Monday, March 5, 2012

Re-entry day

The weekend past was spent playing lots of fun games, including the newly discovered Mine Craft. Much, MUCH fun was had. But that means this morning was bumpy, at best. The kids were whiny. "I can't do it!" was uttered more than once. Both kids spent some time adjusting their attitudes away from me. I tried to lighten the mood by playing music and dancing in the kitchen! That backfired and made Kiddo grumpier because he was torn between finishing his chores and getting started on his school work and dancing. It didn't matter that I gave him permission to dance instead! When he did finally start dancing, he wanted me to do something I had been doing with Kutey, but he was too tall, back to grumpy. Then he wanted Kutey to stop dancing. When I said he couldn't do that, back to grumpy. I was about done. We managed to muddle through our schoolwork, somehow. It took longer than it should have, but we did it. Now I have Kiddo logged into CurrClick's LEGO Club and Kutey is looking at the St. Patrick's Day books from the library. We have made it through "Re-entry day."

What is "Re-entry day?" When I was first homeschooling (three and a half years ago!), I referred to Mondays as "Re-entry day." They were often rough. There were sometimes tears (mine and kiddos). Sometimes very little was accomplished. I blamed it on the weekend of unstructured fun. Not that our school days have a tremendous amount of structure. In fact, there is often very little. There is more now than ever before, because I have two officially school-age kids, but still it isn't what most people would call structured. But still, the weekend is different. The kid refer to it as "Daddy's stay home days." That should give you some idea of the tone of weekends. The kids use it as a time to absorb as much Daddy time as humanly possible. It is great, but it tends to make school and Mommy boring in contrast. Re-entry into the regular week is messy and bumpy. Tomorrow will be better, Wednesday even better. Re-entry day, though, makes me look for chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

How do you handle Mondays?

1 comment:

jugglingpaynes said...

Mondays were always rough when they were younger. If it is any consolation, it gets easier as they get older (and for us, as we shifted to a more relaxed, unschooling model). It's also an adjustment as you officially add a child to your roster. The older ones seem to shift between wanting all the attention and wanting to see what the younger sibling is doing. Take deep breaths. It will get better!

Peace and Laughter!