Is It Time To Think About Regular School?

It was a Wednesday, and, because we had drama classes and ice skating lessons, my son was the only one of my three children that had done any school work AT ALL that week. And he had only done 60 minutes of math.

But Wednesday we had the whole day. No errands to run, no activities, no co-op, nothing on the schedule. So I was sure we would get lots done.

By 2:00, only one child had done anything; 30 minutes of math.

At 3:00, I sat down at the kitchen table where my son was eating a pear (he called it lunch). It felt like I had failed in every area – I couldn’t even get a proper lunch going. I tried not to cry and I tried not to make it sound like a punishment when I said, “maybe it’s time to think about regular school”.

The protests started like sirens –  this wasn’t what I was looking for at all. I needed to curl up in a ball, cover my head and pretend to live in a magical kingdom where laundry didn’t exist and all children have nannies. But I had caused this upset I owed it to them to at least listen to their pleas of why they needed to continue to homeschool. Part of me wanted them to be right (like the toenail on my baby toe part of me) and the rest of me, right at that moment, wanted them to want to go back to regular school.

I explained my concerns. I didn’t want to have to fight, coerce, cajole, beg, plead and bribe them to get stuff done. I wanted (needed) them to be invested in this process too. I couldn’t have them wandering around not learning anything.

“Mom, we haven’t not been learning anything (I cringed, not only at the double negative, but also at the confirmation that the irony of its use drove home). I learned about golden ratios this week”. I stared at him blankly, this wasn’t helping to convince me as I wasn’t sure what the heck that was.

My daughter said “I’m doing double digit division”. They continued,

“We learned all about The Grand Canyon because we went there and then you let us make a diorama and a power point presentation.”  (I let you?) “I wrote an essay for that project mom! And I learned about the water cycle because I asked you what H₂O meant and you told me to look it up and I did.” (You did?)

“And I learned about Leonardo Da Vinci from that library book, and we learned about fossils, and we spotted that Mourning Dove today and we found out what it was called from our Feederwatch project.”

I got out the puzzle with the US states on it at this point. Thinking to myself, but your cousin knows where all of the states are on a map.

We quietly began working on the puzzle. My daughter said to her brother “do you remember the European Starling we saw the other day?”

All was quiet for a bit and then my daughter said “I just learned that Hollywood is right next to Arizona. That’s cool.”

My son looked up, “See mom, we’re learning all the time, even when you aren’t teaching us.”

I guess you are.

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