At my wits end and it's my fault

[boymama]

How do you teach your homeschooler, especially high schooler, time management???????? My son will not get his work turned in on time.  If he has a paper due on a Friday, it will be the next week, and it doesn't bother him to even try to do it on time.  It drives me crazy!!  Now, my 4th grader is doing the same thing because he sees the 9th grader doing it.  I know it is my fault, but I am not sure how to enforce the deadline.  They don't seem to care that they don't get to play or do other activities because they are late with an assignment.  I know that if they had to go to public school, they would have rigid deadlines and if they didn't get the assignment on time, they would get an F.  A friend on mine that sent her kids to ps said this almost caused them to fail.  I know that we don't have to have deadlines in hs, but in life after hs, they will have to be able to meet deadlines.  Plus, it drives me nuts for them to be late.   I  can't move ahead on the next lesson unless they finish the one they are late turning in.   It is like they figure if they are late, then I can't move on. I have told them that it will leak over onto their summer, but then it screws up my time off too.  They do homework all weekend,and always until bedtime.It is like they are always doing school and it isn't because I give too much work, it is that they piddle and take forever to complete something.  the younger kid use to be great about getting finished and now, he doesn't care either.  They don't even care if they get restricted or grounded from tv or ipod or games, whatever.  I have failed somewhere to teach them time management.  My older son has NEVER cared about this, NEVER!!!   Help and thanks for any advice.

[Jen in NY]

Sometimes we have just needed a change in the works to make things run more smoothly... the grind can get to be very grinding without a bit of variety in there for good measure.

 

Sometimes, if I feel like we need to do more of a block schedule... so the kids spend long stretches working on one or two things. Sometimes our weeks need more of a get 'er done approach... especially if we're all feeling a little bored or non-productive... so we switch to more of a timer situation/ This was much more common when they were younger... sometimes my son and I still do this... 30 minutes at the most...some subjects a shorter time... set the timer and see what can get accomplished in one subject... move on to the next, and what isn't finished gets done later in the day (or week, lol). Sometimes working in short bursts raises the energy level enough to plow through stuff...which feels like accomplishing something... you get the picture.

 

Best,

Jen

[elegantlion]

What is your current process for schooling and enforcing deadlines? Does your high schooler work near you or do they work in their room? Reforming bad habits are like turning a big ship, it takes time and strategy (ask me how I know  :coolgleamA: ). So, to better help you, it might be good to know your process and perhaps what you've tried in the past. 

[PeterPan]

Yeah, I'm with Elegant, wondering if you broke the process into steps and were holding them accountable along the way...  

[boymama]

He works close.  I can't let him work in his room because he doesn't get anything done.I have let him work on the porch for warm days as a reward, but then he will end up not working.  I do let him wear ipod to listen to music. Sometimes I 'm not sure that is helpful.  I have tried so much. Different schedule. letting him make his own schedule as long as stuff gets marked off.  This year he is doing a lot on the computer.  For geo, I let him do powerpoint slides to retain info.  I have tried to make it all interesting, but it is almost like the more I push for him to finish, the slower he gets. Maybe he IS trying to aggravate me.  I am a little compulsive about schedules. They have a chart with all of their subject assignments for the week and I try to get them to be able to check off daily completions and then I let the high schooler kind of be more flexible as long as he gets it done for the week, so we can move on the next week.  If he has a paper due in 2 weeks, it takes him 4. he doesn't even start it.  I try to motivate him to take small steps. Lets talk about the subject, let's find our sources, start the intro, etc.   He really wants to go to public school and I think he "punishes" me for hs him.  He will even put up with the no ipod, activities, etc. He ends up punishing himself more.  Is this just teenage mess?  I teach at a co-op and you can really tell the kids that want to succeed and the ones that don't care.  He acts like one of the meat heads.  He sure makes it difficult.  I know part of it is his personality. He has always been strong willed.  :banghead:   Some of it also is some emotional behavior about how one of our adopted kids affects our family with problems.  He will also have to learn to adjust himself no matter what life throws his way and to handle things he can not change.  It gets complicated, but the main thing for now is this time management.  UGH!!! :boxing_smiley:   :001_wub:

[OneStepAtATime]

Have you tried reading books like Smart But Scattered or ADD Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life?  You don't have to be ADD to find the suggestions in the last book useful.  And I love the first book for understanding all the steps it takes to complete a task and where all the disconnects can occur, as well as how to prevent those disconnects from occurring..  It really helped me to get us better organized.

 

Best wishes.

[at the beach]

He works close.  I can't let him work in his room because he doesn't get anything done.I have let him work on the porch for warm days as a reward, but then he will end up not working.  I do let him wear ipod to listen to music. Sometimes I 'm not sure that is helpful.  I have tried so much. Different schedule. letting him make his own schedule as long as stuff gets marked off.  This year he is doing a lot on the computer.  For geo, I let him do powerpoint slides to retain info.  I have tried to make it all interesting, but it is almost like the more I push for him to finish, the slower he gets. Maybe he IS trying to aggravate me.  I am a little compulsive about schedules. They have a chart with all of their subject assignments for the week and I try to get them to be able to check off daily completions and then I let the high schooler kind of be more flexible as long as he gets it done for the week, so we can move on the next week.  If he has a paper due in 2 weeks, it takes him 4. he doesn't even start it.  I try to motivate him to take small steps. Lets talk about the subject, let's find our sources, start the intro, etc.   He really wants to go to public school and I think he "punishes" me for hs him.  He will even put up with the no ipod, activities, etc. He ends up punishing himself more.  Is this just teenage mess?  I teach at a co-op and you can really tell the kids that want to succeed and the ones that don't care.  He acts like one of the meat heads.  He sure makes it difficult.  I know part of it is his personality. He has always been strong willed.  :banghead:   Some of it also is some emotional behavior about how one of our adopted kids affects our family with problems.  He will also have to learn to adjust himself no matter what life throws his way and to handle things he can not change.  It gets complicated, but the main thing for now is this time management.  UGH!!! :boxing_smiley:   :001_wub:

 

I totally understand that how to educate him is your family's decision. Is public school out of the question? What is the draw for him there? I think you have relationship issues going on here, and I would try to deal with that. You said, "It get's complicated, but the main thing for now is time management." However, if other issues are at the root of this, I don't think you'll be able to address time management until you address the other issues. From reading both of your posts, it seems possible there could be more going on. There's only so much you can do to make a teen do things your way. Sorry I don't have better advice than that. :grouphug:  

[regentrude]

I have found it impossible to impose a rigid schedule with fixed deadlines in my home school, so I am not even attempting one. My kids learn to work with a schedule and hard deadlines once they are taking outside classes, and they are doing a great job there. My DD is phenomenally successful in her college classes, despite the complete absence of any deadlines, schedules, or set assignments in our home school.

Just a thought. This would remove entirely all power struggles about assignment due dates. Having hard deadlines is not the only way to home school.

[elegantlion]

I've been thinking of your posts and can feel the frustration oozing through them. I have a student not motivated by grades or deadlines, but my situation is different. 

 

Theses are the questions I would ask myself, not ones you have to answer here. Setting aside the "it's my fault" and he's doing this on purpose comments for a while, those create antagonistic tension and honestly won't solve anything. Could both be true? Possibly, but remember you're steering a ship not a scooter. 

 

In creative writing, the writing is often to show don't tell. In other words don't tell me your character is in love, write out how it feels. In the same way 9th grades may know how to "tell" the steps to getting to a deadline, but they don't know how to show it or actually do it. 

 

First, I would examine his writing. Does it come out well without thinking about the missed deadline? If not, look back over each part. Does he know how to find sources correctly? Does he know to read the material and retrieve the necessary information? 

 

I'm a decent writer, my son is not so much. This has created angst over the years, because it took me a while to realize this WAS difficult for him. I'm also a college freshman and taking an English comp class. My professor is great about breaking down each segment of a task, putting deadlines on those segments and really walking students through the process. It helps him identify where the student's knowledge breaks down and allows them time to improve. 

 

The other thing is that 9th graders are not seniors. If you read some other posts you will a wide range of working abilities and motivation. They grow a lot between those times. Another issue is kids can read our emotions like an open book. If he senses this frustration in you it could create 1. defense 2. defiance 3, apathy. I agree that it sounds like more than is going on. 

 

So if the writing is sound and deadlines are the only issue then 1. you can do as regentrude suggests and skip deadlines. I value her input even though I tend to default to deadlines 2. look beyond the deadlines to see what other issues are the catalyst. 

 

You mentioned he would prefer to attend public school. Is that totally off the table? Again you don't have to answer here, but if it is does he understand why? I find this age is where they balk against the "because we're the parents and we know best". It's not that they will outright disagree, but they need more information. How much say does he have in subject matter? I fondly remember picking classes for my high school experience, I wanted ds to have some of the same. I have my guidelines and he gets to fill in gaps as budget and knowledge allow. He also has some leeway on how a subject is covered. In other words our high school feels like him - I would have picked different ways to cover the same subjects. 

 

I'm sorry you're frustrated. I don't think it's your fault, I don't necessarily think it's his fault either. :grouphug:

[Sunshine State Sue]

I don't really have much to offer.  I have a bright but unmotivated student who will procrastinate until the last moment then often do the minimum amount of work.  Outsourcing helped some, but not completely because my standards are higher.  This is the biggest reservation I have about him moving away to college.  And yet...I know adults IRL who also procrastinate.  It is their issue to solve or not, and I cannot solve this issue for ds.  I make myself insane by trying to do so.

 

Ds is so much like dh.  Is this an issue for your dh as well?  The only thing I think would help is if dh stepped up and enforced consequences for ds.  My dh rarely does.

 

I am Type A.  Dh/ds are not.  Sometimes I want to make them bad/wrong/inferior.  Somewhere I know that they are just different from me, not necessarily inferior.  It is frustrating.  :grouphug:

 

I will say that ds improved throughout high school.

[Jean in Wisc]

Been there. Oh, so been there.

 

FWIW, my kids all have done well in college--deadlines were never an issue.

 

Sometimes this kid thing is a mom/son problem: "Mom is STILL telling me what to do!!!" Having him hand assignments in to Dad sometimes works. (And sometimes not.)

 

I like the comments about breaking things into small pieces. Sometimes they really don't know how to go about the whole task.I remember writing the same assignment as my child (we sat at the table together talking about the assignment but each of us doing our own writing)and comparing, discussing, and analyzing our differences. 

 

Sometimes I had the child sit at the computer while we discussed what he might write (or work on an outline or look up references together). Then when he had something to put into writing, I'd let him type.

 

We started by writing paragraphs this way, but I can say sometimes we wrote WHOLE PAPERS this way. I don't think I every had to do the WHOLE PAPER more than once with the same kid unless there were other problems coming into play (dyslexia, for example). 

 

Sometimes I had over scheduled--too many assignments for THIS child in one year. I changed my lesson plans so I had  assignments/books/papers that were mandatory and the rest of the year was "if we had time". That helped a LOT. Some classes we got it all done. Some we had to push to get the mandatory done. It allowed us to  butt heads a little less often.

 

Fortunately, my kids did not want to attend ps. I did have a friend whose son got the bulk of his work done by the time he was 16, and they then enrolled him in ps (his choice). What classes do you want to be sure he gets from you? Or do you have a community college that you could send him to for a single class each semester? Would that give him a chance at getting out but keep a bulk of his classes at home?

 

Could he be going through a growth spurt where his brain is not working? This is typical for 9th grade boys.

 

Could he need more exercise? I bought my 2 boys running shoes and made them research cross country running. Both of  them are still running--one very seriously. If their bodies are overflowing with unused muscles, hormones, and all, they can't sit and work on anything. What does he do each day to get himself moving?

 

Brain storm. Good luck. Someday you will have done all you can, and it will be his turn to make it work.(Yeah, that sounds sooooo good, and sooooo scary!)

 

:-) Jean

 

 

[Sherri in MI]

No suggestions, just sympathy here.  My 15 yo ds, 9th grade, is the same way.  Especially with Algebra.  It's getting worse as he gets older, not better.   He seems to be very self-motivated to do Biology on time, though, and that is an outside class, with an outside teacher setting  deadlines & requiring assignments to be turned in on time & she grades their papers and tests.  (Trying not to be annoyed, just grateful).  So outside accountability seems to be a motivator for my unmotivated student.

 

I'm also thinking I have not taught enough time mangement skills, especially the last few years as I have been distracted by outside family issues.  When he was young, I was better at scheduling and time management and sticking to it.  I myself have been very distracted the last year or two.

 

I checked "Smart But Scattered" out of the library, but haven't read it yet.  Hope it helps.  I did scan it & they seem to mostly attribute it to just not learning some of all of a wide range of executive skills, which they list.

 

Good luck & let us know if you try anything that works.

[BlsdMama]

Do they obey you our respect you in other areas? Because, methinks, this is a household issue and not a school issue and if it's seen only as a school issue it will not be fixed by only addressing the school part of it.