The goal of parenting is to work yourself out of the job.
How’s that going?
Could your kids continue homeschooling if you weren’t there 24×7?
Could your children continue homeschooling if unforeseen events caused you not to be at home? If you had to take care of an elderly parent for 6 weeks after an operation, if a financial crisis hit and you had to take a job out of the home, if you started a business from home, or if tragedy struck and one of their parents died?
I once set up an appointment for a homeschooling mom to phone me before 10h00 and her response was: “Why is that a good time? Is it because your kids are doing their own work now?”
Actually, yes! The youngest is 9. As soon as a child can read independently, he can do most of his formal lessons on his own. My role now is merely to check and give help when he asks for it.
The same applies to the other two, aged 12 and 14. The 17-year old is working entirely independently. She’s taken ownership of her education. Yes, we have days when sin kicks in and children don’t complete all their work, but there are consequences. Not necessarily punishment, but the same consequences that apply to anyone who procrastinates – the work doesn’t get done by itself. Eventually it catches up with you and you either spend time on a public holiday, or a week-end or the school holidays playing catch up. Depending on the degree of the misdemeanor, there might be an added punishment too, but usually the natural consequence of their neglect is sufficient. Ultimately, our children all need to learn to take responsibility for their own lives and discover the consequences of laziness, dishonesty, procrastination or whichever other vice they choose to manifest.
Don’t feel that you have failed if they aren’t there yet, or when they fall short. We learn some of the most valuable lessons from our failings and short-comings and our children will test the system to see if they can take short-cuts or get away with avoiding the tasks they enjoy least. They need to learn these lessons now, while the consequences are not as serious as they will be in adulthood.
Life isn’t always fun. Sometimes we just have to do work that is not entirely enjoyable, but we feel a relief when it’s done well. You don’t want to burden them all the time, but 20-30 minutes of a subject that is necessary, is not too much to ask in a day.
If every subject is a boring grind and your children are resisting that, then perhaps its time to reconsider the products that you are using.
So, how do you train your children to work independently?
What do you do? What systems do you put in place?
1. Have a conversation with your children.
a) Remind them why they are doing this. Remind them of their goals and yours.
b) Ask them which subjects they think are necessary to learn the skills they need to become independent adults.
c) Then list the subject/s that you feel are necessary and explain why.
d) Then ask them which other subjects or skills they’d like to learn that would be interesting or fun for them and add those to your mix.
Show them that they have a say in their education. Unlike school, our children get to make some choices and learn about things that delight them – even non-traditional school subjects, like hacking, animation, electronics or photography.
2. Give them a realistic plan that they can easily achieve
Set up a system that helps each child to know what to do each day without you having to direct and tell them all the time. In our home, we use a weekly schedule, which I fill out in advance each term or sometimes just for a few weeks at a time. Each child knows which pages or lessons to do in each subject.
We often have a scheduled catch-up day with fewer than normal lessons or a catch-up week mid-term to give them some breathing space. As you know, life gets in the way of the best-made plans and so we have some flexibility in our schedule to accommodate that. We often have birthdays off and allow days for outings and trips too.
For grades 1-7, 2-3 hours a day is more than enough for formal lessons. For high school that may vary to 3-4 hours or more depending on the choice of curriculum you have chosen.
When life interrupts, adjust the plan.
Expect to not accomplish everything that you hoped to do and don’t be disappointed when that happens. Other unplanned lessons that you don’t find in text books will inevitably crowd themselves into your days. Look out for those and appreciate them too.
The schedule and any curriculum is a tool, not a task-master.
Keep the end goal in mind, to send out young adults who are self-disciplined and competent to take care of themselves. To send out young people who can “parent” themselves.
Author: Shirley Erwee