Kids refusing to do home learning!

[Falcon1]

This is week 3 of home learning. Kids are year 2 and reception. It started off well, with them both enthusiastic, but now I'm finding it harder and harder to get them to do anything! The older one has just started to refuse to do any of the work that school has set and I'm obviously doing a rubbish job of making it interesting. I'm trying to do just a bit of proper learning each day, with plenty of breaks, online educational games, outdoor play and craft activities. But the actual literacy and maths stuff (the important bits!) are just met with complete refusal to engage. The younger one has the concentration span of about 2 minutes and as soon as she finds something hard or gets something wrong, she gets cross and gives up. I'm tearing my hair out. I feel so ill equipped to be teaching them and am stressed with how much learning they're missing out on.

Their school - other than providing some worksheets - have not provided any other help. They're both missing their teachers and friends and are feeling very fed up with me and each other. Can't say I blame them!

just as with kids who don't want to brush their teeth or do their homework or eat vegetables, letting them refuse isn't an option
Well, you can physically brush smaller children's teeth, and I guess you can put vegetables into a toddler's mouth, but if they decide that they don't want to do their homework you can't force them to and some children do decide this.
It's not always about boundaries and judging parents, you know.

@Someonelse I totally agree with you.
For some reason, it appears to be an unpopular view on here, so expect a lot of people to disagree with you!

@drspouse are you seriously defending letting children do whatever they want because it's a bit tricky to get them to comply!? Or are you saying it is literally impossible to get your children to do what they're told? If so I'd seek additional support, as the likelihood is either they'd benefit from an assessment for SN, or you'd benefit from parenting classes, or both.

You have no idea do you?
No clue.
It must be lovely to have a compliant child, rather than one who's stubborn at the best of times and now incredibly frustrated because they miss school and their parents are not able to give them the attention they need.

@drspouse it's not about having compliant children, it's about having children who understand that they can't always do what they want. They'll have a miserable time in the real world otherwise.

Lockdown is miserable and lots of rules have been relaxed round here (getting out of pyjamas, screen time, bedtime etc) but some things are essential and you have to find a way to make them happen. Schoolwork is one of them. I can't tell you how to get your particular child to listen to you, but i can tell you that not putting the effort in does your kid a huge disservice.

You clearly have got compliant children if it's that simple.
I'm hiding this thread now as I've had enough of a bashing for one day, thanks.

Its not simple, it taken years of patience and consistency. You can't spend years letting your children do whatever they want and then expect them to listen to you overnight.

I can get my kids to do loads of stuff - even boring schoolwork. But where making them doing the washing up results in having clean dishes, the point of doing school work is that they learn while doing it. If shouting and crying is the only way it gets done when everything's scary and weird anyway, i don't think much learning is going to be happening.

Should be concentrating on making the kids feel safe. We know they're not, they don't have to be panicking about their phonics on top of whether they'll ever see Grandma again.

One of mine is incredibly stubborn (I suspect ASD and demand avoidance to be honest) but I’m still getting a good couple of hours of school work done a day (some is focused on scouting badges or art stuff).

I don’t know how this thread derailed but I’ve got a diagnosed child with ADHD, autism, dyspraxia and speech delay. I worked my ass off in the first weeks of lockdown (when our school gave us nothing but a few links) and researched on twinkl and set up maths, English, science and art daily. We designated where schooling takes place and we ploughed on until we found the right routine. Tried 15 min school work and 30 minute breaks — complete disaster, school day dragged on past 3pm. We tried and tried and tried. There was yelling, there were tears (mainly mine), there were my muffled screams into the pillow. It took a good 2-3 weeks of experimenting what worked best. But I didn’t just throw up my hands because someone on the Internet said it was fine to let them do nothing and I shouldn’t stress.

School is fucking hard on a child with adhd and autism- they have to try so so so much harder just to be able to keep up with others. To let them get behind by an entire term and throw them back into classes in September just wasn’t an option.

I know every kid is different. But I’m so sick of parents thinking it’s ok not to keep up with the curriculum. It’s going to be so much harder for your kids to keep up with their peers.

@Nekoness my oldest dyslexic and dysgraphic with autistic traits and sensory processing disorder thrown in, Similar experience to you, we made it work as well. He’s actually improved, his reading is coming along brilliantly. The first 2 weeks were hell, then we found a solution (Thankfully our school is brilliant, but you can’t leave a SENDs 7 year old to get on with it by himself).

This may be useful? I am working on an initiative offering free videos and resources that cover the National Curriculum, creating opportunities for investigation, discussion, wider thinking & having fun learning at home. Opportunities that are aimed to fit in easily with your daily lives. Everything is free, downloadable and designed by specialists within education. We have animated our programmes to appeal to kids and have crew members helping us so we can mix in some live action parts. Broadcasting across social media, but you can find our central hub at: www.homelearningfun.co.uk

There's a short video explaining more on Facebook & Twitter.

Let me know if you want to know more.

I have one child that's being made (due to SN) to do all set work. And another (primary, no work set from school) whose working through BBC Bitesize choosing what interests him and pleasing himself.

SN child is benefiting from my 1-1 support that she should have at school, but never does, and also from less distraction. She's learning the curriculum.

Other child is learning to enjoy learning in a self directed way - in a way that could never happen at school with the very restrictive primary curriculum that is so focussed on SATs.

I think there is no right or wrong way. This is so tricky and most kids will be learning something.