There's No Crying in Homeschool

Week 2 started out swimmingly--tears and all!  Although Monday was a holiday for most school children, we opted to continue with our classes since Daddy was home to participate.  It was a great idea until we all slept in.  I think classes officially started a little before noon, and halfway through his to-do list, my son was demanding food.  So when all was said and done, after Mommy explained to Daddy what needed to get done, and after Daddy taught Boy Wonder his lessons and forced him to finish his homework, we were well into the middle of the afternoon.  It was a long day.

Then, to make matters worse, Mommy made the mistake of visiting the classroom a few times.  It was during those visits when I discovered that Boy Wonder was hurrying through his numbers and copy/sketch activities.  Granted, the child hates the redundancy of the practice pages.  But today, when I called him out on sloppy "3's" he told me I was being mean and picking on him.  (As if I have nothing better to do?!)  Then he followed up this dramatic scene with tears.  Part of me believes that they might have been real, but I still think the tears were targeted at Daddy with the hope that he would tell Mommy to go away.  Didn't work.

So then we had to have a long family conversation about how important it is to do our work well the first time.  Every chance I get, I reiterate that he must continue to practice until he masters his work.  We want excellence in all we do.  Failure to produce excellent numbers means that he gets to continue to write numbers until the powers that be are satisfied.  And that would be me!

Sure enough, after a logical and encouraging pep talk, the "3's" turned from alien-like blobs to legible numbers.  Something apparently clicked. 

Thank goodness we got that behind us.  Hopefully the tears are out of the way for the week.  Generally, I'm not a sucker for tears.  Sympathy is earned when it is deserved.  Tears associated with eye-rolling do not fall into the deserving-of -sympathy category.  (I am convinced that Dante meant to write about a special level of hell for eye-rollers, but just forgot. I mean, eye-rolling is the rudest and most disrespectful act!)  I'm hoping that we've nipped the tears and manipulation in the bud for now.  But if it persists, I must find a way to teach Boy Wonder that there is no crying in homeschooling.