The Rhythm of Our Days

I am one. At least, in the sense that my kids don’t go away from home to a separate institution to do the bulk of thier learning. As a distinction from public and private schoolers, it’s adequate. But over the years the term has also taken on it’s own nuance.

At differing times, saying the word can conjure up assorted images. Some might imagine a school room,  complete with flag and chalkboard. That was the first example of homeschooling I saw, back at the tender age of 14, but by the time I started my oldest with Kindergarten level work, I’d abandoned the little school room idea. We spent our days in the nursery/playroom, working with lego blocks and counting bears, reading picture books, painting First Thanksgiving scenes to hang on the wall. That room was also where my laundry was and our computer. We lived in there.

Some might imagine Text Books, kids hunched over paper with pencil in hand, answering summary questions. I looked at those kinds of curriculums….they had so many parts. Some of my friends used them and thus entered the vision of “planning”. As in “I’ve got so much planning to do.” Planning consisted of cutting out little colored paper parts, poster charts, organizing supplies. It attracted the side of me that romanticized my own Kindergarten classroom experience. I gave it a shot. Within the first two weeks I’d lost a set of flashcards. My little boy was daydreaming. And we had a new saying, something I could commisserate with other moms about, “I have such a hard time getting him to do school!”

Curriculum Fairs….ah…those blissful convention halls of jean jumpers and fresh books! This is home turf for Homeschoolers. I especially liked the days when the local news would come out and interview us, part freak show, partly an effort to prove we were just like everyone else. Maybe with a better edge though. Amid the smell of homebaked bread and the chatter of excited women, some out of the house for the first time in weeks, I found books about Charlotte Mason. Relaxed Learning. And Sonlight’s little-but-wordy ads in magazines got my attention rather than my disdain for the first time.

Here was an interesting approach! Living books! (Check that CM quality on the list). And… a Teacher’s Guide. No more cutting little parts and flashcards. No more games. Workbooks for the gritty writing stuff but the rest of it was cozy time on the couch. I joined the forums and found a pack of comrades. All of it planned out. The first week I lost my voice. At least my baby napped long enough to get the list done.

I started hearing a new refrain though. “We’re so behind”. (For more on my thoughts of being behind, see this).   That little list was getting week by week more like a mountain I couldn’t climb. My baby didn’t nap well? We didn’t get to it all. My boy hated the story? I hated the story? The guilt piled up. But school is suposed to be a drugery right? Home or Public, was I expecting too much?

We went a few years like that. Then, I did the unthinkable. I just used the books we wanted to, when we wanted to, still uncertain of my own abilty to put together a decent list alone. We still used the calendar. I hid how much we did or didn’t do. I joined in the homeschooling chatter where we all had problems finding curriculum that fit, all felt behind, all struggled with burn out, all had messy kitchens and high laundry piles. I grieved for my younger ones, that they didn’t get that side by side time with my that my oldest did. I figured it was unavoidable.

I think that was the year I heard about unschooling. First reaction: heresy! How was anyone going to convince me that if I let my kids choose their own way, that they wouldn’t spend the entire day on computer games? I joined a large unschooling yahoolist.

Ouch. It still smarts. The woman who runs it, while doing a great job of asking tough questions and pushing people out of their boxes to find the answers, is very strident. She also, as I learned quickly as a newbie not able to develop as fast as she thought I should, can be rude. She ran me off.

Fortunately, while I was “talking the talk” with my latest group, I’d stopped forcing my kids to do just about anything, as an experiment. Bless thier Classical Education father, he was going crazy! But the kids only played computer games for 2-3 days. I started really paying attention to thier play….they did so much. For a few neurotic weeks (my own detox) I kept lists, so I could “prove” it in their record keeping portfolios.

And oddly, thanks to Sandra Dodd, I’d done some learning myself. Through watching my kids, I trusted that we could loosen up. And, from her,  I knew I didn’t want the unschooling label. That label to me, conjures up the rebellious motorcycle crowd of the movement, sometimes just rebelling to show they can. My kids were happier and they were learning; I wasn’t burnt out and a real miracle occurred.

In the down time, without all the external pressure,  my son had FINALLY learned to read and discovered multiplication. I had all the proof  I needed.

So what did I do? I did my laundry. We moved out of state. We joined a new co-op and stepped up our socialization nearly ten fold. I cooked for my family and took them to the park. I started to read to them again. Last winter I threw out all my packaged curriuclum or gave it away. My kids quit complaining about “doing school”, even though they still sat down for math, handwriting, and grammar. We still love the Classical view of the Trivium, but we knew we needed a Living Education.

And I looked hard at that label. Homeschooler. It seemed to define me and not all at the same time. We are MUCH more than homeschoolers. But like the label implies, it often is all we can get done. Because when we are doing it in a box, we no longer have time for the other stuff like being a wife, tending to the ones too small to give written work to, caring for our homes, being women. We are parts and our parts are anemic.

So, I hate the label because it puts me back into a box. I chose to avoid institutionalized education because I wanted something different. I wanted my kids to learn and grow beside me, no matter their birth order. I wanted them to have an intact childhood rather than premature adulthood. I want them to have a broad experience because that is what the world is. Adults aren’t segregated into peer groups and we don’t spend our days with made up deadlines and projects that have no bearing on what we are really trying to get accomplished. That “Homeschooler” label gives an impression that is incompatible with a Whole Life.

We’re now stuck in the murky little spot of what to call ourselves. I’m going with Family for now. I’m a Mother to this Family. The proof in the pudding is that I haven’t been burnt out in a very long time and my kids don’t think learning is a drudgery.  Good enough for now.