A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

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The homeschooling parents I know? They’re the hippies of the 21st century. They said “No” to the man and drew a circle around their houses, saying, “This far and no further.”

No matter how “conservative” you may be politically, or how urban homesteader you are… YOU are an amazing force to be reckoned with.

The confidence, the chutzpah it takes to homeschool gets lost on us. We hang out with each others’ insecurities every day. We make comparisons and doubt some of our decisions. We scrutinize our children’s progress and agonize over curriculum decisions like it’s our job (cuz it kinda is!).

But drop back a sec.

Get the macro view of you—this person who would dare to say “no” to room mothering and the PTA; this person who thinks she can teach high school chemistry some how, some way; this person who thinks her own zeal for learning is enough to school her multiple kids in multiple grades without any teacher training, certification, or validation from the state, the neighbors, often her own extended family, and the other parents on the soccer field.

And then—you commit to do this thing, all day, every day, no breaks, no “summers off” because honestly, for school parents, the summers are when they feel “back on”—and you feel great about it (mostly). I mean, you’re proud of this homeschool thing you do 24/7. You like doing it. Your kids and their educations become your chief hobby and your career—the way you’ll leave your mark on the world…and then you do. Some of you have already found out that your kids as adults have turned out to be even better people than you are! And your finger prints are all over that finished work.

It’s so easy to get sucked into self-flagellation about all that you don’t get done or didn’t know to do or are still figuring out. But the truth is: Who does what you do? Really? Only someone who has this inner reserve of strength that goes far beyond births without pain meds or corporate job interviews.

Your husband (if you have one) isn’t the principal of your homeschool. You are. The parent who runs the homeschool is the one with the power.

You are principal, teacher, curriculum director, extracurricular advisor, and superintendent of your little district.

What will you do with those responsibilities? How can you tap into that sense of self that got you started to begin with? How did you gather up the self-esteem and courage to pull your kids out of school or not send them to begin with?

That’s the person you want on your side today.

I salute you! You inspire me.

Shake hands with powerful you.

Now—make stuff happen!

Cross-posted on facebook.

Image by Bart Everson

Sometimes the weariness and the dailiness of homeschool get the best of us. We become “mini martyrs” because we’re committed to the cause, but we don’t actually like the process or we feel that the alternatives are so loathsome, we will not consider them despite the fact that we feel miserable.

How you feel about homeschool absolutely impacts how your kids feel about being home with you. You are the one who creates the momentum, the peace, the joy, and the enthusiasm of home education. If you’re not feeling it, no one else is either.

That’s a lot of pressure.

For those of you on summer break, this is the time to find your joy again (or at minimum, your peace). Homeschool burnout is real and can’t be ignored or minimized.

There are two ways forward.

1. Go back to the beginning. Why did you sign up to homeschool anyway? Remember what energized you—the time with kids, the joy of learning, the opportunity to create a home of shared discovery. Are you still doing those things? Have you switched to a strategy that is no longer life-giving to you because you are at the “now this counts” stage?

Is your life over-burdened by other activities and you forgot that homeschooling requires attention outside the school day hours? Are you expecting it to continue without your investment into ideas and learning and trying new things?

Have you given up on one of your challenging children? What did you do for that child at the beginning that you’ve forgotten?

Are you being seduced by methods that go against the grain of your natural personality?

2. Go forward. You need new ideas to keep you going. Read. Talk to others. Change one dynamic in your homeschool (less structure or more structure). Be intentional. Make plans (things you can look forward to).

Part of what made homeschooling more exciting at the beginning was its “newness.” You need to inject a little “new” back into the equation. Find a new theory to apply, take a class, join a group, go to a homeschool convention, pick a new curriculum for one of the subjects that has lost its liveliness. Learn something new for yourself just “cuz.” Let your own learning lead you.

You can’t expect yesterday’s inspiration to fuel today’s responsibilities.

You can use the past to help ground you (remember why you were happy before) and you can use the future to lead you (create new ways to be happy in the days to come).

Above all: know yourself. If you are burnt out, identify the source (you have teens and they are less eager to cooperate; you’re under pressure from external factors like illness, job loss, pregnancy, a new job, or some other change in circumstance; one of your children still can’t _________ – read, calculate, write, cooperate). Address the issue: self-education, conversation, and if it helps, therapy.

You can’t get to happy homeschool without an honest look at what’s ailing you and your children. You have time. Take a long slow look.

It’s also okay to coast for a while, to drift, to let go of the reins and create peacefulness through mindful inattention. Sometimes just living day to day, trusting that your energies will rebound once you let down the vigilance is enough. Really. Try that for a little while if you haven’t got the energy to sink your teeth into the nitty gritty.

Check in with yourself on a monthly basis and see if the pressure, inertia, or disappointment ease.

Allow yourself to notice little things: why you like one of your children, how watching TV together brings laughter that’s been missing, the way you feel more energized when you exercise or run or do yoga in the morning before everyone gets up.

Be good to you, and let go of the self-recriminations. This is a problem to solve or a circumstance to learn to live with, for now, for this season. It’s not a life sentence. Go back to one day at a time.

Cross-posted on facebook.

Image by Chad

Remember our discussion about the “prophecies of doom” we sometimes inadvertently declare over our kids?

Sometimes we have to deal with prophecies of doom from others outside our families.

Today I had a message from a mother worried about her daughter who is in school, suffering from clinical anxiety, and struggling to complete a 15 page paper, which will be the difference between passing and failing the class. The instructor predicted dire consequences if her daughter failed to complete the paper and the class.

My friend’s message reminded me of another conversation—one I had with Johannah and Liam as he prepared to travel to Europe. At the apex of Liam’s nervousness about being 18 years old, alone on another continent, not knowing the languages of the countries on his itinerary, worried about making a mistake, his sister told him, “Liam, you’ll make it. After all, what are you going to do? Curl up in a ball and lie in the middle of the road and die? Of course not. If you encounter a problem, you will simply hack away at it until you solve it—because you have to, because that’s what people do when faced with big problems.”

It was a “morbidly comforting thought,” as Liam put it.

And it is. And should be to us too.

When someone else makes a dire prediction about your child and your child believes it (or fears it, or takes it in as likely), it’s your job to neutralize the impact of that negative assertion.

For instance, it’s not true that without a high school diploma, you can’t get into college. Homeschoolers have been proving otherwise for decades.

It’s not true that failure to complete the requirements for a specific class today bars you from making it as an adult tomorrow.

It’s not true that the discipline you show in high school is an indication of how well you will function in a job later. People change, mature, grow, and develop at different rates.

It’s possible to finish high school in your 20s. It’s possible to take the GED and get it over with at 15, without taking all the classes a diploma requires. It’s possible to return to homeschool after going to public school and hating it. It’s possible to delay college until your late 20s or 30s, or to not go at all.

It’s okay to stop schooling (at any stage) all together if your child’s mental and emotional well-being are at stake.

We are much more comfortable taking a child-centered, faith-filled stance with our kids in elementary school and junior high. We trust that there’s time to “catch up.” High school hits, and all of us surge forward into a “pass/fail” mentality—a zero-sum game. The culture would have us believe that all that it needs to know about our children is determined between 14-18 years of age. But that’s simply not true.

Some kids need all of their 20s to figure out what benefit could be gained from a college degree. Some discover not much benefit at all!

What we can do for our kids is to keep opening up the possibilities. We can lay out all the options—how things will look if your child comes home from high school instead of gutting it out, how things will be if he or she decides to wait to go to college, what ideas there are for being a high schooler who takes six years to finish instead of four. We can suggest alternatives like travel, work-study, outdoor education, internships, working and watching television and having friends while recovering from whatever it is that is emotionally disabling.

We can focus on our child’s person, rather than the child’s performance.

Home education is about customizing learning to your child—the human being, not coercing a fragile person through an oppressive system (if that’s what the system feels like—public, private, or home education models).

• Remind your child of his or her unique gifts.
• Identify with that child’s struggles.
• Offer an optimistic outlook for the future.
• Take pressure off.
• Give/get help (because help helps).
• Find alternatives to the traditional paths.

Above all, trust that not one of you (not your child, not yourself, not your spouse) is going to lie down and curl into a ball and die. You’ll all keep hacking away at the problems together, and you’ll find your way because you love each other so deeply. Even with mistakes. Even with miscalculations. Even with your own fears and memories of setbacks in the mix.

Your kids are young (anyone under 20 is). They have their entire lives ahead. They have a couple decades to figure stuff out… and then a couple more decades to figure more stuff out. Like me. Like you.

You might need to create a little safety net for your own ego, too, as you re-think what tells you you’ve been successful with your kids. You are as successful as you are compassionate, resourceful, strong, and kind.

Be good to you, too. You’re doing the best you can too, and can change how you parent and home educate any time you’d like. You are not trapped either.

Cross-posted on facebook.