Good idea about identifying "droppable" items ahead of time! I love that. And I can think of one subject my rising 9th grader is pretty strong in, so I may be able to use the circling idea for that subject. This is our Summer of Math #2 with DS. But not because he struggles with math. It is a long-term consequence of his not having done any of his math assignments last year, when I was very busy and just took his word for it that he was keeping up. If he'd been able to pass a late-stage Algebra 1 test, I would have just given him credit for the course anyway 😬 but since he couldn't, we switched curriculum near the end of 9th, went back to the beginning of Alg 1, and spent all summer and fall of 10th on that. And now we are spending summer before 11th getting as close to the end of Alg 2 as humanly possible before (potentially) sending him to brick & mortar in the fall. If anyone was wondering where my subject calendars and grading approach came from, yes it was that situation right up there ☝️ never take their word for it! At least not more than 1 day in a row 😄

We did Getting Started With Latin with a 9 and 11 year old. They "got" it pretty solidly and enjoyed it! Neither of them were super interested in continuing after finished GSWL though, and neither of them have particularly excelled at any of the foreign languages they've tried since then although that may have been the teachers. If they have some interest, it's not a bad idea to get started now, but in a more fun, low-stakes way like an app or one of the Getting Started With... books. Then if they lose interest, you haven't shelled out for an expensive curriculum, and if they retain their interest, they'll have a good intro to a more thorough program next year or the year after!

As a teen and young adult, success meant "doing more with my life than my parents did," I think. For example, neither of my parents had ever been to another country. Global travel, including living for extended periods overseas, signaled success to me. My parents weren't able to have a healthy and stable marriage, so that signaled success to me as well. Over time, the material things (like travel, degrees, impressive job title, home ownership etc.) have come to mean less to me, and healthy marriage and job satisfaction mean far, far more. I don't have the money to travel anymore like I used to before marriage and kids, and the impressive job title has gone away as well. But the impressive job title and life in another country and culture were stressful and lonely too. I'm much happier now than I was then. For my kids, I don't even define college graduation as "success." I want them to feel capable of accomplishing whatever they want to accomplish, and confident to quit when they realize their priorities have changed. And I want them to find spouses who respect and admire them, and to be good parents who do their best not to pass on the damage and abuse they received from their birth mother.

You do want to cover it at some point but it's never too late and it's really up to them how much they retain anyway! My DS16 looked up from his US history book in complete surprise yesterday: "I never knew Bill Clinton was actually the president! I thought Hillary was the politician in that family." My jaw just absolutely dropped 😅 This was our second time through modern history and I could have sworn we'd made it to the 1980s-2000s last time, but it clearly didn't stick!

That's actually brilliant! We called it Morning Time and I cancelled it forever last year because of the amount of petulance I was getting from one of the kids every single day about how long it went and how they just wanted to get started on school. DH and I decided that we didn't want Bible reading to be a moment of hostility and contention in the house, so it was better to say, "Look, you're growing up and if you don't want to do the Bible together anymore, you have your own Bible, take ownership of your relationship with Jesus and read it yourself." We knew it was unlikely that they would have the maturity to do it regularly yet, but at the time it seemed like it was the better option versus fighting about it daily. Dividing it into Morning Time and Afternoon Time might have helped 😄 I do occasionally hear them sigh self-importantly and say, "I haven't done any Bible study recently. I should really get back into it!" Teens are funny.

OH I forgot to mention my favorite strategy. It's Saxon-specific. I don't go over every missed problem on the homework each day. (When I was a homeschooled kid, this was the approach that led to daily tears.) I just have the kids check their odd-numbered answers in the back and give themselves checkmarks and Xs. Next year I'll probably have them check the evens too, against, the solutions manual. THEN each test day, I go through the next 4 lessons and circle problems similar to the problems that they got wrong on the test. Because the Saxon 3rd editions identify which lesson each problem in the problem sets and tests came from, it's really easy; if they got problems wrong on the test from lessons 42, 10, 38, and 27, I circle problems from those lessons in the next 4 problem sets. (I hope this makes sense to other Saxon users at least.) At the end of each teaching session, after going through the Practice problems for that lesson, we do the "circles." The kid has to work the circled problems in front of me so I can see where they are making the mistakes on the test. The kids like this approach because I then let them skip the circled problems when they are doing the problem set independently, and I like it because in almost every case, they have rocked those problems on the next test. Sometimes it takes 2-3 cycles (like DD just needed me to guide her through volume problems for about the last 12 lessons), but that's rare, and it always clicks eventually. I came up with a grading schema that I'm happy with for the Saxon tests, too. I know John Saxon said you either get it right or wrong, no partial credit, but I don't think that's helpful. So... Skipped the problem entirely, zero work shown: -5 Attempted the problem, but gave up/got a wrong answer and I can't follow whatever work was shown: -4 Got the wrong answer, showed enough work that I can tell it's a procedural error: -3 Got the wrong answer, showed enough work that I can tell it's a simple math mistake: -2 Copied the original problem out wrong but then did everything right from there, or did everything right but failed to read an instruction like "Dimensions are in centimeters. Give your answer in meters," or failed to put a unit on the number, etc: -1 They rarely get 100 😄

I love this idea! Each of our kids has a "dump box" to keep all their schoolwork in, but 3/4 of the time the things don't make it into the box... I've pretty much given up on their bedrooms, so long as I don't have to see the mess 😄 Wonder if the subject-by-subject approach would work better.

Not quite a hits/misses thread. More like a "Implementation strategies that worked/didn't work" thread? This has actually been our most successful year in terms of getting stuff done despite upheavals. It's our fifth year homeschooling, 8th and 10th. Things that worked really well for us: Grades. Turns out when they see "73 (C)" on a math test, they get motivated to study harder next time. To track grades and progress, I printed out grids of each kid's school work for the year (basically just the lesson numbers/test numbers laid out in a calendar style so that I can see how far behind we are) and stuck them in a 3-hole folder. I cross out each lesson when we finish it, and the next day I ask to see the homework and add a grade to the lesson. Rather than having one calendar with all the lessons on it, I have a math calendar, vocab calendar, grammar calendar, etc. Next year I'm going to expand on this by adding a "quarterly report card" grid to each subject calendar. Google Classroom. I probably won't continue this next year because it's a hefty amount of work for me on the front end, but (to the extent that I managed to input the quizzes for vocab and history into the classroom,) the auto-grading and tracking functions were great. Online courses. They feel motivated by having other students and teachers who aren't mom. We've never tried asynchronous courses though, these have all been live with due dates etc. Haven't figured out a working strategy yet: How to judge whether it's worth sticking with the original completion/year-end plans when crises happen. We can't seem to get through a school year without some kind of crisis or upheaval. Last year I attempted to factor this in by including at least one "catchup day" per month in the subject tracking calendars mentioned above, and planning not to finish the entire programs in certain cases. (Looking at you, GWTM.) But that still allows only 10-15 missed days per school year, and that wasn't enough for us this year. I think one of the kids had about 30-40 missed or partially-missed school days this year and the other had at least 20. In response, I cut out vocab study and part of grammar study and part of history study for the remainder of the year. But the kid who missed more days will be having to do math all summer long, and the fewer-days kid is resentful about having to catch up on missed work that "it wasn't my fault that I missed" (IOW, Mom wasn't available to teach the lesson that day). Do we just throw in the towel and give high school credit for a truly uncompleted course? I'm resistant to that. It's an honesty thing for me. I just don't think I can give Algebra 2 credit when the kid didn't even complete half the book.

I was going to say something similar about childhood sexual abuse. I don't think I personally know anyone my age who was sexually abused as a child, although I know one who was clearly being groomed for it until her parents found out. But my mom was twice assaulted by men in positions of authority (a teacher and a seminarian) before age 16, and in her 20s was groped in public by strangers on two separate occasions. She also grew up in the city and I grew up in the countryside. And actually, the people involved don't consider it to be sexual abuse, but among the men I know in my age bracket, there are several whose first sexual experiences were at the 11-13 age range... with babysitters. Girls in the 15-18 age range. I think a researcher might well count that as sexual abuse for the purposes of a study, even if the victims themselves don't recognize it as such.

I started it! Very spur-of-the-moment, called up my mom on New Year's and said, "Do you want to do the Bible in a year?" And she said sure 😄 We invited other family members to get involved but so far no one has taken us up on it. So I guess calling it a "Bible Study Zoom" makes it sound more social than it actually is!

I've noticed this as well. DH's sister never had a single issue and is a well-adjusted adult. My FIL's sister too, she's a missionary. Our DD so far does not appear to have the problems DS does. But she sure makes a lot of excuses for their bio-mom's bad behavior - "She was just drunk, she didn't mean it."

At this point, DS is getting up with me around 6:50. I do a Bible study Zoom while DS trains and feeds his puppy. Then I answer emails/texts, check the Forum, weed the garden, generally putter until about 9 when I consider the "real day" to have begun. Get DD up (I think she's awake but prefers to stay in her room and read until she's forced to do something else), make sure they've gotten their breakfasts etc. and then we do school. I try to get the hands-on teaching (math for DS, math and grammar for DD) done by 11 so I can prep for my work day which goes from noon till... whenever it's done. Usually 6, sometimes more like 8.

The propensity to go down that path? Definitely genetic and related to mental illness. We are now on the 3rd generation of (known) substance abusers on my husband's side. My side has functional alcohol dependence that has led to destroyed relationships and some job difficulty, but none of the harder stuff like in my husband's family. Winding up successful, even if "successful" just means avoiding jail time or early death? God, dumb luck, privilege, IDK. My FIL dealt cocaine as a teenager, then met the Lord and became a very successful pastor. But a less successful father. All 3 of his sons had substance abuse issues (not his fault) and he basically checked out and didn't really get them the kind of help they needed (that part was his fault). My DH ran with a "crew" as a teenager and of the 5-7 of them, only he and one other avoided jail time. DH avoided it by the skin of his teeth. The car was surrounded by police who were going to arrest him as an accomplice. Then the officer in charge saw the car seat in the back and asked him if he had kids. "Yes a son he is 6 months old officer" Officer tells him "Get out of here and if I ever see you again you won't see your son until he's an adult." DH drove home sobbing and never did anything criminal again. The guy DH drove to the scene got 10 years. Another time DH huffed an air duster and passed out in a park, totally unresponsive for hours. His friend was freaking out thinking he was dead or comatose. DH wakes up not even realizing he'd been passed out. That friend later did 5 years for armed robbery and has also survived a... reverse drive-by? He was in a car and some kids doing a gang initiation shot up the car. Friend was shot in the head but lived. Another person and a dog in the car died. Friend has been in and out of rehab again and again. Earlier this year, his brother and his uncle died by OD in the same week. DH and the friend were neighbors in high school but came from totally different worlds regarding race and class. Well-adjusted and sober people are in the minority in the friend's life, the majority in DH's life. I think that has a lot to do with it, a network of support rather than just one or two people. Coming from the perspective of the sober family members, dealing constantly with so many addicts whom you love can be exhausting and it's so easy to just check out and say, "This has to be your problem now. It can no longer be my problem." That's what the friend's sister has had to do with him. DH's people are not rich by any stretch, but they are well-educated, have strong church community, and know where/how to get assistance. That's absolutely huge when it comes to cushioning rock bottom.

Thinking back on my 8th (and summer reading before 9th) at a public school known for ELA rigor: -Of Mice and Men -Midsummer Night's Dream -To Kill a Mockingbird

Agree about the schismatic thing. I joined the Church through one of the more traddy movements and still have devoted friends from our previous parish, but when we moved, I went to the closest parish involved with that movement and... I mean I mask but am not deeply concerned if others aren't masking around me, but the place was packed with no social distancing and no masks. I wouldn't have been as concerned if it had been one or the other, but both was beyond me. So we go to the regular parish that is carefully following diocesan regulations and I put up with the banal music 😛 As a convert who thought very carefully about this stuff before signing on the dotted line, I will not put up with people saying "We have two popes" or "Smoke of Satan" etc etc. The previous parish I attended was extremely well-catechized and most of the converts were from 30-40 years ago when things were really bad, so I didn't realize exactly how toxic a lot of the parishes in the movement are. I have one friend who keeps sending me End Times stuff and interviews with sedevacantists/schismatics, and I literally ignore them. I only respond when she asks how we are doing or invites me for a walk. If she brings it up in person, I tell her I trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church. It's probably my background, but I have an allergy to showy stuff like going out of my way to kneel when everyone else is receiving standing. It was a delight when my parish decided the best way to deal with Covid restrictions was to rope off alternating pews and send the EMHCs through the empty pews to distribute the Eucharist person by person... I could receive kneeling, like I did as a child and like I always want to, and not feel like a showoff.

Yes yes yes. On one of my worse days early on when homeschooling my stepkids I remember wailing to DH, "I've never met two such UNCURIOUS kids!" One of them has improved quite a bit since then, one hasn't. But even the one who has improved doesn't love learning. Gets satisfaction from good grades, and from crossing tasks off a list. But doesn't love learning.

If your DS came up with that line by himself and didn't hear it from an adult, he's definitely entered the Logic Stage! (Trying to think positively here 😉 ) I would agree that if you're getting this level of pushback about homeschool in 5th, something needs to be altered about the way the HS day is happening in order to not have next year be conflict-ridden. Nice thing about HS, though, is how flexible you can be. Scripted is definitely enough--in fact I've gone more and more into scripted curricula as my kids have gotten older. As a schoolteacher myself (of an elective subject) I go out of my way to find materials that require the least amount of planning on my part, because curriculum design is not my strong suit. I know how to teach each topic, but if I don't have a textbook to stick to, I find it too easy to go off on tangents that are fascinating to me (the expert) but way, way above the students' heads. I know that getting distracted is my weak point, so I do my best to strengthen that weak point through my choice of materials. I think thinking through your current strengths and weaknesses about once per semester is a good practice. Obviously the checking in with your kids is important too, and I do that, but checking in with myself is more important. For example: "I'm pretty good at evaluating materials and choosing ones that will suit my kid and me. I'm not as good at time management - we don't ever finish what I planned to finish over the course of a week. Why is that? Is this really a time management/distraction problem on my/my kid's end, or is it that I'm being unrealistic in my assessment of how long each task will take?" Finally, like others here have said, try to expand your mental picture of what "experience" and "education" and "teaching" are. PS kids tend to think of teachers as people who tell them what they need to know in order to pass the test. Most homeschoolers aren't that kind. My kids had a rough time coming out of PS because they were anticipating that I would tell them everything they needed to know, and I wanted them to learn how to learn things on their own. I myself was almost completely unschooled--the only curriculum we used longterm was Saxon Math, which I hated. When I was sent to PS in 7th grade, I got placed in pre-algebra, even though I was behind every other homeschooled kid I knew in math. I was a better writer than almost every other kid in my language arts class, because we didn't have a TV and literally all I did as a homeschooler was read all day, play outside, and avoid doing my Saxon problem set. This wasn't even intentional unschooling on my parents' part, they just bit off more than they could chew trying to homeschool while both of them also held jobs. You could do much worse at this age than taking away all screens, stocking the house with books / visiting the library frequently, and just doing Beast Academy and reading time all day. (Well, maybe some science experiments too.)

Thanks for the info!

I'm so sorry to read this. I will pray for you. You are getting some excellent advice from others in the thread. Don't feel that you have to take every single piece of advice though. It can get overwhelming really fast. Only do the things you know you are able to do, and do safely. You sound like you are operating with wisdom and sound judgment in your interactions with him; keep that up. Be open with trustworthy people in your church community and don't downplay how bad it is. They can be valuable resources. But don't let them change your mind if you decide civil divorce is the only way to keep yourself and your kids safe. My mom opened up a PO box at a post office that my dad didn't normally go to. She used that PO address to apply for housing and other assistance. I think of credit cards as a bad thing normally, but in this kind of situation I might apply for a couple under that PO address, and keep them for emergency use, like if it became unsafe and you had no other option but to take the kids and get a hotel room. Look up the nearest women's shelter if there is one near. The hardest thing is acknowledging that this is a women's shelter kind of situation. It doesn't mean you have to leave right now. But you should know where it is. It will be complicated, but don't assume there isn't a way out. If you have a paypal that he doesn't have access to/know about, you can seek donations. Or you can have a (very trusted) friend accept the donations to their accounts instead. I've donated to things like this in the past, small amounts because I don't know the people personally, but I'd rather give a small amount and have a scammer take it than not give and potentially lose the opportunity to help.

Like others here, my loved one has a T2 bipolar diagnosis along with several other behavioral health dxs. Stable on meds for about 10 years, recently (with doctor's approval/encouragement) decided to cut down the med dosage. We'll see how that goes. My loved one had an extremely volatile youth / young adulthood with substance abuse and risk-taking, but now handles adult life very capably. There are still some behaviors I wish were different, but that is the case with my loved ones who don't have diagnoses too 😉

Oh my goodness. I'm so sorry. What a shock. I don't have advice other than, don't tell the kids today, don't do anything today except grieve and process. The things you mentioned can definitely, definitely wait until tomorrow. When something catastrophic like this happens, you need at least 24 hours before dealing with the fallout. Maybe go to the park as a family or something else fun, depending on your community's covid restrictions. You're in my thoughts today.

It's already seed-sowing season here in FL. We just moved here from up north last year and I'm still not used to how early it is! I am a gardening novice, really, but I get excited about seeds 🙂 On the list of things to attempt this year: summer squash, plum tomatoes, basil, nasturtiums, watermelon, sunflowers, peas, and possible cucumbers although I don't like them much. Last year I did cosmos, sunflowers, and zinnias, but I started so late that they just scorched up in the summer sun by the time they were at the blooming stage. I'll be clearing the patch tomorrow hopefully, and get them all sown by Friday. We'll see how it all goes!

I'm so sorry. I only have 2, I can't imagine 4. My 2 are old enough that they can do online classes at this point. That has made things easier. I now schedule "catch-up days" basically every national holiday. The agreement is, if you are caught up on school, you (we) get that day off. I push them to get missing stuff completed before the catch-up day because Mom. Needs. That. Day.

Badly? 😛 I'm sure other people do it better than we do. The house stuff is what suffers the most, even though in theory the kids help out. This year I finally figured out time blocks, so homeschool either happens during the homeschool block or it doesn't happen at all. Work stuff either happens during work time blocks or it doesn't happen at all. Housework did not get a time block 😉 Maybe I'll wangle that in next year.