Update on my Engineer

Since we stopped and took stock at where my engineer was at we have has some ups and downs and done a lot of learning - or at least I have.

We've had 2 weeks of so of unschooling, where he had the day to himself to choose what he learned and then had to report back to Dad. Admittedly it was semi-unschooling, he had to show narrations of what he had learned and do corrections to his spelling etc if it wasn't up to Dad's standards. He didn't necessarily like it but his level of schoolwork increased heaps.

We then had two weeks off as a family for the school holidays. It was a good break as far as our school holidays go, no planning for mum, a few fun house projects for the Engineer and a lot of rest time. We didn't get out as much as we wanted to but we did re-connect and my engineer caught his breath as bit and started to be polite

During our first week back he was doing his normal subjects, working for me, being checked and marked by Dad. Lots of ups and downs this week. Days when he didn't want to show Dad what he had done because he has spent the morning finding excuses not to work. He also had a one or two better days. Strangely his good days don't always start until after lunch. Maybe it was the motivation of being able to help out on the renovations? It was a good start to the term.

Since I wrote the first part of the post we have had another week of learning and working together. The distractions of redecorating has taken our energy levels and our tension down which has been a good thing. My engineer is happy to do his work, but still easily sidetracked and still dislikes getting reminded to do his school. However - he does accept that he is at his desk until he is finished for the day - so even though he only starts working at 11or 12 am he is at least still doing his days work. I'm starting to accept that this simply may be the way life is.