Homeschooling ... what were we thinking?

As children get older, their academic work becomes more challenging. I feel it's safe to say that is universal, not specific to homeschooling. The difference in homeschooling is that, as the parent-teacher, we are more emotionally involved in what and how our children learn. If you home-educate only boys, maybe you disagree. I don't have boys, so I can't speak on that.  I do, however, have all girls ... girls all in vastly different stages of development, but who are all emotional. LilBird doesn't get too emotional yet over learning; she just seems to have very little interest in anything that looks like traditional learning.  Ace gets emotional only if she is in the wrong mood to begin with or her schoolwork is interfering with something she'd rather be doing (like gymnastics, playing with duct tape, or watching TV). Rockstar gets emotional on a daily basis as she battles learning new concepts and processes; homeschooling for her is much more difficult than public school ever was, only because public school allowed her to skate by without truly learning.

Thirteen years ago, we were preparing for one child. Deciding to home school her was a no-brainer. Neither Jay nor I felt public school had prepared for us real life; we both felt stifled, bored, generally held back in our school experiences. Teaching our child at home seemed natural, and it did come naturally, and Ace was the perfect example of a sponge. She wanted to learn about everything. She made it easy for us. She still does, to an extent.

Then, our life took a turn that brought us into public school; we didn't have a choice in Rockstar's primary education, so we had to just roll with it. We cringed when teachers praised her for "reading" when we could clearly see she just had the story memorized and had fooled everybody but us. In first grade, she'd already mastered short-cutting to please. She reveled in pleasing people who clearly didn't care whether or not she was really learning; and that was just as disturbing as her not being taught.  In what was limited time with her then, Jay and I consistently tried to nurture what was left of that natural love of learning we knew was there. She spent more time in public school than we'd have ever wished for our own child, but we did what we had to do and we got her out of there as soon as life allowed.

Along came our little surprise, LilBird. She has kept us guessing from Day One.  She's strong-willed and defiant. (Yes, I know she comes by that honestly.) When it comes to learning academics, she is the opposite of Ace. If it looks like learning, and she didn't come up with it, it's less interesting than rubbish to her. Thank goodness she wasn't the first one, or we might have just taken our chances with public education.  She is learning every day, though. We just can't stay with one program for more than a few days before she's bored with it. Thank goodness we live in the age of the Internet so we can keep finding new ways to educate her.

Mornings like today make me ask myself, why in the world would I have ever wanted to torture myself like I do?!  I have been working with LilBird on word families - I found some neat "packages" online that included hands-on learning that she seems to like.  Ten minutes into it today, I'd said "it's a B, not a D" a half-dozen times, and "G has two sounds, Juh and Guh" just as many times.  On a different level, it took well over a month of repeating how to add and subtract integers for Rockstar, and that was exhausting.  Today, I marked the same math problem incorrect three times, each time noting that one must add all of the sides of a figure to determine the perimeter. By the third time, she argued that she was doing it right and that I and the book were wrong, that because that particular figure included two curved sides (which were equal and together made the circumference of a full circle), and the proper way to determine the perimeter was to REMOVE one of the curved sides.  She got mad at me over it, as if I'm the one to came up with the formula for perimeter. This, after offering up a book report that was so vague I had to question whether she actually read the book (after she got 40% of the answers right on a quiz over it, I'm fairly confident that she skimmed the book rather than read it). See, in public school, she'd have just missed the problems, guessed on the tests and taken the grades, no accountability whatsoever.

I think I just answered my own question.  In my personal life, I have a solid interest in politics. It goes without saying that many people these days have an opinion on politics. Being radically moderate in Oklahoma, there are few people I actually agree with. On a daily basis, I am frustrated with people who do not fact-check, who believe crap they see on TV or read on a blog or an obviously slanted "news" source, who can't spell or do basic math, who have no respect for or basic understanding of history or geography, and/or who have no grasp of accountability.  I'd never be able to live with myself if my contribution to society was three more of those folks who drive me crazy. My kids must learn it is not okay to cheat, or leave out something, or be careless.

Emotionally-charged days like today are not easy. We get through them, though, despite hurt feelings. Sometimes a lesson has to be repeated again and again. And again. And again. And again. Sometimes we have to walk away, clear our minds and hearts, and then try again. It is hard not to take it personally when "she" immaturely turns her mistake into me just being an evil poopyhead. (I use "she" here in general because they all do this.) She wants to give up when she gets to that point. If I give up, though, how is that different than the public school that failed her? That's why we make it through these tough days, because I committed to providing the best education for my children, even before I had them. It was that important. It still is.