Dd8 refusing to do anymore school work from home from tomorrow

[Northpole23]

My daughter is saying she refuses to do any more work on computer, it’s remote lessons not online until she goes back to school. She said she is officially bored, frustrated of watching videos and doing this boring work and cries. She misses her friends and the way they do things at school.

I can’t force her can I but I’ve already asked school if she could go back and this was last week but heard nothing. Now she has officially reached boredom point. She is 8, outgoing and sociable. Hates the computer and doesn’t want to do anything anymore .

Not really sure what to do? I’ve sat with her, helped her but she just gets bored, doesn’t engage anymore . She is good at things but doesn’t engage anymore and doesn’t want to watch one more video. She has been doing the work but today said she isn’t do anything from now on until she goes back 😳 maybe tomorrow she will but she seems to really mean it now.

I saw on another thread where someone suggested allowing their child to zoom a friend while they did their work. Obviously they'd be chatter but might make it more bearable for her. Every night my dh and I talk about covid and how rubbish it is, it's inevitable our children feel like this too. We had a challenging day today, we're going to go fo filling tge tanks back up tomorrow!

My 7yo is concerning me far more than my 10yo with multiple SENs (who didn't get a place in his near empty class despite his history of struggling to engage).

5.5 months out of school with only a dominant sibling with ASD for company has severely dented his social confidence. His former friends continued in school and he failed to integrate back in with them in the autumn term.
He loathes zoom anyway, can't bear the camera on, and has no one to work with remotely for support.

Pick your battles is an essential strategy for survival in this household, especially with two children struggling with remote learning from the start.

Even with me (and my PGCE and decade of experience) working 1:1, it's still bloody hard. We have some live learning and he curls up with me next to him with his head in my lap. On a better day he will sit up playing with cuddly toys. He is 7. Students a decade plus older are struggling with this format. Children learn socially and this situation is totally counter-intuitive, plus no other form of social release with peers.

The critical thing is don't give up learning.
My priority for this is to emerge with as little emotional damage as possible, strong, trusting relationships and a brain that still works.
We get some learning in each day. How much depends on what reserves we have intact. If DS2 is in tears, or DS1 melting down, that's not a mindset open to learning anyway.
There is more learning beyond the curriculum. When we go out, we do a lot of broader learning. Seeing the river in flood and discussing flood defences helped DS2 with his comprehension tasks on inferring this morning. Tonight he came to the supermarket and we put his maths into action multiplying costs of items.

There is a dialogue rumbling on with school. They are aware of our struggles. They are also happy that some learning is better than none, and better than a constant grinding war of wills. Sending emotionally bruised children with a quenched desire to learn is the worse outcome in this situation.

Of course don't give up learning, but a few weeks of missing blah isn't going to set them back for life unless at a truly key age.

It's like the panic that missing two days of teeth brushing will immediately mean rotten teeth, it won't!!

There are so many ways to win the war!!

@thewinkingprawn

No one is finding it easy and no one gets by without some tantrums. Resilience would be a good lesson learnt in this though. It is hard but we just have to get on with some things. We don’t get to stamp our feet and declare we are simply not doing it.

When you say 'we don't get to stamp out feet and declare we are simply not doing it' what approach would you use when reason and normal encouragement fails?

Punishment? Do you think that will help?

Because I think if my child did flat out refuse, I wouldn't resort to that, so at some point they could declare they weren't doing it. School refusal exists in normal times.

OP - I would tell the school you are very concerned this will switch her off learning permanently and ask them to help you decide an approach that isn't going to cause so much upset, that would be my.first step.

This whole situation we are in is ridiculous, kids are being asked to do far too much, risking their mental health, rather than.proper support being put in by government.

Thanks for the all feedback some really lovely one, others just eye roll lol including the parenting course ?! 😆 my child is 8 and speaks 3 languages fluently and is a quick learner in normal circumstances but is frustrated and bored sitting in front of the computer. We even do other things , in fact we have a good balance I think given the circumstances but it’s the computer work. Thank you to the teachers, they are doing a great job I certainly can’t complain and it’s not their fault.

She can even read in 2 languages very well and the other one so so but still has started to get very frustrated with this way of working. Believe me my child isn’t being difficult but I’m not forcing her apart from maths and English which we do will compromise but with no tears and frustration. She picks things up quickly anyway.

I’m not from the U.K. I’m from a country where deaths rates And cases are similar to U.K. but with less manipulation and a better medical and educational system. Young kids have to rotate and go to school and learn at least 2-3 days a week. The older ones college and uni remote learning.

We will see how today goes. To the poster who said about her behaviour being about my partner no he is my ex and no it’s not that. It surely isn’t difficult to understand that an 8 year old doesn’t learn in the same way as well as an older child.

Why do you co sider boredom and frustration acceptable feelings to make such decisions as not engaging any longer?

I really don't get this. These are two feelings that are normal part of life. It's very good experience to go through it at 8 and learn how to deal with it constructively. Or do you want to teach her that giving up on something essential because of it is justified?

Give her support to learn to cope with it, break it down in chunks, rewards in between etc...but letting an 8yo make such a de idiom just because she is bored and ultimately letting her rule the roost is doing her no favour at all in the long run.

Like the PP suggested up thread, if she is an able child and just fed up of learning off computer, there are other ways.

@Northpole23 your daughter sounds fabulous! And you are a kind and intuitive parent. She will be just fine academically. I hope she enjoys learning in other ways than looking at a screen all day.

Can you look at the online stuff and meet the same learning objectives in a more fun and interactive way? That’s what we do and school are fine with it.

but letting an 8yo make such a de idiom just because she is bored and ultimately letting her rule the roost is doing her no favour at all in the long run.

I would say that it's far worse for a negative association to learning to be created through struggling through. OPs DD sounds very capable, so it probably is boring staring at a screen and doing work which likely has little differentiation in it due to constraints of this way of teaching.

I would say that it's far worse for a negative association to learning to be created through struggling through
I disagree. Two of my kids were labeled gifter and talented. They were very advanced and inevitably were often bored in class. They learned to cope with it. Teachers helped by giving extra work and sometimes special attention, but they accepted that boredom was part of it.

They are now young adults and especially my eldest will still find that she learns things faster than others at work and deal with some element if boredom but is not phased by it anymore and have learned resources to deal with it. They still love learning.

Well OP if you’re getting her to do Maths and English then I really don’t see the issue.

Your earlier posts implied you were going to let her stop everything (or perhaps that’s just how I read it).

When you say 'we don't get to stamp out feet and declare we are simply not doing it' what approach would you use when reason and normal encouragement fails?

I have a rather emotionally volatile 8 year old (also bright but hates home school) so we’ve had a fair amount of foot stamping! Here are some things that have worked :

• bribery, As I said above I am offering 50p for every day the work is done or at least mostly done. If refusal happens a reminder about the 50p often helps

• Telling her that if she doesn’t want to do the work, she needs to send a message to her teacher explaining why and apologising - since her teacher has made the effort to give the lesson etc. She loves her teacher so this often works

• Telling her that if she doesn’t do the work now she will need to catch it up sometime (otherwise she may not understand the next lesson) and that might be during tv time or play time. So better to do it now.

• Reminding her it’s not forever, she will get a break at < > (lunch, after school, weekend, half term...) and schools are going back in March (please god).

I am not too worried about creating negative associations by pushing her to keep going. Maybe it will create negative associations with home schooling but frankly those were already there after last summer! It does not affect her perception of normal school, which she loves and can’t wait to get back to. I am much more worried about creating an idea that if something is boring you can just give up.

Couldn’t you look at the other stuff she has to do and be creative, mix things up a bit and teach her those yourself?...it’s not just up to school to provide the kids with learning there is no reason why we can’t too.

I’ve had to with my 9 year old. Otherwise he would do nothing. So whilst I insist on maths and English to be completed the rest we twist to what suits him and how he learns. Just to make it more interesting as they probably would in class and to keep him from not doing anything. We’ve played snap and pairs with spelling words. Baked - incorporating maths/time. Found shapes and measured stuff outside and taken pics of wildlife. Anything I can think of to keep him interested and it’s hard and I’m glad I’m not a teacher. Also trying to help 3 other kids homeschool after long shifts as a nurse.
I totally get the kids are bored I’m bored of it, I hated school I’m dyslexic so lots they do I learned totally differently so trying to help is a nightmare.

Your daughter sounds like a bright little girl, do what you can to engage her and if she can do as much as possible could she have a reward chart each day.

Did they experience being at home and out of school for months and months on end @dontdisturbmenow? I know the answer, but I'll wait anyway! It's a different scenario. OP hasn't indicated that at school it's an issue, just that stating at a comp screen all day with work without interactive elements or being able to talk to your peers or likely gets work that is challenging is hard. Imagine what they could have achieved though if boredom wasn't just accepted as standard :)

I can't believe all the replies that assume that parents have time to take their kids out and invent a new curriculum ...

That's beside the point though

I know it's more screen time - but could you arrange for her to zoom a friend or even a few of them? and then they could do some of the work together while chatting. I know it probably means more devices (although you could have zoom on small and still work on google classroom) but it might just feel a bit more normal having her friends there too?

ninja, I certainly didn't mean parents should invent new curriculum, and I'm sure others didn't either.
National Curriculum is already there. There are many other resources that follow the NC. So, if she is bored of doing the online work provided by school, there are many other resources if you look it up online, or just buy the work book that follow NC etc.