New outlook

As the season turns to fall, more than just the leaves are changing in our household.  On Friday I spoke with a wonderful woman who has been homeschooling her children for 20 years, she is now schooling her grandchildren.  She was an amazing wealth of knowledge and strength that we are making the right choice and that it will work out for the best in the end.

One of the first things she asked me was if I pray for each day to be a blessed day and things to go well.  Actually I had gotten so tied up in my own stress that I was forgetting this very precious step.  As she said with God’s guidance I can handle anything the world tosses at me.

She also was able to relate to my situation perhaps better than anyone else I had ever talked to before.  You see her son is adopted also, they adopted him as a toddler, he was diagnosed with Autism in 3^rd grade and this year started college to the University of Southern California on a full ride academic scholarship.  Basically this woman got it, she knew what I was struggling with and could tell me that there is a light on the other in of this tunnel we seem to forever be stuck in.  She did make sure I realized that it was a long road to go, but well worth it in the end.

First order of the week  - - - discard schedule.  Our son if anything like hers will never follow it on the principal of someone is telling him what to do and when to do it all day long.

Second step - - - put more responsibility on him, he might just surprise us with what he can do.

Third step - - realize that we need to take time to celebrate the small victories because the big ones might be a long time coming.

Fourth step - - remember to always make the plan in pencil because God loves to keep us on our toes.

Fifth step - - Make time for ourselves, we are not doing our son any good if we are stressed all the time and as much as we need a break from him he needs one from us also.

So he we are the start of week four with a new outlook and a plan in PENCIL.  First thing we did was tell our son that he knew what had to be accomplished and it is his responsibility to keep himself on track.  I made a sheet for each day of the week, with what each subject was working on, what assignments he needed to complete, and with all printed materials attached.  It is up to him to work at his own pace make sure the work is done correctly and stay on track.  It doesn’t matter one bit to his Dad and I if school is the only thing he has time for each day.  We would enjoy staying home a few evenings a week anyway.

Also the Math lessons through Connections Academy are very busy, they have talking characters and such so they are a little overwhelming.  Math has never been a problem in the past so now Hubby is going to teach the math lessons each evening one on one with Son to make sure he understands and just use Connections Academy for the quizzes and test.  (We had no idea this was an option being new to Connections Academy this year.)

Spelling and grammar are something that is lacking, so we have simply added that as a class each week.  I spent time going through the lessons for the week found vocabulary words and made worksheets to have him spend time each week learning these words, then will test him on spelling and usage of the words.  Yes Spell Check will always be there but it should be a back up not a necessity.

Although it obviously to early to tell if this is working or not, I am feeling very positive and look forward to the end of the day to see what got accomplished.

Labor Day weekend lessons learnt

I think one of the hardest choices we have to make as a parent is to take something beloved away from our children as a consequence to their actions and not cave in, regardless of how miserable it makes our lives.

You see in the Ponto house Labor day weekend was not a time for backyard barbeques and pool parties.  It was the scene of the latest battle.  We had made the decision to not allow our son to attend his karate classes the Saturday before labor day this was to show him how serious we are about schooling, which has to be more important than karate. 

Well dear old son decided to make our lives miserable since we had taken something dear away from him.  He just needled us all weekend little things, like using all the toilet paper in the bathroom and not putting anymore in there.  Forgetting to shut lights off ( a big issue for Hubby).  To taking a nap so that he would not be tired and instead was energized and ready to argue all night long about why he should have a later bedtime.  The list goes on and on.  But we stood our ground.  And in large part due to the support of his Sensei, taught him a lesson.  We are serious and will not tolerate the slack off attidude he has had about school.

Conduct at School

‘Really, you honestly thought you could get away with that?’ ask the parent

‘Well, you are not supposed to check every little thing I do, it is because you do that that you guys get mad at me.  After all it is not my fault.’ Responds the child

This was a conversation in our house last night.  Hubby and I set down to watch one of the live lessons the teacher had recorded from our son’s language arts class.  Well what we found was that he wanted to use the chat pod and talk to the other kids about stuff completely off subject and stuff that he did not even know what he was talking about.  So when we talk to him about this we start the conversation by reminding him that the live lessons are the same as being in a brick and mortar classroom, he needs to focus and pay attention to the teacher not the other kids.  He tells us he knows this and he has been.  When we point out not exactly and tell him what we are talking about, he then proceeds to argue that this was not what he did.  Hubby (the calm voice of reason) explains that the teacher recorded the actions on her screen that we can see exactly what happened, when he entered the room, who he spoke with, and what his comments are.  He then proceeds to argue that we are taking them out of context the teacher wanted him to agree with the kid that was talking about Internet explorer and hating it.  I am pretty sure no teacher who has control of the classroom wants to have a class wasted by basing the merits of Internet explorer, however we had listen to the teacher talking and she just told them they had to use Internet explorer nothing more.

H0w is that even then a person is not able to accept responsibility for his actions.  We had the evidence right there on the screen yet he still argued.  That is why we are beginning to feel like we are beating our heads against a brick wall.  At what point do we decide that enough is enough and make the tough choices?  These are a few of the tough things that we are struggling with this week. 

But I do believe that rules have been established and consequences will be harsh if the rules are not followed in the future.

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Originally I had only planned on posting once a week, but after only getting 3 hours sleep after ‘the debate’ last night I just had to set down and write it out to let go of it.  Obviously my intention is not for this to be a blow by blow account of the debates, for that would not be appropriate nor fair to all parties involved. 

Week 2 of homeschooling

Oh how the mouse loves to play

When the cat is away!

Finally had time to really set down and go through all of our sons school work.  (He is in 7th grade so I do not check everything he does; he needs to learn to be responsible at this point.)  I started with his online grade book, boy was that an eye opener.  You see Connections Academy has some pretty nifty features for us parents one of them is whenever he takes a quiz or test; it times that activity so if they get poor score you can see how long they actually spent on it.  Well it is amazing but our son averaged just 2 minutes per quiz that first week of school.  As I begun to pull up these quizzes and quick checks and see the ones he missed I just started asking him the questions out loud, and amazing he knew all the answers, he just had not taken the time to get the work done.

So we started off the week with a schedule posted that told him what time each subject was to be started and when he had breaks and lunch.  This was to help him maintain a routine that is important for him to learn, routines help with organization.  Once again we thought this plan would work.

Yet each and every time I checked his status he was not on the subject that the schedule said he should be on, and he always had an excuse.  By about the middle of the week, I was so frustrated I informed him starting following the schedule or go back to a brick and mortar school.  Boy was that a mistake, he freaked out started crying, hollering, and telling me that if I enrolled him in a brick and mortar school he would run away.  As he is yelling at me, I yell back because I was so frustrated with him.  He tells me that he is a smart kid we will run away and get a job because he is the size of an adult (he hit the 5 foot mark) no one will know he is a kid.  Well let me tell you at this point it was hard not to laugh out loud, I mean really what planet was this kid from, who in the world would hire a kid with ADHD to the point without his meds he would forget to wear shoes in the snow…lol I held it together and said the dreaded phrase I never thought would come out of my mouth.  I told him to set down and do his work, I was not telling him again, he had the comeback of why should I and I replied

‘Because I am your Mother and I said so’

As soon as I said it I felt faint, I mean really, when had I became my mother who felt like she never had to explain anything to me.  I had to just walk out of the room; I could not even stay to make sure he stayed on task.

The decision to home school has become a journey for all of us; it is a daily test of patience.  Along with increased expenses to home school, we got lucky and found a public school, but just the cost of being home makes expenses more.  For one thing it is amazing how much food a kid will want to eat if he can see the kitchen from where he works on his school work. Not to mention that if you are home all day you heat and cool your house differently and lunch tends to be more involved than packing a sandwich for school.

I have faced the daily battle of having to be the ever present extra eyes in the room because given the chance our son will skip any assignment that he doesn’t want to do or doesn’t think is something he really wants to learn.  Connections Academy is really a wonderful tool for homeschooling, the child logs in and selects the subject then has a few screens of text and pictures telling them what they are going to be working on, along with an assignment then some type of assessment to measure if they learned it or not.  Really a wonderful tool, IF and this is a big IF you take the time to read the screens.  That seems to be what has been lacking in our household.  I have a child who reads at a college level, yet fails to read the simplest of directions that result in him failing a section.  And this is school, public school at that they do not have the chance for do over’s!  The biggest battle has been the time, he needs to have 30 hours of schooling a week, yet he wants to rush each day so he can be done in a just a few hours, for what who knows.  Until his grades improve he is not allowed to play video games, or watch TV so not very many things to look forward to.

Well we will just have to hope the third week is a better week.  This weekend we had a lot of people talk to our son about the importance of doing his school work correctly.  Hopefully someone finally got through to him.  I know that he had some people he really cares and respects tell him how important this is.

Homeschooling the Middle School years

As many of you know after a hurried, rushed, and not well thought out plan we decided to home school our son in for the latter part of the school year last year.

Fast forward till this year, 7^th Grade, homeschooling is once again the plan.  But PLAN oh yeah; I have one of those now.

This year we started with a school called Connections Academy they are a public school that just happens to be a virtual school, so it is the best of both words, our son learns at home yet he has teachers.  This was a plus to my sanity.  I am his learning coach really no different than the role I had been playing with him in a brick and mortar setting.  I help him get started on his assignments each day, I check over his work, BEFORE he takes any test or quizzes if he gets it then he moves right along.  This plan was so perfect nothing could go wrong right???

Well as we all know sometimes when we make plans; life has a way of interfering just to keep us on our toes.  We got the acceptance notice for our son in July; his text books arrived the first of August.  All was looking good, he was excited, I had set up a desk and computer for him, supplies all lined up nice and neat.  Then dear hubby decided to throw a curve ball to all of us. 

You see all summer long hubby has been going to the doctor about a hiatal hernia that would need to be surgically repaired, no problem he went to see the surgeon in May.  But with the wonders of insurance and testing the surgery was not able to be scheduled until the end of August, the second day of school for our son.  So basically I needed to get our son going on school on Monday then try to get him to work ahead so he did not miss work on Tuesday.  I mean really whose plan was this in, not mine.

Oh and my classes at college, which thank goodness are all online, started the same day as our sons school year.  So now I had to figure out a way to care for dear hubby and stay on track with my classes, along with calming any fears our son had about starting a new school.  Well this turned out to be the longest week of the year for sure.  You see our son NEEDS 8 hour’s sleep, without it he is on frayed nerves all day.  So when surgery required that we be at the hospital that is a good 30 minutes away at 6 in the morning, I knew this was going to be a long day.

Well we made it to the hospital, got hubby settled in for surgery; thought things were going well, when the hospital decided to test the fire alarm.  Well when you have a 12 year old boy, who is already short on sleep, and autistic this was just a recipe for disaster.  He panicked about how to get out of the hospital because that was the fire alarm.  The waiting room nurse explained rather rudely that it was just a drill no need to get upset, he began to cry.  I mean big huge tears, red nose, and loud sobs.  (He could never be an actor his crying is too dramatic)  So I had to pack up the back pack we had brought and get him outside to calm down.  When I headed toward the elevator he reminds me that you cannot use that during a fire.  So I begin to look for the stairs which were nowhere to be found so that was not making my case any easier.  So I tried walking him over to a window to let him see that it was fine no one was leaving the hospital, and of course we had to see a fire truck streak by.  This is pretty much what set the tone for the week.

But we survived, hubby made it home after just one night in the hospital.  Homeschooling is off to a rocky start but we will figure it out I am sure of it.  I am on track with my classes, and hubby is back to work now.