Recently, a number of homeschooling parents have asked for advice on how to motivate their middle and high school-aged children to engage with the curriculum. While disengagement with one’s studies certainly happens in classroom settings, it might feel particularly challenging for homeschooling families where parents are often in the position of being both parent and educator, which can be a tricky dynamic to navigate especially during your child’s teenage years.
Having spent twenty-nine years teaching middle school and with three children of my own, I know that there are a multitude of reasons why any student might temporarily become disengaged with their education. I also know that it can be frustrating for parents when a child appears to lose self-motivation or, perhaps, adopts oppositional behaviors when it comes to learning. If you find yourself in this position in your home, there are steps you can take to move in a positive direction.
You will want to approach the situation with compassion and patience, for yourself and your child. Your first step will be to shift the focus from what a child is not doing to what the child actually is doing. It might be really challenging for you as a parent to be an objective and silent observer, but I promise it will pay off!
Over the course of one week of homeschooling, try to answer these questions:
How is the child spending time during the day when not doing schoolwork?
What does it look like and sound like when the child is doing schoolwork?
In which subjects does the student excel? In which does the child struggle?
What activities, if any, appear to bring the child joy? (Reading, doing art, playing
video games, cooking?)
Is the child hanging out with friends and happily involved in activities like sports or
Theater outside of the home?
Once you have gathered your observations, you are going to need to sharpen your nerves for the next step: actually talking with your child. Notice that I used the word “with” and not “to.” The point of the conversation is to help your child re-engage with school by calmly sharing your observations, gathering information on how your child is experiencing the educational process, and then partnering with your child to create a new plan. As hard as it may be to stay in the “No Judgment Zone,” maintaining an attitude of curiosity and an approach that is student-led will serve you well. You might start the conversation with your child like this:
“I’m checking in with you because I’ve noticed that lately (name what you noticed in regard to how they spend their time and how their work has or has not been getting done well or at all), which makes me curious about how you are experiencing homeschooling right now. How would you describe your engagement with your education lately?”
If your child is confused because they genuinely thought everything was going great, or your child is outright resistant to the conversation, you can say something along the lines of,
“Because your education is really important for you to be able to achieve your personal goals in life, we need to work together to set up a system that is going to work better for you. What thoughts do you have about how to make changes that will enable you to do your own best work?”
In many cases, students and parents are able to build a plan together and then experiment with that system for a few weeks before assessing and tweaking it. And then there are situations that require support from outside the home. Oftentimes, what looks like a lack of motivation or a dislike of school work is actually a cover for an underlying challenge. Based on your observations and what your child self-reports, you can partner with other adults to support your child’s learning:
If your child is openly hostile or presents as depressed, clearly you can seek
professional counseling.
If your child appears or shares that they feel dysregulated in regard to their sleep,
physical health, or attention, you can connect with their pediatrician.
If your child self-reports or you observe potential learning differences or challenges
around executive functioning skills, you can pursue educational coaching and/or
neuropsychological testing to figure out how your child learns best.
It should not be at all surprising to find yourself in a both/and situation. For instance, your child might be resistant to academic work because they are struggling to focus and have challenges around executive functioning.
If your child reports that they are “bored” or that they “don’t like” a subject (or learning in general), well, that’s worth investigating. You can consider the following:
Is the curriculum too easy for your child?
Is the curriculum pitched too high for your child’s current skill levels?
Is your child spending a lot of time doing independent work on a computer, which can
feel repetitive and isolating?
Maybe the child simply doesn’t feel connected to the learning or understand how it will
help them reach their goals.
Once you have explored potential sources of struggle or discontent, you can adjust your child’s curriculum as needed. If your child is interested in learning opportunities that are more self-directed and experiential, you can incorporate frequent opportunities for student-led learning where the child has choice around what is studied and how.
An example of this type of project is my Student-led Learning Project, which asks students to choose their own topic. They then plan, track, and apply their learning. Projects like these not only break up the perceived monotony of a school year, they provide students with authentic opportunities to drive their own learning, which often really is the key to re-engagement.
One of the many beauties of homeschooling is that you have the power to create the best possible learning environment and course of study for your child. Through this process of partnering with your child, you can set up conditions in which your homeschooler will thrive because, as we all know, students do well when they can.
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