Mimm Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 My nine year old, Imogen, has been complaining about school a lot. I tell her to stop with the negativity, to put some effort into actually enjoying herself and to give herself time to adjust to the new school year. I asked her if she was ready to start again tomorrow, and she sighed and mumbled, "Not really." Last Monday she was in hysterics over grammar. She complains about history, math, writing and even art. :confused: My youngest sister is 14 and Imogen likes to call her on the phone and talk her ear off every so often. I'm sitting here listening to her tell my sister how great school is. She loves Latin and gets to have extra words to memorize and I got her a bunch of drawing books from the library, and she got to learn how to draw cats and how to shade for art class and it was so awesome, and she gets hard bonus spelling words like gracious... etc. She's in the next room, I can't hear everything she's saying, but she's glowing with praise for something she complains about every time I let her. I am confused. :001_huh: But maybe I should take the praise where I can get it? Even if it means eavesdropping on phone conversations? Do your kids do this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasharowan Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 My 10yo dd complains about school, but she does it to everyone, not just me. If I heard her praising school, I would have to take her temp. I think it's just a phase they go through, plus she has been in scouts with several public schooled kids and may be picking it up from them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ma23peas Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 I have no idea how things run at your house...but I've found in my 10 years, that when we get to the stage where it's just doing the motions, checking off the boxes completed, picking up the next subject..it's MONOTONOUS! It's school at home and that's not what I strive for it to be...so I routinely mix things up a bit...(I plan on doing core curricula subjects 4 days a week, so we have some flexibility for a 5th unmonotonous day when we need it) I'll wake them up early, get an hours worth of chores done and surprise them with a trip somewhere spontaneous...it could be a day just spent taking pictures of things...going to pick blueberries...or taking our history for that day and drawing a scene from our lesson....if you're just the magistrate telling her what to do next and making sure it's done...(there is a time for that!!) and not having a little shake up the day fun with it every now and then...then you're losing some precious moments with your daughter...maybe she needs to see a more spontaneous side in you, I'm saying that as I've been the magistrate the past 3 weeks and plan on taking my kids for the day to see the Chattanooga aquarium next week...I'm guilty...but I try to mix it up.. HTH! Tara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mimm Posted August 30, 2010 Author Share Posted August 30, 2010 I'm a fairly spontaneous person, and honestly we haven't been doing school long enough for it to get monotonous. Imogen does this every year, only every year before this year, she was in school. But she takes weeks to adjust to a new year, doing school after a long and lazy summer. In fact, she made me so miserable at the start of this week that I sat down with the calendar and planned out a whole year that takes away their summer vacation and splits it up throughout the year. We'll do one more week of school, then have a week off, and so on. Hopefully this will eliminate this adjustment period next year. They spend more time outside in the fall and spring anyway. Actually, she thrives in structure, and I think I'm a little too relaxed for her taste. I have a schedule all worked out, but it only vaguely gets followed. My husband suggested we start the day with Latin since it seems to be her favorite subject. We started doing that the last few days of last week and it seemed to make things a bit better. She was ahead of a bunch of things on Friday so I let her sit down and read for an hour and then she got to get on the computer and play a bunch of typing games, which she thought was fabulously fun. I'm also flexible about what she can do next and I don't freak out if everything doesn't get done in a particular day. We're kind of "ahead" of what I had scheduled anyway. She loves art class and we've done art almost every day (because I love art class too). She just... likes to complain. She gets all negative and everything gets blown up in my mind and suddenly she can't see the positive side of anything. That's why I'm trying to get her to stop saying negative self defeating statements. Normally, I don't like the idea of not letting someone express their thoughts, but I think overall she needs to stop making statements about things being "too hard" or saying that she "can't do this". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Tell her to translate her complaints into Latin. Either she'll give up, or she'll learn new vocab :D Rosie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hannah Posted August 30, 2010 Share Posted August 30, 2010 Tell her to translate her complaints into Latin. Either she'll give up, or she'll learn new vocab :D Rosie :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mimm Posted August 30, 2010 Author Share Posted August 30, 2010 Tell her to translate her complaints into Latin. Either she'll give up, or she'll learn new vocab :D Rosie Ha! I love it. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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