help

[mum]

ds 13 is in 10th grade in public homeschool charter. He takes a couple classes at a regular high school, mainly with juniors and seniors. He has always done work at the last minute, but this year with the workload that is not working so well. I am stressed just watching how he does things. He is typical for a 13 in his organizational skills, but his academic level is demanding much more than that. How do I help him, and how do I not get so stressed watching it? He has good grades ( he doesn't leave things till the last minute because I nag for it to be done sooner) and I'm putting too much into the commute to just sit back and let him fail. I feel so alone, no one I know in same situation to talk to, and I feel like I'm walking in the dark.

 

Thanks

[2smartones]

What is the alternative if he doesn't continue here? If it's something he doesn't like, I'd hold it over his head as a threat (the way I sometimes have to do public school for my kids on lazy/attitude days, knowing PS would put them back in age-based grade levels and bore them to tears).

 

Can you teach him some organizational skills and/or give him tools to help him do things in a timely manner? Can you give rewards for doing work early?

 

I really think it's just a maturity issue. You'll probably have to do a lot of hand holding (and breath holding) for a while until he gets the hang of it all. :confused:

[abbeyej]

Is he in charge of his own student planner? There are several good ones out there designed specifically to help middle school and high school students learn to organize time and assignments.

 

You'll still likely need to be "on him" about this for a while. That's pretty typical for 13yo boys, regardless of academic level! But if your "on him" can be immediately *after* class rather than before, that may reduce some of the strain between the two of you. Immediately after a class, you say, "Okay, what new assignments and due dates do you have? Okay, a 5-page paper due in two weeks. Write that in. Okay, what are the steps you'll need to complete to write the paper? Okay, yes, research and note-taking, outlining, rough draft, revision... So you write in your planner and show me which days you will use to complete each of those steps." At which point he should recognize that the night before isn't such a great idea. ;) But you do not *tell* him when to do each of those steps -- let him plan them out. And if you think he's making a mistake, bring it up, but with questions, if you possibly can. "Do you really think you'll have time to do your research on Sunday afternoon? Remember, you have a swim-meet that day. I see you forgot to add it to your planner, so why don't you go ahead and do that now, and then reconsider when you'd have time to get the research done." But again, leave as much of it up to him as possible.

 

Then, when he has written "research" on Friday and it gets to be Friday, you can simply remind him of what *he* wrote on the planner -- not what *you're* suggesting he do...

[KAR120C]

Especially if he recognizes that his way isn't working, you could treat "organizational skills" as its own little class. The way we've done it (with a similar situation of younger kid in "older" classes with substantial workload and immovable deadlines) is to come up with a system and sit down each day to keep it up to date. So for DS, the system that works best is a combination of his keeping a planner (one with lots of room for specific dates and times - I didn't like the middle school ones they had at Staples because they didn't have as much space for laying out a day by the half hour), and his keeping a binder for each class.

 

The things I require and check up on are:

 

1. Everything goes in the planner. Classes and assignment deadlines, church & youth group events, television shows he wants to make sure he doesn't miss, birthday parties, dentist appointments.... Anything that affects his day, even if it's more my responsibility (he doesn't get himself to the dentist....). I want him to be able to see that if he has something due next Monday and several PACKED days in between now and then, he's going to need to plan much farther ahead than Sunday night. Much MUCH farther ahead.

 

2. Books and binders and any other material need to be on his shelf over his desk at the end of the day. We don't have a lot of extra time available to go running around looking for his Latin book when class is about to start.

 

3. Everything goes in the binder. At the very least it needs to be in there, but also each binder has its own organization depending on the class. Sometimes the teacher has a system for him to follow and sometimes it's his own. We discussed each one over the summer and he set them up himself.

 

Basically he needs to do his own work of organizing, but I check up on it all and give advice, and nag when necessary. ;)

 

Like Abbey says, when he's written it down himself, even if I'm nagging it's not my random suggestion, it's a reminder that he himself had a plan that's he needs to follow.

 

His first experience with all this was science fair projects... he had to learn to manage a huge project with lots of little parts and a ton of articles and references he had read and marked up, that if he misplaced would mean a huge amount of rework.... eek. So the binder system started there, and although his planner for that project was project-specific (just a list of tasks and deadlines), it was really just a simpler form of his big planner. Actually he still keeps project deadlines together on their own page in their binder, and on the main planner. I think having them in one place helps with seeing the big picture of how the project is going to proceed, but having them in the main planner helps him see where he can end up with a scheduling conflict.

 

It is a lot of work to get organized, but once you have things in comfortable routines it gets much easier. Finding the comfortable routines can be a great big (and sometimes slow) learning curve, but like anything, practice helps. And I think at least for us, having a routine of checking on those procedures and routines keeps them on track.

 

Hope this helps!

[KAR120C]

One other thing I require is that DS come up with a list of what he knows will be expected for each class. So Latin, for instance, he always always always needs his book, his binder, and a mic and webcam set up before class (it's online). Mornings he has Latin he needs to have that ready well before class starts. Also, the teacher almost always asks three predictable questions (how are you, what's the weather, what's the date) in Latin every morning, and I ask that he have his answers ready before logging in. So in his binder is that checklist of things to do before class starts, and when I ask "are you ready for Latin?" he knows exactly what "ready" means.

 

The same is true of classes we do entirely at home. If he's "ready" for Economics it means he has his binder, his readings, the DVD and the transcript (Teaching Company). Each class is different, but he has a checklist of specific things to be prepared with. All of that is on top of having his homework done and turned in on time.