Hi,
I just started homeschooling my son 3 weeks ago. We have several challenges to overcome and I need some guidance. I am a middle school vocational teacher at a school where I work 43 hours a week, not counting all the meetings and having to stay late for grading or prep or whatever we have going on. I have a long commute; I leave home at 6:15 in the morning, and it's often 5:30, or 6, or even 7 when I get home. When I get home, I'm so done. And we live in a rural area where there is no internet, so we are homeschooling strictly with books and paper.
The reason we are homeschooling is because he lost the desire to go to school. He's been bored with school for quite some time. Middle of last year, he started claiming to be sick every day. He started it again this year. We have taken him to several types of doctors where they all said he was healthy. He may have anxiety, so he's going to counseling now to see if that helps. The only thing he was passionate about was football, but his coach was really tough on him and there were a few times the coach refused to let him have his inhaler and complained about needing to treat his "asthma" (air quotes) problem. This killed football for ds and he stopped wanting to go to that also.
I am trying to work with him in the evenings and on the weekend. I ask him to do some things that can be done independently while I'm gone then the hard stuff we do together. I wanted to use a WTM type of curriculum with him and I'm familiar with it from many years ago when my girls were younger, but I had to throw this together fast and on a budget. He's doing the same thing my students do for technology, we just have to go to the library on Saturday's for that. I had some Latin and Greek material already. He loves that! I have him doing MEP y8. For science CK12's chemistry with lab's once a week. Struggling to get going with history and feeling the pressure. Here 8th graders do 1 semester of world history and then 1 semester of state history. They are half a high school credit each.
The first week of homeschool was great! He did all his work, he cleaned his room without being asked. Blew my mind! Then it started going down hill. He started fighting me on doing any assignments except the ones he wanted to do (building a website, reading books, and art). Last week he refused to do anything. This week he is slowly is making up what was left from last week but the struggle is real. I sat down and had a long talk with him and he says he's just bored with doing the type of work we're doing and what he was doing in public school. I asked him what he wants school to look like and he's says he wants to do things that are very hands on...things like learning to weld, art, following other interests like that. With my time and budget constraints, there's only so much hands on I can fit in. I've also noticed that he begins showing resistance when the assignment is outside his comfort zone, and he shuts down on me. Like highest common factor in math, or asking him to write anything (he believes from school that he's a bad writer). Then he starts complaining that it's just too much work. What I'm seeing is that any work at all is too much unless it's interesting and he's in the mood.
I've thought about just trying to follow his interests for a while and seeing where it goes, but I don't want him getting behind or getting into a funk and being lazy.