My failures as a father thread

[Smucky]

Been debating on posting this for like a month. Keep thinking about it so I guess yolo

[Smucky]

Most of these will just deal with my under 12 years of age son. We had always figured we'd homeschool. That is what my wife wanted, and I didn't care. And right when it came time to push them into kindergarten, it was in the middle of covid. I actually did look into at the local school. The procedure was to stop by the school to pick up a laptop, and if you didn't have internet, they'd give you a t-mobile powered wifi hotspot. And then as a parent, you were to stick them in front of the computer at 8am and they would be freed from that after 3pm. That was for kindergarten, no joke. So instead just went with some book/workbook based homeschool stuff.

[Smucky]

Most of these will just deal with my under 12 years of age son. We had always figured we'd homeschool. That is what my wife wanted, and I didn't care. And right when it came time to push them into kindergarten, it was in the middle of covid. I actually did look into at the local school. The procedure was to stop by the school to pick up a laptop, and if you didn't have internet, they'd give you a t-mobile powered wifi hotspot. And then as a parent, you were to stick them in front of the computer at 8am and they would be freed from that after 3pm. That was for kindergarten, no joke. So instead just went with some book/workbook based homeschool stuff.

And that worked fine for my daughter, my son, not so much.

[Smucky]

I had dreams initially that since we'd be homeschooling and I would have awesome remote only software dev jobs, that as a family we'd just buy an RV and travel the country.

[Smucky]

I had dreams initially that since we'd be homeschooling and I would have awesome remote only software dev jobs, that as a family we'd just buy an RV and travel the country.

Like I could roll out of bed at 4am in the RV, do some "coding" then at 8am do some "camping" things outside with the kids before packing up and heading to the next camp spot. Kids could home school while I drove, etc. And then I could put in another 4 hours of coding work at the next camp site.

Sounded brilliant, but at my first remote job, I realized that I am kind of retarded and it takes me 12 hours of "working" just to get 6 hours of work done which I can then maybe just maybe pass off as having put in an 8 hour work day. And even worse, any interruption of my working hours would really derail everything, so it just became critical that I am left alone undisturbed all day and half the night in my home office. I don't hate it, kind of like. But clearly the RV scheme is axed.

[Smucky]

Like I could roll out of bed at 4am in the RV, do some "coding" then at 8am do some "camping" things outside with the kids before packing up and heading to the next camp spot. Kids could home school while I drove, etc. And then I could put in another 4 hours of coding work at the next camp site.

Sounded brilliant, but at my first remote job, I realized that I am kind of retarded and it takes me 12 hours of "working" just to get 6 hours of work done which I can then maybe just maybe pass off as having put in an 8 hour work day. And even worse, any interruption of my working hours would really derail everything, so it just became critical that I am left alone undisturbed all day and half the night in my home office. I don't hate it, kind of like. But clearly the RV scheme is axed.

But there were other issues. For one, I originally thought that I would partake quite a bit in the homeschooling process. Using my experience of 5 years in college to get a 4 year degree, I figured my kids would just love the concept of a limit in calculus or having family problem solving time like how many ways to sort 18 books on a 5 shelf bookshelf if you only want 8 books max on the top shelf

And well, none of that happened. Was always too busy. Now I've forgotten half of my college math and the kids wouldn't jive with that either anyway.

[Smucky]

My son continually put up huge fights with book work. He, up until recently, did way better in math than his sister. This lead my wife spending 90% of her time working with him, while sister was always done but stuck waiting on mom to grade her work.

[Smucky]

My son continually put up huge fights with book work. He, up until recently, did way better in math than his sister. This lead my wife spending 90% of her time working with him, while sister was always done but stuck waiting on mom to grade her work.

That lead to another yolo moment of let's just move to online curriculum, that will fix the issue of sister being always stuck waiting for papers to get graded.

We used the same company that the work books were coming from since they also had a few online options. But once we got that figured out, we realized that their online offerings were just a mirror image of the work books they have. Meaning there are no videos or any other forms of tutelage. But it is at least auto graded via their "stuck in 2005" web interface. But having to teach yourself through an entire grade level only by reading text and answering questions seems like a quite horrid experience. I honestly felt sorry for my daughter at first but she manages to stomp through the assignments.

[Smucky]

That lead to another yolo moment of let's just move to online curriculum, that will fix the issue of sister being always stuck waiting for papers to get graded.

We used the same company that the work books were coming from since they also had a few online options. But once we got that figured out, we realized that their online offerings were just a mirror image of the work books they have. Meaning there are no videos or any other forms of tutelage. But it is at least auto graded via their "stuck in 2005" web interface. But having to teach yourself through an entire grade level only by reading text and answering questions seems like a quite horrid experience. I honestly felt sorry for my daughter at first but she manages to stomp through the assignments.

The idea originally was to have sister to test out the online curriculum before putting my son on that. But clearly having text only tutelage would not work on him as the things that were bringing everything to a grinding halt with my son were him having to read and write. It is not that he can't, but he fights it the whole time.

Like an example reading/writing question might teach that nouns are a person,place or thing and a question might be write two sentences that each contain a noun.

Which would lead to him whining about how this is too much work. He doesn't know what to do. Can we skip this one? ,etc.

[Smucky]

Like an example reading/writing question might teach that nouns are a person,place or thing and a question might be write two sentences that each contain a noun.

Which would lead to him whining about how this is too much work. He doesn't know what to do. Can we skip this one? ,etc.

So like any good parent/teacher, that leads to, clearly I can't cram it down your throat so lets try to brainstorm some.

Hey, lets start easy by thinking of some nouns. Oh look, there's nouns all around us. We are sitting at a table. The table is on a floor. We're in a house that has walls.

Try to do this quick, I'd say. I'm not looking for fancy stuff. Just make up stuff, lie, heck I don't care.

But then you'd just get more whining from him. "Uggghhh", "This is hard", "Ugggg", etc.

Well ok, this is not hard. We can do this quick. Look you can easily say something like "I'm sitting at a table that is on the floor". I mean that is just one sentence and the question wants two, but hey, there's two nouns so that is good enough for me. Just do something like that. Anything!

But then you'd just get more whining from him. "Uggghhh", "This is hard", "Ugggg", etc.

So after 30 minutes of this, you'd finally get him to put the pen to the paper. And what you usually get is plagiarism in the form of a bastardized version of an example that was used.

Or in this case, something like:

"im' at Tabel on Flor."

[Smucky]

So obviously online "book work" for schooling won't work for him. So I began the search for curriculum that was more interactive. This was slim pickings sadly. A lot of stuff pointed to Power homeschool/ and there was a large "offical" facebook group that seemed active. Though in hindsight, the large amount of "parents" on their facebook group that do nothing but hype and prop up how great the curriculum is seems a bit sus. Almost like they are paid influencers.

It seemed good though, and I was just happy that there were videos to watch. I did see somewhat of a red flag in that they were advertising their program for both "gifted" students and "special needs" students:

I mean, can you truly have a single curriculum that works for both the brightest and the dumbest students?

[Smucky]

Nonetheless, for $19 a month for a full access subscription, I pulled my son out of his book work only curriculum and stuck him into powerhomeschool mid year.

[Smucky]

Nonetheless, for $19 a month for a full access subscription, I pulled my son out of his book work only curriculum and stuck him into powerhomeschool mid year.

This seemed to work good at first. But a few more red flags popped up. I was impressed when he first started watching the video lessons that he pulled out a notebook and started taking notes. He seemed excited to learn.

But as the days ticked on, I started to get a bit sus. For one, he was doing an entire days work in just one hour. I mean, we went from fighting with him for over 6 hours straight just to do one subject and now he can do 5 subjects in minutes

Looking a bit closer at his work via the parent portal (who's very limited UI deserves its own post) showed the next issue. Some online curriculum are hard to figure out because it gives the parents so many options. Like how many retries to get, what resources are available during tests, how much time to schedule per day, etc.

But powerhomeschool goes to the other end, it gives the parent no control over these. Each 4 choice question is allowed two retries. So statistically, with two retries per question, just guessing means you'll have a high chance for a 75% and my son quickly picked that up. I discretely viewed his desktop over vnc to confirm. And yes for every question/test/quiz he'd just skip all the lessons and videos and go straight to clicking answers. Unlimited retakes are allowed as well I know how fast he reads and he wasn't even reading the questions or answers. But after going through an assignment a few times guessing, you can eventually memorize question #3 is B, question #4 is D, etc.

He was very proud of his all 100% score card though.

The fix for that was simple. You no longer do your assignments using headphones but use the regular speakers and turn them all the way up so the whole household knows you are working. And then if we see you have retaken an assignment, test, quiz, etc any more than once we are beating your @ss.

Curious if anyone else had these problems, I ventured into the facebook group. And indeed there were some questions/complaints but they would all be quickly squelched by many other "parents" stating that all kids learn differently and just because they are clicking everything randomly, how do you know some osmosis process isn't going on? Well can't argue with that.

[Smucky]

Overall, I think the power homeschool curriculum is simply "ok". They clearly put effort into it. And it seems to work really well for the more "elective" type classes like science, history, geography, etc. But my son's struggle was with reading and writing and that was still coming short. There were "writing" assignments which would ask for short stories, etc. My son would fumble through them on the keyboard with misspellings everywhere. They would be instantly auto graded. Impressively it would kick it back due to certain subjects not being used, etc and sometimes it would whine about misspellings, but not always.

Nonetheless, clearly this couldn't be the only curriculum.

[Smucky]

Nonetheless, clearly this couldn't be the only curriculum.

So that lead to a trip to barns and nobles book store to look for school work books. I had a step dad that used to buy them and make me do them over summer break. Hated them, but I could get through them. With that in mind, I wanted to be nice and got 3 work books for reading, writing, spelling, that were all one grade below his.

So he should be able to blast through them. Just do two pages a day and you should only need 5 minutes or so per page.

No dice, now we are back to him spending hours per page and all the answers just being flat out wrong, or unreadable, or just skipped entirely.

[Smucky]

No dice, now we are back to him spending hours per page and all the answers just being flat out wrong, or unreadable, or just skipped entirely.

I had high hopes that something in the power homeschool curriculum would provoke his ability to think. I had him go through the "coding" elective which just uses the "Scratch" style of programming puzzle blocks that snap together to make "programs". But he still mostly refused to put any logic or thought into those. There was one task towards the end of the class to help a virtual moon lander correctly use thrusters to gently land. It would not have been hard to make it hover around and do loops and then make a gentle landing. But that requires thinking and I disappointingly watched him over several days try to complete that assignment by just randomly changing thruster values and if statement expressions

But so far, I have seen very little of him wanting to learn or use his brain at all. His default state seems to be one of needing constant entertainment with one's brain turned off. He only wants to sit in front of the TV. We ban TV then it becomes endless youtube videos on the computer. We block youtube and then it is endless viewing product videos on amazon. We block amazon and it is endless game trailer viewing on steam.com. We block that and it is endless browsing "video game" on google image search He has no desire to produce anything, only consume. I don't know if that is just the way kids are now or if we somehow made him that way or what. But trying to point out that a life of consumption fueled by Taco Bell employment gets old quick does nothing.

[Smucky]

But the fighting between him and my wife over him getting through simple reading and writing workbooks is depressing. I finally figured we'd better just throw him in public school. I made a passing joke about that the other day and my wife said she felt the same.

[Smucky]

But the fighting between him and my wife over him getting through simple reading and writing workbooks is depressing. I finally figured we'd better just throw him in public school. I made a passing joke about that the other day and my wife said she felt the same.

But the irony with that is we both know kids in the local public school and their reading and writing skills are horrid. So if that is what our son struggles with, then why would we be sending him there to be "fixed"?

So that brings the realization that we are not trying to fix him but simply turn him over to "the system". And giving up on your kid kind of makes you feel like crap.

[Smucky]

We definitely can't afford $10k a year for private school. There are charter schools in the area, but there is no bus service. That means having drive him there and pick him up. And I just really don't want to do that. Which that makes me feel pretty trashy again. But honestly, I have no idea whether charter schools would be any better than the local ISD. After all, they are both publicly funded and required to meet the same testing requirements.

[Smucky]

I feel like perhaps if I just spent more time with my son, maybe things would be different. Telling him "school is important" goes over his head. Maybe if we had a different relationship he'd better listen to my advice? His sister seems to understand that doing bad in school means your adult life will be one of pain. I don't think he thinks that far out though.

I don't even know what would be a good activity. I thought a year ago or so we would be able to bond over Minecraft. But he is a horrible team player. He basically only continually goes off on random treks, never wants to build stuff or try to level up. Even worse, he would constantly "borrow" stuff from my chest. I'd work forever to get an enchanted diamond pickax or something and then the next time I log in it would be missing. He would never be apologetic, only saying he wanted to use it right quick and give it back but then "I fell in lava" That was a continual issue. Even his sister hates playing with him.

[Smucky]

Interesting. I saved this forum thread as a pdf and uploaded it to claude.ai asking for advice:


An "internet friend" of mine posted about having trouble homeschooling his 10 year old son. I'd like to offer some advice but I'm not really sure what to say. What would a family psychologist say to this matter? I've attached a pdf print out of the forum post

Looking at this forum post from a family psychology perspective, there are several interconnected issues at play that go beyond just educational challenges. Let me break down what a family psychologist would likely identify and recommend.

Understanding the Core Patterns

The most striking pattern here isn't actually about homeschooling curriculum - it's about a child who has developed sophisticated avoidance strategies around tasks that feel overwhelming or frustrating. When your friend's son whines, procrastinates, or produces minimal effort work like "im' at Tabel on Flor," he's not being defiant for its own sake. He's communicating that the cognitive or emotional load of the task feels unmanageable to him.

Think of it like this: imagine you were asked to write an essay in a language you barely speak while someone stood over you expressing frustration. You'd likely develop your own avoidance strategies too. The child has learned that resistance often leads to the task being modified, shortened, or eventually abandoned, which reinforces this pattern.

The Attention and Learning Piece

A family psychologist would almost certainly recommend a comprehensive evaluation for learning differences or attention challenges. The constellation of behaviors described - difficulty with reading and writing, inability to focus on academic tasks, hyperfocus on screens, impulsive behavior in games (like taking items in Minecraft without thinking through consequences) - suggests possible ADHD or specific learning disabilities.

Here's what's important to understand: these aren't character flaws or signs of laziness. If a child has an underlying attention or processing difference, traditional teaching methods can feel like trying to catch water with a net. The child experiences repeated failure, which builds shame and avoidance, which creates more academic struggles, creating a cycle that becomes harder to break over time.

The Family System Dynamics

Notice how the educational struggles have created stress throughout the entire family system. Mom spends 90% of her time managing the son's resistance while daughter waits. Dad feels like he's failing as a father and retreats to work isolation. The parents are considering giving up on homeschooling not because they think public school is better, but because they're emotionally exhausted.
This is what psychologists call a "stuck" family system. Everyone has fallen into rigid roles and patterns that maintain the problem rather than solving it. The son has inadvertently become the "identified patient" - the family member whose symptoms express the family's collective stress.

What Professional Intervention Would Look Like

A family psychologist would likely recommend a multi-pronged approach. First, that comprehensive evaluation I mentioned, possibly including educational testing, ADHD assessment, and screening for things like auditory processing disorders or dyslexia. Many children who struggle with reading and writing have underlying processing differences that make traditional instruction feel impossible.
Second, they'd work on shifting the family's approach from a compliance-based model to a collaboration-based one. Instead of "how do we make him do his work," the question becomes "how do we help him access learning in a way that works for his brain." This might involve finding his learning style, incorporating more movement, using assistive technology, or breaking tasks into much smaller chunks.

Rebuilding the Parent-Child Relationship

The psychologist would also address how academic struggles have damaged the parent-child relationship. Your friend mentions wanting to spend more time with his son but not knowing how to connect. This makes sense - when most of your interactions revolve around academic conflict, it's hard to remember how to just enjoy each other's company.

The key insight here is that the relationship needs to be repaired before academic progress can happen. Children don't learn well from people they're in conflict with. This might mean temporarily stepping back from academic pressure and focusing on rebuilding connection through shared interests, physical activities, or simple one-on-one time without any educational agenda.

Practical Recommendations a Psychologist Might Offer

They'd likely suggest starting with small wins rather than trying to fix everything at once. Maybe the son does better with hands-on learning, oral instruction, or computer-based work with speech-to-text features. Perhaps he needs frequent breaks, background music, or a standing desk. The goal would be finding one small academic task he can do successfully and building from there.

For the consumption versus creation issue your friend mentioned, a psychologist would help reframe this. Many children today struggle with what researchers call "continuous partial attention" - their brains have adapted to rapid stimulation switching, making sustained focus on single tasks feel uncomfortable. This is treatable through gradual exposure to longer focus periods and finding creative outlets that feel rewarding rather than frustrating.

The Bigger Picture

Most importantly, a family psychologist would help your friend understand that this situation doesn't represent failure as a parent. Many highly intelligent, creative children struggle in traditional academic formats. Some of our most successful entrepreneurs, artists, and innovators were exactly these kinds of kids - the ones who couldn't sit still for worksheets but could hyperfocus on projects that genuinely interested them.

The goal isn't to force this child into a conventional academic mold, but to understand how his brain works and create learning experiences that align with his strengths while gently building skills in challenging areas.

If you want to support your friend, you might encourage him to start with that evaluation and to consider that this challenge, while exhausting now, could be the beginning of discovering his son's unique gifts and learning style rather than evidence of failure.

[Smucky]

And to:

"Well it sounds like the wrong teaching method is being used? What would be some other ways to teach reading and writing to a child that constantly seems overwhelmed?"

You've identified exactly the right issue. The teaching methods being used are fundamentally mismatched to how this child's brain processes information, which is why we're seeing such strong resistance and overwhelm. Let me walk you through how learning actually works in the brain, and then we can explore alternative approaches that might unlock this child's potential.

Understanding the Overwhelm Response

When a child consistently becomes overwhelmed by reading and writing tasks, their brain is essentially sending a distress signal. Think of it like this: imagine you're trying to tune into a radio station, but the signal keeps cutting in and out with static. You might be able to catch a word here and there, but the effort required to piece together meaning is exhausting, and eventually you'd want to turn the radio off entirely.
For children with certain learning differences, traditional text-based instruction can feel exactly like that static-filled radio signal. Their brains are working much harder than typical to process the same information, which leads to what psychologists call "cognitive fatigue." This fatigue then triggers the fight-or-flight response we see as whining, avoidance, and resistance.

The key insight here is that the child isn't choosing to be difficult. His brain has learned that these particular tasks cause distress, so it's trying to protect him by avoiding them. This is actually a very rational response to an irrational situation.

The Multi-Sensory Learning Approach

Instead of relying primarily on visual text processing, which seems to be this child's weakness, we need to engage multiple pathways in the brain simultaneously. This is called multi-sensory learning, and it's based on the principle that different children have different strengths in how they process information.

Consider starting with approaches that combine movement, sound, and touch along with visual elements. For example, instead of having the child write sentences about nouns, you might have him physically collect objects around the house while saying their names aloud, then arrange them into categories, and only then move to writing about them. This engages his kinesthetic system, auditory processing, and visual organization skills before asking for written output.

The Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction is specifically designed for children who struggle with traditional phonics methods. Rather than expecting children to simply memorize letter-sound relationships through repetition, this method teaches reading through multiple sensory channels simultaneously. A child might trace letters in sand while saying the sound, or use colored tiles to build words while spelling them aloud.

Reducing Cognitive Load Through Scaffolding

Another crucial concept is cognitive load theory. Think of your working memory like a computer's RAM - it can only hold so much information at once before it becomes overwhelmed and starts dropping data. For children who struggle with reading and writing, traditional assignments often exceed their cognitive capacity by asking them to juggle too many skills simultaneously.

When we break down the example from the forum post, that simple sentence writing task was actually asking the child to coordinate multiple complex processes at once: understanding the concept of nouns, generating creative ideas, organizing thoughts into sentences, remembering spelling patterns, forming letters with proper handwriting, and managing his emotional response to the pressure. That's an enormous cognitive load for a child who already struggles with language processing.

Instead, we can use scaffolding techniques that support each skill separately before combining them. For instance, you might start by having conversations about nouns without any writing requirement, then move to organizing noun cards physically, then to oral sentence construction, and only finally to written output. Each step builds competence and confidence before adding the next layer of complexity.

Technology as a Learning Bridge

Given this child's apparent comfort with technology, digital tools could serve as a bridge rather than a replacement for traditional skills. Speech-to-text software allows children to express complex ideas without being limited by writing mechanics. They can focus their cognitive energy on organizing thoughts and developing ideas, then later work on editing and refining their written expression.
Similarly, audiobooks paired with text can help children develop reading comprehension and vocabulary while their decoding skills catch up. They're not cheating by using these tools - they're accessing grade-appropriate content through their stronger auditory processing channels while still developing visual reading skills at their own pace.

Interactive reading programs that highlight words as they're spoken, or apps that break complex words into syllables with visual and auditory cues, can make the reading process more accessible. The key is finding tools that support learning rather than replacing the need to develop skills.

The Power of Choice and Interest

One of the most powerful motivators for reluctant learners is genuine choice in what they read and write about. Instead of generic workbook exercises, this child might be much more engaged if he could write about topics that genuinely interest him, even if those topics seem unconventional for academic work.

If he's fascinated by video games, let him write reviews or create guides for games he's played. If he's interested in a particular YouTube channel, have him summarize episodes or compare different creators' approaches. The goal is to find contexts where the communication skills feel purposeful rather than arbitrary.

This approach works because it taps into intrinsic motivation rather than relying solely on external pressure. When children see reading and writing as tools for exploring their interests rather than as obstacles to endure, their entire relationship with these skills can shift.

Building From Strength Areas

Notice that this child apparently does better with math than with language arts. This suggests his logical reasoning abilities are intact, which opens up interesting possibilities for teaching reading and writing through more systematic, rule-based approaches.

Some children respond well to treating spelling like a code-breaking game, where they learn the patterns and rules that govern English spelling rather than trying to memorize individual words. Similarly, sentence construction can be taught as a building system, where different types of words serve specific functions, much like components in a mathematical equation.

The key is helping the child see that language has underlying logic and patterns, just like math does. This can make the seemingly random rules of English feel more manageable and predictable.

The Importance of Emotional Safety

Perhaps most importantly, any alternative teaching method must prioritize emotional safety over academic progress. This child has likely experienced repeated failure and frustration around reading and writing, which has created negative associations with these activities. Before we can teach him new skills, we need to help him feel safe enough to take risks and make mistakes.

This might mean starting with activities that feel more like play than work, celebrating small victories enthusiastically, and absolutely avoiding any sense of time pressure or comparison with others. The child needs to experience success and enjoyment around language activities before he can develop the resilience to tackle challenging material.

Thinking Questions for Moving Forward

As you consider these alternative approaches, here are some questions that might help guide your thinking: What activities does this child already engage in willingly for extended periods? How does he prefer to receive information - through listening, watching, or hands-on exploration? What topics or interests could serve as bridges to reading and writing practice?

Also consider: What time of day is he most alert and receptive to learning? What physical environment helps him focus best? How might his apparent technological interests be channeled into literacy development rather than seen as obstacles to it?

The goal isn't to find one perfect method, but rather to build a toolkit of approaches that can be adapted based on the child's energy, interest, and developmental readiness on any given day. Does this framework help you think about alternative teaching approaches, or would you like me to elaborate on any of these concepts?

[Smucky]

[NinjaPoodle]

Just sign him up for gender rearrangement surgery, and he'll be fine.

[Smucky]

Just sign him up for gender rearrangement surgery, and he'll be fine.

Don't have any money. I'm unemployed, don't you remember?