Not really, but this was the conversation we had yesterday evening and I thought it was pretty funny.
Sam: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee….. (Sam pretending her pen is a sonic screwdriver from the show Dr. Who)
She doesn’t look like it, but she can be a total dork!
Mel: DAAAADDY… Sam’s being a dork!
Greg: should we send her off to boarding school?
Mel: oh that’s mean…SAAAMM, daddy wants to send you to boarding school….
Sam: Daddy, that’s mean
Greg: Do you even know what boarding school is?
Sam: a school where you learn about boarding?
Yup…
Kid’s say the cutest things don’t they? I burst out laughing when I heard that. But then I thought…
Greg went to boarding school…
Personally, I think boarding school is for parents who just don’t want to deal with their kids, and unfortunately this was actually the case with Greg’s parents.
Or at least that’s the impression I get.
Greg has really bad ADHD. I have it too, but it’s much easier for me to control. I didn’t know I had it when I was a kid, but I had all the symptoms except the hyperactivity. I became very adept at controlling myself as a child because my parents, okay my mom, was a bitch.
No really, I can say that, she really was a bitch, still is actually. I’d go into the whole story, but it’s easier if you just read the article I already wrote if you want the gory details.
Suffice it to say, my mother was very controlling, and I became adept at “staying inline” to keep my mother from screaming at me.
That bitch can scream!
See… total dork!
I would do everything in my power to avoid her fits of screaming. Living with her involved constantly walking on eggshells and sleeping until 12pm or 1pm in the afternoon on weekends. Just to avoid hearing her yell at dad for shit that happened 40, 45 years ago.
Greg, on the other hand, had… different parents. Not to say they didn’t discipline him, but his mom sort of, how do I put this delicately… babied him? Instead of giving him confidence, and teaching him how to cope with ADHD, she took him to millions (ok a few) doctors and had bazillions (okay, lots) of tests done on him to find out what was “wrong.” There’s nothing wrong with him.
NOTHING.
But an 8 or 9 year old whose constantly taken to doctors and tested (understandably) starts to think there is something wrong with him. Then they send him off to boarding school…
See what I mean?
Because they couldn’t “fix” him, they sent him off to a high school that they figured could fix him. And that just made things worse.
He rebelled, did poorly at his studies, pissed off his teachers, and generally just didn’t give a shit. Unfortunately, this has seeped into his adult life. But that’s another blog post.
Sam has really, really bad ADHD. It’s actually one of the main reasons I homeschool her.
One of the hallmarks of ADHD is high intelligence. Not to brag, but my IQ is over 150, which makes me a good example. Greg’s is up there as well, and he even admits that he was never challenged in school. Neither was I, I sort of just coasted through high school, but I kept my grades up because my mother would have given birth to some huge fucking animal had I come home with anything less than a B-. (I did get a D once… NEVER AGAIN I told myself… I didn’t hear the end of it for months…).
Homeschooling Sam… here she’s coloring her page on digestion. We did it together, and she had a BLAST!
Sam would have the same problem. If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll remember me saying how she colored a page out of an adult anatomy coloring book and actually learned something from it. She’s brilliant, and because of that, I know she’d have a horrible time in an actual classroom setting.
I do add in elements of a classical education, and as I said in an earlier post, I have a homeschool notebook for all her work as well as a lesson planner. But we also do a bit of “unschooling” where she essentially leads the way.
I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at the things she has asked to learn about, like chemistry, and physics. She finds science fascinating and loves art, so I use that to my advantage. I also know she can’t sit still for more than 20 minutes (maybe 30 if I bribe her) before her brain just can’t take it anymore and she starts to really fidget.
A classroom teacher has too many kids to supervise to be able to know all that about my little girl.
Greg’s mother was a teacher, and apparently had too much of a “classroom” mindset to consider homeschooling. But I think Greg would have done very well in that setting. He’s even admitted as much.
So, no teaching Sam about boarding….
See, I totally went off on a tangent… Told you I had ADHD…
Squirrel!
I think you are doing an amazing job with your daughter! Homeschooling her and giving her one on one attention. She couldn’t ask for anything better!
Thanks Melanie!! I have to say I thoroughly enjoy homeschooling her, and she seems to be enjoying it too! lol 😀
Truly love about your family and agree with Melanie that I think you are doing an awesome job with Sam by homeschooling her. I do agree with you that we (as mothers) know our children best, too!!
Thank you Janine! And well said. We do know our children best. When I thought about homeschooling as an option, I delved into its history and found that brick-and-mortar schools are actually a fairly recent development, and that most parents taught their own children. I really liked that idea, to me it made more sense than letting someone else teach my child. Why did I have her if I wasn’t going to teach her what she needs to know about life? You know what I mean? I also know I was very unhappy with my “classical” education and Greg… well we know what happened there. Homeschooling became the only logical option. Let me tell you, she loves it! If I forget a lesson, she reminds me, it’s awesome how excited she is about learning!