The key to raising a happy child

Totally disagree with not pushing a child. I’m not going to let my children fail and fall behind because they don’t want to do the work. Nope. Not going to happen

Yaya, I agree with letting them fail and teaching them to pick themselves back up. I wholeheartedly agree with that.

I guess I take issue with letting your kid get behind in school because they don’t want to do the work. Maybe to a small degree, like fail a test because they didn’t study, but I can’t understand letting them be held back or not graduate because they’re being lazy? I feel like that’s where you come in as a parent and teach them that sometimes, even if you don’t want to, you have no other choice than to motivate yourself and get the work done.

You learn by failure, but you also learn by success.

I was that kid who was homeschooled and basically set my own schedule. Guess what? I didn’t get shat done because my curriculum was boring to me, and I severely struggled when I was finally placed in public school. Severely. To this day, I still find fundamentals that I don’t understand as well as the next person, which I have to go back and teach myself. I know that’s one extreme, but that is unfortunately a possible reality of letting your child just fail because they don’t want to do something. I wish I had adult guidance to put me in my place and make me do my work, because as a child I wasn’t mentally equipped to understand the extend of repercussions from my actions.

@yaya ???? that’s exactly how it should be done.

@yaya that was so wonderfully said. I agree with you

Not always. I'd rather my son fail in small ways at home and learn from them. The alternative is to bubble him until he's an adult and capable of making huge mistakes that can't be easily fixed. I don't think that would help him in the long run.

My oldest son was taking taekwondo. He didn't want to practice at home. I asked him to do it. I offered to help him. I did everything short of demanding that he practice. When it came time to take his belt test, I knew he wasn't ready. I let him test anyway, even though I knew he would fail. He did. He cried. I cried. It was one of the hardest things I've done as a parent. But he went to the next class with a focus and a fire that he didn't have before. Sometimes children need to be able to see the consequences of their choices in order for them to learn to make better ones. I don't think it's our job to always protect them from failure. However, I do think it's our job to teach them how to get back up gracefully when they fall.

The feeling is mutual yaya! ?

I don’t understand the mindset of letting my kid fail though, I’m struggling to understand this?

By all means, give them the opportunity to make the decisions but when they decide to make the wrong choices, isn’t that our job as parents to step in?

I think EK and I will just need to agree to disagree on this topic. There are several other topics where I agree with her wholeheartedly. I respect EK very much...even without a full bio.

@unagie from my understanding of the article, homework shouldn’t be as heavily enforced as it used to be or at least cause as much conflict as it does with some families. Instead of saying ‘you need to do your homework right now or you’re grounded!’ and being aggressive about it, it should be more of a ‘hey bud, if you need help with your homework let me know’. It gives control back to the child while still letting the parent have some influence over their child’s school work. Kid’s definitely strive to learn and are always looking to figure out things, this just helps them not be too stressed out about learning due to a parent looming over their shoulder basically forcing them to learn.

@EK and yaya I’m sorry I didn’t mean to turn this into a debate! I just wanted someone else’s perspective since this article is mainly focused on children who attend school as opposed to those that are home school ?

So what happens when a child is unmotivated and fights you on doing their schoolwork? Do you sit back and watch them fail?

Hence the reason I added another comment to clarify additional experiences that have shaped my opinion. I forgot that unless you include a full bio in each comment or post on here someone will pick you apart. ?

For those who are seemingly understanding this better then I seem to be. I have obviously not been in a public school setting in quite some time but homework was a big part of my grade. In some classes if homework was not done and graded well then I failed. So if I read this article correctly if my child does not want to do homework then I should not push back and have her do it because I am telling her to. Resulting in her receiving a 0 for that assignment. What if she continues to not want to do it no matter how much I "consult" her. Do I just let her flunk?

You specifically said that your opinion was based on children that returned to public school. My comment was directed at that statement.

I should also mention that I have served in the capacity of a homeschool consultant/liaison for my district working closely with 40-50 homeschool families per year, most of which do not return to public school. My opinion is based on those experiences as well. I have no doubt that it can be done well. I’ve seen it. On the other hand I’ve seen it not done well or not done at all. My experience and my viewpoint is obviously different than yours, but I do not feel my opinions, examples, etc are an unfair characterization or are wrong. Your experiences and your community give you a different view, and that’s great. No one’s reality is incorrect.

Ocean, maybe I can offer a homeschool perspective. In all things I am my children's guide. They know from a young age that their education is for their benefit. It is not forced upon them. We have a set curriculum for certain subjects and not for others. Some days they push back, but that is not the norm. They enjoy learning and like the challenge of mastering a difficult concept. It's one of the reasons that many Ivy League universities are actively recruiting homeschoolers.

@EK I can definitely see your point there. Now that I’m really thinking about it wouldn’t this kind of fall into the same philosophy as ‘unschool-ing’ for homeschooling children? Whereby you’re not forcing your child to a set schedule, from my understanding, but you would still need to encourage/offer support for them to do certain lessons during the day? I just feel like that would be a tough role to play since, like you said, you have to wear multiple hats. You have to enforce them to do the assigned work but also be lax to a degree to encourage learning. That just seems like such a delicate balance between the two. ?

I think I’m going to send this article to my friend as well and get her opinion on it since she does the homeschool ‘unschool’ing thing.

Homeschooling done well is the rule. You are using an unfair example. Children who return back to public school are a small subset of the whole.

Hmm, interesting question. I think it’s different for homeschool, obviously. Children who attend school are held to certain work standards and expectations for 7+ hours a day. At home it’s different for most kids. So there wouldn’t be homework, per se. I can see that part of the struggle not existing. As far as the academics, I would be hesitant to encourage people to take a more relaxed attitude as is discussed in the article. As a homeschool parent, you have to wear two hats — one as parent & another as educator. I don’t think an educator should have that attitude while teaching.

I will admit, my opinions on homeschooling are very biased. I am professionally trained and find it difficult to have faith that most parents will do an adequate job educating their child. In my experience most children who return to school after being homeschooled are sooooo far behind their peers academically. Additionally, they aren’t well versed in a plethora of subjects/topics of their interest. I know homeschooling can be done well, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Just my opinion based on years of experience working with students who return to a traditional school setting after being homeschooled.

Not sure if I really answered your question??

@EK do you think this same logic can be applied to children who are homeschooled? Genuine question and I have never been homeschooled and have yet to home school my baby.

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Interesting read. Falls in line with my philosophy of education and my own practice in the classroom. I often tell parents that I do not want the (very little) homework I assign to become a huge issue at home. I prefer that it get done but if it’s a battle or the child is having difficulty with it, then it’s okay to call it quits. I also emphasize the “Behaviors that Support Learning” section of our report card over the academic scores. Unless I’m seriously concerned about a student’s abilities (meaning I think they may have a learning disability or are so far behind that intervention is required), then the learning behaviors are most important to me. Despite the enormous pressure on kids, teachers, and parents the fact of the matter is that the majority of our kids are going to be just fine. And furthermore if the parents are so involved to begin with, then their kids automatically have a huge leg up over lots of other kids who don’t have involved parents. Anyways, I think I’m rambling... must be the wine ?

This is what dh and I have learned from peaceful parenting.

Was a very good read. Made sense to me in my experince from growing up and being in school.

Im locking this into my brain for when autumn is older

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/14/584275859/the-key-to-raising-a-happy-child