Dazy,
Here are some thought I have about making the journey easier, but remember that I am not at your house, and living through it first hand. These ideas are not meant to criticize your parenting in any way - only to offer you some 'outside the box' ideas, because I'm getting the picture that life inside the current box isn't fun right now.
LOL Grinity, I would never take anything you say as criticism. I'm all ears! It's been a tough year HSing all 3. Just for some back story as I've not been here for a bit....we put our house on the market Feb-March 2010 which meant lots of cleaning, moving things into storage, painting, keeping the house spic and span while HSing for showings. All this done by me as DH works 12-13hrs/day. And then near daily drives to look at potential houses and not finding anything....oh the stress. Found the not-so-perfect house (really wanted that dedicated HS room) on the perfect property. Got a buyer for our house and into contract on the new. Spent the summer dealing w/ new house construction and contractors. New house not ready, need to close on the old house, pack the old house all by myself, move everything into garage of new house while awaiting inspection, live in a hotel for 1.5weeks....move from garage into the new house, school started 2 weeks later. And then weekends filled w/ hours and hours of yardwork and now two boys on travel soccer. I have. not. stopped since last February.
On a brighter note, I started exercising daily in November (I'm a P90X grad!) and I cured my insomnia which has plagued me for years. So, believe it or not, I now have more patience than before. At least when DS10 went through this, he did it quietly.
Ironically, you may recall this is the same son who developed a near phobia about school due to the noise level in the cafeteria in Kindergarten. He is the loudest one in the family. He's my happy, bubbly, always singing and dancing and moving and shrieking around the house, never ever sitting still unless he's reading child. The whole gist of getting a new house was to give me some space to have quiet for me while giving them the space to be loud boys. We are currently finishing the basement so that will be their refuge to rough house and shriek to their hearts content. They can't do it upstairs right now b/c it sounds like a herd of buffalo coming down on my head. So we'll get there......slowly.
Fortunately, there is nothing ahead of him in math for the rest of the year that is difficult or daunting so he'll be able to cruise into the end of the year and we can play fun math games over the summer to work on confidence and joy.
I'll never forget the look on DS10s face when he got something wrong in math for the first time when we were HSing - we had finally hit new information. His face fell, I saw the tears well up in his eyes. People just don't understand how dangerous it is for some kids not to be challenged. I was/am thankful to be able to deal with this now when there are no repercussions as opposed to high school or college.
Ironically, I've had insomnia for two days, hence my long windedness today.
Dazey (looking forward to a break in 1.5weeks when the inlaws are here)
