Homeschooling moms have the dual challenge of serving as parents AND teachers during the day, which means we often have to deal with a homeschool tantrum or two on occasion. Yay! Not.
When a child throws a temper tantrum, it can disrupt the entire school day. And if you’re homeschooling more than one child, it can distract the other kids from their lessons, make you angry, and throw off your whole schedule for the week. Since we’re homeschooling children with ADHD, it’s essential that we stick to our regular school schedule, so I just cannot afford to have the school day disrupted by a temper tantrum.
Today, I thought I’d share a few of the things that have worked for us in keeping a homeschool tantrum at bay. I’ll also be including a few things that did NOT work, just for comparison. 🙂
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Tips for Dealing with a Homeschool Tantrum
- Find out what’s wrong. Before you even attempt to handle the tantrum, try to learn why your child is upset. Trust me, this can be difficult. Especially if they’re screaming incoherently at the time. Is your child frustrated because he can’t understand a concept? Is she feeling overwhelmed? Ask your child what’s wrong and then try to listen patiently as he explains.
What does NOT work: Shouting at your child to “Be quiet!”
- Establish a regular schedule. Pooh, our oldest boy, is extremely cranky in the mornings. He tends to sleep restlessly and he frequently has night terrors. As a result, he really needs time to wake up at his own pace without being rushed. So, we decided to begin school a bit later in the day to avoid making him concentrate at an early hour. Before I realized that was a problem, he had tantrums almost every day. When we stick with the schedule, though, he rests better and he behaves better.
What does NOT work: Beginning school at a different time each morning
- Keep right on teaching. This one is probably the most important. No matter what you do, continue with your lesson plan to the extent you possibly can. Naturally, if you have a kicking and screaming child in your school room, you may have to stop to remove him or her to a safe place. (I’ve had to do that on occasion.) But, if you drop your lesson plan completely, you’ve just told your child that he or she can make school “stop” by throwing a fit. Once you send that message, you’ll have a hard time teaching every day afterward.
What does NOT work: Stopping your lesson for that day
When I follow these three tips, temper tantrums in our family become minor hiccups instead of major obstacles. How do you handle homeschool tantrums? Do you have any suggestions for how to manage temper tantrums while homeschooling? Let us know in the comments!
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This is one subject that comes up on many of the homeschooling boards and facebook groups. Parents are wanting to throw in the towel on homeschooling because their kids ‘act’ better at school. We as home educators need to understand that a Teacher in a traditional setting has to earn the obedience, respect and position with every child in the classroom. It takes time, consistency and a discipline system. If we parents want that in our homeschools we have to make it happen. When I first bought my youngest home, many people thought he should be diagnosed with ADHD, however, after working with him for 6 months, he changed – greatly and noticiebly. We have a ‘Calm Down’ list posted above his desk where he recites ways for him to redirect himself. We also have 5 min workouts where if he wants to take a break outside of the normal break time, he can pick a piece of paper out of the hat for an exercise activity that he does for 5 min. When he has a tantrum, he is directed to read his ‘calm down list’. If he doesn’t read it, he gets 5 minutes of quiet time. Then comes back and reads the ‘Calm Down list’. Now he has it memorized and doesn’t even need it. Hardly any tantrums now.
Oh My! That is exactly what I needed to read right now. My son was in public school for first grade, and we decided to homeschool him after that because he was so affected by his peers that one time he even had to get stitches from a kid bothering him enough that he slammed his head on his desk accidentally. He constantly has tantrums and it derails my teaching of my oldest, and then gets my two year old upset. If he went back to a traditional classroom, he would probably be diagnosed with ADHD. I am trying my best to find things to help him without medication and using that as a last resort. It is easy to feel isolated, so I appreciate these commments!
We don’t medicate here either, and our six-year-old was throwing tantrums that were making our toddler upset. There’s nothing like hearing your 20-month-old shout “NO, MAMA!” at the top of her lungs just because she heard her brother do it during class. 🙁 But the consistent schedule, the attempt to communicate, and the fact that I keep the routine going really is helping.
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You’re absolutely right. I thought about a PS teacher when I was deciding how to manage tantrums around here. They have to keep on going, no matter what. And so do we. There are ways to adapt to our kids, like the behavior strategy you’re using, but the message to them should be that school is important and that they have to learn to manage their feelings (with our help, of course). Great tips!
Hi Nita and Selena, I am so thankful I have found both of your blogs. They are very helpful and I just subscribed to both of them. Selena I am finding your tips very helpful. Both my 8 year old son and I have ADHD and have developed some very bad habits that I am working on changing.
Nita, I LOVE your ideas of the Calm Down List and the 5 minute workouts! Do you have a blog post about either of those, where you list out the items you have on both the Calm down List and your 5 minute work out ideas? I would really like to implement both of those and would love to not have to reinvent the wheel. Thanks so much.
Hi Jill! Thanks for visiting! I’m so glad you’re enjoying the series! I have ADHD as well. Later this week we’ll be talking about tips for parents with ADHD. 🙂
This is a GREAT post!!! I think our problem is that my 4 & 5 year olds just don’t want to do school work. That’s what their tantrums are about. I’m working to make things fun, but when I do that – they don’t want to do the traditional paperwork required to learn handwriting, etc. I didn’t have these issues with my oldest though, so I’m at quite a loss. Any tips and ideas appreciated.
Hey! Our youngest boy was like that too. I started just with very, very short writing sessions. I mean, like two words. And now he writes a full sentence each morning. (He’s five.) But once he finishes his writing, his math (we use Khan Academy, which he loves), and joint reading session with me, he gets to go play until workbox time in the afternoon. I’m keeping his lessons pretty relaxed for now, but we’re on a schedule, so he knows what to expect each day.
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I’m not a homeschooling mom, yet I find all of these tips to be incredibly useful! Especially #2: My son absolutely thrives on routine, and I know it, so I try to protect his schedule as much as I possibly can. If things get too thrown off, a temper tantrum is undoubtedly around the corner.
Thanks for linking up with the #SHINEbloghop!
Great advice! This is one of the biggest challenges I’ve had to face since homeschool. It’s not like I stop being “mom”, and I’m just “teacher” during the day.
Old post, new comment. Having difficulty with this now. My oldest is nine and throughout our homes he adventure (always, he has never been in school) tantrums are posting crying sessions at the table with the ability for me to ignore it and keep going. Or occasionally send him to sit elsewhere until he calms down and stops disrupting.
New to me now is my 7 year old who throws random tantrums where we push everything off the table, whip pencils across the room, knock a chair over. This is regardless of schedules, regardless of consequences… and consequently I have to school on and off all day for days on end before we have a good day. I have no tips and I’m a miserable human being at this stage (no, I will not miss this when they’re older and I’m sick of people telling me I’ll miss being abused by my first grader haha!)
So… I’ve found nothing that works as there is no trigger or recipe for the bad or good days. School wouldn’t be an option anyway as nothing local has a special ed teacher so I am legitimately my kid’s only hope at this point so something must be done or we will continue to have spells of school that goes on around tantrums for 9 hours interspersed with good days where we are done in 1.5 hours. Sigh. I thought I would add this in Cas anyone else has tried it all, found this blog but has tried this too. You’re not alone.