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.