In my last post I wrote about how setting a good tone in our homes (and homeschooling) is so important – we need to work on our attitude, projecting positivity.
It helps if you schedule some things every day that your children enjoy. To some children, everything is enjoyable, but to most children, at least something is enjoyable, and yes, there are some children (but not most), to whom nothing is enjoyable.
If you have a child with an overall negative attitude, first, check your own attitude – do you voice negativity or show it on your face? You might have to reckon with that, that is, confess it (to God and to your children) and tell them that you are determined to change. You may give them permission to call you out on it.
But maybe you are the most positive person and your child is still negative and grumpy about everything.
Ask this child about it: “Why are you unhappy?” (“I don’t like such’n such” or “I don’t want to do such’n such”). “Okay, why not? What is it you don’t like about it?”
If they have a reasonable answer, then you can adjust the way such’n such is done. Work with them as much as possible.
If they are being unrealistic, then explain how and why it is unrealistic, why it can’t change, and let them know that if there is something that they don’t like that has to happen anyway, it is their choice to be miserable and grumpy about it or to have a good attitude.
Asking your children questions and really hearing them is important. It is one way to help them think, which is one of the most important things we can teach our children. “Thinking” is something that students don’t learn in many institutional schools.
If they are overall grumpy about being homeschooled, ask them why they would prefer to be in school. Listen. Acknowledge what they said. But be prepared with a list of reasons why you are homeschooling them, and also a list of the negatives of being in school. During this time of COVID-19 masks, social distancing and all that, it should be easy to make a sensible case for homeschooling. If your children are believers, then there is a tremendous case for not sending them to an institution that will teach them that good is evil and that evil is good.
Sometimes people (our children, or us) are simply in a bad mood because they (or we) are in a “poor me” frame of mind. That happens when we look at others and compare what we perceive of their supposed easier life, or better life, or…whatever…to ours. We think we want what they have. Or we think we are being unfairly treated. “Poor me!” Your child might envy a sibling or friend for whatever reason, or just “poor me, I don’t get to play enough, or I don’t have the computer games that my friends do…”
I told my son about a skit that I saw once where there was a wading pool that represented “a pity-party pool” – various people would come and say “Poor me! I ___________” and then say something that they were feeling “poor me-ish” about and get into the pool. At one point someone in the pool changed their perspective and got out of the “Pity-Party Pool of Poor Me”, shedding their grumpiness and embracing joy (or at least contentment). We both agreed that sitting in the Pity-Party Pool of Poor Me wasn’t all that much fun. From that time on, whenever my son was in a bad mood, I would playfully (not heavy handedly) ask him, “Have you gone into the Pity-Party Pool of Poor Me? Get out before you drown!”
Our children can enjoy being homeschooled.
