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Have you ever wanted to just homeschool?
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<blockquote data-quote="dreamer" data-source="post: 195159" data-attributes="member: 1697"><p>For years homeschooling was suggested to me by nearly everyone who knew of all we had to cope with with difficult child and school. I resisted HARD partly becuz when she was younger, I had my hands full, difficult child is my oldest child, I had a son who was special needs for other types of difficulties and I had an ill husband and I worked LONG hours out of the home as our sole financial support. I was only sleeping 3 hours a day due to how much fell onto my shoulders, already. Things continued to get worse in spite of involvement with a huge number of resources here for difficult child. I continued to resist homeschooling or unschooling, and things just kept getting even worse. Part of it was classmates, part school policies etc and part my difficult child herself. </p><p>I further continued to resist becuz then I got incredibly ill and was immobile for a few years. Eventually, my difficult child was diagnosis'ed with PTSD from her school experiences and it came to light just HOW traumatized she had become...hr panic attacks got much worse, her agoraphobia became extremely severe, and it finally affected her so intensely, we tried homebound, but, our school does not DO homebound well. I finally wound up homeschooling her. </p><p>Very shortly after I began tohomeschool my difficult child, my son had a severe injury and missed most of a school year. DUe to his disabilities from before his injury, he already performed academically 3 grades or more below classmates and I was not getting very far getting him help at school. After his injury. his school refused still to provide him proper and appropriate help with his original issues or the new ones related to his injury. When I started tohear rumbles of y son being placed in an ED BD program not becuz of any behavior issues, but becuz of his low academic status, I pulled him out of school. </p><p>We do not use any curriculum from anywhere. Our state does not require us to. Becuz of some learning disabilites my son has, we have found that we are somewhat nontraditional. My son attends many different types of scenarios - spends time at our courthouse monthly, participates in various volunteer organizations learning a wide variety of important skills. He spends time with different people at their jobs learning, computers, auto mechanics, heating and air conditioning, he goes shopping with me and does a lot of math work, and he has become very involved in some major home renovations, with the planning, purchasing, and the actual work. He plans all our trips to all our long distance doctor appts and maps out different routes, plans our breaks from driving, plans where we will stay, researching and finding the best deals etc for hotels and such He tracks our mileage, plans our routes, watches the gas prices for best price, calculates MPG for us. ESTimates how long the trip will take etc. He has become involved recently in budgeting, financial planning, and knows how to write all the monthly bills out. He did the research for deals for internet, cable tv and our home phone service, compareing plans and rates among different companies and wrote up the comparisons into a proposal to offer to me, LOL to sway me to get the services he wanted most at the best prices. LOL. He made a to scale map plan of our home complete with all the nooks and crannies for new carpet, and soon will be helping lay it. This past week he assisted a plumber to replace some water pipes. He is fascnated by the History channel, and the Foodnetwork and has begun to plan meals and shop and cook, and can calculate how much a meal costs per serving. </p><p>We have practiced his spelling by haveing him do our text messageing for us, LOL. Sounds strange but, it works GREAT. He has also been learning how to write programs and is trying to crate a new computer videogame. </p><p>Since we began homeschooling or unschooling or whatever it is we are doing, he goes with me nearly everywhere and often I make him write about it, why we did what we did etc. Most days when easy child gets home from class, she does her homework with my son at her side and she shows him what she has done at school and engages his help in her homework. LOL. Since I am also working with difficult child on her GED, my son always sits with us for that material too, and he often helps difficult child with HER studies for her GED. Many times he seems more able to help her learn than I am. </p><p>I used to be certain I needed a break from my kids. What happened when I began to have the 2 kids home more was I found they became much calmer, life settled down incredibly, and I found that the time and energy I used up tending to school issues when the kids were in public school was far more time than I require for education now. Our entire family is MUCH happier, things are so much calmer, more peaceful, a whole lot more fun. We have also found that my son who we THOUGHT had such severe learning disabilities really is amazingly intelligent and learns easier than school realized. Becuz I only have 3 children and not an entire classroom, and becuz I LOVE these children, my children, and have them 24-7, I do have the freedom and ability to work with them nonstop continuosly and the freedom and time to personalize the lessons. We have also found that you can incorporate many different subjects into one - such as cooking can be math and science and history. cutting a pizza can be geometry, LOL. </p><p></p><p>My son also is even more involved now in offerings from our public library, park district, Red Cross, Operation Snowball Jr Police ACademy, and Conservation district. When he was still IN school, often the homework load for him prohibited him from being active in much of anything else due to how much he struggled. I find my kids are now also more polite, more courteous, and more compassionate to others than they used to be. They are with ME most of the time, and MY influence has more time to be absorbed. </p><p></p><p>Today he put together a presentation for me to use tomorrow at my Medical Reserve Corps meeting. And at the moment he is helping us and our VA rep write up documentation etc for an appeal on his dads VA claim. His learning is in the gatherning of information and putting it together in a logical manner and interacting with dads docs and the VA rep. It helps reinforce how to write a paper, becuz he has to have his introduction and later his summary etc. </p><p>While he learns his constitution, it has been arranged via our state rep for my son to go to our state capital and be a page for a day at our general assembly. </p><p></p><p>We have found we enjoy haveing our kids home. We have also found there are endless things to learn and ways to learn them. And we have more control over who our children spend time with. And our kids like the real life applications. It really does help hit the lessons home for them. </p><p></p><p>If you check in the Special Education forum here, some of my posts from when my kids were still in school might be there. Our struggles with school were nightmareish. I only wish now that I HAD taken my oldest child out of school sooner. </p><p></p><p>My middle child, easy child? She excelled in school, did awesome and is now in college and doing great.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="dreamer, post: 195159, member: 1697"] For years homeschooling was suggested to me by nearly everyone who knew of all we had to cope with with difficult child and school. I resisted HARD partly becuz when she was younger, I had my hands full, difficult child is my oldest child, I had a son who was special needs for other types of difficulties and I had an ill husband and I worked LONG hours out of the home as our sole financial support. I was only sleeping 3 hours a day due to how much fell onto my shoulders, already. Things continued to get worse in spite of involvement with a huge number of resources here for difficult child. I continued to resist homeschooling or unschooling, and things just kept getting even worse. Part of it was classmates, part school policies etc and part my difficult child herself. I further continued to resist becuz then I got incredibly ill and was immobile for a few years. Eventually, my difficult child was diagnosis'ed with PTSD from her school experiences and it came to light just HOW traumatized she had become...hr panic attacks got much worse, her agoraphobia became extremely severe, and it finally affected her so intensely, we tried homebound, but, our school does not DO homebound well. I finally wound up homeschooling her. Very shortly after I began tohomeschool my difficult child, my son had a severe injury and missed most of a school year. DUe to his disabilities from before his injury, he already performed academically 3 grades or more below classmates and I was not getting very far getting him help at school. After his injury. his school refused still to provide him proper and appropriate help with his original issues or the new ones related to his injury. When I started tohear rumbles of y son being placed in an ED BD program not becuz of any behavior issues, but becuz of his low academic status, I pulled him out of school. We do not use any curriculum from anywhere. Our state does not require us to. Becuz of some learning disabilites my son has, we have found that we are somewhat nontraditional. My son attends many different types of scenarios - spends time at our courthouse monthly, participates in various volunteer organizations learning a wide variety of important skills. He spends time with different people at their jobs learning, computers, auto mechanics, heating and air conditioning, he goes shopping with me and does a lot of math work, and he has become very involved in some major home renovations, with the planning, purchasing, and the actual work. He plans all our trips to all our long distance doctor appts and maps out different routes, plans our breaks from driving, plans where we will stay, researching and finding the best deals etc for hotels and such He tracks our mileage, plans our routes, watches the gas prices for best price, calculates MPG for us. ESTimates how long the trip will take etc. He has become involved recently in budgeting, financial planning, and knows how to write all the monthly bills out. He did the research for deals for internet, cable tv and our home phone service, compareing plans and rates among different companies and wrote up the comparisons into a proposal to offer to me, LOL to sway me to get the services he wanted most at the best prices. LOL. He made a to scale map plan of our home complete with all the nooks and crannies for new carpet, and soon will be helping lay it. This past week he assisted a plumber to replace some water pipes. He is fascnated by the History channel, and the Foodnetwork and has begun to plan meals and shop and cook, and can calculate how much a meal costs per serving. We have practiced his spelling by haveing him do our text messageing for us, LOL. Sounds strange but, it works GREAT. He has also been learning how to write programs and is trying to crate a new computer videogame. Since we began homeschooling or unschooling or whatever it is we are doing, he goes with me nearly everywhere and often I make him write about it, why we did what we did etc. Most days when easy child gets home from class, she does her homework with my son at her side and she shows him what she has done at school and engages his help in her homework. LOL. Since I am also working with difficult child on her GED, my son always sits with us for that material too, and he often helps difficult child with HER studies for her GED. Many times he seems more able to help her learn than I am. I used to be certain I needed a break from my kids. What happened when I began to have the 2 kids home more was I found they became much calmer, life settled down incredibly, and I found that the time and energy I used up tending to school issues when the kids were in public school was far more time than I require for education now. Our entire family is MUCH happier, things are so much calmer, more peaceful, a whole lot more fun. We have also found that my son who we THOUGHT had such severe learning disabilities really is amazingly intelligent and learns easier than school realized. Becuz I only have 3 children and not an entire classroom, and becuz I LOVE these children, my children, and have them 24-7, I do have the freedom and ability to work with them nonstop continuosly and the freedom and time to personalize the lessons. We have also found that you can incorporate many different subjects into one - such as cooking can be math and science and history. cutting a pizza can be geometry, LOL. My son also is even more involved now in offerings from our public library, park district, Red Cross, Operation Snowball Jr Police ACademy, and Conservation district. When he was still IN school, often the homework load for him prohibited him from being active in much of anything else due to how much he struggled. I find my kids are now also more polite, more courteous, and more compassionate to others than they used to be. They are with ME most of the time, and MY influence has more time to be absorbed. Today he put together a presentation for me to use tomorrow at my Medical Reserve Corps meeting. And at the moment he is helping us and our VA rep write up documentation etc for an appeal on his dads VA claim. His learning is in the gatherning of information and putting it together in a logical manner and interacting with dads docs and the VA rep. It helps reinforce how to write a paper, becuz he has to have his introduction and later his summary etc. While he learns his constitution, it has been arranged via our state rep for my son to go to our state capital and be a page for a day at our general assembly. We have found we enjoy haveing our kids home. We have also found there are endless things to learn and ways to learn them. And we have more control over who our children spend time with. And our kids like the real life applications. It really does help hit the lessons home for them. If you check in the Special Education forum here, some of my posts from when my kids were still in school might be there. Our struggles with school were nightmareish. I only wish now that I HAD taken my oldest child out of school sooner. My middle child, easy child? She excelled in school, did awesome and is now in college and doing great. [/QUOTE]
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