Routine Rules!!!  This has worked well for us especially when it comes to homework.  We have a significant amount of homework each night due to our son’s learning differences.  It has taken some time to get to this point but nightly homework now goes pretty smoothly.  We do the homework in the same place, in the same subject order at approximately the same time each night.  There is no longer the nightly battles to do the homework — it is amazing. So for those of you going through the nightly homework battle, take heart.  I believe that if you consistently pursue the homework battles and establish a routine of what, when and how — you too will achieve a point where homework is no longer a nightly battle.

I didn’t really believe that we would get to this point.  If I think back on all of the battles, the tears, and the exhaustion … thank goodness I have a stubborn streak a mile wide!!

We have also added another element to our homework routine.  Our school does offer an after-school study program.  It is a safe environment where our son can start to transition to independent homework under the close supervision of teachers.  We do this two times per week and both us and our son love it.  He gets most of his homework done at a reasonable hour and he is very proud of the fact that he is starting to transition to being an independent responsible student.  This is a concept strongly messaged and reinforced in our son’s school.  Each student is responsible for doing their work with their best effort possible.  This is expected at school and at home.  After nearly 2 years of this messaging, the responsibility concept is really starting to take root.

Now don’t get me wrong, we still have our setbacks, of course.  There are times when our son is frustrated and the fits and tears come back but they are fewer and fewer and they are much easier to handle at this point.

I know in the throes of homework battles that it is difficult to keep going.  Goodness knows that I have had my times of exhaustion when I absolutely could not fight another battle.  I had to take a break for a couple of weeks to rejuvenate and restore.  The last time this happened, I was able to hold on until the couple of weeks of break between the regular school year and school camp (where he does reading and writing throughout the summer).

If you are in the throes of battle, please keep fighting the good fight.  Establish a nightly routine of homework and try to incorporate the message that it is your child’s responsibility as a good student to do their homework and to do it to the best of their ability.  When you do hit speed bumps in this, work with your child’s teacher(s) to reinforce the responsibility message at school as well.

Good luck and until next time ….. (which will hopefully not be a couple of months like this past time ….) …. take care.

In our case, in addition to ADHD and learning differences there is a slight twinge of anxiety that creeps into our daily lives.  Our son is really happy at his school and with his school friends.  He also is still very close to his best friend from growing up and is always happy to have him over for a play date.  Outside of this, anxiety tends to creep in and affect everything else.

When our long term favorite babysitter needed to take extra classes in order to finish college, we needed to find a new babysitter for the afternoons before my husband and I are done work.  We ended up hiring two girls from our local college who were very nice and sweet.  The change, however, was too much for our son and he proceeded to lock himself in the back upstairs room of our house every day for a month.  Not a good situation.  We kept hoping that he would get used to the idea and give the girls a chance.  We talked about it with him and tried different strategies to no avail.  I felt horrible for our son in that this kind of change was so traumatic for him.  I also felt badly for the girls and for us.  Juggling work, homework, kids’ activities, laundry and commitments on a daily basis is challenging enough.  Throw in a healthy dose of anxiety and it becomes that much more difficult.  In situations like this, I tend to go through a full range of emotions from sad to supportive to angry.

So when college ended for the year in the beginning of May, we found ourselves with no babysitter and no support in the afternoons.  My husband and I juggled everything together and the kids probably spent a little more time in front of the TV than they should have.  Neither my husband nor I could face just yet the trauma of finding another babysitter.  We also needed to make some decisions about the summer which would determine the amount of hours that we would need from a sitter.

I then had an epiphany when asking a friend about the local college job boards.  He joked that they had gotten a response from an attractive male college polo player that we might want to consider.  His twin nearly teenage girls and an attractive male college polo player was not a good match for them.  I immediately laughed at his joke and we went on with our conversation.

However when I hung up the phone, I thought about a male babysitter.  It could work.  We had always had female nannies and au pairs.  Maybe it was time to consider something different that our son might be comfortable with.

So we met with a friend’s son about babysitting and he started this week.  SUCCESS.  Our son loves having a male babysitter and looks forward to seeing him every day.  (Okay today was only day 3).  No running to the bedroom or back room to hide – just soccer, baseball and giggles.

So maybe this solution was not so creative but it did require for my husband and I to think “out of our box” that we had created regarding babysitting!  So we have a new babysitter but no anxiety, for now.  Hooray!!!!  And so I celebrate a tiny success.

Until next time …. Take care.

Couple this with the fact that most of the time and effort with our son is currently focused on academics. He is absolutely exhausted when he comes home from school. He works hard, thank goodness, and cooperates with his teachers and, new this year, he actually LIKES school. I have so much to be thankful about. But some days when he gets home from school, he looks like he has been through a war.

We value play time and are mindful of balancing work with play time. But we have over an hour of homework each night and it is very difficult to fit everything in. He does play sports on Saturdays and seems to enjoy it but it is not clear to us that sports is his THING either.

Why do I worry about this so much? Our primary goal with our son with everything we are doing is to develop is self confidence and his self esteem. That is starting to develop academically because we are able to send him to a school when he can learn differently than the mainstream and be successful. I want him so much to experience success in something outside of school that he truly loves.

Getting him to try new things is not easy. He gets anxious and worried about new activities. Often when we start up a new sports season, he has trouble with the first few weeks of the activity – it is a transitioning issue.

Maybe this worry is more about me than him? I just want so badly for something to come easily to him that he truly truly loves … given that he has to work so hard in the other areas of his life.

So this blog post is not a Karen offering a suggestion blog post – it is one where I am reaching out to you for help. Do you have any suggestions or thoughts?

• How do we fit in the time for him to explore his interests?
• When is the right time to pursue drum lessons or karate or whatever else?
• Is maintaining a balance between play time and work time enough for laying the groundwork for future interests?
• Do I need to just chill out and believe that with self-confidence and academic “success”, he will figure it all out?

Would love to hear from you regarding how you enable the “essence” of your child to shine through all of the struggles!!!