The parent's mind is willing, but the flesh is weak. There is not much follow-through for various reasons, one of which is that there is only one parent, and every single parent will understand this as a major challenge to consistency. There are a few other factors as well; not making excuses, but it makes the situation a little more complicated. Ultimately? I am going to be the one delivering the consequences. Mom tends to cave. I just need the student to understand that it is both deeply personal (a desire to help him be as successful as I know he can be) and not personal at all (they are the same consequences that any student would have, and it isn't because I am against him or not wanting him to succeed). Just thought I'd check in and see if anyone had any suggestions.

While ultimately I am not the one who has responsibility for the other parts of their life, I am way more involved than a regular classroom teacher, and I am certain that homeschooling parents have suggestions that can be used in other settings. They are not just test grades and warm bodies to me; they come into my home every day, and I also have a part in their after-school activities and character development, sometimes in lieu of their parents. I am trying very hard not to get bristly, but I feel like you were dismissive. Perhaps it's because I didn't give much information, or maybe it's because you don't know me (as much as that is possible online). Thank you for your input, though.

The student is identified as gifted but has no desire whatsoever to do anything hard; college is expected, but at this point totally unnattainable and ridiculous to think about witht he current work ethic. This student told me flat out that the best case scenario would be to go back to high school and do worksheets because they were easy. The work he is doing is not above his capabilities at all, but it does require thought and effort. Smart kid, though.

If you have a student at home you have experience with that, and my school is four students, one of whom is my child, so it is more like a homeschool environment than not. Each kid has their own curriculum, and I have four separate grades. That's why I asked. :)

To be clear, I am asking what you have done with your own kids, boys or girls. I cannot influence or enforce anything once the student leaves my school, so anything that is beyond my control during the week is not helpful to me (although I started this as a "motivating the unmotivated" thread, so posting anything that will help others is a good thing, too!!) . I agree with the "no screen time" instructions and have that in place for my own child, but it is not possible for this student.

Not my kid. Not a consequence I can reinforce.

I am not talking about your minorly resistant kid, which happens to all of us now and then. I am talking about your kid who has zero motivation to complete anything other than stumbling around the internet looking at videos, even when given an assignment (or choosing an assignment) that they profess to like. The kid that is not interested in grades, doesn't care if s/he misses a lab or a field trip, isn't motivated by cash. The kid who would rather watch TV/play videogames for 8 hours and get yelled at (or lectured to) for not doing work than take the couple hours to complete his/her work. The kid who is proud of him/herself when s/he completes a tough assignment but cannot (or will not) transfer that persistence to the next piece of work. What do you do? What has worked? What has failed miserably? A twist: simply eliminating TV, videogames and internet is not an option.

I hate seeing riders on the trail without helmets (or in the arena, or whereever). I had a boarder who never wore a helmet, and she had an jerk of a husband and a small child. I had a boarder who rode her horse with my helmet, and he bucked her off; she hit a slope with the brim of the helmet and it cracked. Had she not had the helmet on, she would have gone face-first into the hill and maybe broken her nose instead.

We are reading Huck Finn and then moving on to True Grit by Charles Portis (good for both genders, works with the questions of style, and excellent for a character study). Our focus is the idea of the quest, so we will move to the Odyssey after this.

They are, but there was an article in January about Oxford dropping it.

:iagree:. I loathe Caillou still, and we are many, many years past it.

I made breakfast cookies with a whole grain cereal, brown sugar and dried fruit, and they went like crazy (and my kid isn't a breakfast eater either). Let me know if you'd like the (very adaptable, even for gluten-free) recipe! We also do banapple (chopped up apples and bananas, DD named it) and a spoonful of nut butter, and sometimes graham crackers and nut butter dipped in milk.

You said iPad, so I assumed Mac. I am sure there is a way to do it....

Yes. Macs can hook to other Macs. Two of my students did it the other day, but I don't know how they did. They also all turned their cell phones into walkie-talkies. Pretty cool.

This is very interesting to me. How do you do this? I was actually wondering if one could do this just last week (popped into my mind after conversations about the benefits of local honey).

I agree that it is going to be a transition and possibly a bit bumpy but eventually workable. Boundaries are important. When my DH was unemployed, he would call to me across the house to show me a video online (which was an issue on several levels, but that's a whole other thread!!!). We had to have multiple discussions about how I could be approached during the day; I told him to treat me as he would treat me if I was teaching in a classroom and not in the living room, and that includes not to expect me to stop and chat whenever or to make lunch for him. Separate areas are important also!

Save your money and refinance. If you can get the financing costs rolled into your loan, you won't actually end up paying for it when you sell your house, but that is a significant interest rate reduction. We refinance every time we can lower it by one percentage point. Treat your house payment like rent, and save the extra or pay off credit so you can move debt-free.

I feed a horse (soon to be two), two goats, eight chickens, two cats and two dogs. I check work and personal email, blog and lesson plan for the day, plus write a to-do list and print out/create whatever I need. I prep for labs if we have one. I am in the process of accreditation and a zoning application, so if there is an issue I need to follow up on, I do so right after 8. Post to twitter, update HoneyFern's facebook page and check a couple different, local education blogs, and once weekly I change all of the "news" articles on my website (the goal; sometimes I have to skip a week). I wake the kid up at 8, clean up the house and wait for the other students to arrive. Breakfast and two cups of coffee are in there, and if I get up early enough, I can sit outside and watch the crows and the hawks chase each other for a bit. I adore the morning time, especially this time of year. All of the outside animals are so happy to see me, and everybody makes little happy noises when I walk out with their food. Generally I get up at 8 and am ready to go by 9, which is when school starts.

Yes, both of those help tremendously. I will get him started on those today and talk to his mom about what I am seeing and share the resources you have all suggested. Thanks!!

I can give him drills until his eyes fall out. I can figure out the tracking things and design activities. What I am looking for are kinesthetic activities we can do while we (the adults) try to figure out the problem. He has 8 hours of school, and hour of homework, and then an hour of tutoring twice a week. He also has ADD and tends to have a re-bound effect when I get to him. He is done. He needs movement. I am looking into all of the links you have posted, and I can't thank you enough, but does anybody have any kinesthetic suggestions?

This helps. While I puzzle this over and talk about this with the parent, can you suggest what you are doing with your son? I really need some physical ideas...

I looked around on this site and did not see a diagnostic test. Perhaps I am in need of instruction also. :) Right now, as I am researching this issue, I really need kinesthetic activities for him to do while I am figuring it out. Suggestions for that? Doesn't anybody on here teach a kinesthetic learner? <totally rhetorical question>

Not that I am aware of.

Anybody?

This child is not my normal focus age; I am a middle school and up kind of person. I happen to know his mom, and I have met him before, and when she asked me to tutor I said yes, not really knowing how serious his challenges are (just knowing that he is a rising 5th grader, which is the lower end of my expertise, but certainly something I could accomodate). He is entering 5th grade at a PS but "tested" lower than 3rd when I gave him some sample passages to read. His mom says he does not know basic phonics and that he has gotten seriously inferior reading instruction over the years (one teacher told him to just skip words he didn't know...and that's it). He is identified as special ed for ADD, and when I tutor him he is definitely at the tail end of a long day and is just mostly done. I have only worked with him three times, and here is what I have seen: 1. Definite issues with mixing up letters (b, d and g) at the beginning of words. 2. Issues with groups of letters at the end (like "gulp"). 3. Skips words and doesn't see that it just doesn't sound right. 4. Does not like to track with a finger, index card or piece of paper. 5. Does not automatically know basic sight words (and, the, or, is, etc), or substitutes words, like "the" for "said," which is strange and made zero sense in the context of the reading. Here's the thing, though: I time him on a word list, and he reads way faster and with higher accuracy than when he has to read a passage or a sentence (that I have let him read silently and ask questions about before). Seems odd. He can also read larger words (not sight words) accurately about 50% of the time. We are working through the 300-word Fry Instand Word List and reading short passages and How to Eat Fried Worms (he reads a chapter, then I read a chapter - working on prosody. {unctuation means nothing to this child). He needs more physical activities to build fluency, things that keep him reading but also help him move his body. I considered shaving cream writing of the Fry's words, or of the basic sight words, or of all of the words you can make in a family (like all "bl" words), but otherwise I am drawing a blank. I see him 2 hours a week, so we could make some serious headway, but I want it to be fun as well as useful. Thoughts? TIA...