What HAVEN'T you managed to pull off?

[JennifersLost]

I was just reading about the debate stuff in another thread and realized that I had wanted to make that happen for my kids and it...just...isn't...going to.

 

No one can do everything, right?

 

What haven't you pulled off?

[JennifersLost]

Arrrgh! Just saw the thread below about what you'd spend more time on.

 

Well, this is slightly different....

[JennW in SoCal]

This is absolutely different from a list of things we wish we'd spent more time on. This would be a list of things we ultimately had to shrug off for what ever reason. I think we need to acknowledge for ourselves and others just starting high school that we can't do it all, that priorities and time limits and personalities make high school ultimately look quite different from what we originally envision.

 

Well, having just graduated my first one, I've got a list...

 

Driving. It was the right thing for him not to be driving yet, but oy! It would make my life so much easier to have him driving! On the other hand, as someone else here once mentioned, it also has given us lots of opportunities for conversation that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

 

Travel. We've done quite a bit, but there is so much we haven't done that I had hoped for!

 

Logic. Latin. Great and pretty darn good books. Philosophy.

 

I will have a completely different list by the time his brother graduates as they are such different kids!

[LoriM]

I'll echo driving...both my dds waited (will wait) until 18 to drive.

 

Co-ops or online classes. We just didn't have time to do classes on another person's schedule. Once the girls got in CC, our lives revolved around college time. I miss pure hsing.

 

The things we've excluded from the choices we had were excluded for good reasons. I omitted certain books I'd have enjoyed based on the interests and personality of my child. I varied the assessments to allow for their differences in skills. (My younger dd relies on Powerpoint presentations much more than essays. My older dd was confounded by Powerpoint!) We stopped Latin when they picked up Spanish.

 

Oh, GREEK. I really wanted them to do two years of Greek...but they had no interest. So it fell away. (Aided by the fact that I was too stupid for Greek myself...LOL!)

 

Otherwise, I have a hard time of thinking of things "I wished we'd done" because I don't think we are done yet. :) I still give my mom good books to read, so I expect I'll continue to be involved in their lives enough to encourage and direct their lifelong education, as they have always done mine. From the first day I found out I was pregnant, my older dd has "encouraged" me to read and study...oh, those parenting and pregnancy books! GRIN.

 

Lori

[Lori D.]

Latin

The most we ever managed was just a little bit of Greek/Latin root word study.

 

Foreign Language

Tried Spanish briefly when they were young, but both programs bombed. I finally stopped beating myself up on this one and felt free when I decided to outsource this to 2 semesters of community college foreign language in junior or senior year of high school.

 

Music

They each learned the recorder in 4th grade -- and never touched it again; I really wanted them to learn piano -- any instrument! -- but total lack of interest prevailed. Music appreciation also fell by the wayside after a few short weeks.

 

Art

We did enjoy a little bit of art appreciation through 2-3 books, and I still try to throw a little art history in about once a month to go along with whatever history we're covering... but no one ever wanted to do art projects. And younger DS who loves doodling little cartoon figures absolutely refuses to take art lessons. :(

 

Congressional Award

What an awesome program to participate in to challenge yourself and grow; and what a great thing to have on college and job applications. But, the point is that the student is logging their own hours and is self-motivated... Alas, no interest here.

 

 

 

BUT -- on the bright side... a few things I thought we *never* would get around to -- ARE happening -- and long after I had given up! :hurray:

 

 

Public Speaking

I led a 10-session co-op class last year in which both DSs participated and it was a wonderful experience for all of us! They really DID give me their best, and afterwards told me they appreciated me making them do it for the experience it gave them. wow!

 

Sports / Involved in a school setting

Both boys really enjoyed being on the local public high school tennis team last year and want to do it again!

 

Youth & Government

Unexpectedly, older DS decided to join this with some friends; over the course of the semester he became more interested, put in a load of work, went out of town for the 3-day mock legislation session, had a blast, and was voted the prestigious character award by his peers -- awesome!

 

Family Devotions / Spiritual Maturity

This past year, maybe 2 evenings a week right after dinner, DH has been reading aloud from various books and we discuss a little. (Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Do Hard Things). What a blessing! I also see both teen DSs beginning to take ownership of their own faith, and beginning to look for ways to serve others. They are turning into such wonderful young men. :001_smile::D (proud mama smile)

[Gwen in VA]

My list is very child-dependent.

 

Dd1 -- my first guinea pig. While in high school, she never ever studied European history from 1800 - 2000! That must take a prize for weirdest educational hole! She loved debating but gave it up due to lack of time.

 

Ds1 -- my second guinea pig. He wanted to get in to HAM radio and he even got his license, but the meetings were on the wrong night for us and the involvement just didn't happen.

 

Ds2 -- Guinea pig #3. He's my first engineering type, so he is definitely a guinea pig. I am reluctantly realizing that he will probably never get to Traditional Logic 2. He also may never build that kayak -- it's been a wonderful dream, but his real life is too full of kites to add a kayak into the mix.

 

Dd2 -- She's young and I am SURE that on my fourth go-around I'll have it all together. :lol: I have high hopes that she will benefit from all the mistakes that I've made with my previous three guinea pigs and that she will have the ultimate high school experience. Of course, she wants to go into music and I've never before dealt with the level of outside involvement that she has, but I'm not worrying -- I'm sure that she will effortlessly fit in the academics on top of the music! :tongue_smilie:

[Jane in NC]

 

Driving. It was the right thing for him not to be driving yet, but oy! It would make my life so much easier to have him driving! On the other hand, as someone else here once mentioned, it also has given us lots of opportunities for conversation that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

 

 

 

I'll echo driving...both my dds waited (will wait) until 18 to drive.

 

 

 

Boy, I thought we might be alone in this boat. My son took driver's ed at age 16 because I made him. So he has his permit but has no desire to have a driver's license. Sigh... Like the others said, this leads to great conversations, but life could be more convenient for me if he had a license.

 

Art

We did enjoy a little bit of art appreciation through 2-3 books, and I still try to throw a little art history in about once a month to go along with whatever history we're covering... but no one ever wanted to do art projects. And younger DS who loves doodling little cartoon figures absolutely refuses to take art lessons. :(

 

 

 

Lori, you just never know where life will take you. Just a few weeks ago, it appeared that my son would be signing up for Music Theory at the CC. Once he had the form in hand, he announced that he would like to take Art History! Hey, I'm thrilled with either.

 

By the way, my son took a great biological illustration class a couple of summers ago. This is something that I would encourage since students really learn to see.

 

There are never enough hours in the day so we all do the best we can. What is good that my son is realizing his own gaps. He points out that with our focus on Western Civ, he lacks a good knowledge of Asian history. So I planted the seed that perhaps he could rectify this himself by borrowing a couple of books from the library this summer. Let's see what happens.

 

Fingers crossed,

Jane

[Nan in Mass]

It is hard for me to say what we didn't do because I have a tendency to think that if I myself didn't do it, we didn't do it, which isn't very accurate. And things that we did often didn't stay done; they slipped away. I can tell you some things that I deliberately neglected. History is one. Public speaking is another, although we worked on storytelling quite a lot. Logic and grammar we did another way (math and Latin). At least, I hope we did. We did hardly any vocabulary. We did far more input than output. Most of what we didn't do, I deliberately didn't have us do because there were things that seemed more important. I tried to do memory work but it was very difficult with my children. I wanted to do much more music but we didn't have time. I would have loved to do more art. We never did any drama (except reading some plays in parts). My children would probably have loved that, but it was low on my priority list. We never did any dance. I've tried many things that failed. I never did manage to get my older one speaking a foreign language at a basic level despite many tries. I wouldn't consider Latin one of our great successes. I can't figure out whether French is a failure or a success with my youngest. It depends whether you look at the donut or the hole, whether you focus on what he can do compared to what he might have been able to do. There seems to be a long period of time in the earlier teens where it seems like you aren't getting anywhere academically. I remember this from my older one. So it feels, at the moment, like I haven't pulled off anything I have tried with my youngest, but I know that in another few years, he will probably surprise me.

 

One thing I did manage to do was get my older one driving. Yes, he actually had to renew his permit to do it, but we managed it. After he was accepted to college and Christmas was over, I shuffled it to the top of our priority list and we put in enough practice that I was comfortable letting him get his license. Then we slowly ramped up what he was allowed to do with it. I don't want him driving into Boston alone for a few years, and I still worry about snow, but he can do just about anything else. I thought I was the only one struggling with this GRIN. He was away traveling so much, and we needed the car time for school and I was the only one of us who could drive and do school at the same time, and if we weren't doing school, he was generally tired and wanted to watch the world go by and relax. Finally, I panicked when I realized that if he didn't get his license soon, he was going to go off to college with insufficient driving experience. We skimped a bit on school in favour of driving once I realized that being educated would be useless if he were dead.

 

-Nan

Edited June 23, 2009 by Nan in Mass

[Brenda in MA]

Well... we did manage to get to driving with my new graduate, and that was a life saver, considering that the cc is a 30 min drive one-way.

 

He missed out on music -- we started homeschooling in the 5th grade, and by the time we got up to speed/comfortable, there was no time for music. We did do some music history in middle school and studied a few composers, but that's it. He never learned to sing well or to play an instrument.

 

He also missed out on Latin -- same reason as above -- I bought Latina Christiana and had high hopes of using it in middle school, but we just never got to it. I sold it, and then ended up buying it again a few years later to use with his younger brother! He ended up using Rosetta Stone for Spanish, not ideal, but the colleges seemed OK with it, and this science/engineering guy just didn't have the time for an outside Spanish course on top of a heavy math/science course load.

 

We did do a lot of literature, discussions, and essays, but he never got to the older classics (Shakespeare, The Illiad, etc.). He did learn to write pretty well, and he does not enjoy reading in his free time, so I don't feel too badly about our inability to cover some typical classic literature.

 

Public speaking -- I had signed him up for an outside course for this, but when it was cancelled due to lack of enrollment, we never got to it again. He has done a little speaking with the Boy Scouts and in his cc courses, but I do wish he had taken a more formal course.

 

Despite all these things he missed out on, he still had time to explore his interests and become a confident, capable young man. So I think in the end that things will work out OK. I also kept telling myself that you just can't get to everything...

 

Brenda

[Lori D.]

Just a few weeks ago, it appeared that my son would be signing up for Music Theory at the CC. Once he had the form in hand, he announced that he would like to take Art History! Hey, I'm thrilled with either.

 

By the way, my son took a great biological illustration class a couple of summers ago. This is something that I would encourage since students really learn to see.

 

There are never enough hours in the day so we all do the best we can. What is good that my son is realizing his own gaps. He points out that with our focus on Western Civ, he lacks a good knowledge of Asian history. So I planted the seed that perhaps he could rectify this himself by borrowing a couple of books from the library this summer. Let's see what happens.

 

Fingers crossed, Jane

 

 

Thanks so much for sharing your family's SUCCESSES, too, Jane! :001_smile: It's so fun to watch these teens moving into adulthood -- keep us posted with your DS's CC experiences! :001_smile:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lori, you just never know where life will take you.

 

 

SO true, Jane! :001_smile: That's why I also added our unexpected "lift-offs" at the end of the list of "failure to launch" things. It has been SO encouraging to me to see both boys, but esp. our very introverted non-new-things older DS really blossoming this year!

 

He has been dabbling with filmmaking and just a little bit of still photography for the past 3-4 years. For our church's VBS program this summer, he had signed up to do the photography of the kids each day, put it into the VBS program's little software program, and then it was aired at the end of each day so the kids could see themselves. Well, he also decided to make his own video project -- and invited me to help videotape it (I worked in video production years ago). At the end of the week we had a blast editing it together to fit one of the VBS songs, and then showed it on Sunday morning so everyone could see it -- it was SOO much fun working my my DS as a partner!

 

So when I look back on my list of "failure to launch", really, I can let it go, because I DO see both boys maturing, discovering their own gifts and strengths, and moving into those. There really was no "failure" at all -- just that silly wish that one could "do it all". :001_smile:

[Jane in NC]

 

So when I look back on my list of "failure to launch", really, I can let it go, because I DO see both boys maturing, discovering their own gifts and strengths, and moving into those. There really was no "failure" at all -- just that silly wish that one could "do it all". :001_smile:

 

Precisely what I need to remind myself as we enter my son's senior year (with much nail biting--more to come when college aps go out!

 

Jane

[Cedarmom]

Writing-we never did a big research paper assuggested in WTM.

 

Art and Music- We have done tons of art appreciation and music appreciation. But he has never learned to play an instrument and hates any art "projects" so we have done very little of that

 

Science- He wanted to do both honor chemistry and honors physics. He will do Physics at community College, but he wishes he had more time for more science.

 

Rhetoric-I was hoping to do a formal rhetoric, but we just haven't had time. We did finish Logic 1 and 2 though, so I am fairly content with what we have done.

[FloridaLisa]

Probably the top of my list would be an in-depth science fair project. We did do them in middle school, but I really wanted ds1 to do an in-depth project at an upper level. Maybe this is his year?!

 

Lisa

[Catherine]

Ds wanted to do this last summer, for tenth grade, because many of his schooled friends were. Despite the fact that it's not an interest of his, a strength of mine, or something he EVER had any exposure to in the past. urgh. We ditched it for the SAT 2, and I'm pretty sure we will *not* rejoice over his scores, coming soon.

 

I wish we had done better with art. His and my interest level, and my teaching ability level, conspired to nix this one-not completely, but significantly.

 

I am very glad we stuck with language-he is a proficient language learner and attempting to become fluent in both Spanish and Chinese by the time he finishes high school.

[Gwen in VA]

The wonderful thing is that our kids succeed even when we don't provide the way. If they see a gap that they want to fill, they now how to learn and they fill the gap!

 

* I dislike art. Don't get me wrong -- I like art museums and I am fascinated by paintings, but I learned in school that I couldn't draw, paint, or sculpt. Period. So art is one of those things that we never did in our homeschool. Period. We did a lot of crafts -- knitting, cross-stitiching, sewing, flower-arranging, etc -- but NO art at all. Painting was entirely paint-by-number, and sketching was stopped in late elementary due to lack of interest on both the students and teacher.

 

* My dd is now majoring in art history and so has to take several studio art classes! She has to work twice as hard as most because she has never had any exposure to any of the material taught -- not even exposure to the material used! :tongue_smilie: but she is doing fine in the studio art classes!

 

Where there is a will there is a way!

[mel66susan]

Hi All,

My first post here! After HSing for 15 yrs, I admit failing horribly at any attempt with foreign languages. Some days I was delighted if their English sounded relatively respectable... Also, accumulated vast quantities of art books and curriculums but I still have hopes of implementing those with the four kiddos still homeschooling.

 

On the very bright side, I never in all my imaginings saw how very close and home-loving my kids would be. I count foreign languages and dusty art projects a small price to pay for hearing them love each other!

 

I enjoyed reading all your posts on this topic. Isn't it great when God gives us glimpses of the long-term vision? I love that one poster gives books to her Mom! I definitely feel like we're still HSing our college student. Maybe not in academics but she is certainly learning life skills while dealing with a grandma with dementia...

 

Thanks and may we all experience "failures" that He uses to His glory this year.

 

Susan

[JennifersLost]

Some great posts in here; and some great wisdom.

 

While I regret some of the things we haven't done, I am finding that my kids know their strengths and they really go after what they do want to learn.

 

And as someone said, they have their whole lives to learn....

[Peela]

Its good to remember we just cant do everything. Every time I think of something I want to cover in my daughter's next two years, I have to remember there is only so much time and trying to cram all the literature and subjects in isnt the best way to go to have a good last two years of school.

 

So far, French is covered quite pathetically but she is willing to keep going.

I dont think we are going to get to Rhetoric. Logic is probably not going to be covered any deeper than Art of Argument- no formal logic, just fallacies. Latin is being covered but its not going to be perfected by any means- no reading the original, I think, but its not really my goal, just a good side benefit if it happens.

There are a zillion books I still want my kids to read! I dont know why I feel they have to read every book I have ever loved, PLUS all the Great Books that appeal to me, before they leave home, but it's a strong feeling! Its just not going to happen. But, I guess it's a worthy goal to keep aiming for.

[Mommyfaithe]

I was just reading about the debate stuff in another thread and realized that I had wanted to make that happen for my kids and it...just...isn't...going to.

 

No one can do everything, right?

 

What haven't you pulled off?

 

We have not been able to pull off foreign langauges.

I have tried...really...really tried...but no go, not even Latin, which I tried the hardest.

 

We have not been able to pull of music lessons even though they would have really enriched my children's lives. (well we did w/ dd1 but after that it was just too time consuming.)

 

I have not been able to pull off upper level maths...but my kids have, thanks to DVD's and CC.

 

Some years I was not able to pull off school...thank the Good Lord for libraries and an unschooling concept and me having an attitude of we school for life...just in different ways along the path. My kids learned so much during those odd years when either I was ill or my extended family needed my focus and care.

 

~~Faithe

[johnandtinagilbert]

I really wanted to bump this thread b/c I find it encouraging. I notice the posters are those I admire, so hearing where they missed their own mark, yet produced great dc is encouraging. I want so badly to nurture and lean toward each of their strengths and since they're the first (with my big mistakes of grades past) my boys are forever in my mind, "behind." Foolishness, I know, just the place my minds returns to. WOO SAAA. Big breath. I know we'll get there.

[FloridaLisa]

Lol. I looked up my post to see whether I'd finally gotten to our gap and . . . nope! Ds1's senior year turned out so differently than we had planned but it was all good! So much better than I could ever have planned.

 

Lisa

[2cents]

I wanted to teach the children Japanese but alas it did not work so ds did Latin and the girls are doing Spanish. I also wanted to progress past CW Homer and that didn't happen either. It was replaced by IEW and that is working a whole lot better. Also wanted the girls to continue with chess and do some tournaments like their brother but it just isn't their thing. Oh well, it's still all good. :)