Intense Parental Micromanaging

This school year has been tough at the Hoy House. All three Hoy kids are requiring an intense amount of parental micromanaging.  In related news, these are my 3 most frequently used bitmojis right now.

"Seriously?!?" is quite often mumbled under my breath too

Alyssa has become a full out teenager, albeit not quite yet 13, who is struggling to manage her responsibilities of school, her extracurriculars (swim, piano, and saxophone), and her blooming social life. My most frequent (& greatest) piece of parental wisdom to her of late- "The best way to get me out of your business is to take care of it."

Her phone now has parent controlled screen time limits,
which seem to help

Jackson's bare minimal effort on school work has finally caught up with him in 5th grade. At the parent/teacher conference, requested by the teachers-because he "needs improvement on effort", confirmed our greatest scholastic concern for him-- "bright but unmotivated".  My most frequent piece of parental wisdom to him of late- "The learning will happen. Before the grade, I am not involved. After the grade, I am."  I have been involved much too much this school year.

We are all more productive with a list

Then, there is Matthew. The school work coming home in the first 9 weeks was abysmal. After several meetings with his teachers and (at home) identifying the best learning practices that work for Matthew, he is making progress again- on his SPED goals and the 2nd grade curriculum. It requires a high level of accommodation and intervention. At home, 

• He has 2 sessions of tutoring with a reading specialist weekly. 
• Every morning, he listens to the weekly story that I record on his tablet.
• He completes his weekly math word problem(s) with the help of manipulatives (100s chart or base 10 magnets) and a parent supporting him to break down the steps (e.g. "what is in the ones column?").
• He reads his weekly reading book, retyped in huge font without pictures so he can concentrate to read it.
• He verbally responds to his reading homework questions while a parent transcribes his responses.  

This is after his 7 hours at school and 2 hours at the YMCA after school, and without the benefit of his ADHD meds. It is intense. I think I now know the 2nd grade standards almost as well as I know the objectives for the classes I teach at the high school.

The turkey ran 25 feet, 35 feet, and 46 feet

Last week, I felt like we had a breakthrough. Though I am glad we have a holiday break this week, I would have liked to have seen the upward trajectory continue before we took a week off. I am hopeful we will get in a (positive) groove after the Thanksgiving break, for a few weeks (before the Xmas craziness kicks in) anyway.