Homeschoolers: What constitutes a dismal week for your family?

Question

I am interested in exploring the values of other homeschool families and comparing them with my own. For us a dismal week is when Dad has to work weekends, Mom lets too many obligations pile up and they fall on the same week; leading to too many distractions and Kiddo just won’t ask for help if she gets stuck on a lesson…and eventually gets frustrated and starts to remind me of the saying about leading horses to water. Once we are all grouchy and harried is about the time the car starts acting funny, the cat gets diarrhea, and the toilet backs up. This is not a regular occurrence, but I think everyone, homeschooled or not can relate. Also, how do you deal with a dismal week? I’d like to learn from veteran parents and homeschoolers.

Answer 1

My parents are zero help, actually. My mom's a hardcore unschooler and I want some structure, so not a good mix. My dad works 16 hour days so he's not home to help. I wouldn't be comfortable asking either of them, though, so it doesn't matter.

Dismal weeks are all I ever have, by my standards. Usually in a 7-day week I get 3 days of work done, but since I don't have a curriculum or support system I'm just on my own. My parents don't try to stop me, but I have a relatively heavy chores load (for one thing, I'm in charge of keeping the kitchen spotless at all times, and if it gets messy for any reason I'm in trouble. If I'm out all day, if I couldn't get the dishes that night because I was doing other jobs or homework, I'm still in trouble. Even one time when I stayed at a friend's house over night, they left all the dishes in the sink for me to do in the morning) and am easily stressed.

Nothing in my house or family really works, but I'm just trying to make it through high school so I can get out of here.

I know this isn't the kind of puppies and sunshine, "Homeschooling works so well!" response you're probably after, but it's the truth.

To deal with it I usually wrestle with my boyfriend to get some of the anger out. I'm not going to have any good weeks any time soon, so I've stopped deluding myself and am dealing with reality.

Since I'm a minor, I can't change any of the major problems. We've done a little bit of rearranging that has made our general situation less dismal, but nothing works and I can't change anything until I turn 18.

Beats being in school, though.

EDIT: My answer lacks some clarity. I consistently score high on standardized tests and all that, and am beyond normal tenth-grader stuff in most subjects, but it's not as much as I could be doing, or would like to be doing.

Answer 2

The Dismal week is one where I forget to start my days in Bible reading and prayer, the power goes out (which where I live means no heat, no water, no toilet flushing, no stove to cook on), the kids fight with each other and fight with me about doing their school work.  The bookwork takes so long that we cancel art, science, and anything else extra.  The dog gets out and the neighbors, rather than just tell me about it, threaten to call animal control even though the dog is usually kept inside and doesn't roam the neighborhood on a regular basis.  When the power comes back, the septic goes out.  A coyote broke into the hen house and we are now without four of our hens.  A deer ate an entire row of peas from our garden and our cat got hit by a car.

This actually all happened in one week before.  How did I deal with it?  Well, I couldn't very well control any of it, so I let it go.

Answer 3

This is a dismal week for us...

I just had this answer written, was at the preview window and without thinking clicked the little X to close.... So, now I have to write it again...

Mom and son are sick.  Took son to Doc on Friday.  Doc says it is a virus and must run its course for 3 - 10 days.  No antibiotics.  Son is miserable.

Spring Dance is tomorrow.  We were all looking forward to it but will not be going....

Son behind now from missing a day at his coop courses and the work is piling up...

Son will miss a day of speech club and he has a job to do that all the other kids are counting on ....

We have 50 gallons of Birch sap waiting to be boiled down to make syrup and we are getting about 10 gallons a day (and now I have to go out twice a day and gather without my helper)... If we don't get to it soon it will spoil... and all the work we have done will be for naught...

ACT coming up this Saturday...

My laptop seems to have a virus or spyware - Norton can't find it though...

We are not veterans... but during times like this I remember what Abraham Lincoln said: "This too shall pass."

Applies to good times and bad.  Helps one keep a balanced outlook on life.

Well... anyway, we have our taxes done.

Answer 4

This is easier, we definitely don't recognise the concept of a dismal week, not unless everybody is sick as a dog!  If we go a whole week without going anywhere or generating any wonderful pieces of work, well it's never a total loss. Things did get done and learnt and sometimes it's good to kick back and take it easy, blob out in front of the TV and relax. I see it as one of the advantages of home educating that you can take a 'vacation' when you need to rather than when the calender says :)

Answer 5

Ours would be very similar to yours...

We had a rather dismal week recently.  It rained a lot, meaning my husband was home.  We enjoy his presence, but it throws off our routine and it means a loss of income, which is not usually a problem but everything has been breaking recently!  He ended up having to work on Saturday to catch up on the work they fell behind on, and that disrupted prior plans we had made.  Errands took longer than we anticipated, throwing things off even more.  And then there are all of those things breaking.  Our not so old dryer quit, and when we took it to get it repaired we learned it was going to cost more than we thought it was worth, so we bought another (pre-owned) one.  It worked for a couple of days, then started giving us trouble.  It was sold to us with a full one year warranty, so we took it out the house, hauled it to the repair shop...and the only thing wrong was that the feet were not properly balanced.  The heat/air quit.  Thankfully, the weather has been nice.  Our repair man came the next day, had to get the part...got back and that was not the right part.  My computer died recently as well...I had to get a temporary replacement.

When things are going like that, we generally take a mini-vacation from school.  I loosely plan our school year in a way that we can take off a few days if needed.

Answer 6

The only thing I can think of as a dismal week, is if someone is ill... or worse everyone is.  Things break and no one feels up to fixing it, or has to despite the illness.  

And if this all happens when we had something extra fun planned, then it gets cancelled...

Well, that's that would make for a dismal week.

But, I'm with firebird, we learned something from the experience and so long as we survive, we have something positive to think about.  It's just a week in the life.

:D