Attitude

I'm sure I've discussed this before and I'll try again without sounding like my child is the spawn of hell...

My daughter has a sunny disposition. She loves to create, draw, read, do science experiments and inventing, play piano, play video games, do outdoor things, spend time with family.

However, we're at the stage of life (ie: 11 1/2 yrs old) where more complaining is involved. I thought my teen was awful. Now I consider those years with her saintly compared to this child.

If school is 'fun' and full of delight led learning, videos, drawing, interactive fun things, creating scientific things and such, mostly of her own choosing and inventing, life is good. When I want her to do textbook math, do her Latin workbook, do something that isn't what she wants to do I hear various things:
"I don't want to do that" whine whine whine.
"I'm not going to do that." followed by my stern, 'you will, and now.'
"that's stupid, or dumb".
Screaming happens sometimes, big fights ensue. I ground, add extra chores and did on one occasion add soap to a mouth (not something I want to do again.)

If she does some work. I go over it, compliment her on many things she did right and might point out something she needs to finish or correct.
"yeah, I'm stupid" or 'I'm a loser." (Loser is a new one because she heard me have a talk with the teen about that word. It may be common for teens to say these days but I don't like it.") When she is handing in her work, she, in her mind thinks she is done. Having to go back and work on something, kills her.

I am at a loss on how to cut out the attitude and anger in this child. We talk about what God would have us say, what is best, etc... but it doesn't seem to faze her. When she says she won't do something of course I nip that in the bud with a counter answer 'yes you will.'

I don't know how to explain how this all puts a damper on my heart. I've been praying and praying for direction for our family. How to help with the attitudes and anger I hear coming from this normally sweet child. I'm at a loss at the moment. We have punished, counted (1-2-3 Magic), rewarded for good behavior, memorized verses that should help. Nothing is working. We have a stubborn, growing up girl who is pushing boundaries. I might not survive this one. :roll::shock::lol:

Contrary to how some people teach, I can not have all our schooling be delight led. Sometimes you have to buckle down and learn percents, or exponents, or Latin. It can't 'all' be fun and games and if someone knows how I can make it that way, holler.

Any help would be appreciated. I've ordered a devotional book for her to start reading, but I need some guidance. Any ideas??

 

I feel for you! I do not have girls but I do have boys that are at hard stages as well 15 and 9. I like you get discouraged when trying to educate. I try to do fun things as well but some things just have to be learned without being so much "fun". I took have thought hard about next year and have decided that we are adding more bible studies and character building exercises to our daily work. If we do not hit some other core every day, that is ok as long as our attitude about life is getting better!

Hang in there, hopefully she will even out soon!:wink:

 

Yep, you're not alone. My dd 11 1/2 yo also. Puberty rears it's ugly head!!!!!!
Common, to her bad attitude lately, when doing CPR (Compliment, Positive correction, & Respond to attempt to correct) her response is "You act like you don't want be my mom (dad, sister) anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Where this off the wall comment comes from boggles us.

I have & will still explain to her that how her body & mind are going thru puberty & how hormones cause her to feel all of these crazy ways. The Lord has designed our bodies to go thru these changes & we don't have a choice in the matter. However we do a have a choice as to how we conduct ourselves.

After all of the explaining, I make sure that she understands that while I understand what is going on with her, I do not approve of the way she handles herself while in puberty stages. I give her other examples of how she did not appreciate the way a friend or sister conducted their behavior or choice of words or bad attiude & explain to her that that is what I am seeing in her. That unexceptable behavior. Those are words I use often during these dramatic times, unexceptable behavior.
Puberty is not a 'get out of jail free card' even tho I understand why she is having ill feelings & dislikes much of her studies.

She is my reluctant one to do school work, no matter how fun all the other assignments have been, she TRIES to balk on me when her grammar assignment doesn't revolve around fun. As I comply with her feelings I do not comply with a bad attitude. EVERYTHING in life cannot be fun although your atitude while doing something not directed towards fun can determine between a good day or bad.

While I want my kids to be kids as long as possible, I want to equip them with what it takes to be well rounded adults. Part of those life lessons are that everything cannot be fun; however, attitude is everything in an unpleasant situation.
It takes lots of this sorta talk to get her back on track (b/c puberty is still active daily & ever-changing in her body & hormones) for such a short while but it is worth it. It truly pulls on her heart strings to think that I understand that she is going thru such emotional & physical changes.

Of course all of these conversations are conducted privately & on a 'conversation' level, not on a 'lesson' in health or what-have-you.
Hope this helps. Oh yeah, maybe try having her rea or reading with her the 'Chicken soup' books. 'For the pre-teens (or teens) soul'. This is real life situations that may help her to not feel alone.
Blessings!

 

I don't know what to advise because I am going through the same thing.

I make my son correct his math, unless he gets 80% right. This kills him. I keep hoping that he will see that if he takes more time and effort the first time, he won't have to do the correcting. I also want him to ask questions while doing it and LOOK stuff up instead of guessing, because I think that is a lot of the problem. The other thing that is really getting to me is that he won't write the problems down, even though I have asked over and over again.

Today, his attitude is so bad that I have already given him sentences to write. Right now he is probably sleeping, which is NOT what he should be doing. I told him that I am fine with him NOT doing his work today, BUT that means we have school on Saturday. It gets so bad that he gets mad at me and I can ask him to hand me something and he refuses (today). I even told him he was acting like a 5 year old (which he was).

Sometimes I want to send him to public school, but that would be an all around mess-peer pressure, being "behind" (in their minds), him feeling like he is stupid, and too much homework. The only other thing I have thought of is joining a co-op next year where they can go to classes for certain subjects once or twice a week and they give them assignments to finish the rest of the week. This would let me be his helper instead of the one who is the taskmaster. This is not cheap and he would hate it, but...

 

I have an 11 year old boy and I see the teen type attitude also. I figured out his main objective is to be grown-up/feel grown-up.

For school that translates into letting him do some of the things I would normally do. Instead of saying we need to do this today, I give him his lessons for the whole week. Instead of me teaching him to do things, he would prefer to have me only teach him what he can't figure out. So before he would get mad at me and we would get nothing done. Now he talks about what he has learned to me and we discuss it. This has opened him up to learning things on his own. He just taught his brother and himself the presidents and their information. It sure would help me if they would do the states too but they turned their noses up at that idea.

I also just started letting him check his own work in one subject. He must use a red pen and then redo his work and check again. (that idea came from the CLE LA workbook) He is really excited about this.

I have two other ideas I am trying to figure out how they might help me. One is have him teach me and his brother something one day. He loves to teach me stuff. The second is I want to get him a teachers book in some subject (I have not figured out which yet, but not grammar or math) because who doesn't want to see the mysterious teachers book!

I would have adored learning through unit studies in school. Mine can not stand it! We still get to discuss it just after the lesson now.

This is sure an interesting adventure!
Cally

 

In my former life (LOL), I taught middle and high school. IMHO, girls are worse in middle school, and boys are worse in high school. I found that when a child was determined not to cooperate with me, it usually meant something entirely different was bothering them. My class had nothing to do with it, but it was the only environment they felt they could have a little bit of control. It's easier for me to see that through the eyes of an outsider than I would be to find it in my own kids.

It might work, and it might not, but next time the attitude pops up, close the books, sit calmly with her, and say, "What's REALLY bothering you? Books can't be stupid or smart, because they're just books. You must be upset about something else."

I also agree with Cally. Sometimes kids just want to assert their independence. Giving a little more responsibility for getting the work done and self-correcting might be the issue. Don't turn complete control of education over to the child, but say, "This needs to be done. I don't care when you do it, but I want to see it finished by (day or time)." That leaves the choice up to the child about what they would rather be doing.

I wish I had some mom advice for you, but my kids aren't teens yet. This is just the teacher in me talking. (Hopefully I'll remember all this stuff in a few years! LOL)

 

Whining is part of life. We all do it. I'm sure there have even been a few posts on this forum of adults whining.

Still that doesn't make it okay to do or at least continually do. It impacts on those around us.

Energy drain. I tried this yesterday. My little guy was whining and whining and whining about some things. I just calmly told him that the whining was draining my energy and I would need his help with some chores later. I don't think he has whined today. Either way, I sure don't mind some extra help with chores. Maybe I should ask them to whine. I guess that way I could be sure they wouldn't.

 

My kids were wonderful whiners. So I slowly introduced the flush method. We would walk to the bathroom and throw the stinky attitudes in the bowl and flush. Then we were expected to leave the washroom with a good attitude. If this method failed which usually it didn't because it made them laugh, I would simply say I wasn't listening to whining today and if they wanted me to hear them they should use a polite tone of voice. We still have days but it has been drastically reduced over the past few months.