What To Do If Your Child Resists Online Learning

[elleng]

'If your child is resisting remote learning, you are not alone. It’s similar to learning an instrument for the first time: In the beginning, it’s exciting. Then, when harder pieces that require more determination and practice come along, the novelty starts to wear off, and many children beg to quit. Now, remote learning is beginning to lose its shine. It’s no longer new and it feels more like work for a lot of students across the country.

It is natural for children to have a variety of reactions—including resistance—to the massive shift in learning that has happened over the last few months. If your child is in that place, now is not the time to push hard and turn a negative situation into a battle.

If you are the parent or guardian of an elementary school child, you might be tempted to throw in the towel right now. After all, how important is it for your child to make it through five more chapters of math concepts? With everyone at home, your own work, and now your child’s schoolwork, it just doesn’t seem sustainable.

But, with weeks, if not months, of more social distancing ahead, there are some reasons to hang in there. So don’t give up! Working through this period of resistance is an opportunity for children in the upper elementary grades (3–5) to learn resilience and independence—including what strategies they need to work on their own and how to respect boundaries that you set.

Quite a lot can be gained from having children of this age face their own work and their own boredom and think creatively about how to use their time. Academically, it is important to keep your child’s skills sharp and growing in reading comprehension, writing, and math, especially multiplication, division, and everyday math. And, you’ll want your child to remain connected to the subjects that interest them most, including the arts, science, and social studies.

Below are a few suggestions to help you and your child get over this bump in the road. The resistance won’t end overnight, but these tips should help lessen the friction.'>>>

https://blog.lowellschool.org/blog/what-to-do-if-your-child-resists-online-learning?

[Freddie]

1. My granddaughter

Who I watch every day is having a problem with this. She has ADHD and getting through a regular school day is tough, homework was torture. Now it’s worse. Some days I just let her have the day off. She’s in 4th grade, smart, likes to read but would play Minecraft all day if you let her. She can do the work but is not “self-motivated” where school is concerned.

[elleng]

2. Good luck.

Glad to see this: 'Take a day off from virtual school.'

[Doreen]

5. Children with ADHD were the first ones I thought of.

I have ADHD and I would never had made it with online school. I had a hard time sitting still in school but a human standing in front of you can keep your attention more than a screen.

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. I can't imagine what it is like to be the sole educational force in a child's life.

I never could have done it, my wife maybe, but it would have been incredibly hard back in the early 90s when my kids were young.

[elleng]

4. Very difficult.

Thank goodness my daughters and their kids are young, and have attended schools with teachers they love.

[BigmanPigman]

6. As a former K-6 teacher my co-workers and I found

that computers were the one thing we could count on to keep an ADD or ADHD student focused longer. What we did with students who were hyper was allow them to stand up while working and give them the chance to run around the playground a few times helps too. It is very important to keep them on a schedule and organized. One year 1/3 of my class was diagnosed ADD /ADHD and I almost quit (and I AM hyper myself).

If a student has a particular interest, plan lessons around that interest. If they like comic books, use that to teach them, as long as they are reading something is what is important. If they like insects, use that as a theme to attract them. Insect math, insect fiction and non fiction, write and illustrate insect stories, etc.

[OAITW r.2.0]

7. I believe you are correct.

Have a bunch of lifelong teachers in my family and they would agree with you....use what the student is interested in to catapult their educational orbit.

[elleng]

10. Exactly, that's REAL education.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. Maybe the paradigm of six hours of being in school

isn't the best possible paradigm.

On another social media site, someone I know who was a child in England in WWII, recently posted that most of those years she was simply out exploring the bombed out sites and just getting along. She honestly feels that she didn't really need to be in school all those years.

I'm inclined to agree. Okay, so I don't currently have young children who would normally be in school, but you still need to be thinking outside the box. Just do whatever "enrichment" stuff you can. The basics of "reading, writing, and arithmetic" are going to be there. And honestly? There's a fuck of a lot of boring repetition of those things. So read to your kids. Encourage them to read on their own. Have them explore their environment. Honestly? They'll be okay.

As a side note, I have long encouraged people to think about homeschooling their kids. Not because they should necessarily home school, but because thinking about it makes the parents give a LOT of thought into what they want for their kids.

When my first son was about a year old I thought I'd possibly home school. I realized pretty quickly that I'd be a TERRIBLE home schooling mom. Mainly because I had very little patience for the normal glitches or ordinary stumbling blocks that most kids will encounter. But I was very good at enrichment. So I continued doing that.

Back to the subject here. It's highly likely that most learning can take place in a far shorter time than is typical in standard schools. If you look at what a lot of home schooling people put out there, you'll see there are a lot of alternatives. Make at least one of them work for you.

[MontanaMama]

9. My 15 year old son is an exceptional student.

He loves school. He enjoys learning and prides himself in doing his best. The transition to online learning has been nothing but struggle for him, for his dad and me. Everyday his google classroom inbox is full of notifications from teachers...to the tune of 15-20 of them. Some of these notifications come through between midnight and 6am. It’s ridiculous. Further, his teachers aren’t teaching any more. At all. The child gets reams of google documents, power point presentations, digital worksheets and reading assignments but not one of his teachers has recorded themselves teaching anything. Not one. It is heartbreaking to witness this and try to keep my child’s chin up and encourage him in this environment.

I have asked every single teacher for access to the Google Classroom content they’re sending my child. I am told that there really isn’t a place for parents in google classroom for high school. Google classroom’s support site acknowledges this. We parents are expected to be involved in teaching our kids but we are not at all included in this arrangement. I’m expected to be an auxiliary teacher but I do not have access to the content my child is supposed to learn.

A couple weeks ago, my son asked me if he could email his principal to give him feedback on his experience with online school...I gave him permission as long as the email was fact based and respectful. I proofread his letter and gave him the thumbs up to send it. The principal’s response? “I’m sorry our remote learning environment is not working out for you.” My kid’s response? “So I guess Mr. Miller is not a resource for me going forward.” My kiddo isn’t stupid. He was blown off big time and he knew it.

I realize we have no choice but to deal with this situation but I find it incredibly discouraging, sad and frankly, pathetic that this is what our school district is dishing out. I am not confident my son will ever recover the learning experiences he has missed and will miss.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

12. Sounds like you have a wonderful and sensible son.

I can only hope he can get through this.

What you are experiencing is the huge drawback of a school system that expects all students to learn everything in lockstep.

When my son was in first grade he was essentially held back because he was having trouble learning to read, although his math skills were pretty impressive for that age. He didn't actually learn to read until half way through second grade, when he was put into a special reading program, and it finally clicked. Meanwhile, all the kids who caught on to the reading got to advance, while he was stuck doing math he'd figured out two years earlier. Arrrghhh!

Hang in there. Your son is very smart and will do well, I'm sure.

[EllieBC]

11. My 10 year old.

She has high functioning autism, ADHD, and anxiety. This is really throwing her off. Her teacher keeps letting them know nothing is required which is also not helping. Our district is allowing kids with diverse learning needs to come into the school now and work with their EA or teacher so she’s going 2 hours a day every day and this has helped immensely.

My 5 year old is doing ok with the online learning because it’s mostly project based or creative based learning. She doesn’t mind doing any of it but she also doesn’t have an special or diverse learning needs.

It’s really hard. For most of us, our homes are safe spaces for our kids but they aren’t classrooms. We have a small condo and 3 kids. There’s never “quiet”. Especially not with a 3 year old who runs around in his underwear with a hockey stick yelling about zombies.