Don’t you just love when your children can work on their homeschooling fairly independently? I know I do! I love helping him when he needs it, but helping him to be responsible for his own scheduling.. I LOVE IT! We’ve been working on refining his schedule for the past couple of years and this year it was just a matter of making up a list for him, and then he decides how he’s going to full fill his workload over the course of the week.
Trying to figure out how to help him be accountable in other areas of his life took a little more figuring out. Earlier this year it occurred to us that making a list of everything he was responsible for over the course of a week might be beneficial to him as well. He’s taken to it like a duck to water… he loves having a list to work off of and to be know exactly what he is responsible for. We needed to add some consequences initially to help him take the list seriously as up until this point it was “get it done if you can, we’re disappointed if you don’t, but life happens”. That proved to be too “loosey-goosey” for him.
Once he realized we were trying to help him build a good routine and to develop skills that will help in establish a pattern of fitting in the important things in life FIRST before doing anything else, he got the picture and starting taking it all much more seriously.
NOW he loves it and mostly gets all his work done first thing in the morning instead of lolly gagging about all day and running out of time. He even explains if he needs to do something on a different day (like taking a shower) due to being busy, or working with dad, or _________. He has careful reasoning which I love to see.
What do you use to help your children learn how to be accountable to themselves, to help them figure out what should come first in their lives?
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Kitchen Ease
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