We have been schooling now just over a month. My daughter has been told every Monday for the last several weeks to get on my computer to see her assignments and what is expected from her for the week. I use homeschool tracker to help record and keep track of our school records.
Anyway, this last week I decided NOT to say something to her on Monday. I decided to just let it be and see what happens. Well, nothing! Nothing happened. She did nothing in terms of school work and on Thursday night I think a light bulb went on because I got asked: "Mom are we going to do school at all this week?"
It was at that moment I told her that because of her age 16, going on 17, I expected her to be self-motivated. I expected her to just get on the computer and look for what the assignments are and expected her to just do them, without me having to say "Hey, do some school work".
She apologized for not doing that but must have decided on Friday not to do any work for the whole week, because she didn't do anything on Friday either! :sigh: So, it didn't go exactly as I had hoped. However, what was learned is that she now knows I expect her to be a bit self-aware and to look at what her assignments are and to handle them. I told her post-high school you are not going to have people telling you what to do. Or even teachers in college, if she goes to college, telling her daily or weekly to do these things. They are going to tell you once at the beginning of the year where to find your assignments, due dates, and will expect you to regularly, on your own, to check in and look. They are not going to tell you to do it, or hand them out daily, or anything like that.
Yes, no school work was done, but I learned that she is continuous of it. Yes, she didn't speak up until the end of the week, but because she did speak up that means she had been thinking about it. I do wish she would have said something sooner and I do wish she would have done some work on Friday.
Did I expect her to make up the whole week for work in one day? No, of course not but I do wish she would have done some; I'm sure she didn't because she went the rest of the week without doing it. I mean I know if I had Monday-Thursday off of work I wouldn't want to go to work on Friday, just to turn around and have the weekend off again. I would just go ahead and planned on Friday off too. I think anyone would have done the same.
So, now that she clearly knows what my expectations are I suspect this coming week will go better and school work will actually be done. So here's hoping for a better week and my daughter doing things because she should, not because she's been told to do them. If we go another week with the same, then clearly I will have to rethink my strategy. Have you just done something, or not do something, to see how your children would react? Did you get the reaction you expected? How did it go?
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