I started out my school career by homeschooling for kindergarten. I loved it. When I went to grade one at a private school down the road I did not love it quite as much. I remember distinctly the moment I first got a little talking to from my teacher because I was quietly humming to myself at my desk. She was sweet but I was mortified. No humming in school Tansy! I never forgot that! We did a big move when I was seven just turning eight and I home schooled from a part of grade three to a part of grade seven. I don't remember much that I didn't love except the Math. My mom and I did not speak the same language in Math and so I was probably a little jerk and I hated to do it. I whined aplenty! However I remember learning poems and I remember calendar/circle time and I loved sitting at my desk writing poetry while looking at the creek and apple tree. I wrote long chapter books and learned about great composers with gusto. I was the type of child that home schooled the traditional school way well and my mom was a traditional school teacher. My other siblings...the creative right brained ones? They didn't thrive so well. They needed a whole different way of learning and lot more boundaries as they did not love to SIT and WRITE or COLOR for hours on end. My poor mom. If she had only home schooled me she could have felt like a champ but she home schooled two others and it broke her. My sisters had boundless energy and needed to learn out in the forest and at the play ground every day. They had no desire to sit and color! Somehow though this experience cemented in my head that I would NEVER home school my children. I just would not consider it. Therefore when the opportunity arose and I HAD to home school...I was really ticked off, bewildered, and in many ways set up for failure because of my attitude!!!
I started out my oldest's school career in a little private school and she loved it. The second year in, some hard things happened that caused some trauma and she had to go to a much bigger school the next year. That combined with a lot other things caused so much anxiety that I literally could not get her to the car after school before screaming and crazy things were happening. I didn't know much about anxiety then but it was the gateway to learning all about it! I just knew that she couldn't handle school. There were signs her teacher was telling me and the signs after school that made it obvious school was literally ruining her quality of life, and so I pulled her out in grade two in March. I was terrified. I had no clue what I was doing. I had another child who was having a lot of issues and a baby, and was not getting sleep but we were living on a farm so I thought it might work. I prayed it would work.
It would have been pretty great if I could have chilled out and let go but I was anxious she'd get more behind, that somehow I would fail her. We fought and fought about sitting at the table and learning. It was not fun most days and often I would end up in tears as would she. What was I doing wrong? This went on for some time before I started to branch out and relax a little. Something I did right though was that I figured out what she was interested in and even if I couldn't teach that to her well I got others to. She learned how to knit, sew and bake really well for such a young age and she could operate a Bob Cat at the age of about eight. She could do A LOT of things she would not have had a chance to do if she had not home schooled while we lived on the farm. It was a journey, such a hard, long, painful journey because I am thick headed and stubborn all at once. I was also very tired.
I have learned so much now. Although each of my children have gone to preschool and the two oldest have both gone to kindergarten I still have two at home learning here and my oldest is back in school but she is very happy there. She has had the same teacher going on three years. He does not give homework and he really understands how she learns and appreciates her strengths and applauds them. I feel confident though that if at any point she needs to home school again I will be fine and it will go well. Last year I didn't really do any formal schooling at all with the two at home! I still struggled with feeling like a failure but I knew it was what was needed and as the year went on my heart slowly changed into the opposite. I felt like I didn't give a rip anymore about anyone's judgements about how or what my kids did or did not know. I have a nine year old who is not fluently reading or writing but is so much happier now this summer then he has ever been after a year of rest. My five year old does not know all the sounds of the alphabet and I don't care. I know she will be reading at some point because she loves books and literature and she will want to read! Right now she loves playing outside for hours in only a pair of shorts and I am fine with that.
Our family has been through so much crap. Just literal shit. It has been hard year after year for me to sift through and find the gold in all the silt. Friends and family, counselors and others have encouraged me and helped me keep going. God has been a rock for me, sheltering wings and more. I am a homeschooling mom because I feel like God has asked me to be. He has had to show me a lot about how children learn, how different children learn different ways and that it is okay, and that it is okay that I don't have a single child like me who wants to sit at a table and do book work!!! He has shown me that I am homeschooling in many ways more for myself then for them although it has helped them as well. I am homeschooling because it is part of my journey in learning about anxiety, attachment and healing.
This year things are going to be a little different. Since I have a child who gets government funding for special help in school, and he is learning at home, we have hired a dear family friend who is going to be teaching the two that are school aged at home. They will just go twice a week to her house for a couple hours but I know it is going to influence and impact them in really wonderful ways. I am really excited about this. I am also excited to teach them at home as well. Children are sponges, they really are, but ya just gotta figure out how to get them to soak up the knowledge. I think I have both of my little sponges figure out. We will be doing a lot of outside play, lots of nature walks, lots of talking, lots of screen learning, lots of eating and baking and lots of reading and listening to stories but not much else and it'll be good. There will be many days where I am overwhelmed at the constant state of mess in my house, at the never ending fighting and noise; and there will be more days when I we go on long bike rides or nature walks, where they play outside for hours in the sun, where we learn all about India or the deserts of Namibia while snuggling on my bed or we bake together. It is something to treasure and be thankful for!!!! Peace out :) If you are homeschooling I hope you have a wonderful year. Take it easy on yourself. Your children will be learning from every conversation you have with them and they will love to have you close. XO
