I guess I just want a friendly ear while I hyperventilate over here.

Things aren't terrible, just . . . not good. My child isn't happy. School is a grind. Homework is a grind. I feel like I'm stealing her childhood from her.

I've always secretly (or not so secretly) wanted to homeschool. I also live in a community with a lot of homeschoolers, and I know a lot about it so I feel reasonably confident in how to go about it.

The problem is time and energy. I'm a university prof, so I have somewhat flexible hours, but I do need to work. I'm also not a high-energy person in general, and I'm just not capable of pulling off some kind of super-mom thing. I could hire a baby-sitter/chauffeur type person (as is being discussed in another thread), but even 20 hours a week would pretty much suck up the private school tuition I've been paying.

I also have fears of my strong-willed child becoming completely unmanagable. I've been rather enjoying having a school that teaches her she can sit still and listen to directions and stay focused on her work. (I just wish they did it for about half the hours a day that they do.)

MegMeg-- what else is available, in the school, in the district, around? Is partial homeschooling available?

Even though you have flexible hours, given what you said about energy (I hear you there) I think it would be really tricky to keep getting all your work done while managing the homeschooling.

Our family has hired university students as drivers and tutors, so I know this can be done. But the management of it is... yep, more for you to do.

Partial homeschooling not an option in this state, but there are co-ops and workshops and low-residency alternative schools. It's a pretty awesome community to homeschool in. But it's all piecemeal, and requires the parent to play Managing Director.

What's the school like? Is it possible to get further accommodations in place for the giftedness? Pullouts have been an important respite for my kids...

Can you ask for accommodations to just take her out of school for educational things? Our school let us include that in our gifted plan last year.

I was worried (a lot!) that my two strong-willed kiddos would break me this year because we decided to homeschool rather than let them languish in our school district. It was a bit tough for the first 3 weeks, but then they settled in. I set core school hours and any time between 8-2 is educational activities only. I also let them work ahead to enable them to have a day off on Fridays or at least a very light day. <-- Definitely makes them happier about homeschooling.

This is the school that I've referred to here before as Tiny Private School. They are already very good at individualizing kids' education, and she's right where she needs to be for both math and reading. She could probably be quite a bit more challenged in various content areas (science, history, literature), but I'm okay with that because we do so much un-after-schooling. (That is, incidental learning about all kinds of stuff, just by being the kind of family that we are).

No, the problem really is the high amount of focused work that is demanded, and it's just not working for my kid. Unfortunately this is one area (the homework load in particular) where there is no room for negotiation. (Or, let me clarify that. They've been quite good about letting DD do less because she's been struggling with it, but with the understanding that we are not up to snuff in this area and need to be working towards full compliance.)

I think there are different ways to go with this, none of them wrong.

--You could look for a school of a different flavor. Even the most awesome school is not awesome if it does not fit the actual kid you have. You would have to start over negotiating about curriculum, etc., but you are experienced at that.

--You could just accept that the skill of complying with instruction is something she's building, and it isn't that much fun, but that in the long term, she'll be happier for knowing it. We have gone this route for phases of our history, always making sure there's enough joy in other parts of the day to make it livable as an overall thing. We are not sorry we built this skill.

No situation is perfect, and I do not think parents are obligated to render a schooling situation even close to perfect. Sometimes you have to decide what's "good enough." And I am just making sure you know that you are an excellent parent and your DD will turn out fine whether or not you choose to change up the situation.

If the focused work and homework are overly repetitious and sapping your daughter's love of learning, and if the school is as accommodating as you suggest, you should have a frank discussion with the school director about your daughter's needs. How will this ideology change as your DD progresses through the school? Is it an ethos that students are expected to internalize?

How strong is the school's bargaining position in this situation-- wait list, life cycle phase of the business, appeal to its target market? This will determine how blunt you are, as well as how solid an alternative you'll need lined up as you go into negotiations.

At this stage, I would not rule out any options, particularly homeschooling.

MegMeg,

I know where you are. For the last few weeks, DD has been asking to be homeschooled for K. To make a long story short, I'm leaning towards sending her to a full-time K mostly because I cannot imagine being organized enough to do it right.

But, If I were to homeschool DD, I'd be open to taking another child. DD would be thrilled to have an older sibling figure so I'd be looking for a child who is a couple of years older. We'd be unschooling although after age 8, there would be some expectations for writing and math fluency.

I would not charge what I'd charge as a tutor as I see it being beneficial to my own child and I'd want it to work financially for both families.

If you put words out there that you are looking for a HS partner family, you might find someone who is willing to customize your DD's education based on your vision and DD's developmental needs.

This.

I'm also going to suggest that you could also look at cyberschooling as a credentialing step-- one that preserves that need to learn compliance, but doesn't come with a crushing load of "you have to be doing A, B, or C between the hours of 8 and 3 each day."

This wound up being flexible enough to work tolerably well for DD15 until she basically outgrew it at about 13yo. Attendance hours? Um-- well, don't ask don't tell, if you see what I mean. We told them that DD spent the requisite time doing school, the school was happy, the state was happy, and none of them any the wiser that this estimate was about 200-250% of the actual time required, and DD got time to do more interesting things, including just being her chronological age. She spent a lot of time with me-- professionally, that included a lot of time in your work environment, too, btw. In retrospect, being utterly comfortable and familiar with a collegiate environment was no small thing to a PG child, since she is able to move with an ease on campus that belies her actual chronological age as a starting college student still in her early teens.



She is VERY stubborn and strong-willed. It was definitely not the easiest thing for her to learn to submit to doing things someone else's way-- but as I'm quite sure that you appreciate in your occupation, Megmeg, there is also a need to learn that set of skills. I won't say that I don't still have a certain regret for not being able to outsource that particular set of learning challenges. {ahem}

However, she did learn a great deal in terms of how to navigate college independently, and there was a nice way to continuously sort of benchmark her readiness in terms of not only academic readiness, but also executive function, maturity, etc.

DeeDee said it a lot more perfectly than I could! We too make sure that there is enough joy in other parts of the day to make the school agreeable. I help with homework to hurry it along so that it does not take us too long, I add in other things in the hours after school which are fun and engaging. That is the best I can come up with at this point in time.

Aye, there's the rub.

Okay, I'm more or less over my little freak-out. Today turned out to be a good day (after a serious bout of school-refusal in the morning!) I'm going to wait and observe a while longer, not do anything rash. Thanks everyone.

What helped me when school was not getting better- I started researching all my options: other schools, virtual school, homeschool curriculum. It somewhat helped just knowing I had ok other options. (I did enough research on homeschool curriculum that I had a place to start.) Then, I went back to the tester and asked her opinion. We ultimately did what she advised. My ds is happy, loves school and life is better!

Keep in mind that no decision has to be long term or permanent.

Keep us posted!

I agree with DeeDee's great post. I also think it's not a bad idea just to look into and write up your options, as Melessa suggested. It may make you feel less worried, like you have a safety valve. I have days when I think about pulling the plug on the current school, not so much related to giftedness as other stuff. I cannot fathom homeschooling, though, so I have to look at othe options on my list when this comes up. One thing I would say is that plain old time may help. It sounds like your DD's issues may be an issue of maturity mismatch with too-high expectations in terms of work load. I would expect that to improve, perhaps slowly.

It sounds like you want to homeschool but are worried that you can't keep at it. I had the exact same worries when we pulled Aiden out. Now we are 2.5 years later and I can say honestly that I wish I had had the confidence to start earlier than we did.

I think a lot of people confuse homeschooling with school-at-home. They are different and it doesn't have to be like that. You can put together an interesting curriculum based on needs, asychnronicity, varied interests etc.

For us, the largest part of the first two years has been focused almost totally on life skills and "soft/supporting skills" - ie we worried more about his ability to play nicely, to make his own bed, to be helpful around the house. To be able to write neatly and with confidence and most essentially we have focused on building independent work/learning ability.

It works most days now and I am confident that it will continue to grow. He has now come to me and asked for increased time spent on focused learning activities. He plans his own timetable and is now open to suggestions from me. We include things like music, taekwondo, chess club etc as part of learning time.

I homeschool my 5 year old as well as having my 3 year old around - and the independent learning is brilliant! I don't think we would all be as happy with the way things work if we hadn't focused so much on giving him the freedom to work on his own.

My long-winded point, is that if this is what you really want to do, there is no reason why you can't - it sounds as though you have an excellent choice of abundant support there, and most essentially it sounds as though you really want to. So why not try it for a year and then decide from there?

Hi Madoosa,

Thanks for the encouragement! You're right, I do really want to. The problem is, I'm an employed single mother, and I already feel like I'm failing at my career due to the demands of parenting. My kid is a total attention-hound, and on weekends she's all over me like a cheap suit. I think I will homeschool at some point, when she's matured a bit, but right now it would be really hard.