Gretchen Ronnevik

Ideas on Hard Work and How You Can’t "Make Them Learn"

homeschooling

As funny as I find it, people seem to think of me as an experienced homeschooler.  They must because they ask my advice all the time, especially this time of year, when people are starting to make plans and decisions for this fall.  I still consider myself a newbie because I’m still figuring out the level my oldest is at.  However, I have read a bunch, and have some experience with the early education age.  That is the stage I have now done repetitively.  I write this because I have friends who have talked to me about a dilemma in their homeschool.  More friends than I can count on my hands, in fact.

The issue I find parents running into when starting to homeschool is how to approach the issue of teaching your kid to push through, work hard, and just learn it.  Very often in these conversations, one parent (very often the dad, but not always) wants the kids to just push through and learn the material.  They assume that obviously an issue of effort, if something isn’t going right.  I say it’s often the dad pushing the hard work, and I think there’s a reason for this.  I know this isn’t true across the board, but I know for Knut and I, Knut is always pushing the kids.  He pushes them to adventure, explore and experiment.  I am always telling them to be careful and don’t do anything stupid.  (I push them too, and he protects them too, but it’s a matter of our first reaction and goal/mindset.)  I think kids need both kinds of parents.  They need the one telling them to push hard, and another one telling them to be cautious.  It gives them balance.  I think a lot of dads especially, can think of a defining moment in their life when hard work paid off.  When they dug deep and it made a difference.  They want that for their kids.  That’s a good thing.

So here’s the story I hear over and over.  It’s the classic story of parents who were never homeschooled, trying to homeschool their kids.  All they have ever known is conventional schooling, and at least one parent is set on making school at home look just like that, as some means of a compromise.  (I lived this story too to an extent, except Silje started out in a public school.  I find this story more common with those who are starting out from home.)  A family decides to start homeschooling.  They start in kindergarten as a trial.  After all, kindergarten can be skipped.  You can’t screw up your kid too bad in kindergarten, so it’s “safe” to experiment that year.  You buy a curriculum.  You set goals.  You have a schedule.  You want to be smart.  The goal is to prove to every nay-sayer that you actually know what you are doing.  This will be the year that all future years of homeschooling will rest.  If this year doesn’t work according to plan, then you are convinced homeschooling is not for you.

And your child resists.  He/she doesn’t even care about the curriculum, schedule, or your goals.  So the natural reaction is to push through.  Make them do it.  Get it done.  School isn’t just unicorns and ice cream, it’s about work.

I’m not mocking this idea of pushing through.  I agree with it to a large extent.  The problem often found is there is a learning curve on when to push, and when to pull back.  I’m learning a lot of it has to do with age and context, which I’ll talk about below.  If I were to list the top 3 things I wish my kids knew well, “how to work hard” would be on it.  So this goal of working hard is good.  However, the way you approach this lesson is key.  It’s so key.

So here are some things to think about as you brainstorm how to teach your child to push through and work hard.  This isn’t a guide by any means.  It’s just some things to try out or consider if this is something you struggle with.  Perfect homeschool moms need not read further.

Kids Are People…Unique People


Of course they are not autonomous.  They don’t make their own rules.  We are not raising a flock of hippies.  I am a fan of order.  But let’s first acknowledge at least that your child will have certain God-given interests and gifts. There are things that will spark their imagination and things that will ruffle their feathers.  Concentrating on what they are bad at is a bad way to teach.  Especially in early elementary, the readiness of each child for each subject will vary, and pushing is the last thing you could do.  It will destroy your child’s will to learn anything.  That doesn’t mean you ignore the things they are uninterested in, it means that you introduce them very strategically.  You don’t make it the center of your homeschool.  Make their least favorite subject the school elective.  That’s likely the role that subject will be in their life long term anyway.  It’s how you customize their education.

Attach Hard Work to Things they Love


So often, we attach hard work to things kids hate.  Hate handwriting?  Well, don’t ever be afraid of hard work.  Hate spelling?  Well, work at it.  I’ve learned this makes my kids despise the word “work” like some sort of gag reflex.  Instead, I’ve learned to attach “hard work” to things that they love.

“Wow, you really like to tinker with tools don’t you?  I’ll bet if you work hard, you could create something really fun!”

“I can tell you love reading.  You know if you work hard, I bet you could read 100 books this year.”

When you think about it, if you hating ice skating, and your parents made you take figure skating lessons, and they kept telling you to work harder and harder, you might think it’s dumber and dumber.  You may begin to enjoy it too.  But there will be days of dread, that’s for sure.  But lets say you wanted to play soccer and your parents put you in soccer.  The drills and conditioning were harder than you thought they’d be, and your coach and parents push you anyway.  You feel inspired because something you wanted to do seems out of reach and all these adults around you say that no, it’s not out of reach.  You can do it.  That’s when you learn how to work hard.

One thing I learned when trying to teach David self control is that I was consistently doing it from the standpoint of not moving.  Sit still.  Sit down.  Stop kicking.  Control yourself.  When his doctor suggested putting him in Tae Kwon Do, she specifically said, “because likely his brain needs to learn self control through the means of action or movement.”  Let me tell you, the boy loves self control now.  He can even keep still sometimes… for short periods.  It’s like a light switched in his brain.

When you think about it, one of the most tedious things in the world are working hard at things you really don’t care about.  If you were an adult, stuck in a dead end job, and everyone around you said to just work harder, you would get angrier and angrier.  However, if you were stuck in a dead end job, doing stuff you hated, and someone said, “Hey, let’s get you a job you do love.” You would probably kiss that person.

Be that person for your kids.  You will build trust, and pretty soon, when you say “It’s time for school” they will anticipate learning, not recoil from it.

Inspriation is Key


Your kids won’t always like every subject, and every project.  That’s a given.  I think that every family has that one heckling kid too, who says that every project is “stupid.”  So how do you deal with that?  Well, that’s where the beauty of homeschooling kicks in.  You have more tools in your toolbox in dealing with this, and it would be foolish to leave those tools unused.  Here are some common techniques I use to introduce school stuff to the kids that sometimes work.

  • Stop school.  I mean, just stop doing it.  But take away all screens in the house too.  Just let them get good and bored.  This may take a few days.  Create an atmosphere of learning, where every option in front of them is equally educational and inciting.  Let them rediscover that curiosity is fun.  Let them remember imagination.  After awhile, they’ll be begging you for grammar activities.  Or they’ll be up to their ears in a project that is stimulating their brains and pushing themselves further than you could imagine.  Both are pretty good outcomes.  
Because, here’s the deal.  Kids are designed to learn and strive.  Yes, they are born imperfect, but their core design is figuring stuff out and creating.  You want to see hard work?  Watch a baby learn to walk.  They know all about sore muscles, teeth pushing through, studying the use of a spoon…they are wired to learn.  They will get satisfaction from learning and working and sometimes they need pushing, but more often we just need to get out of the way.  They may not work on the things that we want them to work on, or on the subjects we prescribe.  But allow them time to develop the joy of working hard at something they love.  Give them the time to let curiosity overtake them.  Their brains come pre-primed for this.
  • Read them inspiring stories about people involved in the areas that you are trying to introduce. Make this subject “live” a bit so they see the purpose behind it.  Stories are powerful.  Never ever underestimate them.  There’s a reason Jesus used stories all the time.
  • Use the skill in front of them.  Trying to work on multiplication table?  Figure something out, out loud, about how many ounces of something you will need to buy for a certain meal.  Do a quilting project with them.  Bake some cookies.  When they see the application, the desire will start to flicker.  This means that “school time” might look like following you around in your day to day life.  Sometimes that’s exactly what a child needs to see the point in mastering a skill.
  • Bribe them with “recess”.  Make it a race.  Set timers.  Bring humor into it.  Be silly.  Lighten up.  I know you feel the pressure to homeschool with excellence but take it down a notch.  These are kids.  They love to have fun.  It’s part of their design, and the more you work with their design, the more you will accomplish.  In fact, studies show that humor brings information from the short term to the long term section of a child’s brain.  If you really want them to know it, be funny.  If you really want them to black it out, make it torturous.  It’s basic science.  
  • Feed them.  My kids will do nearly any schoolwork if there are cookies on the table.
  • Use music often.  I learned this trick from my mom.  Work is so much easier with music.  You can manage the mood of your house, either wild and energetic, or calm and meditative based off of the background noise.  This is a completely underused resource.  
  • OK, make them, but choose your battles.  I mean, make it really worth it.  Don’t be a pushover.  I’m certainly not saying let them run the show.  There are sometimes you just have to do stuff you don’t like to do.  That’s a fact of life.  You cannot avoid this step throughout childhood.  Ha…especially with some kids.  But this should not be step 1.  You will use this occasionally, but this is not the foundation of your school day.  If it is, then you have a perfect recipe for mutual misery.  Personally?  The battles I pick are for chores more than schoolwork.  There are a few reasons for that, the first being that they don’t fight me much in schoolwork anymore.  If I can push them to service, to doing the dishes well, to sweeping the floor well, reading to a younger sibling even if they don’t want to, they learn more skills and learn compassion and teamwork in the process.

Get Them on Your Team, or in other words, Be on Their Team 


You know that amazing teacher that you had in school?  The one who made an impact on you that you still carry with you?  I bet that teacher made you feel like you were a part of something bigger than yourself.  I bet that teacher brought information to you that changed you.  From what I can see, that happens with a foundation of mutual trust, and the ability to inspire.  I bet she taught with passion and a silly hat.  I bet she expected a lot from you.  I bet the standard was high.  A great teacher is not one that makes silly multiple choice question and checking off boxes primary.  Its inspiration and mutual trust.  Mutual trust is extraordinarily difficult to build in a classroom setting I imagine.  You have a bit of an advantage at home.
You can make your child do a worksheet, if that is your goal in life.  You can condition them to take tests.  But you cannot teach them without being on the same team.  You can’t make them learn.  You can make them parrot.  It’s not like straining to get off the lid to a jar and then shoving stuff in.  You can make their hands do stuff, and to say the right things.  But to think?  To explore?  To inquire?  That has to start inside your child.  Your child will excel if they own it.  If they don’t own it, it’s not education.  It’s merely entertainment.  In all reality the excellence and depth of their education will effect them more than anyone else, and the sooner they know that the better.  The power to learn anything is in their hands.  You can introduce it to them, but how far that information takes them is up to them.  
This is totally anti-school systems, where legislators believe that teachers have these magic wands they hand out in college that you can wave over students and “make them learn.”  Talk to any teacher out there, and they feel exhausted under that weight and pressure to control things that are not within their control.  They get annoyed when the whole responsibility to excel lies with them, and no responsibility lies with the child.  They understand it’s a two way street.  The government thinks that if they put pressure on teachers they will get better results but I’m telling you, the teachers can only do so much.  They are humans, not wizard-like puppeteers.  (Though I have met a few who have made me question whether or not they are magical.  Some are incredible motivators.)

Excellence has to come from the child.  If you can lay a foundation for your child that they have the world at their fingertips, that they can figure anything out if they work at it enough, that it’s ultimately up to them…they will step up.  Kids love responsibility, and they love being apart of something important.  The age in which they step up to the plate will vary from child to child.  It cannot be controlled.  It can be encouraged and inspired.  Believe me, the sooner you get your child on board with owning their educational experience, the better…for both of you.  This does require giving up some control.  It will take wisdom to see or sense that the time is right, because sometimes we as parents do need to come in and take over.  But this goal should take center stage, and the sooner the better.

One of the best things you can do in the early years of homeschooling is lay that foundation of mutual  trust, and inspiration.  This is especially true if you have a strong willed child.  Working with them is so much less exhausting than working against them.  The goal during these years is to entice them on this educational journey.  These are not the push-them years.  These are the show them the possibilities years.

The Curriculum is a Tool


I’m kinda a curriculum junkie.  I love getting a fresh teacher’s manual and fresh inspiration to introduce poetry, reading, music, or science to my kids.  Curriculum is fun.  But it is essential to understand the curriculum is not the boss.  It does not rule you.  You bought it, it did not buy you.  You are not the slave.  In fact, I’ll tell you a little secret.  You can spend the whole first couple of years just on character development if you want.  You can study topics like loyalty, patience, service, courage, love, perseverance.  You know, things that can be foundational for your child’s whole life.  Can you imagine what the rest of your child’s education would look like if they had a foundation of patience and hard work and compassion?  What great tools!  You don’t have to do anything else. I know stepping away from the yoke of a curriculum feels like you are letting go of a lifeboat, but let me assure you…you can swim.  Keep the main thing the main thing.  The goal is to have your child learning something every day.  That is a super easy way to insure that your child is learning what they are ready for.  Most kids want to learn to read.  If they’re getting it, great!  They will be excited.  If it is just not clicking, take a step back from that for a month or two and study something else.  (Don’t forget to keep reading to them, though!) That way the momentum is in the spot where they are always learning something.  You don’t want to equate learning with feeling stuck and stupid in the early years.  The key to the early years is momentum.

With my son with some learning disabilities, we did a little bit of OT exercises for his reading every day so his brain would start developing in the way that was necessary.  But then we’d put it aside and he’d do a month’s worth of math in one day.  Because he loved math.  He just couldn’t get enough of it.  This route was much less fight, and he didn’t lose his learning momentum.  He’s now not only at the point where he’s reading for fun, he’s reading and I don’t even know about it.  Yesterday he was telling me about the burden on Christian’s shoulders from Pilgrim’s Progress, and how there was so much more to that story.  (Actually, it was a abridged and extraordinarily illustrated version called The Dangerous Journey. ) “Bud, when did you read The Dangerous Journey?  I read you like a chapter out loud 3 months ago, and then I decided to do a different book instead.”  I said.

“Oh, I finished it later Mom.  I just had to find out what happened. It’s a great story!” (Take note this book was 2 grade levels above where he’s at.  But he wanted to find out how it ended, and that’s the point.)

When you have a strong willed child, the most powerful thing you can do for their education is give it to them.  Introduce, inspire.  They will take it further than you could have possibly imagined.

This will REQUIRE, (and this is the hard part) it will require that you limit “twaddle.”  In those early years it’s especially important that you limit the stupid commercial cartoon books from the library, hours of television, and computer games.  I’m not saying get rid of them, I’m saying limit them.  You want to develop their tastes during this time.  Don’t feed them sugar all day.  Just like you don’t feed babies fruit baby food before the vegetables, you don’t let your kids free on twaddle, and expect them to sit down to great pieces of literature.  We got rid of all Disney books, My Little Pony books, and Star Wars books from our home bookshelves.  They’re words on paper pages, yes, but they’re not literature.    I’m not saying you should get rid of “sugar” things completely, but we have had to go through seasons of fasting from these things in order to retrain their brains to think and play, because they get so obsessed.  Right now my kids are allowed to take home 1 “twaddle” book from the library, but the rest are quality literature.  They work from a list.  When they argue with me about it, they get a fast from twaddle so they can remember there are better books out there.  If they don’t ever pick up any of the “quality” books the whole week, then they get a break from the twaddle too.  I want to teach them moderation.  A child who is fed cookies all day will resist the juicy meat.  Put your kids in a position where everything in front of them is delightfully educational.  It’s all about the home environment, and what you make available.

It doesn’t have to be a lot. We want them learning deeply, and learning things that matter.  We don’t want them just doing stuff everyday, we want them learning stuff everyday.  If your curriculum is not helping you achieve that, then skip that part.  It’s dragging you down.  Teach your kids to prioritize which things stay in your lives and which things don’t.  Set something aside for the next year, or wait a month or two.  Years can be wasted just spinning wheels.  

Teaching your child to spin wheels, and teaching them to work hard are two different things.
…the main difference being purpose and inspiration.
Don’t teach them to spin their wheels like a hamster.  Unless they need to burn off some energy, then go ahead and build them a hamster wheel.  I’ve thought of doing that several times with our long winters.  
Spinning wheels work feels like work, and it is, but it’s purposeless work.  It’s a distraction.  It’s straight out of Screwtape Letters which is a book that isn’t on homeschooling at all, but I still highly recommend.  Don’t teach your kids to have the illusion of work.  The real thing is just so much better.  
I’ve realized that we as adults, sometimes have a history of doing purposeless work in our own schooling, and we feel as though it’s a right of passage.
But maybe, and I’m just putting this thought out there: maybe if we don’t claim that it’s a right of passage, and we don’t claim this spinning wheels work as important then the only alternative is to admit that we wasted weeks, months, or even years of our life.  And that’s not a fun thing to admit.
My point is if you think children will only learn their history lesson by filling in a bunch of blanks on an educator approved worksheet, you are a bureaucrat.  But if you take the view that you will teach a child history by any means possible, even a worksheet, book, play, or movie, you are a teacher.  Don’t be a slave to the system you purchased.  It is a tool, not your ruler.  I love reading John Taylor Gatto, who was an extremely well accomplished public school teacher in New York, and one the New York and National teacher award.  He attributes all his success to these exact things: bringing the kids out of the classroom and into the real world, making the child’s interest/needs a higher priority than the curriculum/schedule, and having high standards.  He said in order to teach children, he had to basically break every rule.
Of course, swinging to the other side is dangerous too.  Doing only things your child loves, and making it all about your child desires and aspirations can yield a sense of selfishness, and entitlement.  It’s wonderful to do something menial.  Please don’t misunderstand this message.  But make it have purpose.  Have them call out numbers for Bingo at a retirement home.  Pick up leaves outside as a present to surprise Daddy.  Sweep the kitchen floor and fold laundry.  Put some love and purpose into it.  Don’t let the whole school day be about “getting stuff done.”  Because when it gets to be that, you really aren’t getting anything done at all.

I hope this helps those of you who are in the early years.  Also, since it’s that time of year when I start to get all sorts of inquiries about homeschooling, so for those who want more details on my advice for those who are in that place, here is last year’s post for those considering it.

Comments

  3. Gretchen,

    I want to Thank you for giving people information on “Home Schooling”. For parents of school age kids and ones who’s kids aren’t quite there yet, the information, from “Real Parents” who have Home Schooled and have many friend who are on the same track, the information is a hugh plus. You help parents to not be afraid of the process. I know parents who believe that because they did only average in school, somehow their not qualified to teach their own kids. That’s a bunch of whoie! I wish there had been people like you when my kids were i school. I tell everyone that they’ll be a lot happier and their kids will be happier and learn a lot more than in Public School at this point in time. I also find that most of the people I talk to, really only seem to worry about “Socialization”. With Home Schooling today. I think people are more open that they “Home School”, where when my kids were young, people didn’t want to admit that they Home Schooled. This openness gives more opportunities for
    great socialization.
    Thanks Again

    Reply

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