School

Schooling kinda sucks around here. Sure we are having some good times but it's really been bumpy lately. We started out the years doing well. Hannah was really enjoying both the online classes and the classes at the high school. She was doing the work with very little prompting or nagging and I really didn't feel like I needed to check up on her a lot. The younger kids were really enjoying the seat work they asked for and we were doing some pretty cool units. As time has worn on though we seem to have hit a lot of pot holes. Homeschooling is a very hard job and I spend a lot of time thinking nothing I am doing is right.

Jason has meltdown fits more often than not over school work. Hailey needs me to guide her step by step through each letter she writes or group of objects she counts up on every paper. neither of them are big on following directions and then get really upset when something doesn't turn out right. They even skip numbers in dot to dots because they think they know what the pic is and then get mad when they were wrong! Xavier only wants to do the work they are doing which he can't because he hasn't got a clue about letters or words and that is what they are doing. I've given him workbooks over the same material and told him to go ahead and do it but then he gets mad because he doesn't know how and doesn't understand it. It would be funny if it weren't so hard to deal with his frustration and tears. A few good and memorable things have happened though. Jason read his first book out loud to me. Hailey has decided she really likes adding and she has picked up on phonic sounds without any particular help from me. Jason struggles a little with this and when he's having trouble with a letter sound or the many sounds a vowel can make she often pops up with the answer for him. Xavier has learned to do puzzles and candy Land really well plus he's got his colors and shapes down really well.

I wish I could find something nice to say about Hannah and school or even her in general really. it makes me sad that I can't.

Hannah stopped doing almost all of her online class work and was telling us she was doing it. She is about six weeks behind in most of her classes now. I found this out a couple weeks ago and there was a huge, mega huge blow up over it. I was furious and hurt that she would just lie to us like this. We were asking her all time how specific classes were going, did she need any help, doing anything interesting, have you finished your work for the day and such. She was just streaming us a crap load of lies. Then when I confronted her about the lies and told her how frustrated and hurt I was and wanted to know why she hadn't done any work and then lied about it, she told me it was all my fault as well as a few other things which she blamed me for. Oh yeah I was pissed and did things I'm not terribly proud of.

In the end we took away her social life, computer in the bedroom privilege and made her do school work at certain times in the kitchen where she could be seen doing it. I really thought this would be motivation to stop lying and just do the damn work. For two weeks she sat in the kitchen logged into her classes just not doing a damn bit of work! I really didn't think I would need to sit next to her and check up on her hourly to prevent her from lying more but apparently I was wrong. I've now had to set an hour by hour schedule of what class she works on when and she's literally working form 8am to 9 or 10 at night, plus Sat and Sun in order to get caught up. I have to go in and do check of what assignments in what areas have ben turned in every single day now. I absolutely hate this!!!! She's still making every excuse in the world as to why she can't do it, it doesn't work or she doesn't understand it. I'm really going to lose it one of these times and smack the crap out of her when she's having one of her little temper tantrums. It's not that she doesn't understand she just doesn't want to do the work, read the lessons, do the problems and then skip right to a quiz and get pissed that she doesn't know the answers. She has done this in all of her online subjects. She has become a horrible brat in so many ways I've actually looked at boarding school costs a few times. JT is very little help in any of this. He thinks I either over react or am being to harsh, he's not here to deal with it and when he is here he doesn't want to be bothered with dealing with it.

I'd let her just fail but it has no meaning to her. She doesn't care about passing or failing. She has no particular plans for college so a GPA means nothing to her. She also doesn't seem to care about having to repeat the classes. I've made it clear that at this point I am not going back to traditionally home schooling her so if she thinks that she'll get an easy diploma from me when she bombs public school, she's nuts.