Highschoolers---- do you deal with attitude almost daily?

I am getting so tired of having teens in my house! Lol but seriously I am tired of my kids thinking that the curricula is wrong, or I am wrong just because they get an answer wrong.
I can prove the work, which I do on occasion and yet they still live in denial! GRRRR

We are having a problem in Spanish SOS with es and esta.. ds constantly has put the es instead of esta, one word different fails the question so I tried teaching him by the lesson what he should use but he keeps telling me that its wrong.
I am not at his level in Spanish yet, so I am not sure of anything but what I am learning from the lesson, it is a bit frustraiting. I can imagine if he were in Private school this year like I had planned he would be in detention more often than not for arguing with the teacher Lol...
Any encouragement to me would be good, please no condemnation that my kid needs to be punished, that wont help him learn to give when he is wrong.. but anything else? sure!

Please share any frustrations you are having with your high schooling Home schoolers.

 

I feel your pain! I struggle with math, myself, and so I'm learning/relearning concepts as I'm teaching them. I feel like such a moron when I get it wrong, but that's another story. haha. Anyway, math is not his strongsuit, but he actually sees another side of it than I do, if that makes sense -- he approaches it differently I guess. So, he tries to come up with these shortcuts and/or different methods and I'll be darned if they work a lot of times. So then, I'm further confused and he wants to do it HIS way (and not show his work! ugh! I have to make him go back and show work all the time -- he makes silly mistakes when he doesn't).

No advice, but yes, I feel your pain. It's had to get him to see math the way the text is presenting it and I'm not strong enough in my math skills to teach other methods (or tell him that it's okay to do it "his" way) than the one actually in the text.

Khan Academy has saved me a couple times! The teacher there got the lesson across much better than I did on a few concepts we've studied.

 

No advice here, either. My teens are just fine; it's the pre-teen I'm having this same difficulty with!!!

Kelly, that's exactly how Faythe is with math, too! She has her own way of doing things that make perfectly good sense to her, and she hates to write down all the steps. Like one time she had some really big numbers to divide. When I looked at it, the problem in the book was totally different from what she wrote on the paper. That's because she didn't want to work with "big" numbers, so she divided both of them by three or something, which gave her two smaller numbers to work with....

 

Math is easy part, though ds does math the same way that your kids are doing it. I am wondering if this is a male thing Jackie your pre teen is Philip?

 

ABSOLUTELY!!! I've no doubt that that is exactly what the problem is. Carl and I have been discussing how to handle the situation....

 

Jackie, my 11yo ds does math that exact same way! He HATES "working" the problems on paper...he tries to do it in his head. AGH! That is so frustrating because he sometimes gets the problems wrong because he refuses to work the math problems out on paper.

Sometimes my son and I buck heads about an answer to a question. He thinks about things differently...so his answers make sense to him. And he gets upset when I (gently) try and explain to him why his answer is incorrect. Ah, the joys of homeschooling!

I am pretty lenient about the method my son uses on a math problem. I realize that there is usually more than one way to reach the correct answer for a math problem. As long as he gets the correct answer (and understands the concept being taught) I let him figure out the problems in the way that is best/easiest for him.

 

As far as Spanish, do you have to mark the problem completely wrong? We're doing Spanish here and I often give partial credit. If everything else is right, but she used es instead of esta, I would give my dd partial credit. We use Rosetta Stone. When she is doing the workbook, I don't use that as part of her grade. The workbook is for learning. So, if she gets something wrong I just explain why it's wrong. Maybe that would help your son not object to being corrected. Even for the quizzes and tests I give partial credit though.

 

This is pretty much exactly what happens between J and I. lol. I think we have pretty much proved this is a male issue!! lol

He gets uber-frustrated and says "I don't understand what I did wrong!". and then I have to gently try to show him how sloppily "showing" his work or not showing his work at all led to the demise of the problem. No matter how many times I say, "If you had worked the problem out step by step rather than rushing through it...", we still find ourselves in the same boat, lesson after lesson.

 

And then, when I explain, I hear "But they didn't SAY that! If that's what they wanted, why didn't they just SAY SO? It's WRONG the way they say it! How am I suppose to know what they want?"

 

having three 15 yr olds attitude is a given, every single day! Jackie I had that same exact conversation today with all 5 of the children, three of which were working on math at the time.

 

No and I do not, I just mark off so many points for one word. But he keeps doing the same mistake and I think I have it figured out its in the pronouncing of the word. DD came in and explained it too him before I could get that far.
but it gets tiring ....kwim?

 

Yes, I sure do!!! :roll:

 

I have *DD*s who are the same way about math...

One is good in math, nearly finished with Algebra in 7th grade. She comes up with crazy ways to solve problems that I don't understand (I'm not good in math) so I make her ask DH (math loving engineer) when he gets home and after awhile he'll say..."Ahh, I see what you're doing." Sometimes it's a "harder" way, but she understands it. She also does alot of work in her head and doesn't write out her work so when she misses it, I don't know where to help her fix it.

She never blames the book for being wrong or argues with me about her answer though. My 9th grade *DD* does that...and that's a whole 'nother story. :roll:

So, I feel your pain and it's not just boys...

 

Wow.. We deal with teenage attitude on a daily basis too. My boys ages 14 and 15 are going to be the end of me! We started school yesterday at 9 and they were JUST finishing up by 9 last night!! They think I'm going to give in and let the get away with not doing their work. WRONG!! Dad came home and I was boiling.. The kids are still sitting at the table so he calmly walks over and sits down at the table with them and sat there until they finished.. REDICULOUS!!! Hope today is better. They are just now rolling out of bed so we shall see..

 

I would use the internet to check out the differences between the verbs ser and estar.

It is frustating because we just use one verb "to be" and they have two seperate verbs.

 

thanks cabsmom I was sitting with teh translator opened up today and it realy made Spanish go much easier!

 

We had the same issue last year with the 13 year old male...he would argue...even if I could show him the solution...and the the answer key to boot. And he wants to work everything in his head. Well, it got a bit tense last year...until he realized all of the adults were on the same page with the school rules. As far as wanting to work everything in his head, I discussed it with my son-in-law(who is a math teacher) and he said the problem with that is making mistakes, especially the farther in math you go. So I told 13 year old...this is what Uncle *** said....I noticed today he was doing his work on a wipeoff marker board. lol

 

For me, it's a matter of wanting to see how they got that answer. Did they just make a computation error, or do they really not understand? And, if it's not written down, I have no idea and they really can't tell me. Plus I try to tell them that right now it's easy and you can do it in your head, but it DOES get harder and you need to get in the habit of writing it all down.

 

We have had this problem with almost every kid (but more boys than girls) with whom we've used Saxon math - especially on the tests which have at the top of each page in BOLD CAPS: SHOW YOUR WORK! If I'm not using Saxon math, we're using CLE workbooks, where there doesn't seem to be as much of a problem with showing the work... (???)

 

Phillip finished TT Math 6 with about a 90%, which I'm sure not going to complain about. But with TT7, his daily scores have dropped to around 70-75%. That is NOT OK with me!!! I'm not sure why. I don't think it's because the work has gotten that much harder. I'm considering telling him that I want EVERY problem done on paper and shown to me, and he has two weeks to bring his grade up. Otherwise, it's back to Saxon with me!!! But I want to sit down and talk it over with Carl first....