"So, how's it going?"
It’s 11:12 at night, 2312 for my medical and military friends, and my house is peaceful, warm and quiet. Snuggle worthy, really. I’m sleepy and my body really just wants to just go to sleep, not worry about brushing my teeth or washing my face and just drop like a cement block to the bottom of the sea on my soft, white, microfiber pillowcase.
The thing is, though that this is just about the only time I have to myself these days, when my thoughts are not interrupted by our school lessons or the other demands of my 3 kids or my husband. I use the word “demands” with love and grace; it’s only my kids who need to work on politely requesting things that they need and are within my job description to provide.
I thought I would take this time, as I finish my naughty late night snack of chocolate chip animal crackers I snuck out of the kids’ snack jar to answer a question I get a lot lately, “So, how’s it going??”; the “it” being homeschool. Well, friends, we are in the middle of our very first year. There are grizzled veteran homeschoolers out there, that have been doing this for years upon years and send me words of encouragement and a plethora of ideas and resources but I am not one of those veterans. I am a newbie and while I am not grizzled, I am often frazzled.
Last July I experienced what you might call a Game Changer. I attended the Fort Worth Homeschool symposium for two reasons…well, maybe three.
One, homeschooling is something that I felt called by God to do. I can’t explain it any more than that, really. I just felt this pull towards it, even after prayer and study; that it would aid in my children’s moral and spiritual development which I believe is of the utmost importance.
Two, I was beginning to feel increasingly concerned about my children, creative and genius as I knew they were (yes, this is Momma Bear speaking), begin to be “standardized”, beginning to be shoved into a mold, performing to someone else’s definition of achievement.
There’s a lot of use of that word lately, we often think of the standardized tests that seem to have taken over the world. I just mean I began to wonder if their individual talents and gifts, given by God, would be appropriately nourished and encouraged in Public School in a classroom of twenty or more. After all, for many centuries most children were provided their learning at home with their family.
Lastly, after both my husband and I had idealistically dreamed for years about the possibility of homeschool and whether it was actually doable and the best choice for our kids right now, he assented to attending the symposium with me with relative enthusiasm, as concerned and as thoughtful about our kids and their upbringing and their formal education as I am, if not more. Having struggled with ADHD through school as a kid while still being a very intelligent, as in someone that excels in his profession and has amazing critical thinking skills and that you for sure, DO NOT want to play Trivial Pursuit with, he saw similar attributes in his sons and a desire to be flexible with their education while keeping God at the center of it.
In one day in July I went from idealistic, holding a simple “maybe” full of potential and possibilities yet lacking in actual application, in my hands to being almost completely overwhelmed with resources, choices and options. There a hundreds of curriculum choices, co-op choices, private lessons, etc, etc. Suddenly I was introduced to a whole, huge, subculture of homeschoolers. There were TONS of people online, on Facebook pages and friends that answered all the questions I had that are, apparently very common.
These questions really arose from homeschoolers I knew growing up. Apparently it’s changed a great deal. Homeschoolers, when I was in school, were certainly not the norm. I had one cousin that was homeschooled, influenced perhaps in part by my own parent’s unfair opinion and judgement, was alittle weird. I remember thinking, or maybe even being told, that “She’s like that because she’s not around kids her age. She’s not socialized.” These kids I saw and learned about through the symposium and research thereafter are amazing. I found so many of them to be solid, confident, virtuous, ambitious young people by the time it’s time to graduate and go to college; to choose their path and serve. They’re not like the big kids I fear showing up at the park while I’m there playing with my tiny young children. They are respectful and kind and have a general awareness about them; a maturity. They are the kids/young adults I want to call to babysit and root for to get those scholarships and become evangelists through that Christian college and bring clean drinking water to Africa’s poor and disenfranchised through that program at I don’t know, wherever. These kids are amazing.
So, anyway, at the end of just that one day, that one experience, I looked at my husband and I said, “So, what do you think?” He said, “I think we should do it.” My heart leaped. For some reason, that gave me such joy and exuberance that I felt so much relief. Now, lots of other research and prayer followed but this was mainly the catalyst for our decision.
Unlike some, we hadn’t ever experienced anything negative about our public school teachers or our school. I’ve heard a lot of very sad stories that if I were the parent in these stories I would yank my child out of school as fast as I could. This was not the case for us, however. We had amazing, talented, educated and caring teachers. It’s very hard to look at that and say, “I WILL TAKE ON THE ENTIRE RESPONSIBILITY OF MY CHILD’S EDUCATION BECAUSE I AM THE MOM AND I’VE BEEN TO A SYMPOSIUM!”. There was some anxiety there.
As suggested by many, many people I read Cathy Duffy’s book here: http://amzn.to/2iBAeUS because I really just didn’t know where to start and I had a lot of questions.
Anyway, I chose a curriculum, sent a certified letter to the school district and took the plunge. I had a solid plan, a set of workbooks, an assortment of school supplies with that magnificent new school supply smell and a picture in my head of 3 happy little children sitting at the kitchen table, discussing their thoughts on our daily bible verses with interest, learning counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with household objects and delving into books fresh from the library, peaking their interest in amazing characters from history.
Now, when people ask me, “So, how’s it going?” I tell them, “good”. I tell them what we’re learning and all the positive things that are going on and how proud I am of my smart little cookies. I tell them that I can teach one thing and feel like they aren’t even paying attention, getting super frustrated, only to have them relate the same lesson to something completely different weeks later. This is the absolute truth. It’s true not because I have achieved that perfect picture in my head of what this year would be like, far from it. It’s not because I don’t have to remind myself daily that the very things I worry about regarding this endeavor are the same things that motivated me to make this huge life change in the first place. It is because I have found, in these few short months, that this is totally and completely worth it even though evidence of mastering goals I have set for my children might not be wholly visible until years from now, when they are young adults, flourishing and confident in their faith.
Today, my couch is covered in several loads of laundry, it’s starting to look like a sculpture and I’m thinking of making it a permanent fixture but I’ll have to buy everyone new underwear as 2 out of 3 of my kids got dressed in the living room. I slept late because I was super tired and stayed up a little later than usual to spend time with my husband. This made our start to school late and while I insisted that my kids get dressed I was in my PJs for half of it.
I have a set schedule for our school work that I really feel my children need and we haven’t followed that since we started back up after Christmas because of Doctor’s appointments and various other obligations and activities. My role in our house is that of a housewife even though I still work 2 days a week at the hospital. I can feel my husband’s frustration when he has to search for underwear or socks or when our bathroom doesn’t get a good scrub down, or when our house is like it is today, general widespread chaos.
Yesterday while I was trying to do our Bible lesson and history I repeatedly had to stop my 3 year old from not only screaming for everyone to “pay attention to me! Let me talk! I am the teacher!” but also trying to punch and scratch her brothers when words were not enough. After the appropriate reprimands I retrieved a food coloring-baking soda-vinegar type of science experiment from the pantry to keep her busy. This lasted all of about 15 minutes, also distracted the boys from our lessons and I finally resorted to letting her watch 2 episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, rewarding her bad behavior like a terrible mother and wondering about her future as a human being.
For those inquiring after the general welfare of my sweet little family and how this adventure is going the answer is good. There are so many positives and already, I can see that this is so very worth it. There are about a billion things I’d like to do better and even more adjustments I’m trying to make but this is our first year and I feel I need to cut us a little slack.
To those how are actually homeschooling as well or interested in it the answer to the question, “So, how’s it going?” is it’s hard. It’s often brutal. There are moments when I wonder if I’m doing the right thing, these usually occur when I have to take 3 young kids to Sam’s, Aldi and Walmart to get groceries in one day when they would have been in school. I’ve started a meal plan that I know will help me lose the weight I want to lose more than 6 times because I’m stress eating amongst other unhealthy coping mechanisms. Dr. Pepper is good and timeless friend.
Just like every other thing in my life that has been completely exhausting and difficult. Homeschooling is completely worth every negative thing. It’s worth those 15 pounds. It’s worth the extra stress. If my kids hadn’t been with me at Sam’s last week I wouldn’t have seen my boys rush to aid a worker picking up about 20 bottles of lemon flavored tea that someone had just left on the floor in the middle of an aisle and I wouldn’t have heard that worker tell me that I have amazing boys and seen the pride on their faces. I wouldn’t be able to connect what we’ve learned in the morning with what we’re doing at night time and every day of the week. Suddenly after these few months my boys can actually remember their Bible stories and use the math they’ve learned to not only count their money their making from their jobs they do but also figure out what they can buy. I just about beamed the other day when someone told my middle child his handwriting has “gotten so good!”
I could go on and on about the positives. No, my kids are not compassionate doctors yet, nor wise public servants or graduating at the top of their college class. Not yet, but I get to be in the background. I get to be knee deep in their education and their moral and spiritual development and I wouldn’t trade that, not for one single moment to myself or a day of errands alone.
