Dear Homeschool I'm Tired...

Well in this year of massive transition and horribleness, you know death, moving and shunning add to that moving to a house that is fantastic,  except when it rains more than 1 inch. Then the toilets don't flush... Did I mentions we had 7 inches of rain on Thanksgiving when 9 people were in the house.  It's been difficult fighting feelings of despair have I wasted the last 12 years at GFA, and the whole starting over thing.

But my children's education is tantamount to me.  It's so important to equip them for life. I have one that I can give the guide to and she charges ahead, stops asks for help when she needs it, and brings me the read aloud and the math book when it time to do the teacher lead subjects.  Homeschooling her is so easy.

Then I have the child who drives me to the back yard where I pull out my hair and do a few primal screams before calmly entering the living room declaring her grounded until all school has been caught up.

I'm seriously contemplating putting the iPod in the safe for a year, maybe forever.  She broke our internet rules and lost texting for a month. We still had issues where she was glued to her screen but she was a nicer more positive child that interacted normally with her family.  She got texting back on Monday. Knowing back to school after a holiday is hard, I said she could just do "some school" a few subjects, just do half a day, Honi.  I had a guest here and she and I spent lots of time catching up on our lives. The next day I told Sweet Potato to finish what was left of her school. Circumstances beyond my control caused me to be gone from home from 11-3 On Tuesday. I totally got hosed by this child. She told me she "finished" I trusted her... I was tired from driving for basically 4 hours and I lay down for a short nap that never manifested, the septic guy came by to tell me my back yard is too wet for them to put in the new system. *roll eyes.* You woke me up to tell me your not going to do anything yet???

Wednesday morning I discovered much to my horror, my daring daughter had partially completed only 3 subjects.  So following the therapists advice we sat together and ordered her school subjects one fun, one not so fun, and so on and so forth. She was supposed to be doing this on her own but obviously she was not doing it.  I always find these behavior modification things never work long term with this child.  I keep trying them mainly to prove to the therapist they don't work.  She didn't finish catching up... so Yesterday we sat together and I asked her to order the subjects, fun, not fun. Hey look Child It's your choice you are choosing what and when to do yourself, be the responsible captain of your ship! woo hoo...  Looking at the list last night at first glance it looked like she only had 2 subjects left on the back log... I was wrong she had reordered her list She came in today and asked if she could orally do heath instead of writing them down... Ok I though, but heath was Number 2 yesterday is she on todays work maybe??? Please... HOPE! It sprung a leak a few minutes later when I came out to check on her progress and saw she was not on today's work... really looking hard at the list I see she reordered the list and did all the "fun" subjects yesterday leaving 4 un-fun as back log subjects. Hence the primal screaming in the back yard. 

The last few days she has been stuck in her chair all day "catching up" I have to check on her constantly, if she lacks oversight work grinds to a halt and the application daydream is loaded.  Ugh!  Child you are too old for me to be dictating your life! You resent it, I resent it. It makes me so sad to see her needing this constant pressure from outside to do the right thing.  I really, really, really want her to self start, enjoy her free time, not get distracted.  Yet if we make a schedule together, she does it for 3 weeks or less and abandons it as boring. If we make a magnet check list together for her to move and be happy things are done by herself daily...  2 days into it I'm nagging her to do it and it's not followed either.  Here to is another failed behavior modification program.  At this point in school were still as far behind as we were on Tuesday morning and I will have be chained to her chair to make her catch up. It is not fair to the other people in the house for me to be so completely consumed with one member unless they are in the hospital...  child you are not in the hospital you are strong, smart, and able

I do not understand when she is set up for success, for self-direction, for trust to be built, for me to praise her socks off. She sabotages herself  EVERY SINGLE TIME.  I did this as a child too, I am not without compassion. I had to figure it out, I had to decide to stop being a jerk, to decide to get my act together because I didn't like Mom telling me every single thing to do. Once I figured it out things went better Mom stopped being a pain to me mainly because I stopped being a ornery child.   She has not had that a-Ha moment. *sigh*

I'm tired. There I said it. I'm tired of the constant nagging, I'm tired of how she sabotages herself. I'm tired of "making her" get an education. I'm tired of not exercising because I have to sit with her, I'm tired of the constant supervision of a child that should be learning to drive and developing her independence.  I'm tired of having to Mom Ground her and taking all the fun stuff out of her life. I'm so very tired.

I'm not going to give up on her, I'm just admitting this part of the journey feels like Joy dragging Sadness along behind her in the movie Inside Out.  Maybe the daydreaming Elephant can find a Rocket ship wagon for me to pull her long in.  Oh look she's been in the bath room for at least 20 minutes while I wrote this blog, time to go see if she fell in.