenager.

Have you ever looked up Executive Functioning Disorder? I know for a fact that this is part of my problem so that I had to learn to care about things that others care about instinctively. I also had to work very hard (and still do) at mood regulation and impulse control. Executive function problems are often the reason our kids do not function at age level and do not succeed at their intellectual level. They also cause liable moods and instability. This is the main problem, besides focus, with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), but you don't have to have either to have problems in executive function. Let me find a link so you can look it over. Having these problems makes it difficult in life for the person who has it (and those surrounding him/her).

http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/executive-function
 
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