His tutoring after school was my wifes idea and a total joke and a way to take our money in the name of making a son "smart".

He sits with headphones on and listens to sounds and responds to fluctuations in the sound pattern to score points. I have been patient with this BS for 4 weeks and told my wife today we are pulling him out of it. I would prefer for him to sit with a REAL tutor and learn something not play beep beep with a sound machine.

He has been tested by the school in elementry school, no problems found.

He has been tested by an outside test on our dime, they detected borderline learning problems. They did not want to diagnose any of the trendy problems. But said we would have to work hard with him.


He is his worse own enemy. A simple task like get your make up work and he blows it. He forgets to write all his assignments down. His school makes him carry a journal and in every class is a list of assignments both homework and classwork on the black board. Its his responsibility to write it all down. He forgets or claims he does not have time to write it all down. I tell him he is full of it and even offered him an old digi camera to take a picture of the board if he is strapped for time. He refused saying he would get it done then doesn't.

In this society of excuses I am not one. I am not picking a trendy disease to label my kid with and tell the teachers he needs a special program. This eats me alive, I want him to be a kid and he is miserable. I am hoping loosing this after school BS will give him some more time. I am looking into alternatives.

It does not help that the teachers show no compassion for the kid.

I have a couple of 20 year olds working here and we were discussing what happened. They said it sounded about right but, the cool teachers would cut you a break and let you turn it in late, especially if you forgot to ask for the makeup work. Not something you do every day.

Sounds like he's bored. Try challenging him with some truly difficult stuff once and see how his ego starts to drive him.

Oh and I agree on the trendy disease crap, that isn't what I meant.

I should add that as one of the most teacher-critical people I know, I disagree that this teacher should have cut him slack. He's old enough to know rules are rules.

I know that I was an absolute bastard to some of my Junior high teachers and we had battles and wars, none of which my parent ever knew about. This teacher may be dealing with your son in a way you're not aware of and vice versa.

Congratulations Jim, your mindless religion bashing just earned you a spot on the ignore list. If your kid is anything like you, I will say a prayer for his teachers.

??????


So this topic does not turn religious. I am sending a PM.

He was bashing those who worship sound fluctuations after school.

Huh? sorry, can't hear you.
I kinda lost interest in anything you have to say after you posted this:

"The thing that bothered me when searching home schooling is all the christian crap that is mentioned. It seems all the Jesus freaks are home schoolers. My friends BTW are not."

Yup I think its in poor taste that companies cash in on peoples religious beliefs in order to sell them home schooling.

If it struck a nerve tough luck. I sent you a PM to apologize. I am a christian as well and go to church but do not need to have Jesus mixed in with my home schooling I do just fine teaching my sons about God myself thank you very much.

I find all the Home Schooling companies selling to Church going people a bit distasteful and opportunists cashing in.

Remember Christ ran throught the temple tossing all the vendors tables over because they were trying to cashin on God??

Same thing and I find it equally as offensive.

Maybe I should be as christlike as you and put you on my ignore list.... Nah... My religion told me to be forgiving and to forget others transgressions. You can never win anyone over with hate.

I forgive you. God Bless you.

Jim,
It's impossible to diagnose behavior. It takes professionals to do that, and experienced ones too.
I worked for a school district for 30 years, 20 of which was teaching and part of that was teaching all of the academic subjects in one of those computerized learning labs where students could make up classes or get ahead if they wanted.
I'm going to offer something that won't solve the problem, but might help somewhat. When I started teaching, I really agonized over the fact that some students couldn't care less about an education or learning something from the courses. After about 4 years of beating myself up over this & being unsuccessful with trying everything I could think of & learn in the way of strategies to get them to do it, I realized something (which I already knew, but wouldn't admit). It's also something I found out from occasional contact with students after they left.
It's this. Everybody will do what they are going to do in their own time and when they are ready to do it. Maybe they will never do it. But in the mean time the best thing to do is to foster a positive atmosphere of opportunity and be there for them when/if they are ready. That doesn't mean you have to be a patsy & not have rules, expectations & consequences.
Also there are many different kinds of inteligences. Our educational system emphasizes only a few. But we must always keep in mind EVERYBODY has to learn enough of the basics to function & survive. I figure after that, they're on their own, even if they are your own.
An example I remember is a kid I had in school almost 30 years ago. His name was Danny & I can still picture him in my mind. He wouldn't do anything! I kicked his ass up & down on a daily basis. He finally ended up leaving school. He married a girl from school & they had a kid. He got a good job as a fire control person for a big shipbuilding company. He used to bring his kid to show me & visit at school for a long time. He was really happy, never finished school, and was still working at the job last I saw him.

Marv,

Thanks for that info. Our son has been to a psychologist for evaluation as well. He should be breezing through school and yet struggles. The psychologist visit was very recent.

One thing I have noticed is he manages his time poorly. The psychologist has suggested we create a time schedule at home and regiment everything. Get him used to being on time constraints. We are drawing up a schedule for him and us and the whole house is going on this time schedule.

Last night I told him I wanted to have all the homework done in 1 hour. He had 3 classes worth of work and a 2 week project needed to be finihsed and turned in. As hard as we tried it still took 2 hours. The homework alone took almost 1.5 hours and he spent another 30 minutes on the project. This was only homework in 3 classes he potentially could have had work in 3 more classes.

The psychologist is calling the tutoring center. Wehn my wife informed her what our son was doing in there the psychologist was a bit upset. She wanted him more in a time management type of program. Even though he is weak in math (the the beep and noises thing he is doign is supposed to help that) the psychologist feels his bigger problem is time managment.

Marv, I had good and bad teachers as a kid, it just seemed like the there were more good ones now it seems like its a 50/50 deal.

Like I said I actually keep in touch with one teacher from 5th grade that made a huge impact on me. I did not have the best homelife growing up and this teacher really turned me around behavior wise. Something I strive hard to provide to my kids now.

I guess what struck a nerve is that the teachers can be behind with their online posts and thats o.k. but they expect the kids to be on time with their stuff. Set the example.

"Quality Private Education" and "religious education" aren't even connected. In fact I'd offer my own personal experiences with 12 years of Catholic school brainwashing hell in support of the position that the two terms can even be mutually exclusive.

It's a real kick in the gonads to think you pay a large portion of your tax dollars to support these do-nothing public education systems (in a lot of cases, some are actually quite good, depending on where you are) and simultaneously have to pay to get anything else. Enter the old "school voucher" argument. I'm for it on this premise (people really should only have to pay for school THEIR kids attend - not pay for their kids AND everyone else's), but I'm against it because it's been routinely bastardized by politicians to be a government sanction of religion (since a lot of private schools are affiliated with a particular religion), which I'm TOTALLY opposed to in any form.