Surely not!
The last two days, we’ve charged Captain Science with the task of setting goals for himself and meeting them. If he can continue to do that through tomorrow’s work, then on Friday we will mail in the check for the Starbase program at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, a 5-week, one day a week course in aeronautics. If he can’t demonstrate the ability to set goals and complete his required work, he won’t be going. If he can, then he will.
Yesterday, he set rather long time periods for himself to complete the work (an hour to complete two math problems), but finished most of the work well before his own goal. Today, he’s set much more realistic goals and come within a few minutes of meeting all of them. For instance, he gave himself 45 minutes to complete math (6 problems), which would have put his finish time at 10:15. At 10:10, I check in with him, and he had only done a problem and a half. I reminded him of his goal, reminded him that he had to meet his goals at least reasonably well in order to attend Starbase, but didn’t express any emotion about the situation at all.
At 10:19, he came upstairs with completed math work. Funny how that works.
He completed his language arts, for which he’d allowed himself another 45 minutes, within just over 30 minutes, then took a snack break, and is rewarding himself now with his history. He’s been looking forward to the topic of the Roman army since we started Rome, and now he finally gets to read and write about he. He’s given himself an hour and fifteen minutes to read the chapter and write his essay, so as long as he completes it within an hour and a half or so, I’d say he’s stayed on task for all his major assignments today, and we’ll call this day a major win!
The goals he is setting are very close to the time blocks on the schedule, so we’ll try to get back to that next week. He’s been a little disappointed we aren’t sticking to it, and keeps saying, “But the schedule says it’s time for…” I’ve explained that, this week, he’s setting his schedule and motivating himself, because obviously I can’t motivate him. If he finishes the week strong, then we’ll slowly start reintegrating the extra subjects he loves.
Feeling pretty good about our progress. Hopefully this is onward and upward.
I’m glad he’s doing better.
Well, dang. Come fix my kids, will ya! It is 70+ degrees here and NOBODY wants to do school.
Oh, I spoke way too soon. He’s drag-assing through correcting three whole LoF problems. *sigh* I told him do it, don’t do it, but make a decision by 3:45 so I can call and cancel our visit to my mom’s house.
Smart mamaing!