This week I wrote an email to a friend who was asking for some personal mentoring for herself so she can mentor her "scholar phase" kids (high school age). I asked her if I could post my reply here, in case anyone else may be dealing with this balancing act:
"My two older children are struggling with time management. Now when I say this, I do not mean at all that they are wasting time. They are not. They are working so much doing so much learning that they feel overwhelmed. Now I know that is normal sometimes. But we dont want them to feel TOO overwhelmed. I want them to be joyful learners."
I don't have any real answers for you. But I know it can be therapeutic to vent! At this stage it seems that 95% of what your kids decide to do is based on what they want, what they see in their future, and only 5% what you think they should do. Basically, you have to let go of the reins.
This is a GOOD time for them to take on TOO much, so that they see their limits in an environment where it's safe, where there is a soft cushion for failure. And they may not fail if they're motivated enough -- it sounds like they love what they're doing. So I wouldn't worry too much about that.
At some point in your maturational process you shifted from finding joy in playing and having a "fun time" to finding joy in accomplishing hard things. Your kids may be shifting also, and that's a great thing. The difficulty on my part when my older kids hit this stage was twofold: anxiety that they would fail, and the loss of a playmate/friend, since they're now too busy to do all the fun little things you used to do together. It's sad, but there's nothing you can do about it (except have another baby!) Even when you are remembering the principles of Julie Beck's "Mothers Who Know," family togetherness gets more and more difficult the older they get -- right now you may be down to just weekends (for fun and work).
So, to help with your anxiety and their overwhelm, you should help them make a reasonable weekly schedule, and then provide them with some oversight -- I'm sure you do this. Be a "reminder," but not a nag -- they need to learn to nag themselves.
"What I am asking is HOW did you determine what their high school load of classes would be???"
We try to get in those basics: four years of math and English (always doing something to keep the grammar fresh, plus writing practice of some sort), three or four years of science and history/literature -- we use The Well-Trained Mind as a guide here. Some of this can be AP prep, and they need to do some work with a test prep manual to ace the SAT or ACT in their Junior year, and their senior year it's the college and scholarship applications that take time. Add in Driver's Ed, music, seminary, exercising, a job, and a social life and you've got a full plate! And we were also helping Quinn finish his Eagle his Senior year. It can be a lot, but remember "by the yard it's hard, but inch by inch it's a cinch" (and have then do their Eagle early!)
Yes, I do have HS age kids take outside classes. I think this is critical practice for college.
"Did you have them study a few things or several?" Frankly, my kids have had trouble "compartmentalizing" their time and chipping away a bit at lots of things through the day. They do better with fewer things and larger blocks of time. We often start the year with big plans about many subjects, but only finish some of them. Like Quinn's Classical Rhetoric video program -- seemed great, and he liked it, and it didn't take a lot of time, but he didn't often get around to it, and went off to BYU without finishing it. But they often don't finish programs in the public schools too, and they waste so much time! Quinn didn't waste time -- he was always doing something productive (usually reading far too long.)
"What chores do you have your 14 and ups do?" Everyone had a night to do dinner, and they rotated through the dishes. However, I frequently bailed them out when they were too busy. So the expectation was there, but when we went from "Ideal to Real," like in your class, I'd step in. They also had an inside job (their own bathroom and an area of the house)and an outside job (mowing, weeding, washing cars, leaves, snow, etc.) each Saturday, which together took under an hour, and I tried to consistently get this much work out of them, and usually did (and do, for Luke).
These issues are tough no matter whether your family homeschools or not -- in fact, I think they are tougher for public schoolers since they have less control over what to say "yes" and "no" to. All I can say is, pray and counsel together, and you're already doing that, so I'm confident you'll come up with a good mix for your family.
