My 15 yr old has no interest in anything but video games and such. I don't get this. No matter what opportunity he is given, he just wants self gratification. I will say that he was public schooled mostly until recently. From my experience, this tends to be common with public schoolers, but I don't see it so much with homeschoolers. (of course, there are enthused public schoolers and apathetic homeschoolers too, I am just making a generalization). Do you think he just needs time to come around or do you think I should start pushing him to try things or do things that he might be interested in?
I thought your son was in public school now. I am confused. Just recently you posted about some assignment you didn't think was graded fairly or something like that. So you did pull him out since then?
Oh ok. If it were me and my child I would push for involvement in something, anything really, that is positive. I just wouldn't allow all the video game playing. I have the opposite issue here. My daughter is so involved she doesn't get much down time but on weekends. She loves it but sometimes i would love to just let her sleep in. Anyway yes I would get him invovled in something - lessons in something he likes, a sport, youth group, whatever and wherever his interests lie.
Video games are put to a limit, big time. Since we are using a private school homestudy program, it has helped keep things more disciplined. There is a specific expectation of certain work to be completed within a certain time. For the video games, he doesn't just like playing them, he also likes programming them. It still is recreational. But now his laptop is in the kitchen as he does need it for school (Rosetta Stone). He will only be allowed to take it back to his room for computer games and such until he is ahead on the school work. So right now, there are no computer games playing or programming allowed. I did tell him if he gets ahead in school, I will allow him 2 hrs a day when he is ahead.
It could be because of public school or it could be because of his personality. I have two children and their personalities are totally different. If both of my children had the same task as in getting the mail, my daugher would run to the mailbox and be back in a few minutes. My son, on the other hand, would stroll to the mailbox and be back in 15 minutes. My daughter loved learning and is a real go-getter and needs to be always busy. My 14-year-old son is very laid back and does not love learning unless it is something that interests him. He does do the school work put in front of him but not very quickly. He would even rather sit at home and play video games than go to the movies. Having children with two polar personalities, I do appreciate his laid back attitude. I want him to realize that he has to do school work, but I don't want to punish him for being slow. This is what I do. At the beginning of the year I show him that he has a certain amount of school work to do. Once it is done, he gets off for the summer. This approach has not worked yet but I am hoping one of these years it will. Also, my son has a daily schedule. This schedule does help with the whining and grumbling. It is not me arbitrarily giving him things to do. It is on the schedule. I would like to hear of any ideas you come up with to encourage your son to do school work.
I can tell you from experience it will take awhile or may not come without a fight. It took a good year and a half for us to see difference in sd's behaviour. You need to be really consistant in what you expect and do not let him slack if you do you may never see any effort or desire to do much of anything. We still struggle with sd, partially it is personality, partially the attitude from the kids she hung out with in ps, and partially an age thing. Sd does much better when we schedule things like school otherwise she would rather goof off and just hang out. I think with homeschoolers, especially those who have been homsechooled all the way through, they have learned how they best learn/study. In the ps the structure is given to them but when homeschooled you have to learn how to make your own sturcture. It is one of the most important skills people can develop but one teenagers really have a hard time picking up on if they have not learned it already.
I actually made a chart of the semesters work. Each row equals a half credit (it is high school) and each row has boxes on there. There is a box for each unit completed. This way it is very visual to what he needs to do and he can see the progress he is making and so on. On the backside of the sheet though, I also added a list of the credits he has earned already and told him how the credits from the front will be added to them when he is done. This gives him a goal and a very visual hard copy of what he needs to do and a sense of accomplishment. We have days here in May at 6 Flags and some of the water parks for homeschoolers in the spring. Our goal is to be done or almost done by then. If he is, then we will go to all those things. Oh, and I think they all want to go to the Renaissance Faire too.
You might want to give him some short term weekly goals too. I know sd has the entire year laid out but a month away still seems like a long time let alone 3 months, if I tell her something is due this week then she is more likely not to put it off. If there is something she wants to do (like go out with freinds or to an event) she has to have so much work finished before she can go.
