I realized this week that I’ve been teaching with Scio Academy students for 6 years. That’s a good long haul. While I’ve been homeschooling for more than 15 years, I started this Scio journey when my oldest son entered pre algebra. He has since graduated and I’m still learning how to lead my children into a God honoring adulthood. As my youngest entered middle school this year, I needed the following reminder about how to help him be more independent and I thought you might find this helpful too. Especially if your winter blues are actually mud season blues like mine.
Five Steps to Help your Child be more Independent
- Plan : No one likes to be handed a list of things to do over which they had no control. In all honesty, if my husband handed me the menu plan for the next week I’d probably laugh. This is human nature and it’s also a sign of being an adult. If I am part of the planning process, then suddenly I am responsible for the success or failure of the plan. Include your student in the planning of his or her education. We do this in my home by walking through Scio’s student roadmap, which Scio members can find in the toolbox.
- Organize : Now that we’ve got a plan, we need to have clarity. How do we setup a daily or weekly task list to know what the expectations are. This list will clarify for your student what the measurement is between success and failure. It’s rather simple. If the plan from step 1 had you taking latin 1 this year and latin has 35 lessons, then the organizing of said plan has you doing 1 lesson per week. Did you complete a lesson this week? yes? Success! No? Failure. Done.
- Reward : Here’s the fun part. What do you do if you succeed at something really hard? Most of us reward ourselves for crawling out of bed with a cup of coffee. When my children were toddlers, I’d reward myself for a good morning with some chocolate during nap time. What is our student rewarded with for a job well done? I know, learning is its own reward. But your 12 year old doesn’t necessarily believe that yet. Rewards can be simple. Free time to play is often a reward in my house, the quicker you complete your work, the more free time you receive. You can also model rewards yourself by showing your children the power of delayed gratification. You might say to your son, ‘after we finish this math, let’s reward ourselves for a job well done with popcorn to eat while we do our reading.’
- Consequence : The sad reality for most kids is that if there’s a reward, then there’s a consequence. The work force and world all operate this way too, so let’s get used to it now. Remember the latin from before? Did you cringe when I used the word ‘failure’? You should. But the beauty of it is that we don’t end there. A failure is not an end, and we need to teach our children that too. We don’t simply mark this week off as a failure and move on. We take the consequence for the failure, learn how to prevent this failure in the future, and end the week as a success. Consequences like rewards can be simple. You didn’t clean the bathroom fully? Do it again. You didn’t complete that latin? You are using your free time to complete it now, because failure isn’t really an option here. The key with consequences is to make sure they are clear BEFORE the task is organized. That is, in the planning stage, you and your student need to agree on rewards and consequences for the goals. This clarity is more important than you may realize.
- Accountability : Finally, we get to the glue that holds it all together. Inspect what you expect. Together, decide who your student will report his work to and when. My boys have to present their week’s work to me and my husband every Monday afternoon. This is clear to them and it’s clear to us. We ask them about their work and help them get their organization for the next week setup for another week of success!