Funny how these crash and burn things are cyclical.
If I look back at blogs posts over the years there is a clear rollercoaster pattern of 'we are doing great...we are doing great...we are doing great' followed by 'What am I doing?! This is madness!'
If you're coming here, new to home education you might ask, 'Does it get any easier?'
Yes.
Most certainly it does.
Or like parenting, if it doesn't get easier, it certainly gets different.
Those first couple of years were a scary leap into the unknown. Although at the back of my head I did know we had the safety net of the option to go to school.
And I suppose that safety net is still there if we wanted it. Only now it's different. My children are different. The whole family is different because of the journey we've made. And somehow school, with its targets, drills, league tables, inflexibility and day-to-day monotonous no-pain-no-gain slog seems so irrelevant to learning that I can't even quite visualise what sort of value it has in a modern society (apart from free childcare).
So, here we are again, refreshed and enthused. The sun is shining (after 3 days of rain, no doubt caused by the announcement of a hosepipe ban). We have guests for the weekend so everyone is in mad frenzy clearing floors and sorting beds and in about 3 hours I will, no doubt be yelling at the kids for some minor misdemeanor, and life will be back to normal.
5 comments:
We are in our third year of home-ed and the journey so far has lead to so much change for our family and sometimes I wonder if it has actually had a more profound effect on me rather than the children! Whilst the school option is there it feels so far removed from how we view life and learning now.
Brilliant post, BMF and so true. For me, the luxury of HE is that there is enough time that even a week of bad days can be dismissed as 'this too will pass'.
I know I've learned at least as much from HE as the children. I've certainly learned a lot more about them than most parents of schooled children know
That 'option' is always there yes.... (but not really eh? Not now!!!) Rock on freedom. I know it's not freedom 'from' the kids - but it's freedom from nazi bells and teachers' cardigans and other parents' tracksuit bottoms etc A freedom worth fighting for in my view.
I always get down mid to late winter, the low light levels don't suit me at all. Add HE to the mix and you can guarantee February/March time is when I veer between despair and rage and equanimity is as far away as midsummer.
I used to run courses in Loss and Bereavement and one of the grief theories we'd explore was that grief is like an onion which you keep peeling the layers off and gradually watch diminish. It strikes me that parenting is rather the opposite - like the growing of a bulbil into a bulb, each year another layer develops with always some familiarity but also new thingsto notice too...
Oh yes, great to hear you were enjoying the unexpectedly sunny days but hey, where have they gone since you posted???
I'm not a fan of low light levels either and yearn for April after the madness of November and December, and the greyness of Jan-March. This past year I've overstretched myself and, not being the most organised or disciplined person, there was always the risk I'd crash and burn when my energy levels dropped. But, hey, life goes on :)
I think the sunny day came and went! Very stormy here, feels like camping at the seaside except that we are about 120 miles from the nearest bit of coastline!
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