ugh, i had a message typed out and lost it!
Anyhow...a brief recap..
My oldest went to a reading tutor twice a week (1 hour per session) for a year for remedial isntruction. She was never assigned anything, she did give her stuff to work on at home per my request. She said she normally didnt give homework to kids in school because they already had so much work to do, she would work with them on their current reading assignements for any class. She asks homeschool parents if they want their child to have in-between work, and I said it was ok with me. She always had us do what we could. Honestly, most of the time i forgot until the morning of, and there was no time then because her session started at 9am!
My thoughts about this mother are:
-maybe she is busy with everything and just forgets? If this is the case maybe you should talk to the child, if he's in that 12-14 yr old range for 7th grade he's probably completely able to handle the responsibility on his own. Maybe you should involve the boy more in the assignment process and the mom less, make the child more accountable. Does the mom watch the session? if she does maybe you can ask her to leave and talk with the child about it.
-maybe she is only doing this for evaluation, testing or college admin purposes? if so the program really isn't her top priority, looking good on paper is.
-maybe the child gives her a hard time and she is tired of dealing with it?
-maybe she is getting pressure from a spouse or someone else to do this but she doesn't think it's needed, or thinks it will all work out without the intervention?
-maybe she really just doesn't understand that this is how your program works and maybe you should gently suggest the program won't work without doing the assignments, so maybe she should find a new tutor who works differently?
-maybe the mom/child/child's siblings are already so overburdened with activities and deadlines that this one is just slipping by?? I know with my daughter it helped to have her do the work in the vehicle when she could, becuse we spent A LOT of time in the van.
I dont think you are too caught up in traditional schooling methods, really. We all have to face deadlines and while I personally wouldn't regularly enforce them on a kid under 13, I think a kid that age needs to be getting some exposure to them because that is how the real world works.
Maybe making up a sheet to give to the mom with time mgmt ideas would help, make her think you give it to everyone. Put ideas on like "allow child to stay up 15 minutes later to do his work" or "buy or make a lappad for use in the vehicle" or "read the selection along with him round-robin style" or whatever you think would work for this family.
In the end, the mom is hurting the child by not allowing him full access to your help. Sometimes we homeschooling moms have to put aside our theories and ideas and do something we don't want to do, for the kids.
Meg
