[Effervescence]

My husband, for the most part, is very hands off with the schooling of our children. I basically take care of everything, make all the decisions etc. He does help Jonah with his speech, I think because he can really relate to him there and he knows what kinds of things help. If Jonah asks for one of his learning activities while I am cooking or exercising, I will tell DH where it's at and he will do it with him. But that is about it.

Sometimes I feel like I have a huge weight on my shoulders- educating our children is a huge responsibility! What if I screw up!? What if I am too disorganized!? What if my kids hate me later for decisions I think are good now? I wish DH would be more involved; it would take some stress off of me to feel like we are doing this as partners, and not just me as the manager of this whole operation.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get dad more involved? Is it usually the mom's responsibility to do the teaching, or can it be split 50/50 for most families? I do think this comes from the way Daryl was raised. He simply sees this as part of the "homemaking" job description. That makes him sound really sexist and he's not, I promise!

[Slipper]

Can you perhaps play on his strengths? We do not homeschool, but after-school (I suppose). My husband loves projects that involve computers or using computer technology (printing, designing, making books). He also enjoys science, history and is fairly good at math. I excel at reading.

When we have something we are doing, we divide up the projects based on our strengths. Should I ever home-school, the bulk would fall to me, but I feel confident that he would enjoy the same type of things that he does now with the girls.

[hiskid1324]

DH works from 11:30-8 (or later) most days. He's been picking up a lot of overtime in the morning and evenings though, so he's been leaving the house by 8:30am, and often not home until 10 or 11pm. Needless to say, EVERYTHING falls to me. Pretty much literally. He didn't work that overtime for the first time in 2 months today. I got SO much done around the house! But, I don't expect him to be involved in the lesson-doing of school... unless his expertise is required (ie, later years when he is better at something than I am... like computers, mechanics, home repair, etc).

My dad was involved only to the point that he had us out in his work shop helping with wood working, outside helping with yard work, outside playing sports with him, outside fishing... ummmm... noticing a trend?!?! Seems we did (and do) a lot of outside things with him! He didn't get overly involved in the schooling side of things (actually helping teach) until high school. Until then meal times would be a time where we would sometimes practice math drill, or spelling words, or all sorts of other stuff, but it wasn't just him running the show, and he wasn't the one responsible for getting lessons planned, taught, and children through a school day. He worked. Mum's job was to look after us, our schooling, and the house. That's basically how I see it too... though I do ask DH to pitch in a little with household stuff (ie, he has to wash the supper dishes because he is the last one to touch them, and he takes the trash out, lol).

[christianmommato3]

I do about 95% of the schooling with my children.
My dh now works 10-12 hours a day and has a travel time of 3 hours round trip... so he is gone most of the day.
When able, he does help teach the kids woodworking, electrical, plumbing, carpentry, remodeling, etc.... Hei s very hands on and teaches the kids while doing his honey to-do list

[Miguels mommy]

I was very close to my dad. My son and his father are close. DH and his dad are not. We view homeschooling as a parenting. A lot of subjects we do together, tag team, Or it's a subject that one parent enjoys but the other does not. Other times we have used time4learning, brain pop and our co-op to take pressure off of one or both of us. My husband enjoys teaching and would have taught for a living if school was not as hard for us to stick with. With sports DH is not the accepting parent he wants to be and we have taken to asking him to wait in the car if he's not being positive.

We have been lucky that for a long time he had a supper flexible schedule it's not the best paying but it lets him be supper involved. I would start by having him read a bed time story every night to the kids or setting up daddy time were he has to play whatever game your child wants. What are his hobbies?

[Frackel]

Umm, their father does none of their schooling. I wish that weren't the case, as do they, but it's how things have been most of their lives. I don't think I should comment further on that tidbit as I have not so nice things to say about it, lol.

They do have others in their lives willing to help out and take on roles they really shouldn't have to though. I'm, well we all are, very blessed to have those people in our lives. Having to do every.single.thing. completely alone is very difficult. I don't like it one bit, and neither do they. I do all of their schooling, which in and of itself I don't mind. But I won't pretend that having someone else to help out with that, is a bad thing, lol. It would be nice. Eventually we'll have that, full time. For now we do what we can, as best we can, and we keep truckin' along.

That said, I do believe it CAN be a 50/50 thing, and if at all possible, should be. Even if you can't make it a 50/50 thing, I think both parents taking on some of the responsibility, is a good thing. One parent may be much better at a certain subject, or subjects, than the other. It's good for kids to see this, imo. It reinforces the fact that not everyone will be good at everything, and it's great when you've got someone else to help you when you need it (aka, dad helping mom when mom isn't so hot at a certain subject, or vice versa). My mom will be doing all of their schooling for two weeks in October. I think she's looking forward to it as much as they are, lol.

I wasn't homeschooled growing up. But my mom helped me with a lot of my homework, especially when I was younger, except math. Math was never her strongest subject.(which is funny since she's in college right now and pretty much all of her classes revolve around math, and she's done taxes for people since I was a baby, lol) My dad helped me understand math the best. He also taught me all sorts of other things-as I got older I noticed he snuck an awful lot of math into those other things too, sneaky sneaky.(and I use that on my kids now )
But if I ever needed help with anything else, he was always willing, even if he didn't quite understand it, he still tried, or we figured it out together. Whether he had worked an 8 hour day or a 16 hour day, he had no problems spending time helping us with school work, or anything for that matter. He was very hands on. He was never able to attend any school functions, due to work, and things like that. So he always made sure to spend plenty of time doing anything else he could do, to be hands on. I have to say that I never really thought much of it until I got to high school(7th grade for me) and realized that so many of my friends(the ones in 2 parent households) had dads that believed it was mom's role to take care of kids, his role to make money. So their dads were rarely, if ever, hands on in anything. I thought that was weird back then, but eventually decided that my family was the weird one. Now, I find it sad when people have those opinions and I can see, firsthand, how damaging it really can be, even when they don't intend for it to be.
(sorry if that comes across harshly, it's just my opinion due to firsthand experience)

[Alison79]

Our situation is a bit different because DH works second shift and is home with the kids until 2:30. I work from home and take over when he leaves. So, we decided to split the schooling so that we each teach a few areas. She typically does math, spelling and reading with me in the afternoons and German, science and social studies with her Dad in the morning. It works well because he's fluent in German and loves science so he's excited to work with her.

Maybe you could make a list of the weeks activities and ask him to handle a few of them or ask which he'd like to help with?

[BensMom]

I do 99% of the teaching, and I like it that way. I don't think I'll be much help to you. My dh is gone about 12 hrs a day, too. I'm confident in my ability to teach, and he has confidence in me, so that helps.

[IsraelSofiaMalachi&baby]

I do 100% of the schooling.
My husband is a drummer so we tried having him do music class last year and teach our son but our son wasn't interested.
I even teach my kids spanish which is my husbands first language

[snippets]

My husband has stepped in this year to help with the supplemental math lessons for my daughter. We use Time4Learning as our core curriculum and it does everything for us, but she needs some extra help with math, so he does it. I am so THANKFUL!!

Maybe find out something he in interested in or really good at doing and hint that the kids might enjoy learning that from him. Praise him for showing them something and suggest he show them more. Just plain tell him you need a little help and see what he says.

Joyfully,
Jackie

[Miguels mommy]

If DH is willing to do read alouds but doesn't have the time anybook may be a good option.

[in_mommy]

Dad is supposed to have a role??! LOL!! Well, DH works all the time, so I am the one who does it all. He lets me make all the decisions on their school 100%. He isn't around enough to be able to count on him to teach a subject for them. He does help out a bit here and there when they ask for help or ask to read to him. Other than that, he doesn't do anything.

[Radish4ever]

The only time I ask DH to help is if it is something outdoorsy or a science explanation or something. My husband is usually working and gone at least 10.5 hours out of our day, so I don't really want to bug him during the 1.5 hours he has with the kids to do school, ykwim?

I do like when we can all go on family field trips... Hubs likes to bring up all sorts of fun questions for the kids when we go places like the zoo or Sea World or something.

[blueyedbabii]

My boyfriend is not my son's biological child but that doesn't matter to him. My son's bio fther rarely has any input about anything if I say it's good he'll go along with it.
Now my boyfriend steve is the one who mostly activly teaches him. I come up with the lessons and help out with projects or baking or spanish since i'm more fluent in it than he is. Steve speaks german so when we get into german steve will do that language.

[Banned-katshu]

I'm very fortunate that the hubs works from home, so we are all here all the time. He has an office, and he may not come out of it for hours at a time, but he's here when we need him. He has never been one to excel at math, so he doesn't really offer anything in that area (that sounds bad, but I didn't know how else to word it, lol) but my boys share his adoration with all things science and history, so he likes to work with them in those areas when he can. We are very happy with our online curriculum, Time4Learning, but the boys really like to get their hands dirty, so to speak, with science. I do not, he does. It's win-win. He's also a writer and an editor by profession, so he's our go to for grammar/writing help.

I guess where I was going with that, was to agree with another poster...can you play on his strengths? Maybe if it's an area that he enjoys, he would be more willing to participate.

Katie