Amy Welborn on why she is switching to un/home/roamschooling.

From Charlotte Was Both:

I highly recommend having babies in your mid-forties.  Being the parent of a second grader when you’re 52 is an awesome way, not only of working with @God to make more @humanbeings (always fantastic), but also of tricking yourself into thinking you are pretty much the same as the hot little 28-year olds driving their Rav4′s and XC90′s  to carpool and that you are not actually, you know, so freakin’  old.

But, that wasn’t my point.

My point was that I have been doing the – (deep breath)  – school supplies  - does your uniform fit? – your teacher wants what? we just bought all the school supplies – book covers? Why do we have to do bookcovers?  - welcome to our SCHOOL FAMILY –  parent/teacher meeting – beginning of the year orientation – parent/teacher conferences – giftwrap sales – please return these papers signed on Tuesdays – please return THESE papers signed on Mondays – I have to find an article for music class – but I get extra credit if you go to the PTO meeting! – make an adobe model out of sugar cubes – is your field trip shirt the green one or the blue one? – yes, I signed your planner – wait,don’t throw that away, we need the box tops – SCHOOL FAMILY – you need a check for what? – do you have hot lunch today or not? – candygrams – wait, is it a jeans day today – boosterthon? Try not to run too many laps, okay?  - please send cupcakes/cookies/goldfish but NO PEANUTS – POSTERBOARD – SCHOOL FAMILY.

- thing for twenty-five (25) years.

I get tired just  reading that!  

Occasionally you will run into a woman who says she won't have kids because of what it does to your body. I'm sure there are other reasons for which this is just shorthand or representative small talk, but I've always found the comment silly.   Of course, one's body will eventually break down and quit on you whether you have children or not.  

 Similarly, I sometimes meet people who tell me that homeschooling "sounds exhausting."

You've got to raise your kids somehow.  Frankly, all of the ways are exhausting.  You get to pick the way you want to be exhausted, not whether you have to get exhausted.

I like my way.  

I hope you like yours, too!

Comments

[Amy Welborn]

Thanks! You're exactly right - I have a good friend here who has three kids, ages 8, 11 & 14. They're not an overachieving type of superfamily but they are active in various things. She runs herself ragged the whole school year almost every day of the week, ferrying them to practices and so on and volunteering (God bless her!). They decamp to a family place on a lake in the Northeast during the summer -the entire summer - where she blissfully does nothing, and where, at the end of summer, she starts dreading her return to exhaustion for the nine months of the school year...I think homeschooling would be relaxing for her.

[Barbara C.]

I always tell people that it's about picking your poison. I would rather struggle getting my kids to do their schoolwork early in the day than struggle with them to do homework late at night at the end of a long, exhausting day. I'd rather deal with my kids all day and have a messier house than have to get up at 7:30 (or earlier) to get people ready for the bus.

[Amy F]

Yes! I'm only a few years into formal schooling and I'm tired of it already. Our very nice, highly academic, strong-Catholic school has a reading program where kids track their books/minutes read every day and kids who meet a minimum get a medal at the end of the year. My kids read constantly -- I'm not worried about their reading. But filling out that stupid chart makes me crazy. Pretty much all the kids get the medal so we fudge the whole thing so our kids won't cry at the end of the year ceremony. This is ridiculous and I don't want to bother anymore. There are a bunch of reasons why I think we'll be homeschooling in the fall, but Amy W really nailed part of it for me.

[Dorian Speed]

So right re: everything's exhausting. I like to think I'm in charge of my own exhaustion, thanks to homeschooling.