Give him what he wants

These next posts are going to be catching up. Our house hold has changed a lot in the last few months. I haven't blogged in awhile because of what's been going on. A lot of people don't know the extent of things....but let me give a disclosure first. Some things I'm going to mention haven't been easy. But because of the difficulty of our decision I ask that you don't comment about how I could have done something different.


This last year homeschooling has been a HUGE struggle. Kurt has been nothing but a fight this year. I tried so hard to get curriculum for Kurt that would keep him interested. But everything I got still was TOO MUCH for him....at least that was his complaint daily. I even got to the point that I would ground him until he would have his school work done. School work first, then play. It was seriously a fight DAILY. The last day of homeschooling was in February. That morning it was the normal daily fight. Kurtis in my face getting ready to hit me. Me being stern with him was too much. He was swearing at me, and I was swearing back. I finally through in the towel. I was able to send him to his room and I went to mine. I called their homeschooling teacher and asked her what it was going to take to pull him out and put him back into public school. I ended up crying on the phone with her. I knew putting him back in school was going to lead to other problems. But I was up against a rock and a hard place. That day was a Friday, so I prayed a lot about my decision over the weekend. I didn't feel bad about doing it, but knew what I was about to do, was only the beginning of a downward spiral. Knowing this I still felt that it was necessary to do. When I talked about it to Kurt and told him that it wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. I was trying to paint the picture as real as I could. The curriculum wasn't going to be things that he liked. His teachers weren't going to take his crap, and his mom wasn't handing out his grades. He was certain that he could do it and that he wanted to be in public school. So we went ahead with it. I knew that he would fall flat on his face, but I had to let him try. As all this was coming out EmberLee wanted to go back too. She was at home because in kindergarten full day was way too much for her. Austin didn't want to go back. His idea of school at home is a positive thing. He can graduate early. He can have a whole day to himself if he can get it all done in the morning, which is not a problem for him. In fact he's usually got his school work done and ready to be checked off by 9am. So the deal was as follows....Kurt and EmberLee would go back to school and Austin would stay home. Monday we moved over paperwork and Tuesday was Kurt and EmberLee's first days at school which EmberLee fell right into place. Kurt started off good in his book, not so good in mine. His grades were bad from the beginning. His teachers didn't like him, he had lots of girls flocking around him. He was acting out, stealing, lying. Acting however he needed to, to attract friends. In my book they're not the friends anyone needs. You know the kind...they dare you to do things like steal ipods, and to fight someone, to call others names, to do things that aren't friendship worthy. When it came to doing his school work he would lie about when he did it, and he'd lie about handing it in. He was doing very well in Seminary though. He was made class President in Seminary. He loved his teachers there, and for the most part he was doing a great job. The one deal I made with Kurt, was he was ok going to public school, as long as he had his grades above C's. I told him that I wasn't going to bring him back home if he decided he couldn't do it, I would find somewhere else for him to do school. Not home, I couldn't be the one that he was going to fight with daily about his education. I felt that I had gave my all. I had sacrificed a little over 1 and half years for him. I'm not a teacher. But I did my best. I felt that I did all I could do. I made the offer of paying him for his grades. $10 for every A and $5 for B's nothing for anything lower. My stress level had dropped considerably. I didn't feel like I was going to pull my hair out at the end of the day. EmberLee was enjoying school. It seemed as if Kurt was going to make me wrong on my thinking. So I felt that maybe making this choice was a good one after all.......I wasn't sure how long this would last, but I knew that I had to follow through. It wasn't too long before he got his first report card last month. He was failing 5 out of 6 classes. No matter how many tutors I set up for him or Math helps I could hand him or anything I would try to help him with it didn't matter. He lied about what he needed to get his grades up. For the 1st week I helped him. Jake and I both tried hard to support him in catching up. Things were getting worse for him. At one point Kurt decided that home wasn't where he wanted to be, so he ran away. He wasn't gone long, but when he finally came home he realized that doing basic chores wasn't that hard to do. Or at least he seemed to feel that way when he came back after 4 hours. Kurt was truly spiraling out of control. As the weeks went on after he said he had his homework caught up I still didn't see any grade update. I refused to take him off grounding until he showed me the proof. He had a story everyday. Our downward spiral was definitely downward.....But he was in Public School. Give him what he wants right?