July 22, 2024 • 16 mins
Two questions from listeners: Emma asks for advice on helping her 10 year old son who is struggling with being at school, withdrawing from friends, and feeling sad. And Kari, a homeschooling mum of 3 little boys, has requested an update on the Coulson's Homeschooling experience!
In this episode:
- The 3 basic psychological needs
- Supporting children at school
- 'School Can't'
- Building frustration tolerance
- Attention amplifies discomfort
- Changing classroom or school
- Persistence and consistency
- Homeschooling update
- Euka Curriculum
- Autonomy-supportive structure
- Emotional regulation wins
.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's their Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
wants answers.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Mew, Hello and welcome to the Happy Families podcast, the
podcast for the time poor parent who just wants answers. Now,
I'm Justin Doctor Justin Colson, the author of a bunch
of books about how to make your family happier, and
the dad to six daughters, three in their twenties now,
two in their teens, and a ten year old. Today,
(00:30):
like every Tuesday, answering your questions on the podcast about
how you can make your family happier. If you would
like to submit a question, we love those voice memos.
Just go to happy families dot com dot. You click
on the podcasts link and push the record button. It's
super easy to use happy families dot com dot. You
click on the podcast link and press the record button.
(00:51):
That's simple. Here's our first question today. It comes from Emma, Hi, Justin,
and Kylie.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm wanting some suggestions to help our ten year old
boy struggling with going to school and being at school.
He feels unliked and that a lot of the correction
in the classroom is unfairly directed at him. I have
talked to his teacher, and I can see the teacher's
point of view as well as his point of view
that he can be distracting and unfocused at times, but
I also feel for him in the way that it
(01:17):
is handled. He does have a lot of age appropriate
autonomy at home, which is different to the school classroom.
And I'm a bit worried we are setting him up
badly or we're missing something perhaps in the way that
we're doing it. Just wondering if you have any suggestions
in helping him follow the rules when he doesn't understand
why at school or what your way forward would be here.
Thanks heeps, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Bye, tricky one. Tricky one and Emma also includes some
additional information in her email to me well. She identified
that he is withdrawing from friends on the street that
he usually plays with, no longer enjoying playing clubs, soccer,
emotional sad, easily angered, although that isn't really new, and
it seems like there's just a whole lot of clashes
(01:58):
going on, things get him down all over the place.
Emma's email also says that he doesn't want to go
to school. He's getting there every day, but it's hard
and I'm back walking him in with a long goodbye
before he goes to his bag rack. She says, we're
doing all the things suggested by you and others to
help with school and sleep, but are not seeing improvement.
(02:19):
And she also made a suggestion that the school can't
community doesn't seem to be working out for her either.
All right, really frustrating one. So many challenges. By the way,
I brought missus Happy Families in for today's episode as well.
Hi Kylie, Hi, So I want to go over a
handful of things here because it's just frustrating. And the
other thing is a lot of mental health work. As
psychologists school counselors, they're going to come up with a
(02:41):
whole lot of solutions that aren't going to feel like
they're working. This is what drives people crazy when kids
are starting to say don't want to go to school.
Let's go through the usual stuff. First off, we've got
to talk about basic psychological needs being supported or thwarted.
We're talking about confidence relatedness and autonomy. So if your
child does not feel confident at school, whether it's academically
(03:02):
or socially or in any other way, there's going to
be resistance to going. Clearly, based on the interactions between
your son and the teacher, there are competence issues, confidence
with behavior, confidence with managing and regulating himself in the
class versus what the teacher requires. Sometimes those teacher requirements
are developmentally appropriate, sometimes they're not. But feeling competent school
(03:23):
is going to be a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
But if it's having that much of an impact on
your child, then you can be guaranteed that, regardless of
how competent the teacher is, her technique is actually harming
your child.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Okay, Which brings us to relationships. Relationships have got to
be strong. That need needs to be supported. In this case,
it's clearly not being supported. There is a need frustration
around relationships. This is a really big one. I mean,
you and I were talking the other day. We just
were having a chat with a friend who has I
think it was a grade one kid who was literally
locked in the cupboard at school by the teacher because
(03:58):
the teacher couldn't control the kid's behavior. I mean, this
is twenty twenty four people, it's still happening now. This
is not to bag out all teachers. Most teachers are
doing a great job, and that teacher probably most of
the time does too. But this is unacceptable. And when
you've got a teacher who I mean in the email,
Emma said, she yells at him a lot, and he
misses out on class stamps and rewards, but doesn't always
understand why. Fundamentally, we're dealing with some massive issues in
(04:20):
terms of the way that teachers deal with students. And
I don't want to bag teachers out here. This is
the reality of working with thirty or forty kids and
not having the level of training that's necessary to be
able to manage these situations effectively.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
We've had a couple of kids that have had really
significant challenges in the classroom. We've seen the best and
the worst of teaching strategies in and knowing how to
handle those challenges within the classroom setting. And I remember
when one of our children finally got into a class
and I literally looked at the teacher and I said,
(04:55):
you're like the Mary Poppins of teachers like she not
only did she absolutely love our child, she recognized her strengths,
worked with those, and she found ways to manage the
challenges that existed in such a beautiful way. She taught
(05:17):
me things that I hadn't even worked out how to do.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, I know this is not going to be a
popular thing to say, although I'd imagine most teachers would
agree with me. Some teachers suck. The majority of them,
the overwhelming majority, are brilliant. But every now and again,
you just get a teacher that does not do the
job required. Or sometimes it's not even that. Sometimes they
just don't click with your child. There's a personality clash,
there's something going on and you just can't get there.
And so maybe the teacher doesn't suck, but perhaps they
(05:43):
suck for your child. And in this case, I'm listening
to what Emma saying, and I'm thinking maybe. I mean,
we're more than halfway through the year now, we're well
into term three. Tough it out. Teach your son that
there is this thing called tolerable discomfort and work through it.
Deal with what we call frustration tolerance. This is a
growing thing. We're talking about a ten year old boy.
Now he's big enough to be able to put on
(06:03):
his big boy pants and work through this day by day,
week by week until we get to the end of
term four and we get a new teacher who is
back on it and doing things right for next year.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So it doesn't say in the email how long they've
been working through this challenge.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's only been this year.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But the reality is so often when we're bombarded with
challenges in our lives, especially when it comes to parenting
and the way we're trying to help our children work
through their different challenges, it feels like we're not getting anywhere,
and we will constantly say I'm doing all the things,
But what happens over time is that those things, the
(06:41):
consistency with which we attack or work with the challenges,
we actually do see change. But we want change right now,
and it's a process because we hate seeing our kids
hurting right we hate being uncomfortable. But if we will
just be consistent, often all of us sudden, it will
feel like you're like in a blink of an eye,
(07:02):
all of a sudden, things are different.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And Emma has also highlighted that there's appropriate autonomy age
appropriate autonomy. I really love that in the home, but
this is clearly not happening in the classroom. So we've
got these basic psychological needs essentially not being supported effectively
at school. Having another conversation with the teacher, I don't
think it's going to work. Clearly, this conversation has not
gone in a helpful and positive direction, so this is
about toughing it out. I guess there's a couple of
(07:25):
other things that I would check based on the additional
information that's in the email. I'd want to just have
a medical check up. I want to make sure that
there's nothing going on medically. We've talked about the psychological needs,
so let's double check the medical stuff. I think it's
also worth highlighting this though. Attention amplifies discomfort, and the
more we put attention on the discomfort, the more we
talk about the problems, the bigger the problems become. Sometimes
(07:46):
it's better to simply say yeah, I know it's hard,
We'll get through it and move on. It kind of flinches.
I say this because I don't want to turn into
Captain Tough Love here. That's not the objective. But rather,
sometimes our children need to know and understand that life
can be tricky, life can be awkward, life can be uncomfortable,
and we can still get through those things, even if
it means it's going to be a while. We have
(08:06):
a daughter who is currently in Canada doing volunteer missionary work,
and she's been assigned to work with somebody and it's
just not working out. But it's only six weeks and
she'll get through it. It's been a really, really hard
experience for her, and we've just sat there and said,
we get it. It's really hard. You'll get through it.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Obviously she's twelve years older than this kid, or ten
years older than Emma's boy, but it's still something where
sometimes life is hard and you just have to get through.
And I think that there's something in that. I mean,
the last option is that your school swap, and I
don't think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think that you've kind of jumped the gun there
a little bit. I think that sometimes a change of
classroom and teacher can be all that needs to take place.
Their child's still in the same environment, but has the
opportunity to build a relationship with another teacher that might
be better. Because this is I would suggest, this is
more a personality thing. There's a clash between teacher and
(09:02):
child personality, and that's the difference.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
There are other challenges with that though, as well, Like
you swap classrooms and the teachers kind of compare notes
and talk things through and sometimes the stigma from the
class swap the kids talk about in the playground, it
can make things really uncomfortable. Maybe it's an option. I
think toughing it out to the end of the year
is the better option. I know that there are no
easy answers. I know that people in the school can't
(09:27):
community are going to absolutely hate what I'm saying here,
But I just think persistence is the best way to go.
Avoidance reinforces anxiety. It may be that a classroom swap
is appropriate, but the child goes wherever the child has
to go, right like when you move house, so when
you move neighborhood, when you move school, you go with you,
which means that those challenges may persist wherever you are.
(09:48):
I guess I need to just put in one big caveat,
and that is that sometimes the advice that I've just
given is the worst advice ever, But generally, in most circumstances,
it will work for most kids most of the time.
And this is a great challenge with this kind of thing. Emma,
tough question. I hope there's something helpful there for you.
Let's move on to question number two. Question number two,
(10:13):
Hello Justin.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
And Kylie, My name is Carrie and I'm a homeschooling
mum of three little boys. I started homeschooling at the
same time as Kylie and would be really interested in
knowing a little bit more about how Kylie is going
with homeschooling, what curriculum she's using, what has and hasn't worked.
(10:39):
That would be fabulous. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Find it really interesting that Carrie from Wa doesn't say,
justin how are you finding homeschooling? It is this the
Kylie show? All of a sudden, Am I not doing
any homeschooling?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Not really? Okay, Well I can say this, we're using
Yuka as a curriculum. I know that much. This is
not to post and I don't know if it's great
or not because I'm not involved in it, but I
know that Colie, how did you answer carry?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Well, the first thing is yes, we are using Yuka.
Did I do a huge amount of research and to
whether or not this was a good way.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
To go time for reach?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I did it because we needed to start, and I
also just decided that it was important to be gentle
on myself and not try to know it all in one,
you know, one sitting and so Yuka provided a structure
and a reporting system all in one.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And it follows this train curriculum pretty well, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, And it just allowed me to ease my way
into it. Whether or not it's what we use moving forward,
I don't know. But at this point it is pretty
much doing all of the hard yards for me, so
I don't have to do too much like heavy lifting myself.
What's working and what's not. Yeah, So in my mind
I had this beautiful picture of you know, structure. School
(11:58):
goes from nine to eleven every morning, and we sit
down and she knows that we start with Mass and
then we do English, and then we're doing it, you know,
an extra And I thought that this was going to
be amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
You're talking about a year fourteen year old daughter. Yes,
it's worth just jumping in and letting you know that
our year nine daughter, fourteen years old, she's pretty much
doing it herself, and she's doing a well, we think
she's doing a great job. We'll find that in due course,
but we think she's doing a great job, and she
seems to be pretty motivated to just get it done.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
But our younger one, but that all went out the
window once we started and I realized that the rigid
structure that I had in mind that was going to
work in with my routine was not going to work
for Miss ten. So what I have learned from my
experience is that the more flexible and fluid I can
be in my day, the more compliant and enjoyable Emily
(12:52):
is to be around and to be involved. That she
feeds off my emotions. We talk about this all the time,
emotions a catch. If I feel stressed and we need
to just hurry up and get this done because I've
got other things on, Emily feeds off that stress, and
therefore it's almost like everything shuts down. She can't work,
she can't think, she just gets overwhelmed in that moment.
(13:14):
And then what should only take us an hour ends
up being a really big emotional process and three or
four hours and we're still kind of aut a standstill,
not able to kind of work through it. And then
the other thing is providing an autonomy, supportive structure that
literally lets her lead. So we sit down and like
(13:34):
I said, I had in my mind we'd start with mass,
we'd go to English. And so now what happens is
we sit down and Emily says, I want to do geography,
and I say, okay, let's do that. She feels like
she's in control. She gets really excited about it, she
gets involved in it, and she's really really happy to
do our schoolwork. So I guess they're my biggest learnings.
And what I would consider my biggest wins out of
(13:56):
it is her emotional regulation has just soared.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, what we're seeing different different kid to who she
was when she was at Schood and even our your
nine daughter. I mean, overwhelmingly the kids are the kids
are so much happier. The kids are so much happier
with homeschool.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And over the winter break we went away and we
actually left her for a period of time. That was
my biggest concern was how she would cope because in
the past it has been really really hard.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
On leaving terrors. Leaving a ten year old defend for
herself all by herself at home for a couple of
weeks is hardcore. But she cooked the nails, she fed
the dogs, she maintained the house, put the bins out.
She was great.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
She she she was amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Just in case anyone's freaking out, there were appropriate care
people involved, grandparents, every.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Family member who took care of her, loved it, loved
the experience, and just talked about how amazing she was.
And that flowed on to when we got home. She
got up, she did her jobs in the morning, and
then she came to me and I knew she wanted
to ask to watch the TV. And in a split second,
she looked at me and she said, Mum, I've done this, this,
and this. Is there anything else you want me to do?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I'm chalking that up as a massive win. But when
I look back at the last six months and I
think about all of the experiences we've had to be
in a place where I have a child who feels
in control of her emotions more times than not, who
has the capacity to do life without me for an
extended period of time, and who in general is a
(15:31):
much more calmer, peaceful child. I honestly, I'm so glad
that we made the decision we did, even.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Though it's hard ask me what I think?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
What do you think?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I think that it's the best decision we've made for
our two kids in their schooling, But it's also the dumbest, hardest,
most frustrating thing that we could have possibly done. We've
lost so much of our lives, but what we've gained
in terms of seeing the benefit to the kids, it's
the ultimate reward. It's been absolutely brilliant. You've done it.
Phenomenal job. But it is taxing, and it is not
(16:04):
it's so much harder than we thought it would be.
But Carrie from WA, thanks for the question. We hope
that that's helpful, and good.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Luck three the three little boys.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
The good thing about our fourteen year old is she's
mostly doing it herself. We think, we hope. The Happy
Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you'd like more information about making your family happier,
we would love for you to stay in touch with
us at Happy families dot com dot you, where you
can check out the brand new Happy Families membership. Oh
my goodness, it's better than ever. It'll blow your mind.
Check it out happy families dot com dot AU.
It's their Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
wants answers.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Mew, Hello and welcome to the Happy Families podcast, the
podcast for the time poor parent who just wants answers. Now,
I'm Justin Doctor Justin Colson, the author of a bunch
of books about how to make your family happier, and
the dad to six daughters, three in their twenties now,
two in their teens, and a ten year old. Today,
(00:30):
like every Tuesday, answering your questions on the podcast about
how you can make your family happier. If you would
like to submit a question, we love those voice memos.
Just go to happy families dot com dot. You click
on the podcasts link and push the record button. It's
super easy to use happy families dot com dot. You
click on the podcast link and press the record button.
(00:51):
That's simple. Here's our first question today. It comes from Emma, Hi, Justin,
and Kylie.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm wanting some suggestions to help our ten year old
boy struggling with going to school and being at school.
He feels unliked and that a lot of the correction
in the classroom is unfairly directed at him. I have
talked to his teacher, and I can see the teacher's
point of view as well as his point of view
that he can be distracting and unfocused at times, but
I also feel for him in the way that it
(01:17):
is handled. He does have a lot of age appropriate
autonomy at home, which is different to the school classroom.
And I'm a bit worried we are setting him up
badly or we're missing something perhaps in the way that
we're doing it. Just wondering if you have any suggestions
in helping him follow the rules when he doesn't understand
why at school or what your way forward would be here.
Thanks heeps, guys.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Bye, tricky one. Tricky one and Emma also includes some
additional information in her email to me well. She identified
that he is withdrawing from friends on the street that
he usually plays with, no longer enjoying playing clubs, soccer,
emotional sad, easily angered, although that isn't really new, and
it seems like there's just a whole lot of clashes
(01:58):
going on, things get him down all over the place.
Emma's email also says that he doesn't want to go
to school. He's getting there every day, but it's hard
and I'm back walking him in with a long goodbye
before he goes to his bag rack. She says, we're
doing all the things suggested by you and others to
help with school and sleep, but are not seeing improvement.
(02:19):
And she also made a suggestion that the school can't
community doesn't seem to be working out for her either.
All right, really frustrating one. So many challenges. By the way,
I brought missus Happy Families in for today's episode as well.
Hi Kylie, Hi, So I want to go over a
handful of things here because it's just frustrating. And the
other thing is a lot of mental health work. As
psychologists school counselors, they're going to come up with a
(02:41):
whole lot of solutions that aren't going to feel like
they're working. This is what drives people crazy when kids
are starting to say don't want to go to school.
Let's go through the usual stuff. First off, we've got
to talk about basic psychological needs being supported or thwarted.
We're talking about confidence relatedness and autonomy. So if your
child does not feel confident at school, whether it's academically
(03:02):
or socially or in any other way, there's going to
be resistance to going. Clearly, based on the interactions between
your son and the teacher, there are competence issues, confidence
with behavior, confidence with managing and regulating himself in the
class versus what the teacher requires. Sometimes those teacher requirements
are developmentally appropriate, sometimes they're not. But feeling competent school
(03:23):
is going to be a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
But if it's having that much of an impact on
your child, then you can be guaranteed that, regardless of
how competent the teacher is, her technique is actually harming
your child.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Okay, Which brings us to relationships. Relationships have got to
be strong. That need needs to be supported. In this case,
it's clearly not being supported. There is a need frustration
around relationships. This is a really big one. I mean,
you and I were talking the other day. We just
were having a chat with a friend who has I
think it was a grade one kid who was literally
locked in the cupboard at school by the teacher because
(03:58):
the teacher couldn't control the kid's behavior. I mean, this
is twenty twenty four people, it's still happening now. This
is not to bag out all teachers. Most teachers are
doing a great job, and that teacher probably most of
the time does too. But this is unacceptable. And when
you've got a teacher who I mean in the email,
Emma said, she yells at him a lot, and he
misses out on class stamps and rewards, but doesn't always
understand why. Fundamentally, we're dealing with some massive issues in
(04:20):
terms of the way that teachers deal with students. And
I don't want to bag teachers out here. This is
the reality of working with thirty or forty kids and
not having the level of training that's necessary to be
able to manage these situations effectively.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
We've had a couple of kids that have had really
significant challenges in the classroom. We've seen the best and
the worst of teaching strategies in and knowing how to
handle those challenges within the classroom setting. And I remember
when one of our children finally got into a class
and I literally looked at the teacher and I said,
(04:55):
you're like the Mary Poppins of teachers like she not
only did she absolutely love our child, she recognized her strengths,
worked with those, and she found ways to manage the
challenges that existed in such a beautiful way. She taught
(05:17):
me things that I hadn't even worked out how to do.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, I know this is not going to be a
popular thing to say, although I'd imagine most teachers would
agree with me. Some teachers suck. The majority of them,
the overwhelming majority, are brilliant. But every now and again,
you just get a teacher that does not do the
job required. Or sometimes it's not even that. Sometimes they
just don't click with your child. There's a personality clash,
there's something going on and you just can't get there.
And so maybe the teacher doesn't suck, but perhaps they
(05:43):
suck for your child. And in this case, I'm listening
to what Emma saying, and I'm thinking maybe. I mean,
we're more than halfway through the year now, we're well
into term three. Tough it out. Teach your son that
there is this thing called tolerable discomfort and work through it.
Deal with what we call frustration tolerance. This is a
growing thing. We're talking about a ten year old boy.
Now he's big enough to be able to put on
(06:03):
his big boy pants and work through this day by day,
week by week until we get to the end of
term four and we get a new teacher who is
back on it and doing things right for next year.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So it doesn't say in the email how long they've
been working through this challenge.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's only been this year.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But the reality is so often when we're bombarded with
challenges in our lives, especially when it comes to parenting
and the way we're trying to help our children work
through their different challenges, it feels like we're not getting anywhere,
and we will constantly say I'm doing all the things,
But what happens over time is that those things, the
(06:41):
consistency with which we attack or work with the challenges,
we actually do see change. But we want change right now,
and it's a process because we hate seeing our kids
hurting right we hate being uncomfortable. But if we will
just be consistent, often all of us sudden, it will
feel like you're like in a blink of an eye,
(07:02):
all of a sudden, things are different.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And Emma has also highlighted that there's appropriate autonomy age
appropriate autonomy. I really love that in the home, but
this is clearly not happening in the classroom. So we've
got these basic psychological needs essentially not being supported effectively
at school. Having another conversation with the teacher, I don't
think it's going to work. Clearly, this conversation has not
gone in a helpful and positive direction, so this is
about toughing it out. I guess there's a couple of
(07:25):
other things that I would check based on the additional
information that's in the email. I'd want to just have
a medical check up. I want to make sure that
there's nothing going on medically. We've talked about the psychological needs,
so let's double check the medical stuff. I think it's
also worth highlighting this though. Attention amplifies discomfort, and the
more we put attention on the discomfort, the more we
talk about the problems, the bigger the problems become. Sometimes
(07:46):
it's better to simply say yeah, I know it's hard,
We'll get through it and move on. It kind of flinches.
I say this because I don't want to turn into
Captain Tough Love here. That's not the objective. But rather,
sometimes our children need to know and understand that life
can be tricky, life can be awkward, life can be uncomfortable,
and we can still get through those things, even if
it means it's going to be a while. We have
(08:06):
a daughter who is currently in Canada doing volunteer missionary work,
and she's been assigned to work with somebody and it's
just not working out. But it's only six weeks and
she'll get through it. It's been a really, really hard
experience for her, and we've just sat there and said,
we get it. It's really hard. You'll get through it.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Obviously she's twelve years older than this kid, or ten
years older than Emma's boy, but it's still something where
sometimes life is hard and you just have to get through.
And I think that there's something in that. I mean,
the last option is that your school swap, and I
don't think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think that you've kind of jumped the gun there
a little bit. I think that sometimes a change of
classroom and teacher can be all that needs to take place.
Their child's still in the same environment, but has the
opportunity to build a relationship with another teacher that might
be better. Because this is I would suggest, this is
more a personality thing. There's a clash between teacher and
(09:02):
child personality, and that's the difference.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
There are other challenges with that though, as well, Like
you swap classrooms and the teachers kind of compare notes
and talk things through and sometimes the stigma from the
class swap the kids talk about in the playground, it
can make things really uncomfortable. Maybe it's an option. I
think toughing it out to the end of the year
is the better option. I know that there are no
easy answers. I know that people in the school can't
(09:27):
community are going to absolutely hate what I'm saying here,
But I just think persistence is the best way to go.
Avoidance reinforces anxiety. It may be that a classroom swap
is appropriate, but the child goes wherever the child has
to go, right like when you move house, so when
you move neighborhood, when you move school, you go with you,
which means that those challenges may persist wherever you are.
(09:48):
I guess I need to just put in one big caveat,
and that is that sometimes the advice that I've just
given is the worst advice ever, But generally, in most circumstances,
it will work for most kids most of the time.
And this is a great challenge with this kind of thing. Emma,
tough question. I hope there's something helpful there for you.
Let's move on to question number two. Question number two,
(10:13):
Hello Justin.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
And Kylie, My name is Carrie and I'm a homeschooling
mum of three little boys. I started homeschooling at the
same time as Kylie and would be really interested in
knowing a little bit more about how Kylie is going
with homeschooling, what curriculum she's using, what has and hasn't worked.
(10:39):
That would be fabulous. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Find it really interesting that Carrie from Wa doesn't say,
justin how are you finding homeschooling? It is this the
Kylie show? All of a sudden, Am I not doing
any homeschooling?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Not really? Okay, Well I can say this, we're using
Yuka as a curriculum. I know that much. This is
not to post and I don't know if it's great
or not because I'm not involved in it, but I
know that Colie, how did you answer carry?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Well, the first thing is yes, we are using Yuka.
Did I do a huge amount of research and to
whether or not this was a good way.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
To go time for reach?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I did it because we needed to start, and I
also just decided that it was important to be gentle
on myself and not try to know it all in one,
you know, one sitting and so Yuka provided a structure
and a reporting system all in one.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And it follows this train curriculum pretty well, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, And it just allowed me to ease my way
into it. Whether or not it's what we use moving forward,
I don't know. But at this point it is pretty
much doing all of the hard yards for me, so
I don't have to do too much like heavy lifting myself.
What's working and what's not. Yeah, So in my mind
I had this beautiful picture of you know, structure. School
(11:58):
goes from nine to eleven every morning, and we sit
down and she knows that we start with Mass and
then we do English, and then we're doing it, you know,
an extra And I thought that this was going to
be amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
You're talking about a year fourteen year old daughter. Yes,
it's worth just jumping in and letting you know that
our year nine daughter, fourteen years old, she's pretty much
doing it herself, and she's doing a well, we think
she's doing a great job. We'll find that in due course,
but we think she's doing a great job, and she
seems to be pretty motivated to just get it done.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
But our younger one, but that all went out the
window once we started and I realized that the rigid
structure that I had in mind that was going to
work in with my routine was not going to work
for Miss ten. So what I have learned from my
experience is that the more flexible and fluid I can
be in my day, the more compliant and enjoyable Emily
(12:52):
is to be around and to be involved. That she
feeds off my emotions. We talk about this all the time,
emotions a catch. If I feel stressed and we need
to just hurry up and get this done because I've
got other things on, Emily feeds off that stress, and
therefore it's almost like everything shuts down. She can't work,
she can't think, she just gets overwhelmed in that moment.
(13:14):
And then what should only take us an hour ends
up being a really big emotional process and three or
four hours and we're still kind of aut a standstill,
not able to kind of work through it. And then
the other thing is providing an autonomy, supportive structure that
literally lets her lead. So we sit down and like
(13:34):
I said, I had in my mind we'd start with mass,
we'd go to English. And so now what happens is
we sit down and Emily says, I want to do geography,
and I say, okay, let's do that. She feels like
she's in control. She gets really excited about it, she
gets involved in it, and she's really really happy to
do our schoolwork. So I guess they're my biggest learnings.
And what I would consider my biggest wins out of
(13:56):
it is her emotional regulation has just soared.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, what we're seeing different different kid to who she
was when she was at Schood and even our your
nine daughter. I mean, overwhelmingly the kids are the kids
are so much happier. The kids are so much happier
with homeschool.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And over the winter break we went away and we
actually left her for a period of time. That was
my biggest concern was how she would cope because in
the past it has been really really hard.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
On leaving terrors. Leaving a ten year old defend for
herself all by herself at home for a couple of
weeks is hardcore. But she cooked the nails, she fed
the dogs, she maintained the house, put the bins out.
She was great.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
She she she was amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Just in case anyone's freaking out, there were appropriate care
people involved, grandparents, every.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Family member who took care of her, loved it, loved
the experience, and just talked about how amazing she was.
And that flowed on to when we got home. She
got up, she did her jobs in the morning, and
then she came to me and I knew she wanted
to ask to watch the TV. And in a split second,
she looked at me and she said, Mum, I've done this, this,
and this. Is there anything else you want me to do?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I'm chalking that up as a massive win. But when
I look back at the last six months and I
think about all of the experiences we've had to be
in a place where I have a child who feels
in control of her emotions more times than not, who
has the capacity to do life without me for an
extended period of time, and who in general is a
(15:31):
much more calmer, peaceful child. I honestly, I'm so glad
that we made the decision we did, even.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Though it's hard ask me what I think?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
What do you think?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
I think that it's the best decision we've made for
our two kids in their schooling, But it's also the dumbest, hardest,
most frustrating thing that we could have possibly done. We've
lost so much of our lives, but what we've gained
in terms of seeing the benefit to the kids, it's
the ultimate reward. It's been absolutely brilliant. You've done it.
Phenomenal job. But it is taxing, and it is not
(16:04):
it's so much harder than we thought it would be.
But Carrie from WA, thanks for the question. We hope
that that's helpful, and good.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Luck three the three little boys.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
The good thing about our fourteen year old is she's
mostly doing it herself. We think, we hope. The Happy
Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
If you'd like more information about making your family happier,
we would love for you to stay in touch with
us at Happy families dot com dot you, where you
can check out the brand new Happy Families membership. Oh
my goodness, it's better than ever. It'll blow your mind.
Check it out happy families dot com dot AU.
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