The Talk

No, not THAT talk. Shift gears, people! Seriously, now!

With each of our kids I have had at LEAST one "Talk." The talk is about the fact that learning is HARD work and the work is THEIR responsibility, not mine.
Sometimes...ok, USUALLY, that talk begins with a discovery of shoddy work and I'm angry...and the child is angry. It is what it is. (Some folks have this kind of discussion over other things, but this is my battle.)
"WHY are these exercises blank? WHY did you not do this and WHY pretend that you did?"
I just got to have that discussion with the youngest. Not the first time, but this was the most significant time.

At the start of each "Talk," I usually hear that my child's "output deficit" is my fault...
"You didn't have time when I had a question!"
I will admit, working full-time, that is sometimes (and occasionally often) true. But there is also the fact that they can put a bookmark in it and ask when I'm done what I'm doing. The nature of my work allows this. I will not, however work with a whining child, which can be a drawback for this kiddo sometimes.
The other fact is that often he will tell me "I was waiting for Dad to come home and ask him my question"...and then (variously) "I forgot to ask him" or "Dad didn't have time!" and essentially it becomes someone else's fault..not his.

Then we move to shifting the blame to other siblings. A harder sell.
"THEY are too loud; too distracting; always done when I want to be done too, but I'm not."
"THEY have less work than I do and it's not fair!"
"THEY made it so I couldn't finish and I didn't do it."
Frankly, I'm not buying any of it. Our house is reasonably quiet during the school day and one heck of a lot quieter than a school building! Occasional distractions with the barking dog or people shifting rooms happens, but everyone has the ability to find some quiet space where no one will bother them. The fact that people finish at different times is true. It's the nature of the homeschooling beast. Basically, once the kids have gotten older (around 13-14)and learned the real lessons at hand, they finish school more quickly and are able to go off and do what they really want to do that isn't math, or chemistry or Arabic.

What I drill down for is, "Why did you honestly not do your work?"
And invariably I hear "It was too hard and was taking me too long! I didn't want to do it."
I will say that I try very hard not to overload each day, but I'm also not out to give my kids "free rides" either. Sometimes I might overplan, but 15 years of practice has me pretty good in that department. Some days school takes more time than others, but with that said, the kids can possibly be done by noon or 1 if they don't waste any time. (Not that kids ever waste time, right!? :) )

It comes down to 2 things, really.
1. Schooling...learning...is work. Yep, it's work. School also isn't always a boatload of fun. Sometimes it is, but yes, I said it, it's not always fun and it's not always easy. GOOD!--- Sometimes the thing at hand is hard, unhappy, and time consuming work. Imagine deciding that since laundry and diapers and meals and dishes were work you didn't like, you just weren't going to do them. That'd be a dream, now wouldn't it?--- Now imagine a surgeon opening up a patient and saying, "Gee, looks like that will take me longer than I feel like spending. Let's just close 'er up. "
Consider the hard work that school can be sometimes to be training for real life. It's a fairly safe way to learn the lesson, I think.

2. Learning, particularly by age 12, isn't the "teacher's" responsibility. That responsibility...that ownership...belongs to the learner. You can't force-feed a learner, but rather, the learner must eat the meat and potatoes and peas and cake himself. And yeah, sometimes, the learner is less willing to down the peas (or in my house, it's the potato!)

This is kind of like how I felt/feel about using Excel. I hate the "boxie-ness" of the thing and how I needed to learn a whole set of tools that really mean nothing to me. But in the end, yeah,  it does help me do other things better. It's a nemesis that I had to take on and while it has taken me a while to learn, I can use it fairly well and to my purpose. I've also learned to ask questions and not quit. I'm sure you have your own unpleasantly learned evil!

So, the kids need to own their own learning... and their own success. The success is theirs after all. And inversely, the failure is also their to own. The adage "You get out of something what you put into it" stands. Math can get easier later by putting in more hard work now, but I'm not the one who needs to do that work. HE has to do the work. I (and college professors and bosses et.al.) won't be there forever to hold his hand. He's got to suck it up and get it done...with the work and the time and the effort required. Experience says that with the average mind, practice will make progress. (note that word...PROGRESS! There's no such thing as perfection!) Practicing less of a hard thing has NEVER produced improvement in my experience.

I have confidence that even the 4th child can learn these lessons as the other 3 have. I know this is a developmental point and that I will likely have some other iteration of "the Talk" with him again. I find that some important messages require repetition. But for today, it's onward and upward. Oh, and he just finished some of what he hadn't done. I'll call that good practice. Rinse and repeat!