Lee-Bowens family

Hi. Although I could go on for days about being new to
unschooling and past/present problems my son and I
have; I'll stick to a question at hand right now. My
son (12) has been home from public school for 2 years
now. Although we have tried many different approaches
to homeschooling, nothing is seeming to work out.
Finally I threw my hands up and decided to lay off all
"schoolwork". I have been TRYING to be more mindful
and less controling, but this doesn't always work-my
hangups obviously. SO, he said to me the other day
that he thinks we should "get on the ball soon" and
start doing schoolwork again because he would like to
go to high school. Ugh. So I complied and gave him 2
SMALL worksheets to do (easy math and grammar-more
review than anything) the next week. He avoided them
like the plague and only did them because we were
getting ready to leave for the day. So, how should I
go about preparing my son for high school in 2 years
if he says he wants to "get ready" but doesn't? I have
tried to do real life learning of some things-but as
soon as he thinks I am "teaching" him something, he
shows no interest. I just feel like a even comparison
would be saying that my 5 year old daughter was going
to start school-at the 4th grade level. How could she
possibly be ready to do 4th grade work if she can't
even read. I know I probably sound like I'm going over
the edge-but I am new to everything right now. I have
checked out Sandra Dodd's site and a few others. Sorry
this post is so long. :-) Heather L.



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plaidpanties666

--- In [email protected], Lee-Bowens family
<leebowensfamily@...> wrote:
>>SO, he said to me the other day
> that he thinks we should "get on the ball soon" and
> start doing schoolwork again because he would like to
> go to high school. Ugh. So I complied and gave him 2
> SMALL worksheets to do (easy math and grammar-more
> review than anything) the next week. He avoided them
> like the plague and only did them because we were
> getting ready to leave for the day. So, how should I
> go about preparing my son for high school in 2 years
> if he says he wants to "get ready" but doesn't?

It might be helpful to talk with him about why he wants to go to
high-school if he doesn't like school work - does he think its
somehow necessary? If so, I'd look into any messages you might be
sending that "getting a good education" is important. You may still
have some issues on that subject yourself, if you are new to
unschooling.

>I have
> tried to do real life learning of some things-but as
> soon as he thinks I am "teaching" him something, he
> shows no interest.

It sounds like you need to learn more about learning, yourself. I
have a 13yo stepson who *hates* to read books or instructions and is
currently mostly nocturnal, so he misses a lot of our real life -
but he's still learning things all the time. He also tends to shut
down if he thinks someone is trying to "teach" him something, but
he's very open to learning from life itself.

I have a blog set up for "reporting purposes" if you want to see
what that looks like (or if you want to see me talk about
unschooling without *ever* using the word "unschooling" <g>):

http://rayanschool.blogspot.com/

The most recent post is the "learning plan" we had to submit, but
the next few say a lot on the subject of how learning looks for a
kid who is *very* resitant to any kind of teaching.

---Meredith (Mo 5, Ray 13)