Wakato Academy

Taskmaster or Facilitator

Being a taskmaster is one of the biggest causes of the downfall of a homeschool.  Often times we feel that we have to be on top of our children becuase they "have" to get this work done so they can learn.  Lately I have found myself falling into this trap way too often, my days feel like they are filled with comments like;

           What are you supposed to be doing?

           Get to work?

           If you ever finish that you might have time to do XYZ!

           Put that down and get to work!

I am really feeling exhausted with it all.  I am sure there is a better way to handle this but in the back of my mind I am worried that he might just not do it if I am not on top of it all the time.  I have realized though that this isn't my problem, it really is his problem.  Its my job to help him discover why its a problem that he doesn't do his work.  In public school there are other motivators such as getting a bad grade or in more extreme situations they have to repeat a grade.  So the challenge is  to find a way to help them see the value of their education. 

When we start being a taskmaster, our kids begin resisting, learning stops and our relationships suffer.   So I've decided to give being a facilitator a try.  I sat down on Sunday and wrote out the schedule for the week, I explained that Thursday is field trip day and if you don't finish your work, you don't go on the field trip.  Monday morning we went to work.  The first day went well, the 2nd day he started getting distracted, the 3rd day he got totally distracted and Thursday morning the sitter showed up.  By Saturday evening he had everything caught up.  The next week was better but still a struggle, I noticed that he did do better if I sat down with him and we said o.k. you do this and this and then you can do this for 15 minutes etc, etc, etc...  until it was all done.  This gave him a little brain-down time periodically and he was able to work more efficiently even if not as efficiently as I would like,  So week 3 we discussed what I could do to help him be successful without being a taskmaster we decided to give him a morning boost by saying o.k. here's your schedule tell me what your going to do, ok, let me know how it works out for you.   We are still having some trouble but its getting better and I am not going around all day being a task master.