Let's go back. It wasn't always this way. Oh how he LONGED to goto school at 3 and 4. He watched his big brothers get on the bus since he was born since Thomas went to Kindergarden the year Bubba was born. He spent 5 1/2 LONG years waving at them and missing them and wanting to be just like them! When the time came for his turn, I've never seen a happier little kid! Thomas was excited, Tyler was scared, but no one was as excited as Bubba was this year. He was ready! He had a great year, he really did. A new teacher, full of greatness and definitely the exception to the rule, Miss Webb - oh how we loved her. He loved going to school every day. We were lucky, we lived in an excellent school district at the time and they hired great teachers. 1st grade, he got a good teacher but she was new too, and 1st grade is a little different. She was loving and good to him, but not as exceptional as Miss Webb. By the end of the year, he was not looking forward to going to school every day but he wasn't hating it either. For 2nd grade, we had a lot of changes in our family. We moved and he did not like his new school or teacher, and the stomach aches began. I attributed it to a normal reaction to change. Some kids don't do well with change, that doesn't mean the change doesn't still happen - you just have to help them learn to cope. And so began the process of excusing and justifying in small bits and pieces, my son beginning to hate school. We moved again before the year was over and he had another exceptional teacher for the last few months of school. RELIEF I thought! It was temporary, he would be okay now. And yet, I kept forgetting that these good bouts were temporary - that the exceptional teachers and situations were NOT the rule, they were exceptional because they were the exception to the rule. Bubba struggled for 2 more years through 3rd and 4th grade and we started 5th grade with great hesitation.
October 21st is the day I changed course. I spent 6 hours of my day between my 3 boys schools that day. This was not an unusual occurrence and truth be told, there were more hours in a week that needed to be spent but this was a normal amount of time I had gotten used to having to be at one school or another, or all 3, to do what I always called "helping them do their job". I enjoyed being there for my kids, enjoyed getting back in the loop of things since I spent most of my life with them in school feeling like I didn't understand what they were doing or what was going on but I didn't enjoy the fact that it felt necessary and 6 or so hours still wasn't ever enough. I didn't ever truly understand why I needed to devote so much time to managing my children's education - wasn't that why they were there for 35 hours a week? Isn't that what principals and superintendents get paid ungodly amounts to do?! How many hours, exactly, are we, as parents, expected to reasonably spend helping the school teach our children? From my experience, spending an average of 10+ hours a week was still not enough for the standard I wanted for my children. We were not getting the results I expected and we certainly were involved parents so what was wrong?
Enter my neighbor. In the middle of various runs to and from schools, I stopped in at home quickly - I had about an hour before the next school - not enough time to do anything with myself but I had an hour. I saw her son, about my son's age, who I had known to be private schooled the year before, out and riding his bike, at 11 am in the morning! Another day off?! I asked her. Oh, no...we homeschool now. How nice, I thought. I vented about how I was spending my day - she took about 10 minutes of her day and changed my and Bubba's life. I don't know what it really was about her demeanor that made me stop in my tracks that day but she was such a wonderful, caring lady. Her son was happy. He too, had struggled, she understood what I did - that boys do NOT learn much sitting in a classroom all day in a very girl oriented world. She too, understood that it shouldn't be so hard - they should enjoy learning - that they have a natural desire to learn - but schools break them. She had pulled her son from his private school and enrolled him in our local "homeschool school" as we all call it. She insisted I just go there, tell them I wanted in, just do it - now - it's not too late - I'd be so glad I did. I think I looked at her like a normal mom like me - like someone who had not set out to homeschool but who had seen her child's spirit slowly fading, and with this school's help, she had found an solution. I'd always been scared to homeschool. Secretly jealous of the mom's who were determined to, or who were not scared of it like me. Either I was too angry to be scared anymore, or I saw that it wasn't as scary as I once thought - whatever it was, I went there that day.
I was angry on the way there - still harboring a little fear and angry I was forced in a position to have to make this change. Selfishly, I wanted my freedom. I was raised and didn't want to let go of - thinking that when your kids went to school, that's when you, as a parent, regained some of your own independence back. Stepping stones in life where they learn to be separate from us and we learn to be separate from them - allowing them their own life experiences, letting someone else teach them, care for them, differently than we do, but necessary for their own development. It's hard for mommies to let go, but necessary for us too - we can't hold on too tight out of our own selfish desires not to let anything happen to them out of our control - we learn to care for our own fears of this time and our own doubts, by filling our lives back up with other things that we can only do when we don't have little ones around. For some, that is going back to work, for others it means more social time with friends our age and yet for others it's going back to school or finding/revisiting a long lost hobby. We find a renewed enjoyment of these things and in a lot of ways, enjoy the time our children are in school, because we get some selfish enjoyment while they are there - we "get back our life" is what I had friends call it. Rights of passage.
Wait...back the truck up. Since when did having a child only require 5 years of our lives? That's it? That's all they get? Better soak it all up in 5 years because after that, we're throwing you out there for 35 hours a week to sink or swim. We'll try to help as much as we can but now people that none of us know, but who have degrees and who have been hired by the government, are supposed to be the ones who spend more of your life with you than we do. They are supposed to know more, do more, and do it better than us. And when they don't - well that's our fault because we are probably failing at home with you - in the 2 hours a night we actually get with you at the worst end of your day. So to counterbalance this now, of course we send our 3 and 4 year olds to pre-school. This way they learn earlier, to do without mom and dad and siblings so they are ready for their full time job at 5. So now we get 3 years, maybe 4, before we send them to someone without us. All in the name of them surviving the transition to school at 5 or 6. No wonder mothers hit severe empty nest syndrome when their 18 year old's go to college or move out. We didn't get enough time. We didn't baby our babies when they were babies so we spend the rest of their lives trying to baby them in other, less acceptable ways. Fast forward to the age of entitlement, teenagers without drive, without desire to do for themselves, 30 year old adults still living at home, parents still parenting their grown adult children. It's only natural and it's not just about mom either. There's a disconnect and abandonment for the children in an extreme way. They go from one extreme to the next - I'm with mom all day (if they are a stay at home kid) and then get thrown in a very short period of time, into being expected to survive somewhere without mom for 35 hours a week - throw a bus ride in there and you've usually got a 40 hour week on your hands. They learn how to survive it, they learn how to navigate it. Are they capable of handling it - sure. Is that what I wanted for my kids? No. I didn't want to tell them that childhood was about survival, learning to navigate and finding out just how much you could do without your mom emotionally. I wanted childhood to be about fun, excitement, growing in positive ways and about feeling safe and loved and secure. I had failed.
On October 25th, I turned that truck around and laugh now that I ever thought homeschooling was an imposition on me. I feel so lucky to be able to do this with him. Every day, my son is happy. He is gaining his confidence back. He looks forward to bedtime, because he looks forward to the next day now. He spends more hours learning because it's up to him (well he thinks it is anyway) again. The more exciting, interesting ways I can give him to learn, the more he will choose those activities over anything else. Would you like to do a woodworking project (and learn math and science without knowing it) or play Xbox 360, Bubba? WOODWORKING! Every time. Bubba, I need you to do your reading today. Already did it Mom - would you like me to tell you how far I read and what I read about? I would love to! And when I ask him to do something that stresses him out, now he can tell me - I'm right there. There is no embarrassment in admitting it anymore, no fear that a fellow classmate will make fun of you or a teacher will not hear you, not care or worse, make you feel terrible for not understanding. And when he hesitates or can't find the words or THAT look comes across his face that only Mom knows....I can help him find the words and he is safe.
Eventually - he will not need me there. Eventually, he will not need help finding the right words, because he had help when he was learning. If I allow him to need me when he's the appropriate age to need me, then I can also teach him, gently, how not to need me. He may even teach himself, naturally. Some kids need a little more help and others are naturally more independent. But I think it's a lot extreme to expect them to tolerate 35-40 hours a week away from mom and dad by the age of 5 doing hard core school work - it's really no different to them than work is to us - but wait - they are children still, aren't they? I'd rather let him be a little kid when he's a little kid and a big kid when he's a big kid - than encourage him to hurry and grow up, hurry and get away from me, hurry and get independent. He'll spend his entire adult life doing that and if I allow him to gain his independence on his own, and if I allow him to keep his self esteem in tact, he'll have a solid foundation to do anything off of. I think I like that road much better and the results show that he (and most homeschooled kids) learn more, do more and have less problems in society and in their relationships, than the other way around. Wow - how funny that the stigma is that they will be social misfits if they are homeschooled. No, they are just taught and supervised on how to treat others and themselves - not thrown on a playground with 100 other kids and 2 adults. So far all the kids I've met at our homeschool school, are really neat kids. They are not shy. They get along with each other and here is the shocker.... they make eye contact as teenagers, with the adults who walk through the "school", they acknowlege, have manners, and watch out for younger kids. They are helping each other, they are voluntarily studying, they are working in groups and they are taking good, genuine care of themselves, their friends and their siblings. I have a teenager in the public high school in town - a huge school - and it's scary and ugly to walk through the halls. Rude teenagers to each other, to adults. Kids trying to skip class, hoping to get to class late without getting caught, leaving campus and lying. Kids sleeping in class, talking back to teachers, kids trying to dominate classrooms. Kids making fun of the different kids. You can feel the tension. Of course there are good kids there too - I was one of them. But they are the exception too, just like the exceptional teacher. And that is a shame.
