Staying Focused Can Be Difficult

One of the things I think we unexpectedly found out about homeschooling is the burnout factor. There were times, maybe weeks at a time, where my wife and I just didn't feel like schooling the boys. Whether I was just busy with work, we were having a bad mental health month, or just procrastinating, we just didn't feel like it.

That didn't necessarily mean idle time for Josh and Seth though. By the time they were in 5th or 6th grade, they could really do school on their own. They could read the lessons online and take that tests at the end. The question is, were they really disciplined to do so? Not so much. When we pressed them, they would do some lessons, but at 10, 11, or 12 years old, there's no way we could have expected them to just school on their own.

My wife would typically do something with them during the day, especially once we shut down her home based business, but she was having some struggles too and was trying to work some things out. Even though the kids didn't always do their lessons, they did keep themselves busy.

Josh liked science, not necessarily the science I was teaching him, but he loved the discovery channel and did a lot of reading on his own on the Internet (good reading for the most part). When they would ask us questions, we would give them direction and then tell them to do some research, so they did. Little did I know that it would come back to bite me in the butt! I found out, mostly through Josh, that some of the myths I believed in growing up really had no scientific basis and had since been proven wrong. Sometimes I just though he was a smartass, but then I realized he was way smarter than I was at that age.

Seth was always keeping himself busy doing something. He loved football and playing Madden, He also had an affinity for Pokemon. Madden let you build your own team through a draft. He had notebooks full of information on players and the teams he built. He also did the same thing with Pokemon. He listed his cards and wrote down what his best decks would be and how he was most likely to win a battle. He was also a math wiz, I'm not sure where the heck that came from!

Even with our "breaks" in teaching, one of the flexibilities of homeschooling is that we didn't have to stick to a particular schedule. We weren't bound by the nine to three school hours or the September to June schedule. If we got "behind" we would spend some time getting back on track. In an earlier post I wrote about homeschooling in the summer, I talked about the fact that we did do some schooling in the summer if we needed to catch up on work.

Once the boys reached 8th grade, the curriculum changed from all home based to a virtual curriculum. They were assigned teachers and advisers who helped them pick their classes and ensure they had the right credits to complete high school. If the kids were "slacking" at all, we would get calls from the teachers to see how we could get them back on track.

If they needed help, they could call or email their teachers. I remember one night where Seth was on the phone with his algebra teacher at 10:30 in the evening working out some questions he had. They worked through those issues and Seth picked it up pretty quick.

It worked out pretty well for a while, but the boys did get bored. Josh liked to do his own thing. He learned about multiple religions, did research on planets and the universe among other things. In the classes he liked, he did really well, but the classes he didn't like. . . not so much. Seth was the same way. The curriculum we used was pretty consistent with their lessons, so each year they would reiterate what was learned the previous year, and then expand on that appropriately for the grade level. However, he didn't like doing that, he felt that he was learning things over again and wanted more diversity out of his lessons. It seems like they also had some kind of curriculum burnout as well.

As I wrote in Homeschoolers In College, we got the boys into a program available in a local Community College that would allow them to finish High School while working towards a degree. This also allows them to transfer to four year colleges, which Josh has already done, Seth should be making that leap following the current semester. It seems like they're on a good path now and they have other avenues they're pursuing outside of school as well. We hope they complete their college journey and that the "burnout" doesn't rear it's head to alter that plan.