Ponderings

I spent today with a homeschooling family that I have known for years. They have kids in similar ages to ours and we, (mom and I, and kids with kids) ,have hit it off quite well since the beginning. We were gathered around my kitchen table today discussing our homeschooling successes and failures. This family has great kids, and the parents are really in-tune with them, and totally devoted to educating them the best way possible, at home. They left after a very enjoyable afternoon together, and I began to think about our conversation.....

Do you remember when you were pregnant with your first child, and you read everything you could find about raising kids, and you asked everyone you ever knew who had kids all about it? You talked about it with your mom, and his mom. You talked about it with grandparents, siblings with kids, people you met at the doctors office, people at the mall... Just anyone and everyone. And you read. You read Dr. Sears and Dr. Spock and Dr. Brazelton and all the others who were "experts" in the field. You bought all the things the books told you that you needed and learned all the "schedules" and rules for feeding and sleeping. You learned how to discipline and how not to do that as well.

Then you had the baby.

About two weeks into having a newborn, you threw out the first book, and the first scheduling system. About two months into it, you stopped reading anything at all. By the end of the second year, when you were thinking about more kids, you realized that most of the things you had bought for the first one were never used because they didn't fit into your lifestyle. Somewhere along the way, you started to adapt and become in tune with your heart and your child, and you just parented. You still worried about "milestones" , but you stopped using Dr. Brazelton's schedule and Dr. Sears' sleeping rules and started using your own. You did what felt right. You started relying on the "professionals" when you hit a major block that you couldn't fix, but otherwise you just parented every day.

Homeschooling is like that for some of us.

We decide to do it. We read about it, learn about it, ask about it, talk about it with everyone who knows anything about it. We get books and schedules and lists and websites and methods from everywhere. We sit down and plan how it will look, using what the "professionals" tell us will work. We plan and purchase. We spend hours debating Latin or Greek, Saxon or Singapore, spelling power or sequential spelling, phonics or whole language, cursive or not... on and on it goes.

Then we start actually homeschooling.

By two weeks, we have tossed out our math book and are on a new "board" talking to some "pros" to find out what we should use next. By two months, we are re-working our schedule. But we never make the connection that we did with our newborn. We never seem to get to that place that allows us to trust our own instinct and just "do it" the way that feels right. We experiment with other people's schedules and curriculums, we try on their methods. Somewhere around the second year, I think most of us find what feels right, but we abandon it pretty quickly because we talk to someone who is doing "more" or doing something that feels like we should be doing it too.

My thoughts are rambling here, but my friend today was struggling with what I think, many of us struggle with along the way. We spend so much time trying to do what is "right", what is "popular" , what the book says, what the experts say, that we forget to look at our children and see what our hearts tell us is right for them.

This is my fifth year at home with the boys, and I am comfortable with myself and with them. I am using resources that I chose specifically for each of them, and not because someone else thinks they are great. I am using a schedule that works for our family, even though it doesn't match the schedule in any book or on any website I have ever seen. I am not covering Latin or Greek, vocabulary, art or music. I am comfortable with that. My kids are making forward progress in the areas that I have made a priority, and I am not second guessing myself.

I think we need to recall how we learned to parent our children, and apply it to how we educate them. Read, learn, listen, and then do what feels right to YOU, even if no one else seems to be doing it that way.

End of rambling.