Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [60]
These simple rules will help both you and your children have a good homeschooling experience.
Homework
Homework is one of those necessary evils of growing up. If you are a parent, you will, in some way, be involved in homework (whether you choose public school, private school, or homeschooling). The best thing you can do for your children is to provide a quiet, well-lit, consistent place that they can do their homework.
Here’s the problem. If you’ve got kids who are manipulative, they can con you into doing their homework for them. They can con you into setting up your home as a schoolhouse (though it’s your home as a schoolhouse (though it’s more like a battle zone with all the emotions flying) for 4 to 5 hours a night. But the reality is that your child’s homework is your child’s homework. Not yours. There’s nothing wrong with checking it to make sure your child has done it and helping by asking questions when a child gets stuck, but no way should you do your child’s work for her. In many school systems, you can phone the school, punch in a teacher’s code, and get the homework assignment so you know what needs to be done. I have raised 5 children and have never done that. In our home, our children knew we expected them to do well in school—to do their best.
One of the rules in our house is that the computer has to be in one of our central rooms, not any bedroom. So many nights our youngest daughter, Lauren, sits in the same room as me (I’m in my favorite chair) and does her homework by aid of the computer. We’re five feet from each other, but I rarely ask the question, “What are you doing?” Sometimes I see her doing math and struggling with it, but I don’t intervene. If she asks me for help, I’m glad to help her for a few minutes, but I won’t battle homework for hours a night.
Parents shouldn’t become the fourth grader or the seventh grader. They’ve already been there. If a child is struggling in a subject, the best thing to do is to see if the teacher can give her some extra help or to hire a tutor. We’ve done that with our children on a couple of occasions—once we had a university student help, and another time a high school senior helped.
Do not allow your child to manipulate you into becoming the student and doing what should be her responsibility. (For those of you who are homeschoolers, see also “Homeschooling.”)
Hyperactivity/ADD/ADHD
“Would you just sit still? What’s wrong with you?”
People today love disorders and labels. When I speak and later someone comes up to me and says, “I’m an ACA [Adult Child of an Alcoholic],” I’m tempted to say, “I’m into pork bellies, at least in the short term.”
What’s all the talk about labels for anyway?
“My child has OCD—obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
“I think my son’s ADD or ADHD.”
These days, if children meet any of the qualifications for the 10 symptoms of ADD, the child is labeled—and medicated. It’s seemingly an easy fix. But what does that really do for the child in the long run?
What’s the purposive nature of giving your child a label? I’m convinced it’s not in the child’s best interest, nor is it in yours as a parent. Frankly, labeling your child gets him off the hook for his behavior, and it also gives you a convenient excuse for the way your child acts, so you don’t have to do anything about it other than agree to medicate your child: “She’s not doing well at school because she’s ADD, and the teachers don’t understand her.” Or, “He can’t help it. It’s just the way he is.”
But in nearly four decades of counseling, I’ve discovered that often the behaviors that are labeled stem from something else entirely. What happens in many families? After countless infertility tests that cost a fortune, 9 months of a difficult pregnancy, the throes of birth, or myriad adoption forms,