The High-Heeled Homeschooler

This year I am in the educational sweet spot, my friends.

Since my anxiety levels are in the clinical range, I was trembling when I  pulled my kids out of public school three years ago. I watched that school bus drive off with the other neighborhood kids, and my stomach twisted. It stayed twisted for about a year. I felt the weight of the responsibility every day. I could practically feel cortisol coursing through my veins, pounding against the tips of my fingers and toes.

There were many wonderful things about homeschooling that year; don’t get me wrong. My boys were reading voraciously. They were discussing history on levels I never dreamed possible. They were doing well in many ways, but I never quite felt like I had my head above water.

Year two was a little better. I didn’t feel so much like a stranger in a strange land. I enrolled the older boys in a two-day-a-week tutorial. They were taking Latin and art, chemistry, history, and language arts. Again, a lot was going well, but something was still off. My middle son missed the hustle and bustle of our local school and always wondered what he was missing. My youngest son was having some behavioral difficulties and has since been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. I was trying to be all things to all people, and frankly, I was going down with the ship. I wasn’t doing anything very well. I look back on that year and see that I was soldiering through a mild depression. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other some days.

After much thought and prayer, my husband and I decided we would send our younger two boys back to public school the following year. We were taking customized education a step further. Our oldest child really wanted to stay home and continue at the tutorial where he’d made such good friends and such academic progress. I thought the one-on-one time with him might be helpful for us both.

So here we are more than three-quarters of the way through this year, and everyone is thriving. Our fifth grader loves being home, and I feel like I’m actually doing a good job with him. Our fourth grader is loving the local school, and he’s doing beautifully there. The first six weeks were a big adjustment, but since then he’s been like a fish in water. His teacher is outstanding. I couldn’t be more pleased. Our kindergartner is doing well, too. The structure and routine has been a big help for him, and the peer modeling he gets in his classroom is helping, too. His frustration levels have dropped as he’s seen that he’s not supposed to be able to do the same work his brothers are doing. He constantly compared himself to his brothers when everyone was home.

I like that our family is taking advantage of the pros of both homeschooling and traditional schooling and that we’re finding our own way. Isn’t that what homeschooling is all about? What approach is working for you?

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