We have been trying to educate my eldest child at home. We passed up a great charter school to educate her at home. However, my wife feels like she cannot go on doing this.
First is the difficulty. If my daughter grows bored, she just pretends like she can't do the work and cries. For example, she didn't want to do math, so she pretended that she couldn't count objects and say the correct number (six objects, and she insisted that there are seven). She cries during her lessons because she doesn't want to do the work.
Second is that my daughter is bored all day. She literally has been begging "to go to a government school" like her friends so she can "see them on the bus and at recess." We're having a hard time finding anyone locally for her to play with during the day. She won't do additional lessons or activities and just whines non-stop about playing with other girls.
My wife is at her wits end and tells me that she hates doing this, even though she was the one who made the final decision to homeschool!
When I've had to take over lessons during the day, my no-nonsense attitude seems to get us through lessons smoothly, but her boredom and constant whining is a real point of contention.
What do we do? She's already in four extra-curricular activities. Local clubs fill up fast, so she can't join those. There should be dozens of nearby families doing homeschool, but apparently not?
I have a bored child and an exasperated wife. Help!
We homeschooled all 7 of our kids. There was one child in particular who acted a lot like your daughter. We finally settled on a hands off curriculum for him that had daily lessons on the computer and multiple choice testing (it was called Switched on Schoolhouse and that was over 20 years ago - it wasn't online but on disks.) That kept me from fighting with him and it was his choice how long his schooling took. I'm sure there are far more options available now.
Another thing you might consider if she is bored is letting her pursue something that she's passionate about. This would be a subject she is free to explore on her own- you just provide the materials she needs, whether that is letting her watch documentaries, making trips to the library, buying extra curriculum or materials, etc. We let our kids do unit studies on whatever really interested them and let them dig into those things in their free time after they got their basic schoolwork done for the day (it might be horses, art, filmmaking or anything- we ended up with a 13 year old who built his own computer after he spent a LONG time learning how to build computers.) If she finds something she loves and is passionate about, it helps motivate her to get the rest of her work done so that she can move onto what really interests her.
I second the "bribe" suggestion also. Let her earn rewards for doing what she's supposed to do; they don't have to be huge things.
And there is just this- she has to learn that in life we all have to do things we don't want to do.
Echo these suggestions. We’re going through with one of ours that we homeschool. 12 years old. Wants to negotiate the work all the time. Tough going, but the natural consequence of “school takes longer the more you complain” seems to have had an effect.