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[hs03842]

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Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM

[Momto6inIN]

I haven't gone through this myself, as my boys were close in age and also are the 2 oldest, but a friend of mine irl has 1 son and 3 daughters and she always talked about how much she had to work hard to find something for him to be involved in where he could show leadership and "be a man" and not be constantly "mothered" by someone.

[egao_gakari]

I may have shared some of this info with you before, apologies if this seems repetitive! We tried a number of different things with DS, who is the oldest but his younger sister started homeschooling before he did. Main challenge: he did not want to do the work with me, because he thought he knew it all already; but when I said, "OK you can do it independently" he didn't do it; and I simply didn't have the time (due to many hours working from home) to oversee. We thought he was bored and needed more of a challenge, but when I assigned more difficult work, he didn't do that either. He needed me to be a full-time homeschool mom overseeing him for at least that first year, and I wouldn't have been able to quit my job due to serious financial and health problems in the family.

If you are a few years ahead of middle school, it's worth beginning to "train" for independent work now. See if he can stay on-task for 10 minutes without you. And, if you recently brought him home from PS, assume you'll need to fill in some gaps. I didn't know, for over a year after we brought DS home, that he literally didn't know his times table, and by the time I found out, he had become very stubborn about not practicing with Mom. So he still doesn't know the eights or above very solidly. Apparently at the PS they didn't care whether he had them memorized, bc calculators? I now think DS' "work with Mom" avoidance was because he knew he was behind, and he was ashamed of it and didn't want to be found out.

Also, you can let your DH know right now that 7th, 8th, and possibly 9th will be "brain soup" years. Both my kids seemed to regress in terms of actual knowledge, focus, work ethic, and executive functioning in 7th. With DS, it has been a long slog back, although something seems to be clicking in the last few weeks (he's about to start 10th). DD is about to start 8th, so we'll see whether the melty brain continues this year or not.

[hs03842]

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Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM

[hs03842]

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Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM

[egao_gakari]

13 hours ago, JoyKM said:

My son is only two years old!  😆  Kudos to you for doing such a good job motivating your son from afar as a single mom.  My mother was a single mom for all of my teen years--every day is a labor of love. 💗 Over the years my husband has told me that at some point when boys reach youth they stop caring so much about what their mothers or female authorities have to say--they actively seek a male role model to copy and learn from.  According to him it's a natural phase/part of growing a male identity, but it does need to be managed positively.  He is extremely dubious about our son being the last one around homeschooling during that age range.  My mother actually had a hard time with this being a single mom of three boys (I'm the only girl).  For her it was a constant battle to get them to listen to her at times!  I remember a few parent teacher conferences when I was a middle school teacher where all six of us subject teachers would get together to make a plan for a male student--all of the female teachers would describe the same sort of shenanigans in their classroom but the one or two male teachers had "very motivated and well behaved" experiences with those boys.  At least for some boys there is this phase of just not listening to women for some reason.  It's not PC to say but does seem to play out as some boys move from child to youth.   I know there are many moms on here who have successfully homeschooled a middle school boy in that age bracket, so I wanted to get some experienced feedback to think ahead and not feel like that time frame will be "hopeless."  

edit:  I should probably directly ask my three bros how they felt at that age!  I'm just going based off of how they acted.  😆

If your DH is thinking about this so far in advance, that's a good sign that over the next decade you can train him to take over some of the schoolwork accountability by that time! 😄

[hs03842]

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Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM

[Kiara.I]

I feel like your husband is borrowing trouble and, simultaneously, setting you up for failure. By talking about boys as being DIFFERENT somehow, and difficult for women to handle...

Every kid goes through separation from parents. And every kid had a personality. Are boys generally different than girls? Yeah, probably. Though there are surely exceptions, too. But women, like men, are quite capable of learning to deal appropriately with the tween or teen in front of them. I'm underwhelmed by your husband's assumption that it'll be a problem because you're a woman. Yuck. He thinks you won't be able to handle it...because you're a woman.

I mean, I can fairly guarantee that a middle school boy won't want to be treated like mummy's darling boy, aged four. But that was a given. Treat your child as a competent human, teach him to be a competent human, and insist that he treat others as competent humans. That will look different for each child and each age and stage, regardless of biological sex of the child.

[hs03842]

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Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM