This is another question my friend who is new to homeschooling asked: how can you motivate your kids to get along?
Sure, we can avoid a lot of the bullying and teasing that goes on at school, but we may substitute more than enough sibling squabbling to make up for it. It can be such a problem that you feel you can’t take it anymore! (Don’t ask me how I know.) Here’s where you can take it:
Take it seriously. Sometimes our kids continue to fight physically or verbally because unlike many schools, we haven’t adopted a no tolerance policy. Let your children know that physical and verbal abuse have serious consequences in your home by promptly administering appropriate discipline.
Take it outside. A significant amount of squabbling is simply to gain your attention. Put the brawling brothers outside, in the bathroom, or anywhere uncomfortable until they work it out so both of them are satisfied.
Take it away. If a game or toy is the object of objection, remove it or the privilege of playing with it. Refuse to let your little attorneys approach the bench once you’ve made your decision.
Take it to Scripture. Remind your children of what the Bible has to say about their behavior and then ask them if they are in the right. Follow up by asking what they would have to do to make it right with their brother and with God.
Take it as training. Working on relationships with siblings is training for dealing with difficult relationships in the future. Rather than getting angry with your kids, realize that conflict resolution requires practice just like long division.
Take it to heart. Sometimes we need to listen for the heart issues involved in conflict and discuss them with our kids. Is little brother annoying you because you ignore him? Did your sister take your iPod because you hurt her feelings?
Take it for a time out. Sometimes things get so heated, that only a longer cooling off period will do. That goes for mom and dad, too!
Take it with a grain of salt. Sometimes we worry excessively about our children’s conflicts and inadvertently communicate that we don’t trust our children to grow in this area. When you see your child handle misbehavior well (for example, when a pet, a toddler, or a close friend hurts her and she doesn’t react in anger), emphasize your belief in your child’s self-control.
Take it to the Lord. God knows EXACTLY how you feel! It’s heart-breaking and exhausting to manage bickering children in addition to all our other roles. Pray for wisdom and for peace.
Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Edison have something in common besides being renowned for their genius: they all struggled in school. Their teachers thought them stupid, but most likely they were distracted by their own divergent thinking. Some of our students will also have a hard time focusing on their studies. What is a homeschool teacher to do?
Limit seat work. I don’t know how young boys survive in a traditional school setting, required to sit quietly at a desk for hours. This isn’t how God designed boys. Their brains have legs and most of them learn best by moving them. Kids who have difficulty with focus should spend more time pursuing their passions and less time in front of a workbook. Use a timer for work that must be done while seated.
Learn what they like to do. Observe what absorbs your child’s attention. Incorporate his interests into your studies. Your son likes video games? Find a library book on the subject, find educational video games, or help him learn how to create his own. Use his favorite activities as rewards for completing the less favorite.
Let them sweat it out. When my kids are having a hard time paying attention, I will have them do jumping jacks, sit ups, or push ups. Lest you think I’m a drill sergeant, you should know that my kids love doing these exercises. I recently purchased some exercise DVDs for kids that I will use for this purpose, too.
Lead them to a private place. Some children’s systems are so easily drawn in by other interesting things, that they need to be isolated for a while. Depending on how creative your child is in being distracted, you may need to sit near her until her work is done. Praise her when she is finished and admit that you also have a hard time staying focused sometimes.
Lecture no more. I can’t tell you how many times I lose my focus while listening to someone lecture. Our children are even less able to focus when there is nothing offered to capture their imaginations. Today’s homeschool teacher has so many incredible mediums for teaching: field trips, videos, audio books, music, drama, crafts, experiments, group exercises, guest teachers, cooking, board and video games, puzzles, puppets and more! The Internet makes the “I’m not creative” excuse invalid. Check out my Pinterest boards for inspiration. When you do have to lecture, stop frequently to ask questions and get kids involved.
Let it go. Strong-willed children can sense when something is overly important to us (like the language arts curriculum we just spent $200 on). They will experiment to see how we will respond if they insist they aren’t going to read that book or do their math lesson. Ever! While disobedience must be dealt with, your child won’t be harmed by taking a break from a subject or especially a curriculum. In the meantime, you may find a better solution that makes you both happy.
Listen for wisdom. Talk to homeschooling friends, other educators, and especially to the Lord about your distracted pupil. No doubt you will get a fresh perspective and will be comforted by tales of kids who couldn’t pay attention, going on to be productive citizens. Often when it comes to what our kids are doing or not doing in school, we can be like Martha, “worried about many things.” I imagine the mothers of Einstein, Newton, and Edison worried about them, too! But when our focus is right, the fear disappears.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this (Psalm 37:5)
My friend who will be homeschooling in the fall for the first time asked me this question. As that is one of the purposes of this entire site, it isn’t a question I can answer in one post. But I did have some thoughts!
Choose curriculum you love. If you love it, even if it’s not what everyone else is using, your enthusiasm for it will get you out of bed on those cold winter mornings. I plan to share curriculum that has kept me motivated, but for now, if you love what you’re using, you’re on the right track.
Be realistic in your homeschool planning. I told my friend to plan to teach about half of what she thinks she will. I made friends with another new homeschooler when she bemoaned that her 7-year-old son just wasn’t adopting her plan. I had such a good laugh with her about that. Our kids won’t adopt our plans if they aren’t based in reality. It’s not realistic to do every activity, every area of study, or every workbook page in a school year. It isn’t realistic to homeschool from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. either. I’d like to address this issue more in the future, but the best tip I can give you is to share your schedule and expectations with a veteran homeschooler (preferably one who knows you). If she laughs, you need to modify your plans.
Make it fun in the early years. One of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is not having to adopt institutional learning practices for young children. Some children love traditional workbooks, but many don’t. What my children (and I) remember most are the times we mummified brother, had a family version of the Olympics, and invited Uncle Steve over to share his slides on Africa. I look forward to sharing ideas for making learning fun in future posts.
Let children teach themselves. In recent years I have done more unschooling in the afternoons. As long as it was truly educational (Mario Kart doesn’t count), I let the kids explore their interests. As a result, the kids became origami experts and my 10-year-old shot and uploaded a video teaching kids paper crafts. I can only imagine the reaction I would have gotten had I assigned these projects! Aside from allowing your children to explore on their own, your curriculum plan should include plenty of materials that your kids can use on their own, especially once they are reading.
Take time to recharge. Being a homeschooling mother is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, but when I had many young children, it was often the most exhausting and discouraging. I wouldn’t have made it without lots of answered prayer, the listening ear of my husband, the support of other homeschooling moms, and time to regroup. I’ve mentioned previously that at various times during the last 12 years, I have had a housekeeper and a regular babysitter. Having someone thoroughly clean my house once every two weeks made the mess a little less stressful. If you can’t afford hired help, perhaps you could find a friend to clean with. You’ll make quick work of it and you’ll have fun chatting at the same time. I also hired my niece to watch the kids for a few hours one afternoon a week. I used that time to shop without babies and even to have an early date with my husband. The expense was much less than a therapy session. 🙂
Remember that the days are short. I’ve had those days of constant interruptions and sibling bickering that follow sleepless nights when I’ve wondered how I would ever make it. Now I wonder why I ever worried. I look at pictures like the one featured with this post and I gasp at the privilege I have had of teaching these beautiful children. Get out your photo albums or watch a video and you’ll see how far you’ve come. You’ll be motivated to keep teaching. God bless you as you do.
I have often made the mistake of thinking that organization was everything. It isn’t! While getting organized won’t make you a great homeschooler, it can help.
I used to hate my homeschooling space. It was cluttered, chaotic, and downright ugly. If you have many or young children, you will have to accept a certain amount of chaos. But if your space feels orderly, you and your students will, too. This summer, think about some inexpensive solutions to make a motivating space.
Get rid of anything you know you aren’t going to use. Give it away, sell it, or trash it if it’s something no one would want. I sold a curriculum book for $2 at a used sale that a woman told me she’d prayed she would be able to get inexpensively. That made purging and selling worth it to me!
Make everything that you will be using in the upcoming year visible. I know I am not the only homeschooler who forgets she owns something and buys it again! All of my bookshelves are cheap office store purchases. They’re not good quality, but they do the job. If you need more books visible to you, consider buying more bookshelves. Craigslist is a great place to look!
Put everything you will not be using this year out of sight. The fewer distractions you have, the better. I keep unused materials in storage on even less sturdy shelves organized by science, history, and other.
Separate individual kids’ materials. I use inexpensive plastic crates for this purpose that I store on bookshelves.
Create a space to store individual work for the year. I use additional plastic crates to hold files for each school year for each child. Besides being a place to record what we do to adhere to the law, it’s a great place to store memorabilia.
Create a record keeping system. I’ve tried just about everything and found that a paper system works the best for me. This year, I am combining my love for scrapbooking and junk journals with my homeschool record keeping. I created an album using Ditto products.
Create a homeschool toolkit. Homeschool teachers don’t have a desk where everything they need to do their job is at the ready. That’s why a mobile toolkit comes in really handy. Find a cute bag to organize all of your essentials. I was inspired by this blog post to create this toolkit:
Inside is my record-keeping journal (this picture was taken before I was done with it), files to hold work completed by each student in the coming year), pens, sticky flags, my label maker, flash cards, and more. The kids’ files from previous years are stored under the sofa table we bought from Craigslist.
Decorate your space. I recently overheard two school teachers talking excitedly about getting into their classrooms and getting it ready for the school year. Classroom decoration has to be functional, but it doesn’t have to be ugly. My favorite parts of my school space are my pull-down maps I purchased from ebay and the white board/cork board I bought from Craigslist.
Functional, but all the mess is INSIDE.
We purchased our table and chairs from Craigslist also, but the paint and removal of scattered posters and papers from the walls made the biggest difference. Could you put information for your students on a display board that can be put away? Or could you frame them using art or poster frames?
Pray and ask for wisdom. We know that God will always give us wisdom! Before I made over our school space, I prayed about it. When I was in the middle of the chaos, I honestly didn’t know what to do. But God answered my prayer and gave me a space that motivates me and the kids, too. May He do likewise for you.
Have I ever mentioned that I homeschool six kids? As a result, I have stuff. A lot of stuff. Not only do we have a lot of toys and games (multiply just six gifts a year times six and you’ll see my problem. Of course, they get more than six gifts each!).
I have spent years coming up with systems for keeping toys, games, and puzzles organized. I have definitely found some approaches that work. For example, storing games vertically works better than horizontally or in bins. What also works is using our old ping pong table to provide storage for suitcases and bins underneath. What isn’t working is the putting away part.
Not only do I have six kids full-time, but I have had 11 more joining us for homeschool activities on Fridays. Our super fun co-op activities require lots and lots of art supplies. Using them is fun. Putting them away isn’t.
As you can see, I’ve tried clever strategies for storing paints and underneath the bench are more art supplies.
Yet another problem with our storage area is that it isn’t just for kids. We keep our gifts, gift wrapping supplies, electronic accessories, party supplies, and seasonal decorations here, too.
In our playroom is a second closet we use for costume storage. This is another area where I need A LOT because of our co-op activities. This year we had to dress for the Revolutionary War and for Africa.
I was determined to get control of these areas while participating in my simplify101 class and to be ready for next school year. The good news is I no longer have toddlers or preschoolers. In theory, the kids should be of help. 🙂 I did enlist everyone’s help in decluttering. The approach that works best for me is to lay out a blanket on the playroom floor. Any of the kids may take items that they wish to donate to the blanket. Anything not worthy of donating goes directly to trash bags. This system works beautifully because everyone can see what is ostensibly being donated. Otherwise the older child gleefully puts all the younger’s favorite toys out for donation. Likewise any educational items would go bye-bye without my watchful eye. My husband played a crucial role in boxing up all the donated items and drove them to the charity the same day.
I haven’t shown you every part of the storage room (there are other shelves that were organized and hidden bins that were emptied), but these are the results!
The red bucket on the right is my solution for keeping this room organized. Anything that needs to be put away goes in the bucket, NOT on the table. When it’s full, it will be emptied.
My other idea was to put plastic tablecloths I already owned on the ping pong table. The paint is chipping off of it anyway and it creates a don’t-mess-me-up atmosphere that partners well with the red tub.
The biggest job with the craft and seasonal storage areas was to throw things out.
I was able to get rid of enough stuff that I could keep a bin of other costume basics that was being stored with the toys and games. As you can see, I am continuing to store outsized shoes here.
Hope I’ve inspired you to unload toys, crafts, or costumes that you don’t use, need, or love!
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
