Ferdinand, the Homeschool Kid

Have you ever read the book The Story of Ferdinand?  I hadn't either, but apparently it's a classic, so our homeschool language arts curriculum made me.  

The book tells the story of Ferdinand, a bull who would rather sit by himself and smell the flowers in the shade of his favorite tree than "run and jump and butt heads" with the other young bulls.  His mother, naturally concerned, suggested that Ferdinand join the crowd; Ferdinand refused, saying he quite simply liked it better where he was.

I'll never know what the authors of our curriculum actually wanted us to glean from this little gem, and I really don't care.  All I know was that when Munro Leaf wrote it (in 1936), he knew everything there was to know about homeschooling my daughter last week.

For example, we went to homeschool park group and, instead of holding hands and giggling with the group of girls there, Grace sat by herself and built a "fort" out of small sticks.

We met up with one of Grace's best friends and, instead of playing spies with him, Grace sat by herself and built a "fort" out of small sticks.

We had one of Grace's favorite neighborhood friends over and, instead of drawing pictures with her, Grace went outside, sat by herself, and...you see where this is going.

So there I am, trying to parent Ferdinand the (Maddening, Anti-Social, Opportunity-to-Not-Be-A-Weird-Homeschool-Kid-Wasting) Bull.  Naturally, like any good extrovert mother, I tried to talk her into joining the other girls (because this is how we'll defy the homeschool stereotype, kid, get on board) and each time, she told me in no uncertain terms that she was happy where she was.  Building forts out of sticks.  

It was at this point that I really hit my stride as an insensitive mother.  I asked her every 30 seconds whether she was "sure" she didn't want to join the other kids ("I am sure that I would like you to stop bugging me," says my aspiring teenager).  I tried to drag her over to the other children.  It's even possible that I tried to bribe her to play with the other kids by promising her time alone when we were done.  

She looked approximately like this - like a young bull saying "Talk to the hoof..." in the mid-1930s:

In retrospect, maybe all I really needed to do was to take a deep breath and a cue from Ferdinand's mom: "The mother saw that he was not lonesome, and because she was an understanding mother, even though she was a cow, she let him just sit there and be happy."  

          

See how happy she looks, so confident?  It's like she understands that Ferdinand is who he is, and that he's going to be just fine.  You don't see her questioning every parenting decisions she's ever made, and calling her local public school in a panic (who would do that....?)  

I'm six years into this Mothering thing, but it took a week of failed playdates and one brilliant storybook to make me see that my kids are actual people.  They have their own personalities, their own preferences, their own insecurities, and their own modi operandi. 

In fact, it's been brought to my attention that there are people in this world called "introverts" and although the concept is entirely foreign to me, it seems that I may in fact be parenting one of them.  Apparently, these people don't easily navigate groups and sometimes actually just want to play by themselves.  Apparently, they can be uncomfortable with unfamiliar people or situations and sometimes, just actually prefer to build with sticks, alone.  

And apparently, this needs to be okay.

Once we embrace the idea that our kids are not carbon copies of ourselves, we can begin the long process of getting to know who they actually are.  We can stop trying to force them to respond to situations the way that we would and start helping them navigate their natural response.  We can stop assuming that their feelings mirror what ours would be, and start tuning into the deep, hidden parts of their hearts.  We can stop assuming things about them, and start listening to what they're actually trying to tell us.

We can stop trying to manipulate them into becoming tiny versions of ourselves, because they were created to be something completely unique.

So instead of panicking the next time my daughter chooses sticks over relationships, because that's not a choice I myself would make, I'm going to remember the wise words of Mama Bull, and try to be an understanding mother (even though I'm a cow...) and just let her be happy. 

And let her be Grace.

My Homeschool Panic Attack

If you've seen me In Real Life for even thirty seconds this week (or gotten a text message from me...), you know I was having a little bit of a homeschooling meltdown.  You know, because the entire time we were together, I talked the subject of my child's education into the ground, and you wanted to gouge your eyes out.  Admittedly, you and I may not even be friends anymore; I wouldn't hold it against you.

In retrospect, I think the meltdown was triggered by Grace's Pre-K class from last year going back to school and having experiences together without her.  It was all well and good to say we were "homeschooling" over the summer, but another thing entirely when her former life started to move on without her.

Over the course of about 48 hours, I'd convinced myself that we were doing her irreparable harm by keeping her out of school with those admittedly precious kids.  I literally gathered up the documentation I would need to enroll her in public school, and stayed up late pouring through endless websites of private schools.

Thankfully, I still hadn't enrolled Grace anywhere by Tuesday, which happens to be the day that my little (therapy) homeschool group meets.

I have one particularly wise friend in this group.  She'll tell you that she's not wise at all -- she'll probably say that she's a mediocre homeschooler and that she's barely making it through the day.  You'll see that she has four kids ranging from 2 to some-age-my-kids-aren't-at-so-I-can't-identify, and you'll want to believe that this is true (because you only have 2 kids and you're barely making it through the day). But then she opens her mouth to talk, and you realize that she's so much more than she lets on.

After I threw up my panicked Homeschooling-is-Killing-My-Daughter's-Soul speech on her, she sort of smiled at me (the way you smile at someone who isn't very smart) and said simply, "You didn't choose to homeschool in a panic, so don't choose not to in a panic."

I saw my entire life flash before my eyes.  A lifetime full of making slow, prayerful choices followed by sudden scared (prayerless) retreats.  A lifetime of second guessing myself, not because the situation called for it, but just because I could.

I teach 3 and 4 year old "Bible Story Time" at my church.  Last week's lesson was about Adam and Eve and making Good Choices.  In fact, according to the curriculum I was given, God "knows exactly what we should do no matter what choice we have to make."  While this is probably true enough for preschoolers, whose choices generally center around whether or not to obey their parents, hit their brother, or bite that kid at the park, I'm not entirely sure that it's true for mothers all -- or even most -- of the time.

Most of the decisions we make as parents aren't black-and-white moral ones.  We aren't deciding whether to feed our kids, but what to feed them.  We aren't deciding whether to love our kids, but how to love them. We aren't deciding whether to educate our kids, but where to educate them.  We're researching, weighing, praying about, and ultimately choosing between several morally-acceptable choices.

Maybe, in these situations, God is interested less in what we choose and more in whether we live that choice out to His glory.

And I'm not entirely sure that panic glorifies God.

As a sidenote, Grace has suggested that we abandon homeschooling, don't enroll her in "school-school," and instead just take a constant string of vacations.  I'm considering it (not really...we're still homeschooling, because I couldn't stand the idea of rescheduling our September vacation...).

Anger Management

I'm not competitive.  A perfectionist, maybe, but I've never been one to obsess over winning and losing.  (For the record, I also don't really care "how you play the game," as long as it involves wine and dessert.)

My husband, on the other hand, cares whether he wins or loses and, in addition, he seems to care very much how everyone is playing the game.  When we were dating, we'd play volleyball and he'd tell me how you have to "sacrifice your body" in order to win.  You know, "sacrifice your body" while you're standing in a sand pit with your closest friends, trying to hit a ball over a net, because this is a Thing People Do.

In the world of winning and losing, my sweet Grace is her father's daughter -- but worse, because she doesn't have 30-some-odd years of practicing self control.  Everything her dad thinks inside, Grace thinks the same thing but also yells it.

The authors of our math curriculum thought that playing a game at the end of each lesson would be a light-hearted, fun way to reinforce the concepts.  They probably envisioned a family in front of a roaring fire, with hot cocoa, chuckling to themselves about how much fun addition can really be.  I'm not going to lie -- that's sort of how I envisioned it, too.  But let me tell you, it's too hot in Austin for a fire or hot cocoa, and at the Bertram house, these math games are no laughing matter.

This week's game was a low point for us.  Against my better judgment, I actually tried to take a picture of Grace when she was on the floor, fists clenched, screaming...losing.  I abandoned the idea out of fear for my life.

Naturally, because I had no way of relating to a child this upset over losing (let's just have a cookie and move on, okay?), I summoned The One Who Does This on the Inside -- my husband.  He managed to talk Grace off the ledge with tales of the gross injustices he himself has suffered at the hands of Winners, I promised to play the game repeatedly until she won, and everything seemed to be back on track.

Until Micah asked to play.

Like younger siblings everywhere, he's not trying to dominate the game; he only wants to be included.  But as soon as he actually gets included, he wins.

I don't think I have to tell you what happened next.   I tried in vain to explain to Grace that all that mattered was that she learn divisors of ten, she declared herself the "Loser of the World," and we pretty much called it a day.  Because really, where do you go from "Loser of the World?"

Another day, another opportunity to extend the same grace to my imperfect kids that their imperfect mother needs all the time.

Grace when I've obsessed over the small things because I can't see the big picture.

Grace when I've gotten wrapped up in my own temporal measure of success instead of the bigger, eternal things that matter.

Grace to throw myself on the floor, scream until I lose my voice, and start over with a clean slate the very next day.

Show and Tell

For years before our homeschool experiment began, my kids were in some form or another of traditional school.  Naturally, they've amassed an array of activities that they expect to happen during a school day or week -- some of these are great and some are...less great.  

For Grace, any school worth its salt includes Show-and-Tell.  Most of the time, my daughter seems to have very little concept of days of the week and the order in which they show up...except that somehow, she always knows when it's Monday morning.  This is the day that she has designated Show-and-Tell Day.  

Honestly, I find this little activity wholly unnecessary, even when it's in a traditional school context, because I've never met a five year old who needs an activity contrived to encourage her to take the floor and talk about herself and her material possessions.  

But the absurdity is really amplified when you put Show-and-Tell into a homeschool environment.  I can't think of anything more ridiculous than "show[ing] and tell[ing]" about something that you brought all the way from down the hall to show two people who are with you every waking minute.  

Oh, wait, yes I can:  when the thing that you're "show[ing] and tell[ing]" is an imaginary horse.  That you can ride, and that you've trained to do tricks.

Do you see why I can't put this sweet baby in public school?

Show-and-Tell is admittedly an Eye Roll activity for me, but for whatever reason, it's of critical importance to Grace.  For awhile, I tried to talk her out of it, but now I'm starting to understand that this homeschool I'm running here in ATX isn't just my homeschool.  

Like it or not, this is our homeschool.  And if an integral part of my child's homeschool experience is that she gets to literally trip over herself and fall showing me and her brother how she can "do jumps" on her imaginary pony, then that's what we'll do.  I'll be right there with her, cheering her on (and trying not to think too hard about what my life has become and how there's not really a pony there).  Because what she needs to know more than the history of ancient Egypt or the divisors of 10 is that She Counts.

Mothers -- homeschooling or otherwise -- fall into this trap all the time and we never even see it coming.  We get so wrapped up in our own vision of what life should look like (because admittedly, our vision is fantastic), we completely ignore theirs.  Most of the time, we think we're doing it For Their Own Good, as if we've gained more than we've lost when we've denied them the occasional cake for breakfast, the mismatched we-wear-pink-as-a-neutral outfit, or the late night trying to finish The Wizard of Oz (it's really long...).  

Or the five minutes of Show-and-Tell.  

So I'll take a deep breath and cede a little control to my five-year-old, because the only way I get to enter into her world in any type of genuine way is if I give her the grace to create it.  

And her world -- complete with magic trick ponies -- is awesome.

The Other Side of the Story

Grinnell College has this strange, essentially antiquated alumni social network called Plans -- it's sort of an early version of Facebook, with no pictures, no "like" button, but even more bickering.  It's awful and wonderful all at the same time.

Last week, a friend on Plans asked me if I could write a blog post about how difficult homeschooling is, lest she be tempted to try it herself one day.  Fair question.

My initial answer was that it really isn't that hard.  Through no fault of my own, my kids are fairly easy to deal with, academically and behaviorally.  They're excited about learning, I've had a lifetime of experience teaching young kids, and the three of us generally have a great time together.  "Doing School" with them goes fairly smoothly.  

If I'm being honest, though, this is an incomplete answer.  The school part of Homeschooling may not be that difficult for me, but being a Homeschool Mom certainly is.

So now, for a moment, let's talk about the hard part of homeschooling...

I'm Wasting My Life

I know, I know, I'm investing in my kids, I won't regret this time, I'm making some sort of eternal difference, blah blah blah.

But let's be real: I'm an attorney and your garden variety over-achiever.  If you knew me for even five minutes in school, you know that I worked hard.  I went to one of the best liberal art colleges in the country (so what if our social network is rudimentary...), a top-tier law school, and graduated at the top of my class.  I put everything I had into becoming whatever (admittedly awful) thing it is that someone who obsessively does these kinds of things grows up to be.  

By all rights, now that I've successfully gotten my kids to a reasonable school age, I should get to drop them off in car line, trade in the workout-clothes-that-smell-like-spit-up for a tailored suit, and go do something lawyer-like that changes the world.  Instead, here I am still at home, still wearing workout clothes (but they smell a little better), trying to get one kid to read three-letter words, the other kid to hold his pencil correctly instead of pretending to jab it into his eye, and both kids to care even a little bit about where Egypt is.     

Once in awhile, I meet a mom in homeschool circles who tells me that, even as a child, she knew she would homeschool her kids one day.  It's her life's dream; it's all she's ever wanted to do (except wear long skirts, not drink wine, and perfect the fake Jesus Smile).

When I meet these sweet ladies, I smile politely and move away as quickly as possible (they're probably moving away from me, too).  If spending your entire life teaching your young children doesn't fill you with shock, horror, and at least a little nausea, we'll never understand each other.  If teaching mindnumbing first grade math to your (mindnumbing) first-grader doesn't make you reevaluate everything you ever thought about your life, we just can't be friends.

In short, The Who I Am in no way resembles Who I Thought I'd Be, and that's hard.  

It's Monotonous

We try to keep things interesting over here, but this homeschooling that I never really expected to do happens every day.  Every.  Single.  Day.  I have to wake up every morning and know that, give or take, my day is going to look substantially similar to the one before it.  I'll face the same struggles, in the same rooms, with those same small people.  

Seriously, it was a little demoralizing just reading about it, wasn't it?

Nobody Will Leave Me Alone

This is the hardest one for me.  I'm a girl who likes my alone time but it's become apparent to me that when you homeschool, you don't get any of this.

School is a marvelously guilt-free place to leave your kids.  So what if you spend the entire schoolday watching reruns on Netflix or...watching reruns on Netflix?  It doesn't matter, because you didn't ask for that time alone; the time was merely a byproduct of your kids becoming educated.  Really, you were just passing the time by yourself, depressed, waiting for your little angels to finish their self-improvement and come home to you.  

Now that I'm a Homeschooling Mom, my best option is to leave the kids with my husband when he's working from home.  If you've ever tried this before, you know that it begins with a fifteen minute lecture on what does or does not constitute an emergency worth interrupting an important conference call.  Then, you have to drive as fast as you can to the spa grocery store, buy only what's on your list, and race home before the kids start yelling through your husband's office door that one of them may or may not have scratched the other one during a particularly raucous game of Mountain Lion.

Just so we're clear, this does not qualify as Alone Time.

_______________________________________________________________________

Thankfully, there is grace for all of this mess.  There's grace for the occasional, minor setback -- the brief temper tantrums, the resistance, the exhaustion.  But even more than this, there's grace for the bigger, deeper, What Am I Doing With My Life moments.  Contentment in the mundane.  Peace in the chaos.  A sudden glimpse of purpose hidden in the day-to-day futility.  A few extra minutes to myself that I know without a doubt came through supernatural intervention.  Grace.

In all honestly, the parts of homeschooling that you see on my blog will probably always paint a picture of a light-hearted, homeschooling utopia where the worst thing that ever happens is that we make a mess.  Just know that before we did whatever that awesome thing was that on my blog, I was drinking a cup of coffee and asking God why I'm throwing my life away.  Know that after we wrapped the activity up, I was thinking of ways to get out of doing whatever it was I'd planned to do afterwards because I was running short on energy, patience, or both.  Know that throughout that entire day, part of me was threatening to die if a child said "Hey, mom" one more time.  

Know that homeschooling isn't entirely easy or fun, even if it looks that way on my blog -- it's just that the hard parts are internal and make for a boring story.  Quite simply, there are just better, more interesting tales to be told.

Choose Your Own Homeschool Adventure

While I've been sitting on the couch with my husband, pretending to watch the NBA Finals (yes honey, the Heat does seem to be lacking on their offensive rebounding), I've been debating between two very different blog posts.  

So, in the spirit of a good old fashioned Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Book, I'll let you decide which one to read.  Ready?

It's summer and Normal Families are out of school, so our free time fills up quickly with playdates and fieldtrips.  If you want my kids to have a hilarious drama-free time at the weirdest zoo ever, while I fear for my life, skip to #2.  If you like to feel bad about the state of the modern world, proceed to #1 to read about Little Mean Girls, the Worst Sleepover Ever, and why I'm really homeschooling.

#1  Mean Girls:  I pretend that I'm homeschooling the kids to give them a great education, to spend more time with them, and to free up our schedule for play, travel, and fieldtrips (because clearly, those go so well -- see #2).  But let's be honest -- I'm really homeschooling them so I can shelter them from all of the harsh realities of life (not really...okay, sort of).  

Grace has a friend in the neighborhood who turned 7 this week.  Apparently, public school rising-2nd-graders are in fact basically teenagers.  They show up to trampoline places wearing what I swear is lingerie (it's possible I'm just being a prude, but really I'm not), they sing bitter Taylor Swift songs about breaking up with some boy named Trevor, and they roll their eyes and say that they're "bored" even though they're in a warehouse of wall-to-wall trampolines.

Had I known that this is the sad state of second graders today, I could have anticipated that perhaps my delightfully quirky five-year-old would have been out of her league in this crowd.  In case you haven't met her, Grace is either pretending to be a pony, or pretending to ride a pony, about 80% of the time.  The other 20% of her time is spent searching for pet rollie pollies, or telling knock knock jokes that only make sense to her captive bugs.  In short, she is absolutely awesome.  She does not own lingerie, and she's only interested in Trevor if he happens to be a Pegasus.

Thirty minutes into the party, Grace was in tears, we were coming home, and I was left with the crushing reality that I'm raising a girl who's growing up with girls just like the ones we all grew up with.  Mean Girls.  Let me just say that if I had any doubts about keeping my kids out of this world until they're old enough to navigate it with some discernment, those thoughts all but vanished on that car ride home.  

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying homeschool kids can't be mean.  They're human and struggle with all of the same human nature that all of us do.  Please also don't hear me saying that all kids that go to school are mean.  

To my mind, the difference is simply in the numbers: Homeschool kids aren't left to their own devices in a pack. Any group of kids -- especially girls -- will turn into Lord of the Flies when there aren't responsible, invested authority figures there to help them navigate the complicated world of feelings, social responsibility, and growing up, in a hands-on, authentic way.  

Homeschool Moms don't mess around with this stuff, you guys, and it's lovely to watch them parent their kids into becoming amazing people.  

Also, no self-respecting Homeschool Mom would let her kid leave the house in lingerie.  

#2  The Strangest Zoo You'll Probably Never Visit:  The kids and I love a good fieldtrip.  If you plan it, we'll come.  So this week, we met up with some awesome homeschool friends at the Johnson City Exotic Resort Zoo.  I'd like to apologize for not taking a single picture of this place -- I was honestly in shock.  

First of all, I literally do not know why they call this place a "resort."  There are no massages, no hot tubs, and the closest thing to a swimming pool were some old bathtubs in a field that perhaps used to serve as water troughs until they were attacked by the strange assortment of animals that make their home here.  To be fair, I heard that there are in fact "cabins" somewhere on the grounds-- cabins where people clearly out of their minds pay to stay at this bizarre place, surrounded by hungry goats and violent ostriches.  Please make your anniversary reservations early, guys.

When you arrive, they herd you onto a vehicle that I simply can't describe -- think hayride, minus the hay, but with bars on the side (to keep the wild animals from getting into the vehicle and mauling you).  Someone In Charge quickly and incoherently mumbles some instructions.  You and your friend next to you can decipher nothing from this speech except "Do not feed the zebras, they bite."  And then the Someone In Charge pushes the gas peddle and you hold onto your kids for dear life.

You're doing okay until you realize that the entire point of this expedition is for ostriches, bison, zebras, and what your over-the-moon daughter is calling gazelles to basically chase your vehicle through Texas ranchland while kids hold their hands out and feed them.  Let's be clear: these are not animals that the Good Lord intended should be fed by hand.  

Grace said it was her "favorite day" that she's ever had.  Micah wished that the animals hadn't slobbered on him quite as much.  This City Girl took four showers when she got home to her Austin suburb.  It was a win. 

Week in Review

Before we started our week -- our First Week -- I anticipated a lot of things.  Crying, screaming, hiding, throwing...drinking.  I guess we probably did have a little of all of that (mostly from me, especially the drinking) but I'm really a little surprised by how little drama we had.

In fact, I think we actually had fun.  It was a homeschooling miracle.

I think the kids each learned a few things, but I probably learned more.

1)  It comes much more naturally for me to spend time with my kids engaging in literature, history, and even math than it is to play a never-ending game of My Little Ponies.  Or Spiderman.  Or Spiderman Saves the My Little Ponies from the evil Thomas the Train. Sometimes, five minutes inside of our kids' imaginations can seem like an eternity, amiright?  

2)  One mom and two kids can cover an entire day's worth of Kindergarten curriculum in under 2 hours, including plenty of tangentially-related crafts.  Such as painting "like nomads" (clearly, only the most conscientious of nomads painted using washable paint on paper bags, while wearing smocks).  

3)  My girl draws a mean goose (which starts with G, just like Grace).  

  

4)  The "only things" my son can think of that start with the same letter as his name are "Megamind" and "Metroman."  The only things.

5)  Math is more fun when you do it in pajamas.  But we all probably already knew that, if we'd ever just thought about it.  What you might not have known is how good killer whales are at addition.  

6)  My daughter has some unfortunate perfectionist tendencies and her best is never good enough for her.  My son, on the other hand, does not share this problem and his mantra appears to be "Whatever, it's no biggie."  Somehow, we've got to meet in the middle.

Most importantly, I think we undid some damage this week - damage caused in large part by a school that asked parents to forego telling their children to "Have fun" in favor of "Work hard."  

So far, at our house, I think we're managing to do both and it is lovely.