The Home School Switch

Whew or “Peweph” as Mackenzie pronounces it. The home school switch is proving to be a tricky transistion. Trying to get my daughters, mostly oldest, to buy that I can be mama and teacher. I am getting A LOT of flack. “uugh, I don’t want to do school” and “I don’t know how to write”. Man. How do we do this?

I am struggling today. Feeling irritable and trying to figure out what is going on. The girls would have started school today. We ran into the mother of one of Mackenzie’s friends from school.   She had only supportive words to say, but reminded me that school started. My girls were rambunctious all the way through the store and have been picking at each other for the last few days. It feels like the end of summer. It is like they have an internal clock that says, “we are bored, time for school”. It happens every year at this time. Maybe it is me? Maybe I am bored; maybe I am ready for some space from the kids and they from each other. This makes be feel anxious about our trip. If they are sick of each other now, what are we going to do on the road?   And then I think, we will have structure. We will do exercise in the morning followed by 2 hours of reading, writing and math. Here are a couple of the texts we are using to help guide our year, What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know
and What Your Third Grader Needs to Know.
We will have structured quiet, reflective time in the afternoon to draw pictures of our day or write about the adventures we had. I need to have faith that this will help us all feel more grounded, get along better. I know that part of my irritability is not enough exercise. I am naming the intention to make the daily structure, healthy eating and exercise happen. We all need it.

The other part of my irritability, I think, is the judgment that I am feeling from family and strangers today. The cashier in the grocery store gave me a look of displeasure when he saw me walk up to the line with my two kids. “didn’t they start school?” he says. “not yet” I said in a sing-song-ey voice, trying brush it off and skip to the part where I confirm I have found everything I need. “what school do they go to?” he continued.   Uugh. I could lie and say the name of some random school but some how I feel obligated to explain why they aren’t in school yet and then proceed to have an awkward conversation about our trip and defend our “dangerous” and “crazy” decision to travel around the world for a year. To endure the lifted eyebrows of an older man who clearly does not understand what we are doing or why we would choose to travel with our kids in this dangerous, scary world. I don’t think this would have bothered me so much if I had not just spoken with my mother a few hours earlier who was sharing gossip about our extended family “gossiping” with each other about our decision with the same emotional tone. “dangerous” “risky” “Irresponsible”. It makes me think about the culture of fear in which Americans live and about our media’s talent of hooking our attention through catchy-fear based headlines. The trans-generational message that you must buy a house, have 2.5 kids, a dog, and follow gender roles that have been laid out before you by previous generations. I’m not saying this is a bad life. I have been living it. It is a beautiful life. I have found much happiness in watching my kids learn to ride their bikes in our street, in taking them to their first day of school. I am likely to return to this life AND I want to experience an adventure. I want to see the world, the different cultures that I am suppose to understand from reading about them in text books starting in kindergarten through graduate school. I want to live in different countries to really expand my understanding of what diversity means.

Believe me, I am not naïve about what we are doing. I understand the inherent risks. I also understand the amazing ways we are all going to change. Develop a better capacity for patience and adversity. Gel as a family in ways we could never do living this life of running from place to place, school drop off to school pick up to swimming practice to gymnastics to a quick dinner before homework and bed, only to do it all over again the next day, each of us working ourselves into little islands under the same roof. Just because we are making a choice in our lives that others view as different, does it make it “wrong”? I believe you make your own happiness and the only thing limiting you, is you. If you hate your job, who says you have to stick with your original job decision? I think it is only yourself, or some obscure cultural norm that you follow.

3 thoughts on “The Home School Switch

  1. You’re dangerous…. I would say that because you’re cognizant of these things it the inverse. You and your wife know the girls are most important. For those that will be naysayers; they can either speak with you and understand, or you can write off their opinions.

  2. I think what you’re doing is absolutely brilliant and am so excited for you! Change, instability and insecurity are terrifying things for our society but our lives become so much better when we confront them and move through the fear. While I don’t remember a lot about the 6 weeks spent in Costa Rica as a 7 year old, I remember enough and it definitely made a positive impact on who I am today.
    Thank you for letting us follow along and helping me think outside our own box.

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