Thet Thar Ejumukashun

I did not set out to be a homeschooling parent. Nope. No way.

To be truthful, I didn't really think much about the how and where and such of educating our children till after Thing One was already born. I'd sort of always assumed we'd send our kids to the private Christian school we went to (though I never confronted that pesky issue of $$$). But when I was pregnant with One, that school closed. No matter, I still had years and years before I had a child ready for school. We'd be moved out of our rough neighborhood by then, of course. Or maybe we'd find a private school and lots of money by then.

Ha.

None of those things happened, and as Thing One got older, the very idea of sending him to the mini-thug factory this neighborhood calls a school actually hurt to think about.

So, there were no other options. I bit the bullet, thinking that it was going to be a horrible journey.

It's really not that bad.

I'm glad we started young, so I had preschool and kindergarten to get me in the swing of things and go through trial and error when the stakes were low.

Thing One has never been easy to teach. Some of it is his temperament and some is me having expectations that were too high. After all, all the homeschool kids I knew were supposed to be ahead of the curve. So I started him early thinking he'd be reading at four and flying through math. And then I'd feel like I was failing when he was "only" at his age appropriate grade level.



I'm happy to report he's a much better student than he used to be, and his natural abilities are the opposite of mine. He's a math/science kid to the core. Those subjects are easy for him. He's pretty good at reading this year too, but he's had to work hard at that. Spelling and phonics just do not make sense to him. It amuses me that he can spew out a detailed description of all the parts of a cell but he needs two or three tries to spell "where".

And then Thing Two came along and really surprised me. He was a late talker, and I always sort of assumed he'd be "behind" in school. He just seemed to stay a baby longer than Thing One did. Lo and behold, before I ever taught him phonics, he could read at early four. He's a natural with words. Even Thing One is impressed with his spelling. I cannot take credit for any of that.



There are still days where I feel like I'm failing or that I'm cheating my kids of something, like the valuable experience of watching the kid in the desk next to you throw up all over his reading book (true story). But with each year of this we get under our belts, I get more confidence and motivation. I'm even getting more organized, which is nothing short of a miracle. It's really cool to figure out how each of my pupils work and know just the right way to communicate to them. I love having the freedom to make the schedule that works for us and to be able to hit museums and parks at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday if we so choose. I like that we can shake up our subjects so no two days are exactly alike, and we can work at the appropriate pace for the child.

Who knows if we'll do this forever. I'd like to send them to a Christian school when they're older, but I've learned that things don't always go the way I foresee. For now, I'm actually starting to enjoy homeschooling. Like, seriously. I'm thankful for it now. That's kind of a big deal.

Now if I could only get this little stinker to stop sabotaging all educational efforts by stealing seats whenever anyone gets up and screeching while we try to work or climbing on top of desks and doing a little dance. I guess every class needs a clown.