Listening to the teacher @ home school.

[snappylt]

I was reading the replies in a different thread about home schooling and a question came to mind.

All of my sons have gone through a phase as teenagers where they thought their mother and I were terminally stupid.  (I used to joke that our sons were surprised that my wife and I could walk and talk at the same time.)  If we had homeschooled them when they were in that stage would they have listened to us as teachers?

I can remember when one son was in middle school and was having trouble in math.  I asked him to please show me his homework paper one evening.  I checked his work, and he had every problem wrong.  I could see exactly what mistake he had made over and over down the page - I could tell right away because years ago I used to teach math with an earlier edition of that very same textbook!

It was an easy mistake to fix - or, it would have been if he would have allowed me to gently re-teach him the one concept he misunderstood.  He got furious with me and insisted I couldn't possibly know what i was talking about.

I started to get angry back at him, but then I stopped myself, took a deep breath, and asked him to pretend with me.  I asked him to pretend that I was no longer his father, but to pretend that I was his new math teacher.  I asked him to pretend that I had taught this concept before and that I knew what I was talking about - just long enough to see if what I was trying to say would make sense.  He calmed down and looked at the lesson in his book with me, and pretty soon he was able to see his own mistake and fix his homework.

But - phew!  What a draining experience!

Anyway, I can think of other situations where another adult would ask my sons to do something and they'd do it right away, but when my wife and I would ask there'd be grumbling.  I'm sure it had something to do with separating themselves from us and growing up, etc.  And other parents tell me its very normal.

But it made me think that if I had homeschooled, it would have been a struggle to get them to listen to us just because we're their parents and they thought we were stupid.  (I joked one time with another dad that he and I could trade kids for homeschooling purposes.  I could teach his boys because they'd listen to me and he could teach my boys because they would listen to him.  It was a joke, but I was half-serious.)

Anyway, I'm curious to know if "thinking mom and dad are stupid" is aproblem for teenagers who really are homeschooled?

[Sophie Jenkins]

None of the many homeschoolers I've known in my life had that problem to any obstructive extent. There were days where heads butted, of course, but that's normal teenage stuff.

If a kid is stubborn and willful, they'll be that way, no matter if school is public, private, or home.

[dawbs]

From what I've seen, it can and does rear it's head.  I've seen it in HSed friends and HS students who then come to me later

I love my dad dearly.  He's an awesome person and an awesome teacher.  He shouldn't teach me, even now that I"m an adult who knows how smart he is (unlike when he was really stupid when I was a teenager --he got a lots smarter ni the last 14 years  )
Because of the 'baggage' each of us has, we miss things when we teach e/o.

In fact, my dad has a background that gives him wonderful skills in diagnosing LDs in his students.  He was slack-jawed-shocked when, as a college student, I got a LD diagnosis.  His first words were "I am so sorry, I should have seen that"--and, yeah, in some ways, he should have.  But in another way, he was NOT my teacher; his role was dad and he was 'to close' to see it.

[Iris]

See, I have the opposite problem. I am infinitely more patient with teaching my students at work than I am teaching my daughters, especially my eldest. It's not professional training either. It just feels different inside.

From my point of view when she needs help I find it much better to have a specific time that I am going to sit down and help her. It keeps me in the 'teacher' zone rather than the 'mum' zone. Perhaps it works in reverse for home schooled kids i.e. during school time 'mum' becomes 'teacher' mentally?

Just a thought.

[snappylt]

None of the many homeschoolers I've known in my life had that problem to any obstructive extent. There were days where heads butted, of course, but that's normal teenage stuff.

If a kid is stubborn and willful, they'll be that way, no matter if school is public, private, or home.

{The bolding in the above quote is mine, not in the original.}

I do agree with you that a stubborn kid is a stubborn kid... sometimes, anyway.

But what I was trying to get across is that I have found that sometimes my own kids would not listen to me or my wife, when at the same stage in life they would listen to another adult (a teacher or the parent of a friend) who is not their own parent.  I've had several conversations with other parents at school events and the other parents have noticed that, too.

I recently had jobs where I was working with other people's middle school and high school aged teenagers.  I found that with my own personal style of interacting with other people's teenagers, I was almost always able to get our job done with remarkably little fuss.  I felt like sometimes it was easier to accomplish tasks with other people's kids than my own.  Other people's kids didn't dig their heels in with me as much as my own sometimes did.  And yet, at least with my oldest ones, there was no evidence that mine were digging their heels in at school the way they were at home.

And I can think of two neighbor boys, teenagers, who at different times came to my doorstep almost in tears about things that were bothering them, and both felt very free to ask my advice.  So I'm thinking I'm not un-approachable to other people's kids...

I guess my question was if homeschooling parents had noticed their own kids having trouble taking them seriously as teachers - in cases where those same kids had no problem taking other adults (other than their own parents) seriously as teachers.

[Roe]

I'm not homeschooling a teen just yet but I can say that when my older two were teens (one still is) they often asked for help regarding school work.  Not only school work but advice about life in general.  (both attend(ed) public schools)

It probably has more to do with the personality of the child/parent/home than it does regarding homeschool.

I imagine that if a homeschool parent was faced with a teen who wouldn't listen that parent would seek outside help as in tutoring or classes.  If my youngestson becomes difficult to teach, I will consider either outside classes or public school.  Though we homeschool, we do evaluate on a yearly basis to make sure it "still works" for him and for our family.

[sevenday]

I think in the case of homeschool it does matter when the homeschooling starts.  If the child has always been homeschooled, it should be easier for them (and the parent) to create a space in their heads for "teacher" versus "parent" so that when the Terrible Teens hits and suddenly they're smartypants, perhaps that space will still be there and be enough to smooth over all but the worst of the butting heads phase.  It does help if the parent has a resource so they can say "Look, I'm not just talking nonsense, here's what the literature says on X and Y, or here's what the public school books say about Z technique in math..."   The routine's already been set, as they say.  If they've only just begun homeschooling, then it'll be rougher.  That's just my opinion though.

[camlan]

There's a parent-child relationship and a teacher-student relationship. Some parents and kids can switch between the two. But it doesn't work for all parents and all children. It's not a matter of stubborn kids so much as not being able to mentally switch gears and accept a teacher-student relationship for teaching time.

Sometimes one parent can switch roles easily with the kids and the other can't.

My dad taught all my brothers to drive. His attempts to teach me were, to put it mildly, agony to both of us. My learning style and his teaching style did not mesh at all.

My mom, on the other hand, did a great job teaching me to drive.

It isn't that the parent is a bad teacher or the kid a bad student. It's all about being able to accept a parent as a teacher for part of the day, and your child as a student.

[Rohanna]

I still don't know math very well to this day because A- my mother was terrible at teaching it, and B- she is toxic, and we butted heads so much between my stubborness and her abusiveness that it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth for the subject.  In school, I had a teacher I had a hard time with, but my Dad requested a change of classroom and I did well after that.