Homeschooling Not So Confidential Volume 9865

The best part about homeschooling is that you are with your kids all of the time.  The worst part about homeschooling is that you are with your kids all of the time.

I had a lot of time to think about this truth this past weekend.  This past weekend I ended up having to take an unexpected trip to the west side to deal with the rental house.  It was unfortunate, the reasoning for my travel.  However, I didn't realize how much I needed the freedom to think without anyone else alongside of me.  Homeschooling does not lend much time for this and I walk around feeling quite imbalanced most the time. My psyche needs time to marinate on its own....I have learned this from our homeschooling experience.  

Homeschooling was never anything I ever saw myself doing.  My mother-in-law told me once that was interesting statement because I would always be willing to do what is best for my littles no matter what it is, and in this thought I suppose she is very wise.  I will always do what is best for my littles!  And what is best for them is homeschooling right now.

Before we moved I had one friend who homeschooled her children.  I taught at the homeschool cooperative in our area but if anything that experience alone furthered my original thought process....school outside our home was what was best.  Well now most all my friends are homeschooling moms, our church is full of them.  I find myself finding them to be full of sage advice, I find them to have a similar heart to my own, I find that most of what they say or believe resonates within my own soul for mothering my littles too.  This is earth shattering to me.  I find myself saying, "I am not sure how this happened?"  The truth is I know exactly how this happened.  I tool a moment to ask God what he really wanted and then I listened and then with a terrified spirit and an anxious heart I moved forward.  

I am no more or less terrified than I was the day that I started. It is a humbling job, teaching.  It is a frustrating and taxing job.  I have had to become quite selfless and sometimes this causes me to be crazy about the things I think that I can not possibly let go of.  I am used to focusing on myself a bit, finding the nuggets that God has intended for me to find.  It is frustrating sometimes because I feel that right now there are no nuggets for me, but if I take time to spend with God every morning I find that there are more nuggets in every day just for me than I could possibly carry on my own.  That's what I have learned the most I can not carry any of this on my own.  

I have also learned more and more that my children's place is within my reach right now.  That if my heart is right than my arms are just an extension of God's for them.  Right now my arms are long enough to reach them still, in fact now at this point I can still wrap my arms around them whenever I feel the need.  But my main purpose now is to prepare them for when I can't reach them anymore. I don't feel at this point that this is anyone's else's job.  In fact I am not sure that it is a job at all.  It is love, it is care, it is a connection that comes from within. It is an understanding and a love for what GOD is creating them to be.  No one can understand them or this better than me. No one wants this more for them than I do. And so the best thing for them is to be with me. 

And so now you now know that after much deliberation we are homeschooling both kids again next year. 

Brian asked me how I felt about it all the other day.  I thought for moment and replied that it really isn't about me and what I can do on my own.  My sanity may fail from time to time but I am learning more and more that that is more of a testament of how much time I spending within the arms that reach for me.  

Please know this is my own journey not a reflection of what I think is right for everyone.  I also know how incredibly blessed I am to be able to take this time to devote to them without interruption.   

"He will perform the cause I hold in my hand." That makes it very real to me today.  The very thing "I hold in my hand" - my work today is the concern that is beyond my control, this task in which I have greatly overestimated my own abilities - this is what I may "cry out " for HIM to do "for me," with the calm assurance He will perform it. "The wise and what they do are in God's hands" (Eccl. 9:1) Frances Ridley Havergal...Taken from Streams in The Desert

Homeschooling Not So Confidential Part 3605

I'm back with renewed inspiration and vigor and oh man so much to write.  So expect a full week of blabbering and rambling and something that hopefully resembles well formed thoughts.

Oh the homeschooling frontier.  Somedays it feel like wide open spaces like you see while driving through Montana.  Insert green rolling hills, big puffy white clouds and wide open space that resembles what I think is freedom in all directions.  Somedays I wake up and I feel those thoughts when thinking about our day of schooling its lovely and dreamy and promising and the idea of regular school seems crazy. And some days I feel like we are in the middle of a far off desert without water and someone is asking me to run 10 miles as fast as can, the prize is living through the exercise with maybe a glimpse at a mirage of a big glass of red wine.  The loser has the promise of teaching her own children again the next day.  This may seem dramatic but it is tough. 

We have hit some major milestones though and I feel as if we might survive...we may just be getting the hang of this and I think that my children may possibly just be learning from me.  Which is actually nothing short of a miracle given to me by God in heaven.  I pray each morning that I will be able to touch their minds if even just in the basic barely there required sort of way.  I try to run through a positive thought process before my feet even hit the floor in the morning in conjunction with my prayers, in a way those words and prayers are the only thing that get me moving some mornings.  I feel humbled by this calling of homescholing and right now I know that a calling is exactly what it is.

We have hit tough times on the frontier.  Some days the natives get restless and stage a massacre where I am the enemy.  Other days we breeze through and have the latter part of the day to do as we please. Those days where they cooperate with out hostile take overs, the afternoons are filled with giant lego scenes, fort making and dog wrangling.  These are the days that make it worth it and I know they are getting what they need right now.

I would be fooling myself to say that this move has been easy for them.  Or that we are even part way around the bend with the transition that comes with an upheaval of this magnitude in life.  There are days when I feel as if I am the restless native that came in one day to stage a massacre on their previous heavenly existence. They miss their grandparents beyond anything I could have imagined and it is one area of their lives I feel guilty about still.  To hear them retell stories and memories to each other of times passed is excruciating for me but I am so happy they have each other. And I actually feel as if homeschooling is actually healing this a bit, or at least providing a cushion for hard days, creating a bond between the two of them that is something more special than any of my words could explain.  And this is a valuable.  These are just some of the moments that create the feeling of validation...a feeling I don't deserve but that I am grateful for, a feeling that I do not take for or let pass by without a prayer of thankfulness sent upward.

And so today was one of those days of validation sent to me through a test.  Grace had a math test in her midst and she was nervous.  I watch he almost physically crumple like a leaf drying in the fall.  She is her worst enemy at times, quick to give up under pressure, quick to declare defeat.  It saddens me and worries me.  But it is also healing to me as I know that I have this quality within myself as well.  Sometimes my biggest weakness is what appears as strength to someone else.  Sometimes the ones who appear most confident on the outside aren't always okay within.  Oh my Grace....you make my heart hurt!  And so the pair of us are moving through this together.  She ends up teaching me more than I could ever possibly teach her at times.  And we are moving through.  The math test came this morning she began to crumple but with a few skills I taught myself in test taking (for I also have the test taking anxiety gene) we approached the test piece by piece.  And I saw that sassy little peanut soar through that test.  And with each piece she let out an audible "hmph" as if it were no big deal...as if she were made for this test stuff. She aced it without any help.  And that folks was another little glimpse of validation and the frontier once again seemed manageable.

So it'd day by day travelers.  I am not sure when each day comes and bad days are inevitable but they won't crush us. They won't stop i sin our journey we will push onward and be better for it.  I am thankful for this time with my cherubs even if it does include the parenting strategy "attached."  The word I find to be a bit stifling at times has also become freeing for us.  The word that seemed suffocating actually resembles more Montana than the desert.

Homeschooling Not So Confidential

I have been absent in this place. Anytime I feel like I can't share everything here I disappear.

I think that I have been fairly honest here about the move. Today I will just share the difficulty we have experienced in changing schools.

In choosing a new school I was looking for a few things. Size, general structure of beliefs and similarity to how they had already been being taught were just a few of the main things I was looking for. So we chose a school that I thought exhibited not one but all of these things. Even though it was 20 minutes south of our home I felt it was worth it. I felt it was the best place for them and so we went for it. However the honeymoon ended quickly and we began to realize that this was probably not the best fit for our family. In the last months we have dealt with bullies, physical violence, inappropriate language, themes in play that I find extremely unacceptable for their age and lastly and probably one of the kickers, teachers that assured this was all normal and kids will be kids.

Finally a few things happened that helped us come to the current decision. Prayer and prompting. I felt the homeschool nudge. The first time I felt it I was surprised. I thought to myself you have go to be kidding me. This is the last thing in the world you will ever catch me doing lets just switch schools. So I checked out other schools...found a great one now that I was armed with the proper arsenal of questions. I actually wish I would have put them there in the first place. But as I prayed about switching them I began to feel like that would just be to much for them after all of the change they have gone through in the last months. So our next thought was we would keep them where they were for the rest of the school year and then revaluate over the summer. We would pray our tushies off and all would be fine...I mean how much damage could be done in one school year.

Well last week it all became ever so clear how much damage could be done and I started to pray about homeschooling. Two days later we had a discussion with Elliot about friends and how sometimes we can't always be the leader. In order for others to get to know you you have to immerse yourself in their play. With tears in his eyes he told me with little judgment and much humbleness that these were not the kind of friends he was supposed to have. (to some this may sound judgy...keep reading) You see I have been very deliberate in teaching my kids how to choose good friends. How to be a good influence and what to do when faced with those who don't reflect what we believe to be right (I mean this in behavior). And my boy may not always do it perfectly, in fact sometimes I am not even sure he is listening. Turns out he had been listening. He went on to tell me these kids were not good influences in full detail....he had a mental list. Now I am all about my children being good influences to others and blah blah blah. But I also believe at this age they need to be sheltered a bit. I take full advantage of the fact that I can still control their environments and who they hang out with and that is how I like it. Our old school I realize was a gem. I loved all the kids in their classes, I knew all their parents and I knew we were all similar. This is what I hoped I would find here.

So I went for it in my mind. Brian and I had a strong discussion. We came to the realization that Homeschool might be the option and we agreed to investigate it.

But there would be more to come in the form of pushing in regards to this decision. The next night I lay down with Grace to chat and she led me into a conversation that would make my decision easy. At the end of the conversation she asked me not leave her at school anymore, she was crying and upset, fearful and anxious. My girl has never expressed this ever in her little life. She is mostly confident and has always has found school to be fun and exciting.

Before I go any further I want to share my viewpoint on school. I realize it may not be the same as yours and I am fine with that.

I believe school should be any extension of your home. It should be an extension on what you believe in spirit, in beliefs, in behavior and in love. I realize this is a high calling and an even bigger expectation. And we have been blessed for the last 5 years to have been a part of school that was by no means perfect but supported our goal in this with our children. My children had teachers that not only loved them for who they were but for what God had in store for them to become. They had friends whose parents had similar goal in mind for upbringing. And they approached school with a mindset they we do our best in all things because we do all things to bring glory to God. As I watched them learn in that environment it was easy for me to develop my own opinions for what I wanted for them in school.

This was not the case in their new school. In fact I found myself questioning much and over time developing my own anxiety towards leaving them their every day.

So after having my conversation with Grace and praying and talking with Brian. We decided to pull the plug and move forward with the new plan.

We are homeschooling. What the heck? I never thought in a million years we would homeschool. However, I never thought in a million years that we would move across the state and form a new home in a place where we had no friend or family either. It is all about God's plans not my own. On Friday I registered us into a program that is affiliated with the state so that we could receive guidance in the area of academics. My biggest fear is that I stink at this and we get behind. So the program is run through the Mead School District, they will aide me in a bit of teaching as well as guide me in curriculum and facilitate testing to make sure my kids know what they need to know. They also provide some extracurricular classes as well as PE among other things. We have selected Christian curriculum in the subjects of Science and History and of course we are doing bible as well. It has been overwhelming and I would be lying if I didn't express to you that I feel confidently terrified as we plunge in.

Today we covered Math, History, Art, Science and Bible while mixing in a bit of writing. I am waiting for our Language Arts Curriculum so we are trying to incorporate writing into other things in the mean time.

The good thing is they are already ahead in most subjects in their respective grades so I just need to keep up the pace. This is no small thing:)

We are taking this one step at a time. We will most definitely finish out the school year this way. And reevaluate after that. I think there is great importance in them learning from others in a classroom surrounded by their peers and so we are incorporating one day of "school" as well with the homeschool coop.

I have so much more to say about the parenting importance's I learned through all this and so I will spread it our overtime. I think I made you read enough for today!

So we go where God leads....I have no idea where that will be and everyday I learn that there is actually more comfort in the mystery than always knowing what lies ahead.