So Embarrassing

On the way into Colonial Williamsburg today, I noticed that you could rent costumes for the day.  “Guys, we can rent costumes!  Who wants to get costumes tomorrow?”

Ezra couldn’t wait for me to get the entire question out before he blurted out, “I do!  I want one, Mom!”

All three of the older boys declined.  I was surprised.  My costume-loving older son didn’t want to dress up and carry a musket?

Later, when I asked who wanted to join in the military exercises, Ezra jumped up and ran over by himself.  Not so the older boys.

Ugh.

Finally, when I was groovin’ to the drum and fife corps, Zach kept pulling on my arm and asking me to stop.

“What’s the problem, Buddy?  You know I love drums.”

“Mom, please, you’re embarrassing me!”

No.  This can’t be happening yet.

It’s so boring to be a bored tween, a snot who can’t be seen having fun with grown ups and little kids.  Isn’t this supposed to be one of the benefits of homeschooling?  By keeping kids out of the artificial, single-age groupings we create in classrooms, they are not supposed to be as susceptible to peer pressure.

Putting kids born in the same year in one classroom, sequestered from old people and babies, from brothers and sisters and people who are eighteen months older than they are, is an entirely modern phenomenon.  A phenomenon that means that kids don’t learn as much from older role models and don’t see themselves as responsible for younger kids.  As a classroom teacher for nearly a decade, I understand the system, especially when I think about being responsible for more than twenty kids..  But when I worked in a middle school guidance department for a year, I thought, “This is crazy.  Why would we put all of these kids in the same building?  It’s a recipe for high drama and tears, at best, and bullying and misery, at worst.”

As a parent, I had hoped that opting out of that system, at least for awhile, might help us avoid some of the worst of it.  Well, for now, Zach is still quite concerned with what his peers think.  He doesn’t always know how to understand or navigate what they expect; but even Zach knows that in our image-obsessed society, it is not cool for your mom to get down with the militia band.

Too bad for him that I am no longer obsessed with how I look to all of the other kids who are obsessed with how they look.  Instead, I am a middle-aged woman who doesn’t get out much. I ignored Zach’s imploring, and kept right on rockin’ with the corps.  And tomorrow, I will proudly walk through town in colonial dress, holding hands with the son who still knows how to have fun.  That’s not cruel, is it?