Go in through the narrow gate. The gate to destruction is wide, and the road that leads there is easy to follow. A lot of people go through that gate. 14But the gate to life is very narrow. The road that leads there is so hard to follow that only a few people find it.
It made me think about something Sweet Potato has been saying a lot lately. You see whenever school, chores or relationships become difficult she proclaims them "to hard" and stops trying. When I encourage her to work harder, step up or just care about her schooling. She just whines and moans "Its Toooo Hard I just want to do easy things." Where in the world did she get that from this is sooo not us. She has been having a poor attitude toward school for a while. We have turned a corner and it's getting better but it's been a rough couple of weeks. I have found sticking the consequence of detention for being late (going to bed early) and suspension for 5 tardys (getting grounded all day Saturday or Wednesday and doing chores), requiring all her work to be turned in by 4pm or it was an automatic zero this was to stop the doing school from 9am -8pm daily dawdle , (a zero in the grade books means the itouch is now confiscated for 24 hours), got her attention.
Part of me did not want to dig out the consequential parenting tool from my tool box, but Time In's and talking reasonably about it were just not working. I wonder if this falls under the "high structure" requirement she needs as a sensory overloaded adopted child. Homeschooling can often be relaxed and loosey goosey. In one way it is helpful, as you can focus on the needs of the child, allow them to grow into the work if needed, but I think for Sweet Potato she needs more structure than I was providing. Once I started enforcing the detention missing prayer meeting OH MY! and re-explaining how her tardiness affects the entire school day for everyone. Then I restructured the school schedule, added disincentives to fail, and it seems to have pulled school back from frustrating to workable. Sad to say I can't say "joy" yet but my hope is in Christ :-)
I saw this Fox News snippit on a new book that shows authoritative parenting produces higher grades made me remember all my training from the Monroe's at our church and I felt better about my parenting goals in no way have I arrived :-) this is a journey...
I have been training and turning over responsibility of remembering to take your medication to Sweet Potato. Were in the "Trust but Verify" stage of this process, in 3-4 years I hope to not have to worry about the verify part, because ultimately it's not my body, it's her body, and she needs to self care. It's all part of my ultimate plan for my child to grow up and out. For her to be able to do that means I need to share power with her and allow her to fail, make mistakes and get messy. I think homeschoolers in general do the last 2 really well and the first one not so well. So I'm trying a new approach; allowing failure to be an option. So now she can fail in a safe environment all the while knowing I still believe she can do it and I'm here to help all she needs.
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