Homeschooling

As a mom, I have kids. I’ve always wanted to homeschool them, but I’ve also always wanted them to have “normal” childhoods, and that meant going to school. You can’t do both simultaneously, so I had to choose one, and I chose the path of least resistance. I sent them off to school. 

But then the pandemic (2020) happened. I’ve had time to reconsider that choice and now I find myself with the perfect opportunity to switch. So I’m going for it. We’re going for it.

Presently I’m having a hard time with two obstacles. Or maybe two main clusters of obstacles.

One is the legal bullshit. There’s a lot of paperwork (electronic and otherwise) needed to pull a child from the tangle of public education. It’s a headache and a nuisance and does not play well to my strengths. It’s the bureaucracy of life, something that seemed to follow me everywhere until I accepted it’s just a part of living in this country. Paperwork is tied to everything. From the legal hoops involved in a name change to the invoices demanded of corporate gigs, I’m always filling something out. But it’s not following me around, it’s just already everywhere I might think of going. 

It all feels like a huge wall in front of me, but I know that, while it’s a hassle, it can be broken down into manageable items that I can work through one at a time. 

The other is the emotional bullshit. I’m worried that the principal will be sad when he finds out. The secretary will scoff. The girls’ previous teachers will take it personally. Guilt and Sentimentality weigh me down and gum up my works.

And then it flips. It suddenly seems all so slight, seeing it written out in a handful of sentences. These little flashes of imagined scenarios are small tugs on my heartstrings that I’m pulling on myself.*

And of course, in a way, that’s what I want (sort of). I mean, it’s better than receiving cold indifference at our choice, right?

Yes, Public Educator and/or Staff Member, weep at our absence!

And then there is the fear that I won’t be able to see it if/when things do go “wrong.” That I won’t recognize it. Conversely, there’s the fear that anything that makes them unique might be seen as bad. Of course, these are possibilities for the publicly educated too. There’s no way to make it unavoidable. So really the fear is that if/when something goes wrong, it’ll be all in my hands— the fault can’t be shared with anyone else if I’m on my own. And having the government do it for me is more about covering my ass than anything else**

So either I give in to fear and the pressure to maintain the status quo by keeping them in school or I embrace the big feelings that go with the unknown, both from myself and other people. But as I get older I’m learning that big feelings, just like paperwork, are going to be waiting for me wherever I go.

*And here I am editing this a few days later, already beginning to wonder if it’s just the size of the feelings more than the shape they are taking. That the issues I have are mostly about accepting that all of this only happens once. Uh-oh, better finish this up before I do a 180 and the whole thing

**And yeah, I’m jumping from thought to thought without enough connective tissue, and being too vague. I see it now. I’m guessing this is the kind of thing my English teacher was talking about when he wrote “unpack” on my essays. I’m sorry Mr. Gaucher, but I need to hit post on this one and begin work on the next.