How to motivate my children to get their work done?

[Oakblossoms]

I have three boys and I cannot get them to even start to do their work. I feel like I've done everything at this point. I'm really tired of it and find myself yelling at them. They are so rude to me now. They are nice unless it concerns school work. Then they whine, complain, and are rude to me.

 

My 11 year old is horrible right now.

 

Any suggestions? We don't actually have much work scheduled every day. I've tried having a fuller schedule, but I just can't handle it myself. They cry and whine the entire time and I don't have the patience anymore.

[shalom22]

We went through this and at times go through it again and again. I think that the first thing that I delt with is the disrespect that my kids were showing me. When I was being disrespected especially when involving school work, I would put them to work. All fun activities were put on hold, all privileges were suspended. I sat them down and we had a discussion about their behavior and that this behavior was not tolerated in this house. After a while they figured it out that I was serious and that doing their school work wasn't such a bad thing. It is still a struggle at times to get them to do their work, but I do not have to deal with the outright disrespectful attitudes that I did before.

[TammyinTN]

If you don't do school with a good attitude--you don't have to like it---but you can't complain...then manual labor it is. It only takes a day or two of working hard to find school very appealing. :D

[Cheryl in NM]

For the disrespect I give pushups. I've also had ds run. We live on a dirt road 1/2 mile from the pavement. He's had to run to the pavement and back. It wasn't too much for him because he's a conditioned athlete. I find that physical activity helps to get the hormones moving and makes the pre-teen boys much easier to deal with.

 

This morning ds was mad at me because I made him start school when he didn't want to. He was mad, I gave him about 5 minutes to get over it and when he didn't I.....went over to him and hugged him and started kissing him all over his head. He started giggling and laughing and then tried to get mad again so I did it again! It went over well. Sometimes it doesn't.

 

I said this in an earlier thread about the motivation. Reward system. Don't worry about the fuller schedule. When you get this schedule working see if you can add more; if not, then work with what you've got. Anything you are doing is more than they'd be getting in public or private school. It's okay.