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My 10 year old daughter moved to a new school this year. She has a great teacher and she claims to be much happier at her new school. She finally feels like she fits in and she loves all of the projects they do. The problem is, school is stressing her out. Another problem is that her school is stressing me out.
In retrospect, it is obvious to me that Amelia needed a change last year. If your child is reading a couple books a day during school hours, something is wrong. Kids need to be challenged. If there is no challenge, changes must be made. On the other hand, if a child has so many challenges at school that she doesn’t have time left for other activities, or if she has little time for being a 10 yr old, something might be wrong there too.
It is tricky to be the parent of someone who has the option of being challenged too much or too little, but no obvious third option. I’m not the teacher; I can’t adjust the homework load. I can’t make the curriculum just a bit easier for her. I can help her to streamline her life, I can try to help her see that she doesn’t have time to do everything demanded at school, retake her science test until she gets a perfect score, swim every afternoon, go to chess club once a week, go to Activity Days (a bi-weekly church group for girls), enter the Reflections contest (PTA arts program), and study for the spelling bee, etc.
The problem is it makes me sad to encourage her to scale back on the non-school activities that are also an important and enjoyable part of her life (and let me be honest: our life. I am mourning the loss of time to study spelling, because it was something I really enjoyed doing with my daughter). For example, dropping swimming would save the most time, but after her fight to make the swim team, I would hate to see her leave just when she is reaping the rewards of her hard work.
Because of the stress that her homework assignments put on our family, I am often tempted to encourage her to go back to her old school. It can’t be worth it! I say. But despite the stress she evidences and the anxiety I feel, how can I send her back when she says she is happier at her new school and wouldn’t go back for the world?
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10 Responses to “School Stress”
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I’ll reply to my own essay: I don’t think that there are any easy answers to this. I do think that perhaps I am overwrought. It has been a tough week. Amelia had a couple of major assignments due (and meanwhile I was busy with Duncan’s school doing a lot of work for the Reflections program). The main assignment was a story she spent most of Fall Break writing (She may be a little too fond of challenges. She brings some of these problems on herself. Her story was 11 pages long single spaced. Who ever heard of a 10 year old writing a 20 page story?)–and that we together spent a huge chunk of last Saturday editing. I didn’t have time to help, but she asked for my help, she needed my help, and I like spending time with her, so I did. Monday morning we discovered that all of the post rough draft changes had been lost. Since then, hours have been spent trying to recover the document, but it hasn’t worked out. She’s supposed to redo last weekend’s work this weekend. Meanwhile, the laundry needs attention, the house needs attention, the other children need attention. Someone should be helping Duncan learn how to read. Someone should be doing activities with Kate that don’t involve strapping her in her car seat and shuttling her back and forth between home and school and swimming. That someone has children and therefore Halloween will claim its obeisance. Finally, someone has a marriage that requires time and attention. I hope Amelia remembers last week’s anti run-on sentence lessons, because I don’t think I’ll have time to repeat them! When do we get to just bake cookies?
Wow, she is one busy girl. I on the other hand can’t get my kids to sign up for anything. Where is the happy medium?
This is so hard. Isaac crashed-and-burned the end of last year and I was so torn because I wanted him to do the work so he wouldn’t get in the habit of not trying, and at the same time, I thought it was much too much work–and there was so much “homework for parents,”in trying to talk him down from the ledge when he had long writing assignments (which he dislikes, and tends to clam up when he has to do one,) and in helping assemble costumes, etc. Even making grilled cheese sandwiches for the (much-loved by the kids) medieval fair turned out to take up several hours one morning when I had a new baby (and lots of dirty laundry.) At the same time, when I asked him whether he would still have chosen A.L.L. again he said he definitely would have and that they did lots of very cool and interesting things in class.
I think it’s a good idea to try to encourage kids to be independent, which lifts a lot of the burden from the parents and lets the kids own their successes–but then again, sometimes Ike is too independent and we realize too late that he could have really benefited from more involvement and help from us. And I’ve been grateful he hasn’t wanted to do any extracurricular stuff lately (he did soccer last year, and it was HARD getting him and Mabel to their games and practices,) but sometimes I feel guilty that he’s not learning an instrument or getting to do much other than academic things. And yet, I do feel like the A.L.L. program can be really great. So far it seems like Jr. High has had a slightly more manageable pace than 6th grade at Cherry Hill did, so I’m hoping that continues (although with History Fair about to kick in, maybe I should be biting my nails.)
Another thing I’ve thought about lately is how in college it’s often a big push to get through each semester; a big challenge and something close to living in what I’ve heard called “crisis mode” and it seems to me that if thejunior high and high school grades replicate (as they often do) that crisis-mode style, kids will burn out long before college. Of course a degree of challenge and stress is healthy, but how much is best is hard to know, and it seems to me so easy for every class and every program to think they should get the kid’s most heroic efforts, not allowing kids enough family time and down time, let alone a good night’s sleep most nights.
Zina´s last blog ..My family’s so lucky that I can now share my “humor” with the whole internet and not just them
My children have been/are all in accelerated learning programs in their schools. Overall they have had great experiences, but they have also experienced the kind of burn-out dicussed here. I have also experienced the kinds of concerns and and the feeling of being spread too thin that are mentioned. I learned midway through this whole process to do a very important thing: take things into my own hands and manage my family’s time. Not in an overbearing, controling manner, and not really with the kids, but with their teachers. If we have a family outing planned, or some other important event, and the kids come home with loads of homework, I don’t cancel the family outing or event; I speak with the teacher about the situation and look for a compromise. In the past, sometimes a due date was extended; sometimes the assignment was adjusted; and on a couple of rare occasions, I told the teacher that my child simply wouldn’t be able to complete that particular assignment–the other opportunities in life outweighted the homework. Now, this has occurred with three children over the space of going on 13 years, so it is rare that I step in, but I do step in.
To me, family and health–including mental and emotional well-being–trump academics. That’s how my priorities lie, and each person and every family has to determine their own priorities. I raised my children to be members of their families first, their religion second, their community third, and their classroom fourth. That may not work in the same order for others, but making all of our decisions as a family based on a descending order of priorities continues to help us. When there is a question about who is going where, or how the money is spent, or what we are going to do with our time, we defer to our family priorities. This gives every opportunity clarity and balance.
We also understand that no one gets to–or even CAN–do everything he or she would like to do. That’s just the way it is. So we look at our resources, including time and energy, and use that as a basis for choosing what our family will be involved in, and how much time we will give to those things. For a while, all three of my children were in company dance classes three times a week, but that was all they were in. They had to accept forgoing fencing, karate, science camp, soccer, and all the other things that seemed interesting. Not because their parents are Nazis, but we helped them look at the amount of time, money, and energy that was available, and then let them choose, based on that information, what they wanted to do more than any of the other things. They learned to make their own priorities.
I was an over-achiever in high school and made myself miserable doing things I thought I should be doing rather than what made me happy. (Determined not to let gym class prevent me from getting straight As, I came in early to practice my volleyball serve even though I hated sports. Really – straight As are meaningless.)
It wasn’t until college, that I changed this paradigm and was much happier to find a better balance. It takes a while to work through our expectations, especially for doers and achievers. I think parents can help by communicating that it’s okay to miss an activity, deadline, or goal every now and then. Perfection is not required. For achievers, letting oneself off the hook is progress and growth. (This does not apply to slackers!)
This is what I struggle with too, except in an entirely different paradigm. My daughter has ADD (not the hyper part) and works SO HARD to get things finished – it takes her hours because her focus is just all over the place. and I have to sit beside her giving her cues to refocus her. The teacher says 1/2 hour of homework at this age (grade 4) is max. And yet she cannot do it in half an hour. But I don’t want her to be a quitter. And we both acknowledge, that although things may be a bit harder for her to focus, she still can finish school, and get into college, and ultimately be whatever she wants to be. But she needs to PLAY and RUN after school too.
We just don’t get all the work done. And the teacher and I have a notebook that we write back and forth in, so that I can let her know why she didn’t finish certain assignments. And the teacher lets us know if there is something she needs more practice in – so we don’t let it slide at home.
I hope you find the medium that helps your child and your family…
Hugs,
Cathy
This is a big concern at our house too. Maddie switched schools this year and is still in swim team, has violin lessons, activity days and took up with the school Shakespeare program (after school) and choir (before school). On Wednesdays choir starts at 7:35am and her violin lesson ends at 7:30pm. What a long, long day! It helped me to hear from an older mother that this is an age when they want to try everything and be in everything. So I’m letting her try it even though they aren’t the things I’d choose and even though she’s scaling back on things I would do.
This was just one of those weeks you hang on for at our house as well. Maybe it was only Halloween and the weather? I can hope!
Listen to Anne. She’s right: you have to decide how to organize and run your life and your family’s life and make everything else fit that rather than the reverse.
Last year my Kate was in fifth grade, which is top of the grade school here. The number of projects / field trips / special days with costume, etc. was enough to break my usual vow of remaining neutral about my kids’ school. “I hate fifth grade,” sadly, became a mantra. My friends heard it, my kids heard it, the PTA board heard it. If you read my blog, you heard it too. It didn’t make things any easier that Kate was in two choirs (required to “support” the robust school choir upon making district) and piano and drama club and activity days. It was too much — but all activities were beneficial for her growth at that time.
That being said, my Kate is also my child with perfectionist tendencies and that brings its own drama. She often writes paragraphs when sentences will do, will re-write homework and “re-organize” her folders. A little OCD? Perhaps. It has been a theme in our conversations over the years to do things not perfectly, but good enough. (Strange to counsel your child to lower their expectations, but necessary in this case.) And gradually progress has been made.
I am happy to report that sixth grade is better. The first weeks of middle school required a bit of adjustment on her part but in this second six week block I’ve noticed she has brought herself up to speed and no longer spends all available evening hours on homework.
So I guess my longwinded comment is to persevere — thinking of famous philosopher — that I guess it will make you (and Amelia) strong.
Wise words. No easy solutions.