Barefoot and Pregnant
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve spent the past several months beginning to navigate the treacherous waters of homeschooling. I haven’t blogged much on it, mostly because I’m not too invested in the endeavor. I mean, I am invested in my child’s future, but homeschooling, for me, isn’t really about some great ideological battle. Or at least, it wasn’t.
In the beginning, the Ogre wanted to homeschool and I said, “great, if it’s that important to you, you can be the one to do it.” And he said he would. And then I realized I was being a petulant nitwit but decided to continue being one. Finally I made a concession: if, by the time our eldest reached the age of schooling (5-ish or thereabouts), we could neither find nor afford an appropriate private school, I would homeschool, provided he took control of the math and the Latin.
Lo and behold, Sienna reached the age of 5 and we had, within our grasp, not only an affordable (and by affordable I mean free) school within our grasp, it was an excellent school. My alma matter, as it happens, and the school where my mother still works. But we also knew that we would only be living here for six months, and felt that it was unfair to start Sienna at a school which she would have to be plucked out of come Christmas-time. I also knew that we would not be able to afford to send her to a decent private school when we move to Florida, so I knew that I would have to swallow the bitter pill and commence with homeschooling. Somewhat recklessly, I said to the Ogre mid-August, “I might as well just start now.”
And start now I did. Or then. Whatever. I got online, ordered some random textbooks, signed Sienna up for a co-op, sat at the foot of the co-op’s foundress and took copious, feverish notes, cried into my wine at night about just how much work it was to figure out which books to order, let alone how to cram the knowledge within into a 5-year-old’s head, and overall spent a few solid weeks dreading the journey we were about to embark on.
Then a funny thing happened. I had no great stakes in the homeschooling thing. I viewed it, more or less, as something I was being forced into by lack of funds and lack of a permanent home. But other people, as it turned out, did have stakes in it. Or against it, I should say. I found myself in the peculiar position of being forced to defend a decision I wasn’t all that fond of.
Mostly the objection was the commonest of common arguments against homeschooling, the one I personally find the most banal and unconvincing, but which seems to get the rest of the world’s panties in a collective twist. The socialization argument.
“Sienna needs friends!” our detractors insisted. “She’s a social child and she needs other peers!” No objection there. We’ll find her play groups. Co-ops. Put her in ballet or something. This argument doesn’t hold much water for either the Ogre or I, mostly because the true fear at the bottom of this argument means next to nothing to us. The fear that “she’ll be weird!” my sister, never one to mince words, finally expressed. “Look how weird all the homeschoolers were that we grew up around!”
Well, sure, the homeschoolers I knew growing up were, in fact, weird. One of them was my best friend. She was a little strange. Still is. The kids I knew in college who had been homeschooled were a little odd. Dreamy, mostly, sort of nerdy. Preferred to read rather than gossip. Weren’t the greatest at the popularity game. Made jokes about Platonic theory in Latin that no one else understood.
Basically, all those weird homeschool kids are exactly the kind of people I want my children to grow up to be. I want them to be weird. I’m weird. The Ogre is weird. Why in the world would I want my children to fit into the social sphere of our country, at this time? Sure, I want them to be able to talk to others. I want them to be able to converse, to understand, to interact with the world around them. I understand that that part of socialization is important. But in my mind, that comes down to the parents and their interactions with the world much more than it does the interactions of the child’s peers.
The greatest lesson I learned from most of my peers in school was the lesson I never want my children to learn: fit in. Be like us. Like the music we like, dress the way we dress, watch the movies we watch, or you will be utterly persecuted until your hormonal heart can stand no more. There is no room, in the modern-day adolescent school-room, for differences. For weirdness. There wasn’t room for an awkward little girl in thick glasses to prefer reading to playing tetherball. There wasn’t room for a painfully shy young man to not quite grasp the ins and outs of social interactions. Why should there be room for our children? There won’t be. I don’t want my children to be shoved into some cookie-cutter Hannah Montana shaped mold by the pressure cooker of their peers. I want to give them room to grow, to explore, to learn, to bounce around without being labelled ADHD and being pumped full of Ritalin, to be awkward without being sent out for Asberger’s testing, to get acne in peace, to not agonize over their broken-out shoulders when the spring formal is only days away, to be free to express a preference for classical music over Lady Gaga without being labelled a fag. I want them to grow up not even hearing that particularly grotesque term. I don’t want them to know the latest ways to insult people the most painfully. I want them to grow up and see the beauty of the world without having that beauty twisted into perversions by other children who have grown up too fast and too hard.
I’m not saying it’s like that everywhere. And I’m certainly not telling those of you whose children are in a traditional school-room setting that that’s what’s happening to your children. It may not be. I have no idea. I’m just telling you that that’s how it was for me. That’s how it was for the Ogre. And we want to preserve our children from that.
So that was it for that objection. Without fully realizing it, my forced defense of our decision was actually what convinced me that I was pro-homeschooling, theoretically.
In actuality, I had my doubts about my ability to homeschool my children. They were serious doubts. I’ve got a temper. I’ve talked about this in the past. I get upset easily, and quickly, and I was pretty sure that my tendency to frustration would destroy both my attempts to homeschool and my relationship with the children I was trying to teach at the same time.
Lo and behold, I wasn’t the only one concerned about my ability to homeschool. These were the objections which stung. The ones which made me angry. No one ever came straight out and said, “You aren’t capable of this.” But more than one person hinted at it. I couldn’t have done it. I did a bad job when I tried. What are you going to do with your other two? It will be harder than you think.
These were also the ones which made me determined. As far as our immediate future goes, I don’t see myself having much of an option other than homeschooling. Public school is not an option for our family. Private school is way beyond our means. And so, if I fail, I really fail. I have to find a way to homeschool.
We were a few weeks in before I had my first real test. Sienna was just learning to blend sounds, going from single-sounds like “c” and “a” to sounds like “ca”. She kept saying, “c-uh” and then the “a”. I tried to be patient. When that failed, I tried to grit my teeth and pretend that I was being patient. I knew, right then, that what I should do is give her a snack and a break and come back to it later, but I kept on. I wanted her to get it right. I felt that she could. That she should. So I determined to make her.
Even before I was outwardly angry, she could feel it. She began to stop looking at the book and started watching my face, judging by my reaction if she was doing it right or not. Her voice dropped to a hesitant whisper, and finally she began to flinch away from me as my voice got sharper and more demanding. Finally I snapped, barked at her that she was obviously not trying hard enough, and then sent her to another room to give myself time to calm down.
It took a while, but after about twenty minutes I gave her a snack. I let her eat in peace, then we sat back down and I apologized. I told her that I was wrong to get upset, and that of course I knew that she was trying hard, and that this was an extremely difficult thing to learn and she was doing wonderfully. Her face cleared, she visibly relaxed, and almost immediately she began blending the sounds properly.
Since then there have been a few other such moments, but I’ve caught myself earlier and earlier each time. Last time, when she was reading a short story and kept forgetting that “d” didn’t make the “p” sound, I managed to laugh a little and tease her about calling the little boy in the story a “sap” instead of calling him “sad”. She laughed with me, and got it right after that.
We’re learning together, Sienna and I. We’re learning patience, she along with me. We’re learning to work together and understand each other in a way that we haven’t had to before. I’m learning to read her, the smallest clenching of her fingers signaling frustration, a sigh that means we need to take a break. Throwing her head in her hands, and how all she needs is a little encouragement to lift it back out and try again. She’s learning to read the shades of my voice, and when I get frustrated and my tone gets flat she reminds me that maybe it’s time for a break for me as well.
I’m learning that I’m capable of a whole lot more than people give me credit for, and a whole lot more than I’ve ever given myself credit for. I’m learning to see my daughter in a new light, to try and figure out how her mind works and why. I love seeing her face light up when she gets a complicated word right or when she surprises me by reading a word off a shirt or a sign. I love the way she’s fascinated with science and the way her mind so easily grasps concepts like air pressure that even my adult mind struggles with. I love this exchange we had last week, when I was sick and didn’t feel like doing school at all:
Me: Sienna, let’s skip school today and just play.
Sienna: Umm…ookay. I guess. But can we do a little bit of school? I like sitting with you.
That’s enough to win me over to homeschooling. It may not last forever. We may re-evaluate in a few years and find that I’m burned out and not teaching effectively, or that one of our children really does need a teacher who is not their mother in order to learn. But the most surprising thing about my reluctant homeschooling experiment has been how much I love it. I hope I continue to love it. I hope I manage to figure out how to effectively teach each and every one of our children. But even if I don’t, I’m glad I didn’t listen to all the objections that were thrown at us. Because for us, for right now, this is the right thing.
Also, there’s this:
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