Most homeschoolers encounter resistance at one time or another. The fact is that we all resist work. At this very moment, I am happily typing away at my laptop and watching TV when there is a sink full of dishes I should be doing. Work is defined as: “1. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil. 2. something on which exertion or labor is expended; a task or undertaking: 3. productive or operative activity.” (from dictionary.com)
Labor, toil, exertion.
Not fun.
BUT……Producing or accomplishing something IS fun.
Convincing my child to accomplish something is my mission.
I do not complete my mission every day. One reason is that my son resists. Resistance can be overcome with a little bit of creativity (which is also work).
My child stands in the way of me accomplishing my mission. I want to “finish school” every day. He absolutely does not care if we finish school. He lives in the moment. He wants to play, he most certainly does not want to toil or labor or exert any energy being “productive”.
Over the years I have handled resistance in a variety of ways. I asked my grown daughters what they remember I did when they resisted “doing school”. (One thing we giggle about is how the girls’ friends at college laugh when they say they “do school” while the other kids “go to school”, but I digress).
My oldest immediately answered, “You didn’t let me eat until I finished the lesson, “no math no lunch.” My youngest said “Yeah, she still does that.” She then said, “You bribed me”. Yes, I still do that, but I call it “creative motivation”, as in “finish your math and we can go skating”. For example, my son does several speeches for tournaments. I consider this “extra curricular”, but he has no choice. As his teacher I’ve decided this is part of his education and I believe it is using the gifts the Lord has given him. However, it is a lot of work, so I pay him. It helps him to justify the work. I know someday he’ll see the value, but for now, it gives him a way to earn money doing something that requires skill. Bribery or productive employment, you decide.
Back to overcoming resistance. My other daughter said I overcame her resistance with two words “threats and guilt”. I’ve screamed and cried. Once, I opened the front door, pointed at the elementary school across the street and told my kindergartener to go ahead over there. (she sat on the front porch in her pj’s for an hour until grandma came over with goodies). Another time I wrote a letter and left it on the fridge telling my twins that they could take the rest of the year off and that in September they’d be going to school. I then took care of the baby and totally didn’t mention school. By the next day they were back on track and worked hard, begging me to please let them still be homeschooled.
Now that the air is clear, I’ll give you a better idea. The BEST way to overcome resistance is to make the work FUN. The way you do that is figure out what your kid’s passion is. Pay attention to what they always want to do that isn’t total laziness. Laying around watching tv or playing video games doesn’t count.
I heard about “flow” and this is what I found at Wikipedia: “Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate experience in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning… Buzz terms for this or similar mental states include: to be in the moment, present, in the zone, on a roll, wired in, in the groove, on fire, in tune, centered, or singularly focused. “(Citations of Csíkszentmihályi's 1990 book about flow on Google Scholar.)
I can’t say how many “flow” hours we’ve logged. But I have discovered that we get way more done when I go with my son’s flow as opposed to following my LIST (as in what I wish / dream we could do each day). To figure out what motivates my son and what his passion is, I have to observe when he is in the flow. Then once you know what your student’s passion is, you tailor his or her schoolwork to include that thing in every way you can.
There was a time I was particularly frustrated. No matter what I did I could not capture my son’s attention. He wasn’t disobedient, but he was completely uninterested. I was at the end of my rope. I was sick of forcing my baby to work. I was tired of trying to be a cheer leader. I was tired of dragging a heavy rock through the sand.
He loves animals so the next morning I woke him up by whispering in his ear “we’re going to the zoo today”. He jumped out of bed, got dressed, did chores and ate breakfast at top speed. At the zoo he was a different kid. He willingly read. He actually READ the signs. He was focused. He was interested. He made fascinating conversation. He was calm and enjoyable to talk to. We had an amazing day. Gone was the hyperactive Tasmanian devil tornado that I had been trying to tie down. I was amazed at how different he was.
I discovered that if I interspersed “zoo days” in our schooling, he learned everything better. He would concentrate and work diligently for 2 solid hours if he knew that we would be doing “science and lunch at the zoo” at 11:00 am.
When my oldest had to write term papers, she chose topics that all had to do with embryos and stem cells and DNA. She loved reading all about this stuff and was “in the flow” with her papers and projects. The twins learned literature effortlessly when it included Shakespeare and Jane Austin.
Knowing what your kids love makes it much easier to overcome their resistance. That doesn’t mean that we skip the stuff that they are not interested in, it means we creatively stick the “flow subjects” in between the drudgery. We study them and let go of our lists to work more “in the flow” time into their school days.
This takes a tremendous effort on the homeschooling parents’ part and it doesn’t always fit into a ‘scope and sequence”. It may mean you don’t finish a perfectly good curriculum. My three daughters were science majors in college. Two of them are in grad school for science related fields and the third will start in September. They have won every science fair they ever entered. We NEVER finished an elementary science curriculum. Not even once in 20 years of homeschooling. The four kids LOVE science so that means I let them go off on rabbit trails. They did projects and speeches and field trips and reading all about science. We simply would not have had time for that if I had insisted on finishing the science curriculum. In high school we did finish the curriculums; actually they breezed through since they were re-doing experiments and dissections we did in elementary grades! (By the way they got near perfect ACT scores and A’s in college).
I know of other families with avid readers and their literature consisted of letting the kids read as much as they could! I’ve had to do some crazy things to provide this “flow” time, it has stretched me. I’ve : directed Shakespearian plays (after never read it before), dissected a herd of small animals (I was a math major), sewed 30 ballet bodices at once (learned by doing in exchange for the high priced tutus they needed), helped my husband shampoo carpets and buff floors to barter for lessons, spent umpteenmillion hours at zoos and pet stores, read sappy English novels, hired a herpetologist to give us snake handling lessons, endured explicit medical explanations (yuk) when my daughter was in nursing training in high school, spent every last penny on traveling around for tournaments and Bible quizzes, learned how to breed and keep a colony of meal worms, and I have to endure the ridicule and shock from my friends every time we add a new reptile to our home collection (13 and counting).
This is what parenting is all about, isn’t it?
So don’t punish your resistant students and reluctant learners, study them! Don’t push them, draw them in. If it means a year of lego essays, so be it. Find their passion and entice them with it. Teach them the skill of “flow” and train them to work by making more of the work PLAY!
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