Considering Home Schooling

I had the same problem with my son and now we homeschool and he is a much happier kid. You can email me if you would like for advice and where to start if you choose to Homeschool. ____@____.com

Get more involved. Talk to your daughter's teacher(s). Request a meeting to discuss your concerns, and then stay in touch through email so that you KNOW what homework your daughter has, and you can be informed immediately when/if she isn't getting her work done. Explain to your daughter the importance of doing her work. If she needs help with her homework, work through it with her. If you're not able to help her, try a tutor. If you can't afford a tutor, check with your church, or at the library, or ask at her school to try to connect with some volunteer homework helpers. Or just talk with her teacher about getting extra help if she needs it! It sounds like she's a very bright child, and most likely just needs a little more supervision and encouragement. A little more involvement on your part can go a long way!
Best wishes to you!

I use to teach middle school and also high school before having children. From my experience with teaching middle school I always said that when I had kids they would absolutely not go to middle school. I taught in some top schools. I actually started home schooling my two daughters a couple of years before middle school because of some bullying issues. I see no reason why kids should stick it out and work through trying to get along with these people. Working through problems is one thing (which you can easily teach at home) but some of these "socialization skills" you learn in school are not necessary. How many adults call each other fat, ugly, stupid, completely ignore them, hit each other?? If this were to happen, wouldn't you want to stay away from those people? I would choose to. I am not saying that home schooling is what everyone should do but it is definitely what some kids need. YOU need to decide what is best for you and your daughter. If I can help with any questions about home schooling please let me know. By the way you won't need to be doing school work all day - it is amazing how much you can get done in a few hours when there aren't 35 kids in a classroom.

One thing I haven't really heard stressed is getting the help of qualified professionals. A good psychologist can evaluate your child for learning disabilities as well as any underlying anxiety or other emotional issues. If it is your 12 year old, she may be having issues with other girls. Girls at this age can be very mean and cliquish. If she has anxiety about her looks, her abilities, or any other characteristic, her age can make it worse. Is her body changing? Is she developing faster or slower than other girls in her class? She may not be comfortable talking to you about what's going on but something definitely is. My daughter developed much more quickly than her friends and she had a lot of trouble being "different". After seeing a psychologist and working with a therapist, she is confident in her self and able to make good choices about her friends and activities. Good luck.

it sounds like something is going on at school for her grades to be low, and incomplete work. Has she expressed a dislike of a teacher?? other students?? certain classes? Do you have the time for home schooling? The only thing I am agaist with home schooling, is lack of the social aspect of school. Friends, sports, activities, etc... does she want to be home schooled?? Maybe talk to some of her teachers and see what their concern is??? Good luck and God Bless.

Homeschool takes a lot of dedication and structure in order for the child to be successful. Unless you can be dedicated to a structured schedule everyday and instruct her for at least 4-6 hours a day then I would not even think about it. I also know that there are certain requirements in every state. Check out what the requirements and credentials are for where you live. As far as your daughter being picked up from school everyday that is just crazy. I would not pick her up no matter what unless she was for sure sick and it could be confirmed by the school nurse or teacher. I have a rule in my house that you go to school unless you are throwing up or running a fever. Otherwise you are there and you are going to stay there they full day. I actually blame you for gving in to her. If you let her control her environment it won't be long before she is controlling things at home and with the family. I would not homeschool her unless she is having some severely poor social skills. Have you talked to her teachers? My sister had the same problem with her son when he was in middle school. She talked to the teachers and they began doing a daily journal. The teachers were to write the assignment for my nephew everyday and sign off on it. The last teacher of the day would fax the schedule to my sister so she could see it just in case my nephew didn't give it to her. When he got home, she made him sit down and do his work. Then she signed off that they work was completed and his grades have turned around dramatically. Where he was failing before, he is making A's, B's, and C's. She had to have a conference with the principal and every one of his teachers at one time to get them all on the same page. My nephew has very poor social skills and was very withdrawn from everyone. After she got his grades up she enrolled him in an extracurriculm activity to help develop his social skills. We have seen a marked improvement in how he socializes and is not withdrawn anymore. It took about 2 years to get him on the right track but my sister was very committed an determined to see my nephew succeed. Often when children have poor social skills they get withdrawn and depressed. If your daughter doesn't have close friends at 12 years old then I'm going to say that she is lacking a little. In my opinion, homeschooling will further delay her social skills and may even make them worse. I'm a big advocate of homeschooling if done properly but I've seen too many times where parents drop the ball and get really lax about making their children stick with a routine. Sorry so long winded. Good luck with your daughter, 12 years old is such an awkward age and peer pressure is so hard for them to deal with. Help her learn how to deal with issues.

I'm a fan of home-schooling, so would encourage just about anyone who is considering h/s to do it. But there are some issues I'd explore first, just to make sure you're not missing something. She sounds like she's faking sick to get out of school, and there has to be a reason for that. Is she being teased or bullied? Are boys making inappropriate remarks? Are they taking inappropriate actions? Is the work challenging enough or too challenging? Does she need glasses or contacts (maybe she can't see the board well enough to write down her homework)? Does she not get along with the teacher(s)?

Some kids just do better with home-schooling -- and there are a lot of home-school groups around, so you'd have a lot of support and socialization opportunities if you chose to homeschool your daughter.

How long has this gone on?
My third child was wetting her pants in Kindergarten and calling home sick. I thought she would get over it. She did it in 1st 2nd and 3rd. By fourth grade when she was still peeing in her pants and calling home I started thinking something had to give. In 5th grade I pulled her. She is a new child. We have no more anxieties. Work is getting completed, in fact, she is so organized now. All her notebooks have divider tabs for each subject. She takes notes in her math and has a special place for math notes, math definitions, etc. She is paying attention, she is passing and learning.
I am not a jump on the bandwagon homeschool mom. I didn't know what to do with her. We tried Christian schools which helped but didn't alleviate the "issues" we were having.
When I did start I thought this is the dumbest thing I am doing, she isnt' going to learn, she will just get behind. Then I tested her and she blew the test away. She is now asking to go to high school when the time comes. We are studying Latin and she wants to take German too. Right now she is in 6th grade.
I had taken her to the doctors numerous times, nothing wrong. We tried everything, rewards, punishments, nothing worked..
Talk to the counselors and teachers and see what the root problem is. Is she ADD, does she have anxiety issues, is she OCD. These are my daugeters demons and now that we have conquered some of them we are moving forward at a very fast pace.
Good luck to you. You are her M. and know her best.

If she is really bright, knows & understands the material being taught, but tends to have difficulty finishing classwork, beyond what is normal for most kids, you might want to have her tested for Dyslexia. IF it turns out she is, there is lots of help out there so she has the tools to understand her problem areas & how to utilize her strengths.

Many schools are unable to assist children who might need "out side of the box" teaching methods. This merely reflects on the limited resources many of our schools have. But what it ends up doing, is making a really bright kid feel stupid & worthless and loose their love of learning.

She may benefit from homeschooling or a school that offers a different approach to learning.

If she is bright, she may simply be bored out of her tree.

Good Luck!

P. : )

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when you find out everything let me know because I have read that there are different laws in each state pertaining to if a parent is "qualified" to home school their children (which I think is bull in the first place) you may need a certain degree of your own. I know with certainty that I do NOT want my daughter to go to public middle school and Id like for her to go to an all girl high school, but it seems I would have to work at her school in order to pay the tuition in the first place and Im not big on religion so my own needs and expectations as well as for her well-being would be met by just keeping her at home and letting her work at her own pace and then letting her be social in other ways through girl scouts and a competitive sport. I was around several home schooled children while I was in high school because they would come and play with the Louisville youth orchestra and noticed that they were always the ones at the top of the class or playing first chair in orchestra and they seemed to be less effected by all the teenage drama going on around them. They didn't dress like everyone else and never really "acted out" as other students did.They seemed more mature, not in a creepy way but as in they had more integrity and confidence.

We just went through this with my neice and now my cousin. Middle school is hard, in everything! First of all, is she really sick all the time at school?-I wouldn't pick her up unless the school nurse called me and said she had a fever and/or needed to be picked up! (I am a school nurse and I know how the kids try to get out of school)- I know it sounds drastic but she is probably playing you. We have been in school for 38 days and she has already missed 12-that a 1/3 of the time?- she keeps it up and you will find yourself in court. I bet at her age there is something going on at school, something she wants to avoid. Her age always has homework. This day of technology there is no reason you couldn't keep in contact with her teachers at school. The school year has just started for her, so getting her back on track would be easy. I would ask for a meeting with her teachers and see if they have seen any social problems at school, and find out how to get her back on track. To help her get back on track, you are going to have to find out the problem at school.

If you do homeschool, make sure you try to get into a group. They help with teaching and socializing. I do see both methods benefiting her and your family. But make sure she understands that school is serious even if it is at home. School will start at 7:30 and end at 3:00 every day, kind of thing. Good luck.

First of all, it sounds as though a face-to-face with her teacher(s) is in order. It could be that there is someone with whom she has a bad relationship for one reason or another and this person intimidates or threatens her in some way so, in order to avoid this person, or because of a negative encounter with this person, she opts to come home from school. You need to discuss this with the school and try to find out if that is the case. (You cannot correct a problem if you don't know what it is and your daughter may be shy about sharing this bit of 411 with you.)

You don't say if your daughter is in middle school of high school yet so the class arrangements may make a difference, too. If this is her first year in a new school environment, that may be part of the problem.

Has she had a pattern in the past of being able to call home and you will come pick her up from school? If you have established a precedent, it may be hard to break her of it but, twelve days of school in a couple of months is going to cause (legal) trouble for you as well as her.

And home schooling is not the answer! Kids usually do better in the more interactive environment of a public/parochial/cottage school system where they are with their peer group on a daily basis. This also helps them to learn how to deal with others and prepares them for their adult lives when they need to have an acquired skill set coping mechanism. To make the choice of home schooling, you need to be sure your reasons for making the change are not just to help your daughter avoid a difficult situation at school.

Avoiding a problem is not the means to correct the problem so home schooling is not really going to address your daughter's issues with coping with whatever is bugging her. And that is a poor reason to opt for home schooling over public or private schools.

As far as the homework issues are concerned, most larger school systems across the country and many smaller ones have a website where you can find a link to your child's school/class work record, including homework assignments. You can not only see what kinds of grades she is making in class and on homework but what her upcoming homework assignments are as well. Check with your daughter's school and find out if they have such a system inplace. (And if not, why not!) If they do not, talk to her teacher about e-mailing you her homework assignments on a weekly basis so you will have a heads up on what she is doing (or not) in class. With my kids, whenever they told me they had no homework, I would make sure I gave them homework. And my homework assignments were always guaranteed to be longer and harder than they would have at school. If they said they did their homework at school, they would have to bring it home for me to go over it with them. If they didn't bring it home ... it's back to Mom's homework! (They really didn't like that!) And, lastly, if they didn't bring their books home, they had OTHER home/house work to do. Kids learn quickly the lesser of the evils is to just do the homework and get it over with!

In any case, it's better to address the real problem your daughter is having rather than encourage avoidance of problems. Remember, whatever character lessons you teach her now will carry with her throughout her life; you want to be sure you are teaching the right lessons.

(Just as an aside, my daughter, one winter when she was about your younger daughter's age, suddenly began crying in the morning before she had to go to school. She was still crying when she got there. At home, she would tell us of some problem at school; at school she was telling them of problems at home (I didn't let her have breakfast or didn't let her wear a sweater and she was cold. I even had a few visits from Child Protective Services because of it!) She got over it before the school year was half over but, many years later, she confessed that, a very bad, multi-car accident we had witnessed a previous morning while taking her dad to work had made her start fearing that her father (who had a bad heart) would die while she was at school. What a horrible burden for a little child to have to bear alone!)

Whatever you decide, good luck.

Talk to her about it. There could be problems at home you aren't aware of, maybe with her father situation or something. I would try talking and maybe some therapy for her if she's disengaged, angry or depressed. Changing the school situation should be a second tier solution, not a first.

Relax about the friends. It's hard for kids to be real close at that age. They're all about social experimentation and there's a lot of drama and hurt feelings. They have a new BFF every few weeks and it's all superficial. However, having a mom nag and worry is much worse. I would be accepting and supportive but otherwise keep my ears open and my mouth shut.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Talk to her pediatrician. They get more calls about the emotional and academic stuff than any illnesses. Maybe she would talk to her doctor too.