{"id":2117,"date":"2015-01-14T20:24:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T01:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/?p=2117"},"modified":"2015-01-14T20:24:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T01:24:10","slug":"wfmw-staying-motivated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wfmw-staying-motivated\/","title":{"rendered":"WFMW: Staying Motivated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Motivation has been one of our toughest hurdles since we’ve started homeschooling. \u00a0One student flies through his work so fast he hardly takes time to think. \u00a0The other can spend so much time thinking he forgets to do his work. \u00a0The problem is, the thinking isn’t even always about his school work. \u00a0Putting punctuation into a sentence about Henry Ford sparks an instant need to dialogue about Henry Ford and the fact that he didn’t actually invent the automobile. \u00a0He just improved it so much that it became readily affordable and dependable.<\/p>\n

There was the garden variety messing around and the kind that looks for all the world like you’re concentrating on a problem when you’re actually not even thinking about school at all. \u00a0This might be harder to identify if the person overseeing hadn’t been notoriously adept at every trick of the trade when it came to messing around in middle school. \u00a0But by far the biggest problem was the need to talk about the subject referred to in a book or something a sentence reminded him of that now needed to be discussed immediately. \u00a0For some Mom’s with a different style of homeschooling, this could actually be a good thing instead of a problem. \u00a0It all depends on your educational style and what goals you are trying to reach. \u00a0At our house, we have very little trouble with discussions and conversations. \u00a0We are trying to improve on the ability to be assigned a task and do it quickly and efficiently. \u00a0Also, because we may choose to re-enroll the boys in school if we move back to Virginia, we try to keep school similar to the structure of school, just a bit less rigid. \u00a0We also try to parent in a way that makes sense for the rest of their life, i.e. , what\u00a0kind of work ethic are they developing and is this going to be a detrimental or helpful pattern of behavior in a job?<\/p>\n

\"homeschool<\/a><\/p>\n

I tried many things. \u00a0I set timers. \u00a0I gave frequent reminders pleasantly and in an I-mean-business voice. I asked many homeschool moms and school moms alike for advice. \u00a0I tried many more things. \u00a0There were rewards and consequences. But nothing worked for more than a few days. \u00a0The truth is, it was still me who was doing the motivating. \u00a0This was really nothing more than a very bad habit. \u00a0They say if you can build a new habit for two weeks, you’ll own it.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure we’re completely owning it, but we’re a lot closer than we were.<\/p>\n

\"homeschool<\/a><\/p>\n

One fabulous day in September I was talking to a former teacher and explained my dilemma. \u00a0She smiled immediately and then offered the wisest suggestion I’ve heard so far.<\/p>\n

When she had a classroom of kids who couldn’t stop talking and constantly thought of interesting things in the middle of a lesson, she gave them a piece of paper and told them to write down what they wanted to talk about and save it for later.<\/p>\n

It worked perfectly. \u00a0For one thing, the act of needing to write it down made him think about whether it was actually something worth talking about. \u00a0Most of the time, writing was more of a chore than the joy of talking about something inconsequential. \u00a0I wasn’t feeling like I was constantly shutting him down. \u00a0He could converse about things that interested him, just at a different time. \u00a0And finally, he was working at self-motivating. \u00a0Usually, all it took was one question with the first random conversation at the beginning of the day. \u00a0“Is that something you want to write on your paper?”<\/p>\n

And that was it. \u00a0He is motivated not to talk, because he is motivated not to write a long list of conversation pieces mostly contrived to avoid the task at hand.<\/p>\n

Our days are much more peaceful with plenty of time for the interesting conversations that are<\/em> relevant.<\/p>\n

If only it wouldn’t have taken us years to find such a simple solution. \u00a0But kids are all different. \u00a0Sometimes you’re lucky and the first thing you try works. Other times, you have to try nearly every conceivable thing until you find the right method. \u00a0Maybe that process is teaching them just as much as the lesson being learned. Anything worth learning is worth working at until you do learn it.<\/p>\n

\"homeschool<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0“It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.” \u00a0\u2013Ann Landers<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Motivation has been one of our toughest hurdles since we’ve started homeschooling. \u00a0One student flies through his work so fast he hardly takes time to think. \u00a0The other can spend… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,21],"tags":[32,51],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeschool","category-works-for-me-wednesday","tag-encouraging-motivation","tag-homeschool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-y9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2122,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions\/2122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}