Why I homeschool.
Why I homeschool? Because wandering around this wide world, and discovering all it has to offer, is an interesting, engaging, intriguing way to live a family life. And I loved doing it with my kids.
Also, I love having the public library as our second home. Thumbing my fingers across the children's storybooks and shoulder bags full of interesting reads were part of our routine too.
(Though the late fees were enormous!)
Oh, and wandering bookstores and libraries during school days: this is an amazing life!
Or bringing those books to the local cafe to "CafeSchool" and enjoying special drinks while listening to adult conversations while the kids play games or finish their books.
Driving around the neighbourhood or driving to a new town to discover museums and botanical gardens or nature centers with my kids, listening to audiobooks in the minivan, or completing a math workbook while we drove there was fun! Mini-van schooling is underrated.
Reliving childhood memories alongside my kids, like learning to swing on a swing, understanding World War history for the first time, or even relearning basic arithmetic and algebra was an accomplishment.
Also, our family could create a meaningful social network with values that mattered to us was a cool way to live our lives too.
What led me to homeschooling?
It was a book I casually picked up from a bookstore on a vacation. I intended to find the arguments against it because I didn't want my kids to be weird and I didn't wear jean jumpers, yet it seemed like everyone around me was homeschooling. So I needed my arguments against it.
So I knew I could engage the academic elements of an education, despite only surviving high school. I was crazy motivated so I knew I could do it. This would be a fun adventure in learning all the things I didn't learn in school! (Did I have gaps? Oh yes! Didn't you?)
Since my husband planned to work part-time and we would travel part-time, I knew we'd give our kids loads of interesting experiences as we traveled. And we did, you can read about them here.
We're highly engaged people doing interesting things so the kids wouldn't lack variety.
I knew we'd find social opportunities because we were already doing that.
However, what we had pre-homeschooling was a life that didn't fit.
The life we were living was fine, average, expected, but it wasn't this...
Our life didn't feel authentic. There wasn't a lot of us in it. We were doing what everyone else was doing. Signing up for the same life everyone else was living: letters after our names, numbers in the bank account, not enough time together, but nice house, two-car garage, annual vacations, investments, soon-to-be membership in a local church, birthing babies born with a full Baby Gap closet, and when they got old enough, signing them up for the local private Christian school.
Our life didn't feel purposeful. As much as I adored my two daughters' kindergarten teacher, and still do, knowing that my kids were in a classroom not being challenged, beyond memorizing ASL hand signs for the alphabet in their first official school year, yet coming home to prepare dinner so we could turn around to return to the school to participate in a communal soup and cracker night felt time-consuming and not-so-meaningful when we could all join together in the kitchen on Saturday to make soup and crackers, minus the fanfare.
When I first grabbed that Homeschool Option book off the shelf, I wasn't expecting my life was about to change.
Our intent to homeschool wasn't just about choosing an individualized education for our kids or giving them an education that felt more robust with the values we approved.
It wasn't just determining which curriculum we liked, or what social network we would encourage for our family. Though it was all those things.
And though we didn't have life figured, and still don't, we categorically knew we were choosing an intentional life.
Unexpected challenges: what I didn't know before I homeschooled.
This homeschool thing wasn't hard because I didn't know how to 'teach' someone (in fact, I did, I didn't recognize at the time that mothering IS teaching.)
This homeschool thing wasn't hard because I didn't choose the right curriculum (curriculum choice has little impact on a life well-lived).
And this homeschool thing wasn't even hard because family and friends weren't supporting it.
Homeschooling, at times, was hard because I needed to grow myself up in more ways than I had counted on.
Of course, I had high hopes for a charmed homeschool life (that's why I titled my blog, Capturing the Charmed Life).
What I subconsciously chose as I began this homeschool life?
I was looking to replace a hard childhood -- a tumultuous, always on-the-edge of my seat, emotionally dysregulated, nervous system overstimulated, confusing, insecure childhood—I was determined to replace it with an idyllic 1980s sitcom, circa Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains childhood. If the Huxtables can figure out family conflict in 22 minutes and then live happily ever after, I could too.
Turns out, homeschooling is no panacea for the broken-hearted.
And it's also not a panacea for those who had a predictable, occasionally annoying, disappointing, frustrating childhood.
It would take three or four homeschool years to hit my proverbial wall.
(Where I wanted to send the kids on whatever yellow school bus passed by).
But when I did, I had a life-changing homeschool day.
I don't recall. I'm not sure it's relevant. Because it could have been any or all of those things. All these things were part of a typical frustrating homeschool day at that time.
It wasn't just those things that impacted that fateful day when everything changed for me.
I didn't understand how to assert my needs, so I was spent. I didn't know how to be vulnerable to share those needs anyway.
Underneath that layer of spent-ness, I had a self, a person, a young Teresa that never grew up to become the adult Teresa that needed acknowledgment, consistency, safety, and security.
And I didn't know myself, nor did I invest time in becoming more me.
I was trying to do a whole lotta things for my kids and my husband, the things that I would have needed when I was younger.
I was doing a lot of the things for my kids that I needed for me, but I didn't consciously know that's why I was doing them.
At the time, I didn't understand that a home education didn't need to resemble a prestigious private school. Though I was trying to make one.
Perfection was the only option: perfection meant I did enough--and if what I did was one smidge less than perfection, what I was doing was not enough.
If I let myself do less than perfect, I acknowledged what I had already been told as a child (in no minced or hyperbolic words): you are nothing, you are worthless.
Now I couldn't be reminding myself that this was true. So I didn't. Perfection was the only option and must be maintained or else that imperfection would reveal that I was indeed nothing and worthless.
I remember that "hitting the wall" day, feeling exasperated before 9 am. Certainly, I remember yelling at the kids. I don't remember the specifics. But I do remember I left the kids in the family room with our morning basket, and I excused myself angrily to my bedroom.
I texted my husband for help. He was too busy in emerg (a physician) to message me back.
So I texted my friend. She was a more seasoned mom and could listen to my real mom freak-out moments. Since she just finished watching a Ted Talk by a lady named Brene Brown and she found it impactful, she told me, "You should watch it right now."
And I did and everything changed. (Well it was the beginning of changing everything).
I had a whole lotta things to learn.
These lessons didn't happen overnight, but over the last decade and a half, I realized I'm not alone in these unexpected challenges.
I repeatedly have conversations with other homeschool moms with these challenges too; especially in the last five years, as I walk alongside them to support them to become the real them.
I support homeschool moms to shed what's not working, so they can show up authentically, confidently, and purposefully in their homeschools & lives.
(And it's an absolute pleasure to do it!)
Book a conversation with me here.
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Teresa Wiedrick
I help overwhelmed homeschool mamas shed what's not working in their homeschool & life, so they can show up authentically, purposefully, and confidently in their homeschool & life.
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