QUESTION: I’ve homeschooled my seventh-grade daughter on and off by means of elementary faculty. This faculty 12 months, I started homeschooling her, however she’s now telling me she desires to go to “actual” faculty once more as a result of she desires to be with different children her age. She’s very social and has a lot of buddies, principally by means of the church we attend.
The identical factor occurred final 12 months. After a month on the native public faculty, she needed to be homeschooled once more, her cause being that public faculty was boring however their math curriculum was too exhausting. She has at all times had issue with math, so I instruct at a slower tempo.
Her battle over homeschooling versus “actual” education appears to be largely a matter of eager to be with different children her age (which I perceive) versus her long-standing issue with something having to do with numbers. Personally, I don’t assume it’s a good suggestion for her to bounce forwards and backwards between public faculty and homeschool. Your ideas, please.
ANSWER: You’ve clearly been letting your daughter determine, for essentially the most half not less than, once you homeschool her and when she attends “common” faculty. The query that you want to reply for your self is, “The place my daughter’s schooling is worried, who is aware of higher, me or her?”
I’ll reply the query for you: You recognize higher. You’ve as a lot as informed me that her selections are based mostly totally on emotional components: to wit, faculty is “boring,” her buddies are there, math is irritating, and so forth. When a choice of this magnitude relies on an individual’s emotions, and the particular person is a toddler, the choice shouldn’t be going to be in anybody’s finest curiosity.
If you wish to solicit your daughter’s emotions, that’s wonderful, however you must make the choice, and in case your resolution doesn’t coincide together with her emotions, so be it. In the event you don’t take cost of this essential resolution, she is prone to proceed bouncing forwards and backwards for the subsequent six years. At a sensible degree, that isn’t going to look good on her transcript.
On the very least, i might have her signal a contract through which she agrees to be homeschooled for a minimal time period earlier than any adjustments will likely be thought of and that any change at that time will likely be everlasting.
[Family psychologist John Rosemond: johnrosemond.com, parentguru.com. Copyright 2022, John K. Rosemond]
