Once a Month

Once a month, give or take, our youngest decides to give Mom a break and cooperate with school. He just turned 5 so he's not officially even Kindergarten age, so, I'm not talking about his cooperating with his own education. No, this post is about his cooperating with his older brother's education. Typically, our day starts with a few minutes for the boys to fully wake. Our youngest is usually hungry when he gets up, so he has breakfast at this time. N doesn't like to eat first thing because it upsets his stomach. N is also pretty slow to wake, so it usually takes him a good 20 minutes to fully wake up (sometimes longer). This is usually the point when A starts trying to get N out of school. Hahaha! This kid can actually go all day with it, too. If he could only figure out this he is actually making it take longer for his brother to be able to play, but anyway . . .

Today, was so peaceful. He played alone (something he rarely does) while N finished up what he was working on and then they played together with Legos for over 2 hours without a single argument (another record!). And to top it off, this is the second time in 5 days that A has cooperated with school :o) Maybe we're making progress?

**Note: We have tried giving A "school" work to do with his brother (it worked for a short while). We have also tried the box of "special" toys (worked for a week - 30 days worth of activities). We even tried a DVD (which I was determined never to do when we first started homeschooling - didn't even work the first time). We've even tried asking for his cooperation and explaining why he would want to cooperate. Anyway, I just wanted to add the note, so that you'd know we've tried. I'm really just posting this to encourage others - ours is not the only one, and neither is yours :o)