My Twice Baked Potato

For some time now, my son has enjoyed playing video games with internet friends.

One particular friend usually comes on-line to play around 3:00 our time which is 6:00 his time.

This week, we were surprised to see him online around 1:00 our time. When my son asked how he could be online, I heard a faceless boy say….

“Dude, I’m done with school for the summer so I get to play when I want! Isn’t that awesome, Dude?”

You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you?

My son responded in a sad voice, “yeah Dude. That’s awesome.” His face didn’t match those words of celebration.

About 40 minutes after they started playing, I reminded my son that he still needed to finish his science. I heard him explain that he had to quit because of homework and Internet boy replied….

“Dude, you have to do school work in the summer?”

My son looked at me and dropped his head. It was starting to hit him that other kids were singing “School’s Out For The Summer” and that wasn’t the case for him.

Now before you think I’m cruel for homeschooling year round, let me explain…

We are still building up stamina, especially for less preferred, more “have to” work. Because of this, it takes us longer to finish math units and cover topics.

Interests and conversations drive about 75% of our learning so many times, he doesn’t realize that he’s “doing school” and he’s happy as a clam.

During the summer, school involves more outings, like today we went to an art museum. Even though he isn’t passionate about it, he doesn’t think this is school either.

The biggest reason why we homeschool throughout the year is that he’s terrible at transitions and once I stopped, it would be hard to start and a predictable routine helps my kid.

I told myTBP when he asked why we school year round some of these reasons. He proposed a compromise that was….if he worked more during the week, could he have the weekends off.

This is currently under consideration. It will depend upon him. I’ll let you know what happens😊