Tired and Burned Out

[JusDelenH]

We are only into the 2nd week of schooling this year and I am already burned out. Although I spent the summer planning, I feel like nothing is right. I am feeling a repeat of last year's failures staring me in the face. My kid learned plenty of grammar and math but nothing else. Since I was dedicated to creating my own curriculum, I did not budget anything for this school year curriculum wise outside of the new WTM Grammar curriculum. I just do not know what to do. 

[Miss Tick]

Sounds rough! Can you be more specific about which subjects you are covering and how each one is going? Maybe we can help brainstorm some burnout avoidance approaches.

 

Were you looking forward to the semester during planning time?

Edited September 24, 2017 by SusanC

[HomeAgain]

What happened last year?

[Garga]

Ages of kids?  Give us the details and I'll be we can help.

[OneStepAtATime]

:grouphug: 

 

Agree, we might be able to help but we need more info.

 

1.  Ages of kid(s)

2.  What is your current schedule?

3.  What subjects are you covering (trying to cover)?

4.  What specifically were the issues last year?

• Mismatch on material vs. student/parent
• child struggling or resistant or having health issues or...
• overscheduled
• lack of motivation (parent or child or both)
• struggle to stay focused/on task (parent or child or both)
• ?

 

[Lang Syne Boardie]

We are only into the 2nd week of schooling this year and I am already burned out. Although I spent the summer planning, I feel like nothing is right. I am feeling a repeat of last year's failures staring me in the face. My kid learned plenty of grammar and math but nothing else. Since I was dedicated to creating my own curriculum, I did not budget anything for this school year curriculum wise outside of the new WTM Grammar curriculum. I just do not know what to do. 

 

 

You never came back to the conversation, when we talked about this exactly a year ago!

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/625167-getting-nowhere-with-history/

 

In case you don't come back this time, either, I'm not going to waste anything on asking questions to better understand the problem. I'm just going to take the gloves off and tell you how it looks from here, and you can decide whether I'm right or not. Whether you want to make excuses or whether you want to make changes. Ignore me, fix things, keep going as you are...if you're in the USA you have a lot of freedom to educate your child (or not) as you see fit. But I hope if there's any truth to my opinion, that you'll face that truth and make a change. I know you can if you want to! We all can. OK, here goes...

 

I think you suffer from a fairly common ailment known as "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good." You think you need to invent your own lesson plans so that your child gets the most possible out of it...but you never get around to actually teaching the child!

 

Instead of saying, "She'd get more of out of it if I did XYZ," think of it this way: "Doing NOTHING with me is LESS than she'd get in any other setting or by any other approach."

 

If you can't change your mindset, and thus your practice, until you are teaching her some amount of history several days per week...please consider returning your child to the school where she was learning, retaining, and enjoying her education! If you don't want to put her back in school, then purchase a ready-made curriculum and diligently follow it. Every single day, for the whole school year. It doesn't matter if you think you could do better. If you won't do better, then do good enough. Be faithful.

 

Your child deserves and education and has a right to be properly schooled.

 

[JusDelenH]

Sounds rough! Can you be more specific about which subjects you are covering and how each one is going? Maybe we can help brainstorm some burnout avoidance approaches.

 

Were you looking forward to the semester during planning time?

This year we are attempting to do earth science and US History. I have downloaded many different curriculum plans but nothing feels right for us.

 

 

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[JusDelenH]

What happened last year?

We never got truly started with it. Then adding in a huge move and adjusting to a new space, I don't feel much got done.

 

 

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[JusDelenH]

:grouphug:

 

Agree, we might be able to help but we need more info.

 

1. Ages of kid(s)

2. What is your current schedule?

3. What subjects are you covering (trying to cover)?

4. What specifically were the issues last year?

• Mismatch on material vs. student/parent
• child struggling or resistant or having health issues or...
• overscheduled
• lack of motivation (parent or child or both)
• struggle to stay focused/on task (parent or child or both)
• ?

She is 11 but asynchronous. We scored really well on required state tests but the things she loved were pretty much missing. I am also a full time student while trying to school my child. She hates writing and reading so I was trying to work around her likes and dislikes.

 

 

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[JusDelenH]

You never came back to the conversation, when we talked about this exactly a year ago!

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/625167-getting-nowhere-with-history/

 

In case you don't come back this time, either, I'm not going to waste anything on asking questions to better understand the problem. I'm just going to take the gloves off and tell you how it looks from here, and you can decide whether I'm right or not. Whether you want to make excuses or whether you want to make changes. Ignore me, fix things, keep going as you are...if you're in the USA you have a lot of freedom to educate your child (or not) as you see fit. But I hope if there's any truth to my opinion, that you'll face that truth and make a change. I know you can if you want to! We all can. OK, here goes...

 

I think you suffer from a fairly common ailment known as "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good." You think you need to invent your own lesson plans so that your child gets the most possible out of it...but you never get around to actually teaching the child!

 

Instead of saying, "She'd get more of out of it if I did XYZ," think of it this way: "Doing NOTHING with me is LESS than she'd get in any other setting or by any other approach."

 

If you can't change your mindset, and thus your practice, until you are teaching her some amount of history several days per week...please consider returning your child to the school where she was learning, retaining, and enjoying her education! If you don't want to put her back in school, then purchase a ready-made curriculum and diligently follow it. Every single day, for the whole school year. It doesn't matter if you think you could do better. If you won't do better, then do good enough. Be faithful.

 

Your child deserves and education and has a right to be properly schooled.

I am sorry. I thought I did come back to that conversation. We did get things accomplished but it was not enough to satisfy me and it was rather disjointed. We watched a lot of shows, discussed, and played games around the topics. However this being middle school for her and knowing her capabilities, I know I need to do more. She has expressed wanting to graduate early and I am trying to help her make it happen for herself.

 

And that is exactly my issue. I was trying to create something to meet my crazy standards and wound up stressing myself out. As I sit and look at all the things surrounding me, nothing seems like enough. I pulled her because she was not being challenged enough. I think that I fell into the trap trying to fix what I feel was wrong with her education.

 

 

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[....]

I have some incoherent ramblings to add to your thread...  I have 5 kids and we've been homeschooling for about 8 years.  Oldest two are interest-led homeschoolers.  #3 and #4 are more classical.

 

Anyway...your dd is only 11.  You don't have to push yourselves so she can graduate early.  That's a long ways away!  (And I started college at 16, so I understand the allure - Lol).  A lot can happen in the next 7 years.  I wouldn't even let that creep into your mind when you're planning.  Just do what you guys want to do and enjoy learning together.  Heck, don't even worry about next year.  Just try to enjoy the point in time where you and dd are learning together "right now".

 

Rabbit trails are awesome!  So what if you veered off your path.  As long as your dd is consistently learning new things and enjoying learning, I wouldn't worry about taking rabbit trails.  And we have taken a ridiculously long time to read certain books, too.  One year, we spent like 5 months reading The Cat of Bubastes - I kid you not.  It was becoming a huge joke in our household.   :glare:  But, other books, we have buzzed through at light speed.  I think ds14 read Sun Tzu in one sitting.  It somehow evens out in the end around here.

 

I don't know you personally, so I don't know if this is one of the issues, but it's important for us to work consistently every day- but not pushing time-wise to the point of burn-out.  We school year-round with very little breaks, but we only "do school" for short periods of time.  A very long day for us would be 5-6 hours (and that would be like a lab or something).  But, my kids are always doing projects on their own, reading, researching something, collecting things, building models, drawing, etc.  So, they need that free time.

 

You said you were putting together dd's curriculum.  I'll put together some plans and then after awhile, I just don't want to do them anymore.  The best thing for me is not to overplan and don't plan too many things in a series.  I do better when I plan one or two things and then when we finish those, come up with plans for something else.  If I plan an ENTIRE school year, we will not finish my plans.  We will have veered off on so many rabbit trails that my plans were a waste of my time.  Not sure if that makes any sense.  One of the bad things about putting together your own curriculum...   :001_rolleyes:

 

We can't teach our kids every single thing there is to know.  It's impossible.  Also, it's OK if they keep learning after they graduate high school, too.   :tongue_smilie: Someone told me that a long time ago on these forums and it really helped me calm down as far as anxiety about not covering "everything" - it's just not possible.

 

Hope something out of there helped!

[regentrude]

If you are overwhelmed by trying to create your own curriculum, I suggest you pick several resources you find acceptable (does not have to be perfect!), assign your child a certain amount of time to spend on academics, and let her use which of the pre-selected resources she prefers in which order and for how long. No schedules, no lesson plans.

It worked fabulously for my kids in the middle grades.

For example, for history I would select a spine, library books, documentaries and later some audio lectures. The kids were free to use any of these to fill their required school time. I did this is most subjects except for math, and let them choose. My task was to research and select materials.

You can do this very inexpensively if you forgo scripted curriculum and use real books.

 

 

[Pen]

It is only a few weeks into school year for most schools.  I suggest putting her into brick and mortar school now when she won't be much behind or lost.  

 

My ds is at brick and mortar school this year and there are still quite a number of kids arriving  where attempts at homeschool or tries with a different school were not successful. Later in year it is still possible, but I think gets much harder to catch up.

 

Focus on your own schooling, and on getting past burn out.    

 

If you feel ready to homeschool again, try

 

1) starting with after-schooling where you are adding some depth or challenge you think is missing, or working on weak areas, or moving ahead faster in strong ones -rather than failing to do the basics while searching for the more perfect, 

 

given her goal of early graduation, and also if she got behind from things undone, this could help both to catch up and or to move ahead

 

and,

 

2) working on homeschool on a full time basis during the summer, which again could help to get ahead for the goal of early graduation.

 

3) only continue into the school year next year if the summer homeschooling is going extremely well as the school year arrives--that is, a full group of subjects, being reliably done.

 

 

 

 

[happypamama]

If you're doing US history, you might consider a program like Notgrass that is easy for the student to do independently.

[OneStepAtATime]

You say she hates reading and writing but is very bright.  Could she be 2e?  Meaning twice exceptional?  In other words could she have some areas of struggle (such as stealth dyslexia) making it harder to function with input/output, but be highly intelligent/gifted?  That can make finding a successful path much harder for both student and teacher, especially if undiagnosed/unacknowledged. 

[Pen]

Also to add, the WTM approach may not be a good fit for you and your dd.

 

If nothing else, could you find things on audio, such as SOTW, and have your dd get through the whole thing, 3 and 4 (without stopping to do more, without narrations, without projects)?

[Sahamamama2]

It is only a few weeks into school year for most schools.  I suggest putting her into brick and mortar school now when she won't be much behind or lost.  

 

My ds is at brick and mortar school this year and there are still quite a number of kids arriving  where attempts at homeschool or tries with a different school were not successful. Later in year it is still possible, but I think gets much harder to catch up.

 

Focus on your own schooling, and on getting past burn out.    

 

:iagree:

[ElizabethB]

It is a lot of work to read everything to an 11 year old, at that age they need to be doing some of their own reading both to build up reading stamina and fluency and to help prevent teacher burnout.

 

I would assess her reading and check for dyslexia symptoms to see if there is an underlying problem.

 

Do the MWIA 3 short, the 40L Quick screen reading grade level test, and time 25 nonsense words from my nonsense word document, extra version, link #6 in teacher folder.  The other tests are at the end of the page, links 2 and 5.  She should not have a slowdown on the MWIA and should not miss a word on either section, and should be reading both sections at least 60 WPM, 80 - 100 WPM is the normal range for that age.  The nonsense words should also be at least 60 WPM with no errors, and you should go through my syllables program and do daily nonsense words for a while if they are below 100 WPM or if there were any errors reading the nonsense words.  (Or, if below grade level or a slowdown on the MWIA or any words missed on the MMIA)

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

 

My dyslexia page has info about how to screen for phonemic awareness problems and vision problems.

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/dyslexia.html

 

 

Edited September 25, 2017 by ElizabethB

[Pen]

I agree with figuring out if your dd has dyslexia or some other learning challenge, since that could be an issue.

 

However, whether or not she does have any such issues, a major problem seems to me to be your own feelings of perfectionism and anxiety. As well as tiredness and burn out.

 

Even if you find out that she has a dyslexia type problem, dealing with that yourself when you already are tired and burned out --and have not left yourself a budget for more materials--is probably not going to work well.  A public school may be able to help better in this situation.

 

Did your dd want to leave regular school and is she liking homeschool?

 

It is hard to homeschool a tween who is not happy with the arrangement.

 

If she does want to homeschool, why not get her input into materials and a plan of how to achieve her goals?  And also her own ideas about what is not working and why and how to solve that?

[JusDelenH]

You say she hates reading and writing but is very bright.  Could she be 2e?  Meaning twice exceptional?  In other words could she have some areas of struggle (such as stealth dyslexia) making it harder to function with input/output, but be highly intelligent/gifted?  That can make finding a successful path much harder for both student and teacher, especially if undiagnosed/unacknowledged. 

 

She is 2e. She has ADHD, SPD, and anxiety but tested as gifted on the Cogats and in a private evaluation. Her areas of high giftedness are spatial and mathematics. She just has a hard time organizing her thoughts and getting them on paper but if she is sitting at a computer she can do amazing things. She is very much an auditory and kinesthetic learner. 

[JusDelenH]

Write down some goals for the year. 

Write down every day what was accomplished. What goals were worked on. - I did this one year when I started getting down on myself because we were veering off my planned path and following interests. I was surprised how much we had gotten done and it gave me the boost of confidence I needed. 

You might just find that more gets done than you think. Increments are hard to track; especially when you have a specific idea of what homeschool should look like. If you find you are still barely meeting your expectations, then I'd look into alternatives like b&m, online or correspondence courses. 

 

 

Maybe on the topic she's really interested in, you could try an online or correspondence course that has more structure. Just one to start. To give you a break and give her a chance to do some independent work. I like BYU Independent Study. They have middle school courses and are accredited making it easily accepted if she ends up in a high school.  There are a lot to choose from though if you are interested. 

 

It turns out that we do a lot. We touch on loads of things just in general conversation and spontaneous research during our day. My fiance looks over our daily log and is amazed at how many different topics we manage to cover in a day just by allowing her to be.

[JusDelenH]

It is only a few weeks into school year for most schools.  I suggest putting her into brick and mortar school now when she won't be much behind or lost.  

 

My ds is at brick and mortar school this year and there are still quite a number of kids arriving  where attempts at homeschool or tries with a different school were not successful. Later in year it is still possible, but I think gets much harder to catch up.

 

Focus on your own schooling, and on getting past burn out.    

 

If you feel ready to homeschool again, try

 

1) starting with after-schooling where you are adding some depth or challenge you think is missing, or working on weak areas, or moving ahead faster in strong ones -rather than failing to do the basics while searching for the more perfect, 

 

given her goal of early graduation, and also if she got behind from things undone, this could help both to catch up and or to move ahead

 

and,

 

2) working on homeschool on a full time basis during the summer, which again could help to get ahead for the goal of early graduation.

 

3) only continue into the school year next year if the summer homeschooling is going extremely well as the school year arrives--that is, a full group of subjects, being reliably done.

 

Brick and mortar is not a good choice for us right now. Our neighborhood schools are all failing and my daughter is uncomfortable with the thought of public school after visiting my fiance at work and seeing how some of the children behaved at her grade level. The class sizes are also too large. Our last traditional school was a small Christian school where everything worked extremely well outside of her being thoroughly challenged. She did the bare minimum there and aced her classes. That is not education we want for our child. We have always supplemented her education from the beginning.

 

She has always been eager and quick to learn. I just always feel as if I am not teaching enough. We cover the 3Rs daily without issue other than her hating the longer readings. She also has Latin, dance, voice/instrument, and musical theatre classes. My planning of history and science are the major issues although she has learned loads by researching things for herself. It just looks very disjointed to me.

[JusDelenH]

I agree with figuring out if your dd has dyslexia or some other learning challenge, since that could be an issue.

 

However, whether or not she does have any such issues, a major problem seems to me to be your own feelings of perfectionism and anxiety. As well as tiredness and burn out.

 

Even if you find out that she has a dyslexia type problem, dealing with that yourself when you already are tired and burned out --and have not left yourself a budget for more materials--is probably not going to work well.  A public school may be able to help better in this situation.

 

Did your dd want to leave regular school and is she liking homeschool?

 

It is hard to homeschool a tween who is not happy with the arrangement.

 

If she does want to homeschool, why not get her input into materials and a plan of how to achieve her goals?  And also her own ideas about what is not working and why and how to solve that?

 

I have allowed her to choose all of her extracurriculars and the topics she wants to research. She spends a lot of time building, drawing, and crafting. Her goals are to become an engineer/ architect and Broadway performer. So Ive allowed her to explore in those areas. She actually asked to be homeschooled when we moved. She says she loves it at home.

[Sherry in OH]

For U.S. history - have her listent to the audio version of Joy Hakim's The History of US.  If she likes the American Girl Historical series, assign those for reading.  Otherwise, each month, have her select and read one work of fiction and one work of non-fiction relating to current history topics.  If written assignments are an issue, don't assign them for history.  If you need documentation for a portfolio, have her complete projects.  Otherwise, discuss and move on. 

 

[Pen]

She is 2e. She has ADHD, SPD, and anxiety but tested as gifted on the Cogats and in a private evaluation. Her areas of high giftedness are spatial and mathematics. She just has a hard time organizing her thoughts and getting them on paper but if she is sitting at a computer she can do amazing things. She is very much an auditory and kinesthetic learner. 

 

 

Brick and mortar is not a good choice for us right now. Our neighborhood schools are all failing and my daughter is uncomfortable with the thought of public school after visiting my fiance at work and seeing how some of the children behaved at her grade level. The class sizes are also too large. Our last traditional school was a small Christian school where everything worked extremely well outside of her being thoroughly challenged. She did the bare minimum there and aced her classes. That is not education we want for our child. We have always supplemented her education from the beginning.

 

She has always been eager and quick to learn. I just always feel as if I am not teaching enough. We cover the 3Rs daily without issue other than her hating the longer readings. She also has Latin, dance, voice/instrument, and musical theatre classes. My planning of history and science are the major issues although she has learned loads by researching things for herself. It just looks very disjointed to me.

 

 

I have allowed her to choose all of her extracurriculars and the topics she wants to research. She spends a lot of time building, drawing, and crafting. Her goals are to become an engineer/ architect and Broadway performer. So Ive allowed her to explore in those areas. She actually asked to be homeschooled when we moved. She says she loves it at home.

 

 

Then it sounds like what you said about her learning only math and grammar and nothing else last year is really just your anxiety and perfectionism talking and not really true?

 

 

It is really hard from the outside to have any sense of whether your first post about "failures from last year" repeating this year is a real phenomenon that the homeschooling is not going well, or your imagination and anxiety driven sense of failure that does not match actual accomplishment..

 

Do you have Audible?  If so, she can listen to a lot of material and learn through auditory plus her own research.  There are a lot of good Great Courses for history and science available fairly inexpensively via Audible..  And if you have Netflix she could get a number of documentaries for history and science also.

 

Possibly you could just let her run with history and science as she wishes, and take those off your plate this year.

[Pen]

We are only into the 2nd week of schooling this year and I am already burned out. Although I spent the summer planning, I feel like nothing is right. I am feeling a repeat of last year's failures staring me in the face. My kid learned plenty of grammar and math but nothing else. Since I was dedicated to creating my own curriculum, I did not budget anything for this school year curriculum wise outside of the new WTM Grammar curriculum. I just do not know what to do. 

 

 

 

?????  What is true??????

[JusDelenH]

????? What is true??????

I say that because those were the only subjects that looked anything like my vision for a well ordered, productive school in my head. I know after evaluating my thoughts that I need to lay off Pinterest and other blogs trying to emulate what works for them with considering does it work for my family and my daughter's learning styles. Last year wasn't a failure overall because she did extremely well on her standardized tests. I just feel it needs tweaking to get life done.

 

 

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[Peaceseeker]

I agree with the above poster that you should not let perfect be the enemy of good. Spend x amount of time on content subjects reading real books and you can require written output or just continue discussion. That is history and science getting done. It really is! If she is an auditory learner she is probably getting quite a bit out of discussing topics with you. Don't discount the value in that for her education.

Edited September 26, 2017 by CaliforniaDreaming

[....]

I say that because those were the only subjects that looked anything like my vision for a well ordered, productive school in my head. I know after evaluating my thoughts that I need to lay off Pinterest and other blogs trying to emulate what works for them with considering does it work for my family and my daughter's learning styles. Last year wasn't a failure overall because she did extremely well on her standardized tests. I just feel it needs tweaking to get life done.

 

 

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If she did "extremely well" on her testing, then I would consider your year a success!  And be careful looking at Pinterest, blogs and even reading what other people are doing on this forum...   :unsure:

[drjuliadc]

I think I have the same type of personality. My oldest are only 4 and 6 and seemingly gifted. They are in a Montessori school that keeps them a year or two ahead of any other school, but I after school them some (not very much, but I supply them with a lot of material) and I always feel like if I were available to give them more they could be doing so much more.

 

I always feel inadequate to the task of keeping up with what they would be easily capable of, in spite of the fact that they are both so far ahead.

 

I have a lot of work and family commitments. There is only so much time and energy.

[JusDelenH]

Just am update. I finally just gave her my expectations and what I want her to accomplish for this week and she went for it. Turns out she doesn't like a lot of hand holding. Just direct instructions with goals. After zooming through what I gave her, she began adding extra things on her own that were much more than I planned. Right now she is researching how to emulate the book making process of the Middle Ages to attempt to craft a book on her own. I definitely need a chill pill.

 

 

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[MerryAtHope]

Just am update. I finally just gave her my expectations and what I want her to accomplish for this week and she went for it. Turns out she doesn't like a lot of hand holding. Just direct instructions with goals. After zooming through what I gave her, she began adding extra things on her own that were much more than I planned. Right now she is researching how to emulate the book making process of the Middle Ages to attempt to craft a book on her own. I definitely need a chill pill.

 

 

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What a great update! I love her drive and initiative too! 

[lindao12]

If you don't want to put her back in school, then purchase a ready-made curriculum and diligently follow it. Every single day, for the whole school year. It doesn't matter if you think you could do better. If you won't do better, then do good enough. Be faithful.

 

Your child deserves and education and has a right to be properly schooled.

Wow! I read this a few days ago and it's stuck with me. And it's been such an encouragement to me! Thanks for telling it like it is :)

 

 

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[Guest]

You never came back to the conversation, when we talked about this exactly a year ago!

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/625167-getting-nowhere-with-history/

 

In case you don't come back this time, either, I'm not going to waste anything on asking questions to better understand the problem. I'm just going to take the gloves off and tell you how it looks from here, and you can decide whether I'm right or not. Whether you want to make excuses or whether you want to make changes. Ignore me, fix things, keep going as you are...if you're in the USA you have a lot of freedom to educate your child (or not) as you see fit. But I hope if there's any truth to my opinion, that you'll face that truth and make a change. I know you can if you want to! We all can. OK, here goes...

 

I think you suffer from a fairly common ailment known as "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good." You think you need to invent your own lesson plans so that your child gets the most possible out of it...but you never get around to actually teaching the child!

 

Instead of saying, "She'd get more of out of it if I did XYZ," think of it this way: "Doing NOTHING with me is LESS than she'd get in any other setting or by any other approach."

 

If you can't change your mindset, and thus your practice, until you are teaching her some amount of history several days per week...please consider returning your child to the school where she was learning, retaining, and enjoying her education! If you don't want to put her back in school, then purchase a ready-made curriculum and diligently follow it. Every single day, for the whole school year. It doesn't matter if you think you could do better. If you won't do better, then do good enough. Be faithful.

 

Your child deserves and education and has a right to be properly schooled.

This was helpful to me, too. I faced this situation this summer and did just this. I bought a lot of BJU materials and VP self-paced. I'm taking on just literature and geography this year. Everything else is just follow the next lesson on the dvd/computer.