I have been so terrible at keeping up this blog posting gig...as a way of defending myself, I should say that I've been a wee bit busy this fall because we made a HUGE decision!!! We are those weird homeschoolers you read about (and talk about to your friends)!!!! Just kidding. I mean, we're as weird as we were last year (still no TV in the house and my oldest routinely says things like, "Mommy, I can't sleep because I'm worried about the time in the future when the sun will eventually begin to die and envelop the Earth and everything will die"....yeah, that's a normal worry a 7 year old has, right?), but now we are homeschoolers!
It's really kind of funny because last year I totally accidentally horrifically insulted a nice homeschoolin' lady (with her four kids sitting right there) at a gymnastics class because I was trying to defend my no-TV house by pointing out that there were FAR weirder people out there than us (i.e.: Weirdo Homeschoolers). Here's how the conversation went:
(My 3 year old daughter is furiously doing jumping jacks so that my friend, J, will notice her and think she's awesome).
J (always game): "Wow! You are so strong! You are probably going to be in the Olympics, huh?!"
Daughter looks at her quizzically obviously thinking, "What the hell are you talking about???" whilst still jumping-jacking her little heart out...
J (to me): "She probably doesn't know what the Olympics are because you don't have TV!" (all in good fun, we love each other, but we like to joke)
Me: "Uhh....we watch TV on the COMPUTER!!! WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE WEIRD LIKE SOME OF THOSE WEIRDO HOMESCHOOLERS!!!" And of course I keep repeating this even though I begin to notice that a lady who is neatly dressed and has nice hair (I point this out because I was NOT a homeschooling mother although, at the time, all my kids were in school for part of the day at least, I still looked like a hobo) had a shocked, sad look on her face.
Homeschool Lady: "WE are homeschoolers."
Me (turning red, talking too loud): "Oh, right, I wasn't talking about YOU. I'm sure YOU are not weird. It's the other homeschoolers I'm talking about. The WEIRD ones! You know, not YOU. You're normal. I can tell, it's just that there are other weirdos out there..." and it was like that for another five minutes before she walked away, I think....I just could not stop digging that hole! I really meant no harm, but it seems that my super power in life is accidentally insulting people, feeling awkward about it, and making it ten million times worse when I am trying to make it better. I need a muzzle. Or one of those shock collars they put on dogs to stop them from barking and annoying the shit out of people.
So anyway: homeschooling. It was a big decision, but it was one that I have grown to love and feel confident (mostly) in. We were between a rock and a hard place: Whale Rescue Boy was having a difficult time finding the right academic situation. It wouldn't have been the right thing to do to skip him ahead a few grades (emotionally/socially he wasn't ready for older kids) and socially, he was having a hard time finding peers who would understand him and get his personality/games/trains of thought (for example, yesterday at gymnastics, he brought a manual we got from Homeschool Day at the Air/Space Museum from a NASA representative...it was a technical manual that had all the specs of all the airplanes that the United States uses in their military...because you know, that's what most 7 year old boys like to read in their spare time...he brought this to share with his friend...so yeah, it would've been lonely for him in first grade, I think).
I know that most people are concerned with social development among homeschoolers (I was, too) because we have an idea that the most natural place for children is in a group of 25 other children their exact age with one adult supervising the interaction. And I think most children do well in that situation. However, I learned a hard lesson last year: whether you are ahead or behind in the education system, the experience of an outlier is a very lonely one. I saw how much L struggled last year because he could not seem to make the social connections with other kids that seemed so easy and effortless for everyone else. And we have not been hiding him in a cage in his room, so don't worry about that (well, we only do that if he gets sassy...)...we've joined a big group of other Homeschooling families and have participated in so many field trips and park days that I feel like he is getting a lot of social interaction. I think because I am afraid that aspect might be lacking, I am much more determined to find those opportunities for him than I was when he was in school and I trusted the school to do it for him.
And here is the truth about socialization (for us, anyway): it's only a good thing to be in a huge group of kids your own age if you understand what is happening and why. I saw L go from being a confident kid who assumed everyone liked him (before the last school year) to feeling awkward and being convinced that nobody would want to play with him (because let's face it, not too many other kindergarten boys were all that interested in reenacting a naval battle from WWII between the Japanese and the Americans or pretending to save the Arctic from the threat of global warming). He absolutely internalized that rejection last year as being indicative of something that was wrong with HIM. He couldn't see that it was just that he was at a different place than the kids his age. And with all that is going on in school, it was too hard for the teachers to spend the time that he needed for an adult to explain to him social dynamics and what was going wrong for him. I had no idea how to help him since I didn't regularly go to recess and he was loathe to talk about it.
Now: here we are homeschooling and at park days, I can watch what is happening and go through it with him later. The first few park meet-ups were so difficult because he was convinced the other boys wouldn't like him. There were many tears (for all of us), but with a lot of work and some help from a social skills book, we have worked through many of the issues that were holding him back. More than that, we were able to meet other boys like him whose parents chose to homeschool for some of the same reasons we did. He has a friend!!! A friend who gets him and is soooo much like him. I watched them on the playground the other day and I almost wept with relief. Just to know that he will not be alone as he grows up. There are other boys out there like him, with the same penchant for telling elaborate stories about the bombs they create with their Legos, with the same desire to explore outer space, who create whole worlds for themselves with their imaginations!!!! I can't tell you how it feels to see someone else, someone L's age, HONOR him for who he is and enjoy him! Someone else who worries about the death of the sun even though he understands it will be billions of years from now (this is a genuine fear, sometimes he can't sleep because he thinks about it too much). Hallelujah!
It was a challenge to make up a curriculum for the kids (preschool is at home this year, too), but I have loved it. I love teaching them and being with them (except when they are being assholes, then it's time to take a break). It has changed my dynamic with them because now I know how to keep them engaged and entertained and I don't mind that I am with them almost all the time. It helps that the little ones are more rational human beings than they were a year ago...but part of the whole mom-at-home thing for me has been the mental stagnation I have felt (it's not all that mentally engaging or taxing to continually wipe someone's nose/butt/etc), but it is emotionally draining. And I could see no benchmarks for success in my efforts...but now, when I see my daughter really pick up on how a "magic E" changes the sound of a vowel or how my younger son can now actually blend 3 letter sounds into a word, it's success! It's a victory and I can see that! So anyway, that's why I haven't really spent a lot of time writing. It takes a lot of time to prepare lessons and check out books from the library and set up crafts and activities to go along with our science and history studies, but I feel (for the most part) that it is the most important work of my life. To come up with ways to make the subject matter interesting and engaging, to make educating oneself both appealing and important, to nurture and encourage their innate curiosity about the world and how it works...that opportunity has been priceless. And really, I know a lot of people will say, "They won't turn out like everyone else if they don't go to school with everyone else," but I was able to let go of that when I really recognized that they were already NOT like everyone else. Plus, I think a lot of our values are a society are raising people who are quite unhappy...and to be honest, I want L to be able to LOVE watching birds and learning about them without some other 7 year old making fun of him because he thinks it's strange that he feels that the new Star Wars cartoon is too violent.
Next time, I will upload some pictures, I promise...
