I'd like to be able to say that every day is a wonderful day when you are homeschooling. If I did, it would be a lie. There are days when I think to myself, "Wow! This is SOOO much better than if they were in school." Other days, like yesterday, I am ready to chuck it all in and hand them over.
Here is a blog post I did when we were first starting this homeschool adventure as an example of a great day.
"We had a really nice day today of home-schooling. Jessi started the day by reading her very first chapter book before breakfast (American Girl - Thanks Sara and Lisa!)! After breakfast, Jessi decided she wanted to scrub the big bathtub (an idea she got from a friend at a play-date last week... gotta love Montessori!). She did this, helped me to clean up the playroom, and then we did some study of sentence structure and capitalization. From there we got side-tracked onto the study of whales (that in-itself is an outgrowth of our “Hawaii” study). Three books and several You-Tube video’s later, I think we’ve got a pretty good handle on whale anatomy, habits, sounds, and history. One more American Girls book later and a nice snack, and we were off to get Noah. I’ve found Spelling really works well in the car (of all places), so we did that and listened to a couple of free audio stories on the way, then picked up Noah and a friend of his and came back home. Noah and his friend played while Jessi and I made gingerbread cookies (the first time I ever did that in August!) and decorated them with icing (all another Jessi idea). Jessi also found time to do a little math work and experiment with oil pastel crayons. She also created a nice drawing to send off to the local kids newspaper.
So you see, our days can be extremely busy! It wasn’t exactly traditional schooling, but we got in Language Arts, Reading, Spelling, Math, Science, History, Art, Home Ec., and Technology!
Tomorrow is her last day of Nature Camp for the week, so I’m sure we won’t get nearly as much done, but after a day like today, I think maybe I (we) can do this."
This is the sunny happy side of homeschooling that I think we all want to point to. Sadly, the dark and scary side also exists. Yesterday things came a head in our house when I tried to tackle some math with Jessi. She had had a huge meltdown the day before and I said I would sit with her and we would do it together and hopefully we could avert the meltdown and make some progress. Math has been our weak spot and sore point since the beginning. Jessi has developed this very unfortunate tendency to loose all composure when faced with any math she can't do and get immediately. It's a particular problem with bright children who are used to having everything be easy. Add a few tween hormones and the fact that mom usually gets all the flak, and you can see where this is going.
We sat down and I had us both take a deep breath and reminded her to remain calm, we would work it out and it's ok to not get it right away. We had been working through Singapore Math and having occasional bow-ups, but I had just started her on "Life of Fred: Fractions" in the hope that she would just love it and we would have less stress. Huh. Not so. We made it through Chapter 6 without too much trouble. We then delved into the "Bridge", a little quiz given every few chapters to see if the students remember what was covered. Well, she started out great, she knew how to solve the problem but made a mess of her numbers and got the wrong answer. It all went downhill from there. Pretty soon she is crying, yelling at me, refusing to take a breath and let me answer her and/or try to explain. Once the crying and screaming starts, there is no rational thought, and she worked herself up into such a state of confusion and me into such a state of frustration that I had to send her to her room so I wouldn't strangle her. So, now she is upstairs crying and hating me (It's all my fault... it's always my fault.) and I, in spite of my fuming hopeless frustration, calmly ask my son to complete his writing so that we could make it to the park to see their friends that day. He must have felt he needed to get in on the action, because he chose that moment to get all frustrated and mad about his writing and threw the pencil across the room in a fit of anger. A better mom would have kept her cool, but I didn't. I yelled at him and told him he couldn't start emulating his sister and to just do his (blank blank) writing already or we weren't going anywhere that day. So now he is crying. Uggg! Bad Mommy! Bad, bad Mommy! "I'm a total mess-up at teaching my kids, clearly I can't teach math anyway. Maybe I better find someone else to do it, because I just can't do this anymore." This is what is going through my head. So I emailed our homeschool group and asked for some local tutors. The response was immediate and so heartwarming. Between all the wonderful people who offered resources and encouragement and all the wonderful people at the park that day who shared their own stories and solutions, I realized (yet again), that none of this is new. Everyone has those days, those moments. This behavior is not too terribly abnormal. I came back feeling so much calmer and with a more healthy perspective about the whole thing.
My husband offered to do the math teaching for a while. Sometimes his explanations are better, and maybe she'll be more civil with him and we can break this awful, awful cycle. I know it will all work out in the end. I may be a dry husk of a person when she is done sucking all the energy and life out of me, but we will get through it (You know I'm joking, right? I love my bright, stubborn, creative daughter even when she is having temper tantrums more appropriate to a toddler.) I can laugh about it already, but sometimes it's hard to step back and get that perspective when you are in the thick of things. I can't say how many times being able to talk to other people in a similar position has helped me. My fellow moms helped me through the difficult time of new-baby-dom (MOMS Club of America is wonderful!) and now my fellow homeschoolers are a great well of experience and knowledge to draw upon. I'm not even a super social person, but having that support group has been so key for us. It's days like this that I think without them we never would have made it this far.
I recount this experience so that if you've had a day like this you'll know that you are not alone. Raising kids whether they go to school every day, or stay home to learn, is difficult. It's probably the most difficult job there is. There will be good days and there will be bad days. Feel free to share if you feel the urge.
No comments:
Post a Comment