How to Begin to

Develop a Lifestyle of Learning 

with a Child Who's Half-way

through High School
   

You probably feel like you need your teenager on a crash course of some sort, however your approach will depend entirely upon how long you think he will remain at home. My suggestions can be applied no matter how much time you have, but the benefit to your child will be greater if he chooses to submit to a season of vocational preparation until he is truly ready to go out into the world on his own.  A "leave home at age 18 mentality" whether he is ready or not will surely lend to your stress level and not allow you to accomplish very much with him. The quality of your relationship will be the measuring rod of how far you are both willing to go with his preparation for life.

   
For instance, a happy, contented child will not be in as much of a hurry to get out there by a certain time unless he has definite direction that you both agree upon. If he does not though, he should either be willing to submit to ongoing preparation no matter how long that takes or he will end up choosing to go his own way whether or not he has strong and acceptable direction. If you are willing to allow your child what he truly needs, the down or debriefing time away from superfluous academic requirements then you will have the time to focus on the most important areas of his development. Focusing on what is really important will redeem time.
  

   
Important Training Objective:

Self-Motivation Toward All Disciplines
   
Self-motivation toward learning what he needs to learn is probably your most important training objective and should be approached immediately. This is what I began doing with Jennifer. She has always been schooled although never really instructed. She is basically behind in everything. I am concerned with developing her character, heart motivations, skill quality, etc. She also does not know what she likes to do but seems to know quite well what she does not like! - in short she possesses the condition of boredom in her soul.

   
One of the first conversations I had with her was regarding boredom, explaining what it is, what it does, and what is and is not healthy in her line of thinking and choice of activities. She did not like this. She thought I was describing a dread disease she had! I told her she was right but that it was done to her and was not her fault, but she had a choice now to learn to overcome it. I told her that boredom is a dread disease of the soul that will rob her of her life. It was nearly two months later when she finally saw the truth of what I had told her and admitted she needed discipline in her life to overcome it! 

   
Next, I simply observed her for a few weeks to see what types of activities she was motivated toward. This helped me to see what to further develop and it also showed me the voids in her life. She was not motivated to do anything and she is almost completely self-absorbed. I spoke with her about self-motivation and how we live by grace which means that we do not always adhere to a rigid routine but that we choose to do our disciplines at other odd times whenever the opportunity presents itself, and that we also choose to do more than what is required of us at times. I set up a few very basic disciplines for her life that we could build upon once she got more adjusted to her new lifestyle with us away from familiar school lifestyle disciplines.

   
Household Responsibilities

   
I found that most children in the system no matter how old they are are very much still like children unless they have had a unique parental involvement. Children need real responsibilities to develop life-skills, common sense, and maturity - something lacking in today's teenagers. I feel it necessary to get children no matter what their age to be contributing toward the daily management of the family's needs. They need to develop as much responsibility as can be handed to them. Boys should be doing some form of manual labor and working with their dads in the adult world as much as possible. The important traits of common sense, resourcefulness, concern for another's welfare, self-initiation toward life's responsibilities, etc., are a few of the qualities that make the difference between children and adults. I put Jennifer in charge of the kitchen dishes, sweeping the floor, dusting and vacuuming so that she could contribute to chore time. This does not sound like much but she could not do a good job with anything that was given her. Both Kathryn and I have had to follow her around and make her redo her work or show her how to do it right or a better way of doing something. Training in household responsibilities will help to mature her character and help to draw her out of her self-absorption and prepare her for working for someone else if the need arises. She now initiates the morning routine but still needs to learn self-motivation for the evening chores. If your child cannot initiate household responsibilities how can he manage his life away from home? Training for life begins in the home.
   

   
Basic Academic Skills
   
Next I determined Jennifer's skill level by reading a couple of letters she had written to friends (all letters get editing attention and a copy is made before they are sent out). It was easy to see at a glance that I would have to back her up to third grade skill level in her writing skills as she had been allowed to develop several bad habits all of which made it hard to read her writing. Since she had never heard anything about God before, I put her to copying the Psalms in cursive. At first she did not like the continual erasing but I regularly reminded her that handwriting was not the only thing being developed during this activity. Her character was being challenged to pay careful attention to detail for the first time in her life. She eventually enjoyed it and initiated this activity on her own. Three months along and she was initiating helping her little brother to copy the Psalms and teaching him how to memorize them as well!
I am now using the copies we made of past letters to show her how to structure her thought and break it into paragraphs. (She had never been taught this; her letters are one long paragraph with confusing, mixed-topic, sentences, yet she is fifteen and has never been set back a grade in school!?)

   
Next, I backed her up a bit in math as I determined that she had been pushed through assignments too fast and really did not know what she was doing. She, at the age of fifteen, still did not know how to arrange numbers in a column, yet she was made to do fractions and complex seven-step word problems where she had to work problems on scratch paper (in columns!) to come up with the answer. Basic skills were not learned well enough for her to be doing that kind of math! She also could not address an envelope! How do I know? Five letters she sent out the first two weeks after she was here came back undeliverable. She had made mistakes in addressing and the mistakes were not even consistent with each other. She really did not know how to address an envelope nor even understand the components of an address. We are learning that she also does not know how to listen to instructions. We have had to repeat and redo many things including projects, chores, and table-time. Is she ready to go out and support herself or run her own household? Ask these questions of your own child and you will know which disciplines on which to spend your time and energy.

   
So, the guiding rule of thumb I believe when attempting to redeem some time and equip practically for life would be to determine what immediate basic skills need to be polished up and refined before adding to them. If the child begins to enjoy improving her skill with regular household activities and basic table-time work then a desire may be growing in her heart to learn something new that springs from an interest deep within her, such as singing, writing a song, playing a piano, etc.
   

   
Reading
   
Next get the child reading as many good books as there seems to be time for. Jennifer's soul condition hindered her from embracing any reading time on her own except for the trash she had brought with her. I shared with her how would be having her read lots of good books that would educate her mind and her spirit and that I would be having her keep a record of books read. She was not thrilled. I made her read for thirty minutes a day at first. After about two months and several more "mildly intense moments of fellowship" with her she began and is still choosing today to read for larger blocks of time on a daily basis. I had told her that with the lack of proper education, correct thinking and void of truth in her life up until now, that she could not read too much at this season of her life. After three months, she has read several books now including the set of six books by Hannah Hurnard, Hind's feet on High Places. I recently just gave her the record book I wanted her to begin using to document all the books she was reading, and she received it with a joyful spirit and even a little eagerness to do the required recording. 
   

   
Personal Interests
   
In conversations I have had with Jennifer, I helped her to see her life on paper in four divisions to show her how off balance it was and in what are as I wanted her to spend her time. The four areas I discussed with her are: chores, topics of interest, productive use of topics of interest, and diversions (moments of fun or rest). The diversions category had up to that point received the most attention in her life as demonstrated by the immediate gratification she seemed to need for every activity, pre-planned event, etc. that came up and the fact that she only seemed happy at those times and overly somber and withdrawn during times of routine disciplines like chores, table-time and reading-time. I told her that while diversions were a necessary part of life they would not help her develop vocational direction, and that chores would help her to overcome laziness and teach her a work ethic and responsibility. I encouraged her to be thinking about an animal she might like to own so that we could help her to care for something other than herself.
     

Next I asked her to meditate on some topics that might interest her and helped her to see how I would be directing her interests toward possible vocational application. I conveyed the importance of spending most of her time in this area of developing interests and gave her examples from Kathryn's and John's lives as to how the interests can be more fully developed, thus developing both her learning ability and vocational direction as well. This will be some time in unfolding in Jennifer's life because of her lack of education. She still needs a few years of heart and character training and routine disciplines. Your child may already have some of the correct tools in place in his life which will make it possible to move ahead at a faster pace. All children are different, go with the peculiar needs of your child and most importantly, emphasize your relationship with him and his with God.  Without teachableness you will not accomplish a thing! Jennifer is teachable and even though she has a lot of worldly ideas in her head now, because she is developing a heart-to-heart relationship with God, I know that there is a lot of hope for the needed changes and at this time I believe she will allow herself to stay with us as long as it may take for her growth to catch up to where it needs to be before "leaving home."   - Marilyn

Copyright 1999 by Marilyn Howshall

This article was originally

within the joint-authored article called:

Is Mid-High School too Late to Start Homeschooling?

Click on the above link to go or return there

as "the rest of the picture" is pressented therein.

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