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I was just going through and checking my daughter's work. Today was just a "listen to disc and track" day. She did have it checked off, but I asked anyway. "Did you listen to this today?" I was floored by the answer!! "No, I already listened to that a long time ago." LONG story short, she didn't "realize" that all of the weeks that said Disc 1, she listened to Disc 2! So, now that she's on Disc 2 track 6, she has just been checking it off because she "had already listened to it". Wow! I asked her, what about that it tells you the name of the track, that you do follow-up activities on the same subject as your history and the CD. "I don't know" was the best answer I got. I'm still flabbergasted. I don't even know what to say! It's makes me wonder about her intelligence and her thinking skills!

Not to mention that I noticed her drawings in the student notebook are not colored but the directions say to color. (the very first ones she had colored) I asked, she said, "I don't like to color." Ohhhh.....by that time, I had to walk away and count 5,000.

Okay, I've vented. What would you all do now?

Time to go back and listen to Disc 1!

Honestly, this is SO my DS . . . ALL. THE. TIME! I find I have to check his work for every subject almost every day. If he hasn't done the wrong book then he's left out a question or part of the instructions or done print when he was told cursive or gave an answer not worthy of his time, pencil lead and paper it took to do it. He regularly reads beyond the end of the assigned reading, especially if he's only supposed to read part of a chapter (sticky notes are helping mark divisions now). I have learned that unless I clearly set the bar every day for him and monitor then he will automatically do the least work possible.

So, if this is the first time something like that has happened, BE THANKFUL! And then impose some natural consequences.

Has she listened to all of Disc 1 yet? If not, then just substitute, track for track. It will have the history periods out of whack but she'll just have to remember that as she's listening and realize it's a natural consequence of doing the wrong one and hopefully that will translate into being more careful next time. If she finds it confusing, then maybe you could figure out something different (a few tracks at a time with narrations between on Saturdays or something?).

If she's already somehow done Disc 1 as well then maybe she could listen to the first minute or so of a day's assigned Track (to jog her memory) then narrate what she remembers from the first time.

Or even make her listen again, telling her to come tell you at the end three things she didn't notice/learn the first time she listened. I know from listening to them in August that it would be easy to listen to them multiple times and still learn/remember more each time.

There are lots of options for dealing with it, but I think the most important thing is that she learn from her mistake (even more important than the course material covered) and how to deal with it. It is a very real possibility that something similar could happen again in the future (say, even in college/university) and learning to adapt, make up the course material she missed and facing the consequences will be key skills for dealing with it next time, too.

Oh, and there's lots of time to color in those beautiful drawings yet! A couple a day seems fair, right?

Blessings,

Don't stress about it It is good for kids to make mistakes now rather than later. Last year, my oldest dd would make mistake after mistake after mistake! It was SO infuriating!!!! I think I felt most frustrated because not only did she have to fix stuff but she that she wasted so much time. And honestly, I teach college level accounting classes and those students can't follow instructions either. Now, that is a shame. I figure if my kids learn one thing, by the end of high school, they will learn to follow instructions!!!!

For me, I am a big believer in natural consequences. We like to call these life lessons. She wasted time doing more than she needed. So, personally would take the approach not rewarding that. Since she didn't follow directions, I personally would make her relisten to those parts next time the come up. That is how I would handle it. And I think that would be punishment enough.

Thanks ladies! She will definitely be listening to them again==just like it says in the box. And no, she hasn't listened to the first disc, but she definitely will. I'm just so blown away that she was so lazy as to not either figure out what was wrong with her stories not matching up or at LEAST asking!! I've calmed down, but thinking about it stresses me out again! haha Unfortunately, this is not unusual for her--it's just in different things, not necessarily school work. I wish I knew if it was thinking skills, laziness, lack of caring or what.

Anyway, thanks for your help.

If it is a chronic thing and transfers into other areas of her life, one thing to check into is Executive Processing Disorder. My DS that I was talking about has trouble with being distracted by my other kids, can't transition between subjects and even if he does get started on his own there's no guarantee he will have found something to do that is what he is supposed to be doing. It looks like he's lazy but it seems he has a valid mental inability to make transitions, manage his time and see consequences of wasting it. He, in fact, is consistently described by at least 9/10 of every EPD checklist I've found. Hopefully the same is not true for your daughter, but just in case and because I'm thankful to the other mom who first mentioned it to me I thought I'd put it out there.

Blessings,

One thing I did last year with my dd is before she worked on any independent boxes, we meet and talked about what she was supposed to do. I would make her read the box out loud to me and then I had her explain what she thought she was supposed to do. Julie suggested this and it helped a ton. We did this for about a year. I don't go over nearly as much with her now but do still meet with her everyday to go over the boxes and some of her books. I just want to make sure she doesn't lose time trying to figure out what to do or lose time doing the wrong thing. Occasionally still though she will make a mistake. And if she does, we scrap it and she does it over. She used to complain but now not so much. She knows she did it wrong and she fixes it.

That's a good idea. I probably need to do that. I forget that just because it seems pretty self-explanatory to me, it's not that easy for her.

She is slow as molasses in everything about her life and it makes me crazy. She barely moves. She can make a sandwich and spend 10 minutes doing it. I hate constantly saying to hurry up, move faster, don't you want to get on with.... She does that with getting out her books too-barely moves. It's not just stuff that she doesn't want to do, it's everything. I'm wondering if she has more issues from her birth, etc than I realize. Briefly, her birth mom was always drinking lots of alcohol during the pregnancy. She was born 8 weeks early so I think that saved her from fetal alcohol syndrome-in and out of foster care until coming here at 25 months.

Thanks for listening!