Pondering Homeschooling a Child Who Has an Undesirable Attitude

Pondering Homeschooling a Child Who Has an Undesirable Attitude

Have you thought about homeschooling your child but are reluctant to do so due to behavior issues? Maybe your child is having trouble at public or private school and coming home with a bad attitude. When your child has a flare of temper, you try to work through it, but you just don’t seem to get anywhere. You try to help with homework, but you are met with resistance. Your relationship is rocky already, and you’re not sure either of you could take being home together homeschooling.

Well, I can tell you, you are not alone! This past year, I have helped many parents (and grandparents) contemplating homeschooling for the first time. They call or email Heart of Dakota (HOD) and share stories just such as this. They long to homeschool with HOD, but they are not sure they can handle the attitude they are getting from their children. In fact, just recently a loving, concerned mother shared her desire to homeschool her seven-year-old. However, her daughter’s attitude and behavior were pretty undesirable already. She was worried her daughter would resent her even more if she homeschooled. She asked what she should do, and in case it would help others in the same situation, here was my reply!

Pray, pray, pray – the Lord can make a way!

Well, first my advice would be to pray, pray, pray! The Lord can make a way where it seems there is not one. My second piece of advice would be to homeschool with Heart of Dakota (HOD). Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory is is a wonderful guide full of Christ-centered content alongside American history. The Godly character study in Beyond Little Hearts would be especially helpful in your priority to help you daughter with her attitude and behavior. It is tough to impact those two concerns when she is not with you the entire day Monday through Friday. This is the primary reason we chose to homeschool our 3 sons, and I can tell you 20 years later it has been worth everything we had to do to make that happen!

I know it seems like you cannot make a change in schooling right now, but you can. I didn’t feel like we could make a change way back when we chose to make the change to homeschool either, but we did. It was the best decision we have ever made. Today, our sons are 22, 19, and 15, and they each have a solid, strong faith in the Lord. They also love each other greatly. My husband and I are thankful for all the time we invested in homeschooling with HOD, a Christian program – though all glory be to the Lord.

Your concerns are valid!

Praying for you as you ponder what to do! I can understand your concerns. They are valid ones! Since she is already coming home with an undesirable attitude and behavior, you will need to discipline that in some way already – which in turn will probably make her resentful. So, I am thinking she is going to be resentful either way. As far as her being an only child, that may be good in some ways. You can focus on her completely and really get to the bottom of why she is behaving this way. Habits begin young, and bad attitudes and bad behaviors need to be dealt with right away, or we end up dealing with them the rest of our kiddos’ lives.

You are not alone in power struggles!

You are not alone in power struggles with children! I don’t know if that ever truly goes away. However, I will tell you that you as a parent need to win this power struggle, whether you keep her in private school or homeschool her. I know it is tiring. I know you don’t feel like doing it, and I know you just wish you could be her friend and get along perfectly all the time. I know this because I feel this way myself, often.

However, I also know that with prayer and the Lord’s help, the power struggles we have won as parents with our sons have helped them stay on the straight and narrow and helped them have a good strong relationship with the Lord and with us as parents.

We’ve had power struggles over finishing “homework” (some independent work for high school) for HOD on time. Now homework is 100% of the time done well every night. I am so thankful! We’ve had power struggles over chores, over keeping rooms clean, over doing Bible time in the mornings on summer breaks, over getting up on time, over putting laundry away, and the list goes on. Every power struggle we win – out of love – helps our children become better people! And eventually, what was once a power struggle is not anymore (though a new one will have replaced it).

You are right to want your child to have a Godly attitude and Godly behavior!

There IS a happy ending to this! My 22 and 19 year-olds have so many amazing Godly habits intact at this stage of life, that we ARE friends, and we almost DO get along well all the time. So, this is a long answer, I know. But, persevere! You are right to want your daughter to have a Godly attitude and Godly behavior. Work on the worst thing first, and one at a time she’ll have a whole new set of good habits.

I still hope you homeschool. Of course this will be easier to do in the home setting homeschooling her – you have time on your side. Oh, and if you homeschool eventually find one friend – a good friend who is kind and loving to your daughter – and invite that friend to your home once a week or once every other week – just to play and have fun. It need not be long – an hour or two – or little gals either run out of things to do our get into arguments. Most of us only have one or two good friends as adults. That is better than 5 bad friends. Hope something here helps! Your daughter is blessed to have a mother like you who loves her so very much!

In Christ,
Julie