I am hs my 5 year old son since Jan. He is very bright intellectually, but kinda immature or average emotionally. He is also a typical first born in that he is high strung, strong- willed, and REALLY active. He would probably be labled "ADHD" if he were to go to PS, but our family doesnt really buy into "ADHD" My question is what do your families do for acting up when they are suppose to be schooling? For example, if he isnt following directions or keeps interrupting, complaining or whining " I dont know how!" even though he does and can do what I am asking. I hate to stop what we are doing to discipline him, b/c then he kinda gets his way and gets to stop. He has to endure the punishment, but for him most of the time it is worth it. This is a kid that would gladly take the spanking if what he wanted to do was worth it. The consquence that works the best for him is either not being able to go outside or having to go to bed early. What I have been doing lately is making marks during school, one mark for each naughty occurance, and for each mark he gets he has to go to bed 10 min. earlier for each mark, or misses 10 min outside for each mark. What do you all do? or am I the only one whose child acts out??? I just need some new ideas that will not interrupt school. Thanks Jill
maybe he's too young for structured learning? The main reason our family homeschools is that I feel that structured education is framed in a sure failure way, for young people. A five year boy that is full of energy is not often ready to sit still and listen. Instead of asking him to adjust I would consider adjusting. You could go for a hike, take some field guides and a few petri dishes with covers. Talk about what you see and hear, take a few specimens home and create a nature table for him to add to. Ride bikes to the park, pack snacks and a books. Read a book to him while he's eating his snack after playing for a good while. Instead of having him to repetitive writing tasks, ask for his help in creating grocery lists. Then ask him to find certain items in a store for you. Listen to good music while driving or even audio books. Do loads of hands on activities for science and math. Play math games (try the Family Math series) instead of introducing curriculum to him. While reading aloud to him at home, let him build with lego or use modeling beeswax or draw. Hope some of those ideas work. I'd stay far away from associating any form of punishment with learning time at such a young age. Michelle
This is just my two cents, mind you, but at his age he probably needs a more immediate consequence. You could have been writing about my 5yo because he's exactly the same. If I postpone the consequence, he doesn't fully understand and remember what he's being punished for. Here's what I do: Since we try to use Love and Logic style parenting, when he acts up, I simply tell him that he's draining my energy. In order to restore my energy, he's going to need to buy something nice for mommy. Of course, he has no money, so in order to buy me something nice, he'll have to trade one of his toys. He will have to immediately go and get a toy and give it to me. And he knows that I don't take the junk...lol. Then it's right back to schooling. The whole process only takes a moment of interruption, but it usually reigns him in. (the toys are donated, btw) I would highly suggest looking into the Love and Logic institute. You can usually find their books in the library. What I do may or may not work for your family, but there are plenty of other creative ideas in their books that will make it possible for you to discipline without stress.
Hello, I have 4 children, two who are diagnosed as ADD. Trust me it's real, our oldest struggled majorly in ps and our 3rd child was behind in public school so we homeschool. Personally for us hs is the best choice. She has a totally different way of learning, let me tell you. When we are working on sight words, I would do 3 at a time, she couldn't remember them but when I gave her 10 at a time, she done better. Go figure. When she's learning, example math concepts (adding subtraction, etc) we do not sit at a table, I made up flashcards so we play ACTIVE games with them. Phonics we play games. I do a candy/toy/school supply store. She would get play money, 5 cents here and there and then she could spend it at the end of the week. If she didn't behave, wouldn't give me a 100% on a worksheet or her favorite thing is to talk constantly through a lesson then she would loose $. It worked for us and she is learning math skills because she would have to count and make wise decisions. The best advice I can give is that kids learn differently and I had to learn to be flexible. I also had to recognize when she needed a break. The first week we started to hs, she refused to do the work so I told her she had to stay in her bedroom until she could figure out that I was serious. She stayed in her room for an hour until I called her out. Sometimes that reverse psychology backfires. :roll: I hope that helps some.
Yes, I agree in that maybe a taking a different approach would be best. You might do some reading on learning styles; there are great links here in the Favorite Websites forums. My own four and a half year old son is very... active. He'd probably also be labelled as ADHD. I know that such a disorder DOES exist, but I also think that it is entirely overdiagnosed. Some children have true issues in concentrating. Some children just learn differently, and when they're having to concentrate on being quiet and still it's hard to concentrate or absorb ANYTHING else. This is my son. My oldest son loves workbooks. My youngest son loves art and music. My 4yo must jump up and down, must show "big, apple" and "little, berry" with his hands, must let a bug crawl all over him. So I let him do those things. He's what you'd call a kinesthetic learner - he has to DO something to understand it. Visual props also help him. For phonics, and since he loves animals, I'm going to try and help him see that, just like every ANIMAL makes a sound (a cow says moo), every LETTER makes a sound too (an M says mmm). I'll take that a step further by first drawing a large M on a piece of paper. Then, as we talk and he watches, I will turn the letter M into a cow with drawings - add a head and tail, an udder, and some black spots and hooves on the "feet". In learning to form the letter, I'll let him make signs with his hands. I'll teach him to stand up straight, tall man head to toe, and then lean over a little like a slide, and then lean the other way, and then stand up straight again. These are the pieces of writing the letter M. We'll practice with shaving cream spread out on the table, and, if he's interested, I'll let him trace a few letters. I'm not worried about writing yet - his motor skills aren't quite there. I'm introducing it as a concept, but want to keep concentration on the phonetical sound. So when we're done with these "up and doing messy" things, we'll read a book. As many books as he will listen to. And he won't have to sit still - I'll give him a toy cow to play with while he listens. I'll stop and have him repeat every word that starts with "m" and have him repeat "moon starts with mmmm just like mmmmmoo". (Not, moon starts with M. We're focusing on the sound, not the name of the letter.) Anyway. Hope that's given some ideas. There's a time that I recognize he's just not going to pay attention any longer. I send him outside. We come back to it later, or the next day. There's a time to work on 'sit and listen' skills, but I don't try to COMBINE that lesson with anything else I want him to learn such as phonics or math or whatever else. Try getting up and having him sit on the couch. You tell a story as you act it out in front of him. Keep it short. At the end, have him tell you what happened in the story. That's working on listening. If he must STAND on the couch, let him, as long as he's mostly still and watching/listening. But, trying to combine "sit down and listen to learn about the letter M" just hasn't worked here. So I stopped trying to do it. Best of luck! I struggled with my first one, and have changed what I do for this one.
Gosh. . .when my kids are that young, schooling is optional. So my kids never act out. (LOL at least while homeschooling.) I'll just give you something to chew on and it may already have been said but. . . Discipline problems during school would indicate to me that I am missing the mark on one of my fundamental goals for homeschooling: that I want learning to be fun. I don't want to struggle through a lesson and when we do, it's an indicator that I'm not doing my job well. My best professor in college was asked once whether or not she had an attendance policy. The policy of the college was that you had to attend at least 2/3 of the classes. But she said this: "If my class is so horrible, that you would rather do something else than come here, I haven't done my job well enough. The pressure is on me to be a phenomenal teacher and not only teach you the material, but cause you to want to know more. The pressure is not on you to show up whether you like it or not." So I feel like the pressure is on me to teach well enough and select materials well enough that my kids want to be here. If I were in your shoes, I would take two steps backward, and look at what point during the day he is acting up. Does he need a snack, does he need a break? And as a former teacher I would caution strongly against taking away recess time. That's like shooting yourself in the foot--at that age he probably really, really needs to burn off that energy.
I have a 61/2 yo dd just like your son. When she starts with that attitude I leave the table. I have found if I myself walk away and leave her alone with what she's supposed to do, she eventually comes around. Like last week she had a math review to do- 3 pages but only a couple problems per page. WHined and cried. So I left the table. 10 minutes later she brought me the pages, all done, and all done right. I refuse to argue and fight her. And for every day that she does really well she gets a star on the board. She's allowed one bad day a week. If she has 4 stars on the board by Friday, she gets a movie night. It's MUCH better this year then it was the end of the K year though. I found out what worked well with her- a lot of hands on, games, ect. Kindergarten was a lot different too. We don't have to turn anything in here for K, but this year I will need to turn in test scores at the end of the year so I am a little more insistent that she "get it" and stay focused. But for Kindergarten I would NOT push the academic schedule so much. Have fun! Paint, read lots of books, play games, sing songs. I found by month 2 of homeschooling- we pulled her out in Dec., we were both burned out and so irritated and cranky all the time. It was awful! I had to learn to relax and have fun instead of pushing the academics so much. Yes, academics were done, but not like I was originally expecting. And really it didn't hurt her any because she was ahead going into K. And the things we did moved her farther along.
Well, as you see, everyone here has an opinion, lol! The first thing you should do is read through them all and decide which fit most in how you feel about children! I'm also one who doesn't have a lot of structured learning that young. But I do have SOME! And I did expect work to be done. To me, work or not to work is a CHOICE. If my child CHOSES not to work now, that's fine! She can go up to her room and sit there bored (ie: not playing). And I will count that as her "free time". She can do her schoolwork "later"...and I specify exactly WHEN "later" is, like while the other kids are watching TV (and Daddy is home to help with any discipline problems, lol!). The one time my oldest pulled this, I told her she could finish up at 6:00 that evening. Suddenly I hear, "But that's the time I have soccer practice!!!" "Well then, I guess you'll have to call your soccer coach and explain exactly WHY you won't be at practice tonight...." My middle one is also one I think they'd label and try to medicate if at school. We try to deal with behaviors instead. I've seen too many that use ADHD as an excuse for bad behavior. At the same time, I've learned to adjust the amount of time spent at any one time on lessons. Break it up with fun activities. Make a chalk number line on the sidwalk, and have him do adding by jumping from number to number . Or by throwing stones into a bucket. Someone suggested learning styles. That's excellent advice! Finally, if I haven't mentioned it to you, check out the site www.HeadsUpNow.com It is specifically geared toward homeschooling the special needs (ie: ADD/ADHD) child. (If I told you that already, sorry!)
I don't have much better advice than these ladies. I will say that for my son, I have learned that taking away outside time punishes me just as much as him. So sometimes if he is acting up, I will tell him that instead of playing at the park, he will have to play in our yard. Then he still has a consequence, since our yard is not nearly as fun as the park, but he is still running around and working off his excess energy.
Do you do any kind of exercise before you begin? If not, I'd recommend starting. And I'm not talking about 5 or ten minutes of jumping jacks; I'm talking about a good half hour to an hour of constant physical activity. At my kids' gym (my kids are 4 and 5), they'll run the kids around and around in a circle then stop and do something. Then, they run and run around and stop and do something. You get the picture. Try having some serious exercise first. Then, shorten your lessons to 10-15 minutes each before having some kind of break that, again, involves some kind of physical activity (could be a craft or something). If none of that works and he's giving you a disrespectful attitude, you could always try what a friend of mine did. She cleared out her son's entire room except for the bed, night stand, lamp, and one change of clothes (underwear and PJs as well). He had to earn back his stuff one thing at a time. She was pretty amazed at how quickly his attitude turned around. Oh, and TV/game time was included in that as well.
If none of that works and he's giving you a disrespectful attitude, you could always try what a friend of mine did. She cleared out her son's entire room except for the bed, night stand, lamp, and one change of clothes (underwear and PJs as well). He had to earn back his stuff one thing at a time. She was pretty amazed at how quickly his attitude turned around. Oh, and TV/game time was included in that as well.[/QUOTE] I had to laugh, we did that to our oldest son, he was in 6th grade. For every paper he done good on, he got to pick one thing back. Two things happened, he improved and he started to realize what wants & needs were. All of his "baby" toys he donated them because he realized he didn't play with them. We call it DR. PHIL, nobody wants to be Dr. Phil in our house. :lol: Kellie
Thank you all for the advice. I was just curious what other mom's do. Especially b/c my ds acts up a whole lot more for me than his dad! We do alot of the things you all have suggested. I have read the Love and Logic series and I like Melinda Boring from Heads UP! I am not willing at this point to give up the structured learning. I feel he needs this to challenge him and help him learn to master this skill, b/c he is capable he just chooses not at this point. HOWEVER, I do NOT want to put too much pressure on so our "structured" learning lasts only about 1/2 an hour to 45 min, 3 times per week. THe rest is all unstructured. We also do alot of moving around while learning too. I also know he does better with the structured stuff if he can munch a snack while doing his work. Thanks alot for all your replies, your kids are all real lucky to have you. Also I didnt mean to make it sound like ADHD is not real. Actually my dh is a therapist with children and from his research we have concluded that it is way over diagnosed and not treated properly for the most part. It can give some parents an excuse for poor parenting or the childs poor behavior. The children quickly learn "they just cant help themselves!" My dh has given me the best advice in dealing with ds and no one knows him better than his dad, but of course I still feel the need to ask the ones who are actually DOING the teaching! =)
