Smrt Lernins

Remember the homeschooling mom archetypes? Today’s Secular Thursday post is the first in a series about how to play to your archetype’s strengths and plan for your archetype’s weaknesses*. Of course, few homeschoolers really fit into one category — we’re mostly a sampling of two or three (I’m Earnest Mom, with a side of Idealist Mom and a little sprinkling of Allergic Mom) — but knowing how to work around our tendencies to keep from getting hung up will only benefit us.

I’ll start with the archetype nearest and dearest to my heart butt ( because it’s possible I once got drunk after a hard day of homeschooling and had her motto tattooed there)…The Earnest Mom. A little about Earnest Mom:

The Earnest Mom — She really, really wants to be good at this. She’s absolutely certain that homeschooling was the right decision for her children. She’s equally certain that she could screw up at any moment and doom her children to a lifetime of social awkwardness and community college. She relies on the experience and expertise of other homeschoolers, especially The Organized Mom, to guide her curriculum choices. At one moment convinced the work load is much too heavy, and the next, adding logic and Bavarian folk dancing, she’s desperate to get it Right™ so that her child can be successful and well-rounded. Her motto: “Does this sound rigorous enough to you?”

I think this archetype’s weaknesses are fairly apparent. Yes, Earnest Mom is a little needy. She’s also insecure and at times quite demanding (“What’s your opinion on this?” “How do you think I’m doing on this?” “Please pause your busy day so you can address my curriculum insecurities!”) She never feels quite confident about her children’s work loads or her curricula choices, which means she does a lot of rearranging of the schedule and tends to go through multiple curricula options in a year for any given subject. This can be frustrating for the children and expensive for her. She needs a lot of feedback from those she views as “expert homeschoolers” (especially Organized Mom).

Weaknesses she has in spades, but what are Earnest Mom’s strengths? For starters, Earnest Mom isn’t usually going to be the one assuming she’s doing it right and everyone else is wrong. She’s open-minded about curricula and is willing to experiment and even completely toss something if a better option goes along. This means she’s eager to engage in discussions on curricula with other homeschoolers and take their opinions into account. She wants to do it Right™, so she won’t keep doing something that doesn’t work, just because that’s the way she’s always done it. She values a community and will usually willingly participate in an open exchange of ideas and materials.

How can Earnest Mom make the most of her strengths and turn those weaknesses into something useful? Here are some suggestions on combining strengths and weaknesses into helpful tools for Earnest Mom’s homeschooling toolbox:

• Weakness: Earnest Mom is insecure about the rigors of her curricula.  Strength: Earnest Mom values input from experienced homeschoolers.  Helpful Tool: Find a tolerant homeschooling mentor, especially one with similarly-aged and/or similarly-skilled children, who can model how s/he uses certain curricula to its utmost advantage. Feedback from someone who has been there and done that will bolster Earnest Mom’s confidence in her choices.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom replaces curricula frequently, which can become very expensive.  Strength: Earnest Mom enjoys a feeling of community with fellow homeschoolers. Helpful Tool: Look for a like-minded (or like-minded enough) group of homeschoolers for a regular curricula “open house” and meet n’ greet. Earnest Mom’s wide assortment of discarded curricula can be helpful for other homeschoolers, engendering goodwill, which helps Earnest Mom feel validated.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom feels uncertain about balance and rigor in her children’s schedule. Strength: Earnest Mom actively seeks out input, especially advice from Organized Mom, whose children’s schedules she perceives as perfectly (or nearly perfectly) balanced and rigorous. Helpful Tool:  Organized Mom’s color-coded daily schedules clearly demonstrates how her school days are balanced, allowing Earnest Mom to easily take note of the amount of academic, rest, play, etc. time in an average day. Earnest Mom can take a page from Organized Mom’s book, and develop her own color-coded schedule — a week-at-a-glance version, so that she can easily see any gaps that need to be filled. Earnest Mom will get to feel like an Organized Mom and develop more confidence in her ability to adequately meet all her children’s educational needs.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom is very self-effacing, as a coping mechanism for her insecurity. Strength: Earnest Mom has no problem confessing how incompetent she feels and years of self-effacement have made her at least remotely funny about it. Helpful Tool: Start a homeschooling blog, sharing all the ins and outs of your struggles with homeschooling. Earnest Mom’s ability to point out her own massive failures will make readers forgive her when she questions decisions made by others. Positive comments will make her feel better about herself. Negative comments will make her spend hours of introspection trying to discover areas where she could either be a better homeschooler or be funnier about not being a better homeschooler.

Hopefully, this advice will help the Earnest Moms out there. Do you like it? Is it okay advice? Was it useful? Someone please tell me I’m not failing as a homeschooler blogger! (That’s a joke right there, see?)

Tune in for our next installment, Homeschooler Archetypes: The Organized Mom.

*Lest you think I’m putting myself out there as some homeschooling expert (oh heavens, no!), I’ve been talking to other homeschooling moms who would self-identify as these categories and getting input from them on how they augment the stuff they’re best at and work around the stuff that isn’t their cup of tea. If you ever see something vaguely smart in this blog, remember that it probably came from somewhere else, as all you’ll get from here is SMRT. As I continue this series, expect to see some guest bloggers who have much better advice to give than I could ever fabricate!

When one is a liberal, secular, rigorous home educator with the inability to control one’s virtual mouth, I suppose the potential for controversy runs pretty high. I’ve never been a punch-puller or an eggshell-walker. That’s part of what makes me a great advocate and activist in several non-homeschooling areas (which I generally opt not to blog about here, though I might some day, especially if someone were to express any interest). It also makes me a great target for those who don’t cotton to any form of criticism.

I’m perfectly fine with being called judgmental, because I don’t find judgment to be a bad thing to exercise. There’s nothing wrong with setting reasonable standards of behavior, based on your experiences and ethics/morality, for the people you allow into your life. I will most certainly judge someone based on their words, actions, and/or choices. I don’t have a high tolerance for certain types of jackassery or tomfoolery, but I also don’t expect a high degree of tolerance from others. If my own brands of jackassery and tomfoolery offend you, feel free to judge.

I will not tiptoe around certain subjects, simply because someone’s feelings might be hurt when I knock their choices — choices being the key word here. Once you make the choice to think or act in a certain way, you need to be ready to stand for those choices. Own them. That means owning the fact that not everyone will approve of those choices, and developing coping mechanisms for that disapproval. “Bad choices” vs. “good choices” may be subjective, but when we make our choices public, we are willingly subjecting them to the praise or criticism of others.

I am comfortable with my own concepts of “good” and “bad” choices. I don’t expect yours to be the same, nor do I expect to change your mind or anyone else’s, but I’m not going to dance around a subject out of fear that your morals and ethics aren’t like mine. As such, I have no problem writing or reading controversial posts about:

Philosophies or ideologies
Schooling methods
Parenting choices
Family dynamics (such as valuing sons over daughters)
Religious beliefs and practices, or lack thereof
Public behavior (like making a fool of yourself at a peewee football game)

In all these areas, you have a choice. If I think that choice is dumb, I’ll probably say something (though I’m most likely going to say it here, not on your blog, because I don’t like kicking up a fuss in someone else’s yard). You have ultimate control over those areas. You can change any one of them. Because it’s something over which you have power, and because it’s something you choose to make public, it’s something I feel is within the purview of public criticism. I don’t expect any different from you, however, and I won’t get my pretty plus-sized panties in a wad because you criticize me in those areas. Perhaps you have more grace that I or you ascribe to the notion of never judging anyone, ever, no matter how off the charts their actions may be, mote/beam and all that. If you don’t have something nice to say, however, you’re still perfectly welcome to come sit by me.

I’m not going to write (or speak) negatively about someone on the basis of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, abilities/disabilities, physical features (including height and weight), sex, gender, sexual orientation, or any other aspect intrinsic to their being. I believe humans inherently have worth, regardless of what they look like, their roots, or who they love. I won’t tolerate sexist, racist, homophobic, or other bigoted comments*. You’re spared those particular offenses on this blog and I won’t participate in a discussion where that kind of language is bandied about. I won’t waste my time on a bigot.

It’s also worth noting that when I write with “flowery prose and glittering generalities”** about systems and methods and organizations, I am aware there are real, individual people within those, with many individual merits, to whom those generalities don’t apply. I am able to think the idea of young earth creationism is rather ludicrous, while simultaneously having great respect for the intelligence and humor of an individual who believes in a young earth. I can think unschooling is a flawed educational philosophy overall, while acknowledging the well-brought-up and well-educated children that resulted from a particular unschooler’s implementation of that philosophy.

Most importantly, I know I am as absurd as any of you, probably more so. The very basis of this blog was to lay bare my own inadequacies as a homeschooler, mother, and person for the sake of personal introspection, community dialog, or a good old fashioned point and laugh. I am an innately flawed individual, inviting critique and even criticism through my decision to blog about my thoughts and experiences. I won’t cry, stomp my feet, throw a hissy, delete your comments, or come throw stones at you in your own blog if I don’t like what you have to say about me. If someone’s laughing at me, I’m probably laughing at me longer and louder. I don’t dish what I can’t take. I don’t dish what I don’t dish at myself.

Them there’s the ground rules, folks, straight up and on the level. I’ve never been particularly good at subtlety. I am what I am, like it or lump it. If you find yourself offended, just move right along, because this isn’t the blog for you. If you find yourself wanting to take me to task, however, step on up to the plate. You throw it and I’ll swing at it, and we’ll let the other readers decide whether I hit, miss, or foul out.

*To be perfectly honest, I will put up with a teensy tad of Yankee-bashing, but only because the victor writes the history and they’ve had a good 100+ years of Southern-bashing and making fun of my accent to build up a little karma.
**As my AP US History teachers use to accuse us of slipping into our papers.

If I have any other Michael Clay Thompson curriculetes* out there reading my blog, your input on this would be most welcome.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to get Captain Science rolling on his new MCT language arts curriculum. We have the whole Town level at our disposal, so any topic staging I do won’t have to revolve around the ordering of and waiting for books to arrive.

The recommended order of events seems to be:

1. Start the four-part grammar text (Grammar Town).
2. Halfway through grammar text, start the Latin-based vocabulary (Caesar’s English I).
3. Upon completion of the grammar text, begin writing (Paragraph Town), poetry (Building Poems), and practice workbook (Practice Town).
4. Upon completion of writing/poetry texts, start next level of grammar text (Grammar Voyage).

Is my understanding of the recommended order of text introduction (per this elemetary curriculum guide) correct?

Because Captain Science has such a good foundation of grammar already, I am considering starting him with the Latin-based vocabulary at the same time as the grammar, then alternating writing and poetry once the grammar is completing. I don’t forsee completion of Grammar Town taking any great length of time. Any strong recommendations for or against these plans?

I suppose I could just scatter the books around on the floor and let Captain Science chicken-peck at them at his own pace, but I guess I’m just the conventional type.

*There is something practically athletic about developing rigorous curricula for our classically educated children, isn’t there? I suppose we could also be curriculists or curriculeers, but that’s not nearly so awe-inspiring.

Let’s just put this out there. Compared to other homeschoolers, you are woefully inadequate.

I’m not speaking to any specific “you,” because it would take too long to address each of you to whom this applies individually (as it applies universally), but to the general “you,” which also includes me*. You are a woefully inadequate homeschooler, and if you didn’t realize that, you haven’t talked to enough other homeshoolers. You may feel pretty good about your current course load or you may, like Earnest Mom here, always feel like you’re doing slightly less than you ought to be, but one good conversation (or forum thread) with a pack of other homeschoolers will make it clear to you: compared to them, you are doing it wrong.

I’m sure we all have our categories of homeschoolers towards whom we feel slightly superior academically. I confess, when I see people writing about either “unschooling” (especially “radical unschooling”) or using certain “Bible-centered curricula” from certain publishers, I have a brief moment of feeling our academics are rigorous enough by comparison. That is the crux of it, though, isn’t it? It’s always “by comparison.” Whenever I feel good by comparison, you can be sure that someone else is going to come along and by comparison make me feel like I’m trying to educate my children with three crayons, a wet dictionary, and a broken sliderule.

Part of it’s financial. Most of us aren’t Pioneer Woman, with our very own one-room school house and nigh limitless money for curricula and craft supplies. At the McLernins home, we’re raising three children on a police officer’s salary, with a slightly-below-the-American-average-but-still-too-high-for-comfort level of debt and student loans to pay off for a Smrt Mama who doesn’t work outside of the home. I will always wish I could afford more curricula and supplies than I have. I want to buy the best books and the workbooks and teacher’s guides that go with them. I want full color, full content, all the volumes. I want to buy books at least a semester, and preferably a year, ahead of time to better prepare. I would like to have the full scope and sequence in my possession so I could be sure that I’m covering everything I need to cover, not discovering in 11th grade (or the 11th hour) that we missed something crucial all because I didn’t have all the curricula together in one place at one time. It could happen, ok?

I often feel inadequate about my space. I will always long for a dedicated school room, not a school room/office that used to be a dining room. I want more storage and a better filing system, both of which are limited, not by Officer Daddyman’s ability to containerize (which is, let me tell you, simply magnificent), but by space**. Space is also constrained by money, because we can’t afford a bigger house or to build an extension on this one just for the sake of having a large school room. Filthy lucre. Dirty luck.

Then there’s the time issue. Even with a color-coded schedule, I can’t find the time to fit in everything some of these homeschoolers are doing, because (back to the money issue) we’d have to travel for some things (which takes away more time) and we have to eat, sleep, and teetee sometimes! I guess if I were willing to wake my children at 6 and have them working by 6:30, we would have time for music and art every day, for more regular field trips (no, wait! that pesky money thing again!). We do unexpectedly find ourselves with an entirely empty Tuesday, as our secular homeschool co-op went to pieces this morning, so I’m hoping to shove some art in there, along with creative writing and Patchfire’s class on the human brain, for a little mini co-op of sorts.

At the end of the day, all I have to do to feel like I’m failing miserably is to log on to the Well Trained Mind forums, especially the accelerated learner board, where if you’re doing two advanced math programs with your 8-year-old, they’re doing three more advanced programs with theirs, and where if your child is reading five grade levels ahead, theirs is reading Dostoevsky in Russian by choice, and where their children are all enrolled in five extra curriculars, put in seven hours a day in academics at home, and still have time to write their novels, finish their cross-stitched pillow cases for charity, and make inlaid mosaic murals from glass tiles they made themselves using self-taught glass-blowing techniques (which the do in their specially-designed-for-homeschooling school room, with built in shelves full of the entire set of curricula they’ll use between now and their early enrollment in college at 14).

I have two options: wallow in my feelings of relative inadequacy or decide that they’re just making it all up to cover for their own crushing sense of inadequacy. Who’s with me on option #2?

*In fact, it mostly means me, but if I say “you collectively,” I feel better about myself, because I have company.
**Next week’s “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler” question comes from Officer Daddyman, and is, “Are you going to keep all of this?” with a frantic gesture at the pile of last semester’s papers.

I’d written a lovely post called “Relative Inadequacy” about never feeling like a good enough homeschooler by comparison. It was quite funny, I assure you. I thought I’d saved a draft before I left the house, though even if I hadn’t, it should have autosaved. Instead, my laptop decided to restart itself while I was out and the post disappeared. *poof* I’m not really sure what happened here, but I know I’m not happy about it. Now I can’t even muster up the energy to attempt to rewrite it.

Imagine a witty and insightful post about feeling inadequate when you hear about other people’s homeschooling, and we’ll pretend that’s what I wrote, ok?

ETA: Oh, heavens me! My post is back! I clicked a link in a chat window and when the window opened, my post was there. Yes, a magical hidden browser window contained my post, which is probably much less witty and insightful than promised, but it’s there! Oh joy oh rapture, it’s there!

I have decided to start my own 101 in 1001 project on January 1st. Are any of you other homeschooling parents out there (or non-homeschooling readers) starting this project and looking for moral support along the way? I believe community keeps you honest and on track.

My list will start on January 1, 2010 and go through September 28, 2012.

A little about 101 in 1001:

The Challenge:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on your part).

Smrt Mama’s 101 in 1001

Blogging [8 Total]
1. Participate in NaBloPoMo in 2010
2. Participate in NaBloPoMo in 2011
3. Tag all past LiveJournal entries
4. Comment on two homeschool blogs weekly for a year (104 comments, total) [weeks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
5. Find one new homeschool blog a month to add to blogroll [1/10 The Diosa Dotada Endeavor , 2/10 Classless and Lovin' It]
6. Do two “Day in the Life” photo essays and post in blog
7. Create content for three pages on Smrt Lernins [Completed: Adventures in Smrt Lernins 02/05/10, Smrt Curricula 02/04/10, and Secular Thursdays 02/05/10]
8. Update Smrt Lernins look with custom template

Breastfeeding, Pregnancy, and Birth (Education and Advocacy) [14 Total]
9. Earn a professional certification/accreditation relating to pregnancy/birth
10. Earn a professional certification/accreditation relating to breastfeeding
11. Provide labor support at five births
12. Subscribe to Mothering magazine [reconsidering this one, as Peggy O'Mara is batshit crazy]
13. Become a paying La Leche League member
14. Develop written action plan for NMBBC
15. Hold four NMBBC meetings
16. Develop care provider survey and distribute to local maternity providers
17. Compile provider book for NMBBC, with notes
18. Hold two BOLD Red Tent events [1/10]
19. Write “My Mother was a VBAC Pioneer” article for submission to Mothering magazine
20. Write one additional article for submission to Mothering magazine
21. Update amniotic sac, breastpumps, and early days of breastfeeding essays’ links on LJ and make those essays public
22. Update and cite sources in “Birth Safety as a Binary Condition” and “‘Brave’ Has Nothing to Do With It” essays

Crafting [16 Total]
23. Knit something for myself that’s larger than a headband/hat
24. Knit a sweater (at least child-sized)
25. Knit a pair of socks
26. Learn intarsia knitting
27. Learn stranded color knitting
28. Learn cable knitting
29. Learn provisional and cable cast-on [01/02/10 -- am unimpressed]
30. Learn magic loop knitting
31. Perfect sizing for “Daw’s Drawers” pattern and put it on Ravelry
32. Develop dollhouse-sized Waldorf doll pattern and make doll family for the kids
33. Stock my Hyena Cart at least four times in a year, including one themed stocking
34. Knit two pairs of longies for Babypie each winter until potty training
35. Knit two pairs of shorties for Babypie each spring until potty training
36. Make wardrobe for the Tank’s Bibi and Babypie’s baby
37. Hook Pet Society-style strawberry rug for Babypie’s room (in red and pink)
38. Make curtains, pillow shams, and comforter/quilt for Babypie’s room (red and pink, strawberries)

Health, Fitness, and Nutrition [13 Total]
39. Lose 25 pounds to reach next major weight loss goal (165 pounds)
40. Lose 10 pounds to reach final weight loss goal (155 pounds)
41. Maintain final goal weight for a year
42. Start and complete a fitness program (like 30 Day Shred, Couch to 5K, or Body for Life)
43. Find physical activity I like enough to do at least twice weekly and do it twice weekly for a month
44. Replace all HFCS food products in the home with HFCS-free alternatives
45. Switch to locally raised and/or free-range organic chicken
46. Build chicken coop and raise chickens
47. Build small garden box and grow at least two food-producing plants a year
48. Switch to SLS-free products for myself and the children
49. Can my own tomato sauce (from locally grown tomatoes)
50. Go to chiropractor once a month for a year
51. Get a full physical (including bloodwork and gyn)

Home/Yard Improvement and Organization [18 Total]
52. Buy our house from my parents
53. Purchase new living room furniture
54. Replace carpets with laminate flooring
55. Repaint living room
56. Repaint kitchen
57. Repaint school room
58. Find at least one large piece of artwork to hang in the living room
59. Remodel office for Captain Science to use as bedroom
60. Repaint Cpt. Science’s old room and move the Tank into it
61. Apply dinosaur transfer to the Tank’s new walls
62. Strip border from and repaint the Tank’s old room and move Babypie into it
63. Dig up front flower bed (w/ rock wall) and replant
64. Plant placentas
65. Reorganize children’s memory boxes
66. Sort saved baby clothes for longer-term storage
67. Develop and implement a filing/storage system for physical photographs
68. Develop and implement a filing system for digital photos
69. Choose favorite digital photographs and have prints made

Personal Improvement [12 Total]
70. Write thank you notes on behalf of myself and the children (have Cpt. Science write his own) for Christmas and birthday gifts
71. Get hair cut at least every 12 weeks for a year
72. Get highlights and have them touched up at least once
73. Buy five flattering tops for each new size while I lose weight
74. Buy two flattering pairs of pants for each new size while I lost weight
75. Get professionally fitted for bras and purchase two properly-fitting bras
76. Go through clothes and donate anything that doesn’t fit or flatter
77. Have Visian Toric ICL implants (after they get approved for the US)
78. Read four new books a month (at least one of them non-fiction) each month
79. Have date night with Officer Daddyman (sans children) at least once a month (1/10)
80. Have ladies’ night out (even if it’s just a coffee with Patchfire) at least once a month [1/10]
81. Develop personal website on existing domain

Safety and Security (both physical and legal) [10 Total]
82. Purchase a standing gun safe
83. Purchase a fireproof lock box and put important documents in it
84. Go to firing range four times (Yes, I’m a great big Liberal, but w/ a cop husband, guns in the home are a reality, and I need to know how to use them safely)
85. Learn to disassemble, clean, and reassemble any firearms kept in the house
86. Have a will and living will made
87. Set up 529 college savings plans for Babypie and the Tank
88. Change Captain Science’s name on his 529 plan
89. Get Babypie’s birth certificate and Social Security card
90. Eliminate family credit card debt
91. Develop emergency plans for family and do at least two practice drills

Writing/Editing [10 Total]
92. Submit two short stories to literary journals
93. Submit ten poems to literary journals
94. Submit five articles to magazines for publication
95. Create professional website
96. Update writing portfolio (make print and digital copies)
97. Create world “bible” for The Great Journey with Officer Daddyman
98. Complete a novel-length work
99. Compile recipes and write flavor text for Apocalicious
100. Develop creative writing curriculum for homeschoolers
101. Find a literary agent

Today is a day for tuning the piano, literally and metaphorically. Tommy Tucker, piano tuner (yes, his real name! how great is that!), is here fiddling around with my piano, getting it back where it needs to be for Captain Science to start piano lessons in January. I am trying to get Captain Science back in tune, after a 5-day absence, which is enough to make me want to never take a vacation again! Dawdling, forgetfulness, and all manner of irritaitons.

It feels like we’re trying to tune most everything at the moment. Babypie is recovering from her illness, rash slowly fading, but she’s still a little sensitive and not sleeping well. I’m shaken and out of sorts over the Lakewood police shooting, because when you’re the wife of a cop, every officer is your officer, so you take every incident like this to heart. The Tank is back at preschool this morning, and honestly, I was much happier having him at home. Our attempts to regain a sense of normalcy seem all wonky and ill-fitting.

Even this post, which should be a celebration of a successful completion of NaBloPoMo, feels out of tune. I need a mental pitch pipe to help get me back to where I need to be, I guess.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I though today might be a good idea to answer some questions about those parts of homeschooling for which I am most thankful (and, yes, least thankful).

Zelda asks, “What is your LEAST favorite thing about homeschooling? What is your MOST?”

Since one of the glories of homeschooling is that I have no obligation to do things “in order,” I’ll address my most favorite first.

I love many things about homeschooling: not having to get up at 6am, having control over the depth and breadth of the curricula, having the freedom to take our work with us, having the opportunity to take fun classes through the co-op, developing a wonderful new community of friends for both of us, and more. The thing I love most, however, is how much homeschooling has improved my relationship with Captain Science.

This was actually the area I was most concerned about before we started homeschooling. We butted heads over homework so often when he was in public school, and it led to a lot of tears, yelling, stomping around, and general frustration and unhappiness. When homeschooling first popped up on our radar as a possible solution for Captain Science’s school problems, family member questioned whether the parent-child relationship could really hold up to me being the primary instructor day in and day out.

Miracle of miracles, however, we are getting along better now than we ever have! I enjoy working with Captain Science, and I know he can see that. My positivity over the curricula and the educational experience rubs off on him, and his joie de vivre that comes from not having to sit in a boring classroom, going over repetitive work as a snail’s pace rubs off on me. This isn’t to say that every day is easy, joyful, and stress-free. It’s not (and I think I blog about that pretty frequently, too). Our overall attitude towards school and each other has changed, though. We like each other’s company more. We don’t have to go back and forth over homework that neither of us see as being worthwhile, but I feel obligated to make him do to keep him from failing a subject that he mastered two years ago. I’m proud of his hard work now. I’m excited to see him engaging with challenging subjects. I’m in love with his love of learning. I’m rediscovering what an amazing child I’ve brought into this world and seeing what a remarkable person he is growing up to become. Who wouldn’t love that?

Homeschooling is definitely more than just joy and good times, though. It has its own host of frustrations and difficulties. I’ve written before about the isolation that a classical, secular homeschooler can experience, my frustrations with religion being so pervasive in homeschool curricula, and some of the (stereo)types of homeschooling moms with whom I have come into contact (including the ones that are homeschooling their 11-month-olds). I dislike the lack of diversity without our homeschool community, having to always be the one who has to take care of everything, and those days where Captain Science dawdles and wastes everyone’s time.

Despite all that, however, the one thing I have to say I like least about homeschooling is no more school lunch. I didn’t go up and have lunch with Captain Science often in the previous year, because the temptation to bitchslap his teacher into next Tuesday was just too hard to resist, but when I did, I usually planned it carefully around what they were having. Seriously, I love school lunch. Those little Krystal-style hamburgers, the fluffy rolls, the practically-cardboard school pizza, and little cartons of orange-flavored pseudojuice — HEAVEN! Alas, we bid farewell to that world of giant cinnamon rolls, diced peaches in a tiny plastic container, salad dressing pumps the size of my torso, and the weirdly delicious meat-floating-in-gravy that I can only assume is supposed to be Salisbury steak. I’m pleased that Captain Science now gets a more nutritious meal every day for lunch, but I do miss those pastel-colored sectional lunch trays full of tasty, nutritionless, institutional faux food.

I never worried about Captain Science being expose to a diverse enough assortment of people. Our family isn’t monochromatic. The kids’ godmother is black, our dear family friend who is for all intents and purposes their aunt is Japanese (lives in Japan, visits yearly), their great-grandfather is Mexican. Captain Science went to a Montessori school for three years. It was owned by an Iranian couple and the ethnic/racial make up of the school was mainly Iranian, Indian, black, Chinese, and white, in that order. From there, he moved to the public school, which adequately represented our part of the county’s diverse makeup. His classmates were white, black, Hispanic, Arabic, of varying religions and socioeconomic backgrounds. Being around people of all colors was normal for him.

Now we’re homeschooling, though, and that has changed. The homeschool co-op is predominantly white. Most of the children he plays with regularly are white, because that the demographic of our street in the neighborhood. Every child in The Tank’s preschool is white (and most are Methodist, because it’s a Methodist preschool and their parents belong to the church — we don’t). When we go to the local playgrounds, they seek out playmates of all colors, but they just aren’t getting the same sort of daily exposure to diverse groups that Captain Science used to have.

This worries me. How do other homeschoolers address this issue? Do they address it at all? Do they worry about their child being limited to other children who are of the same race, religion, and/or socioeconomic status? I know that for some homeschooling parents, this is exactly what they strive for, but to me, it’s one of the few down sides to homeschooling. Most of the homeschoolers around here are white and that’s just the way it is. It’s not like I can magically manifest a more diverse group of kids, just to compensate for that uncomfortable feeling of homogeneity.

I think race is an important issue to address, though. I don’t buy into the whole “we live in post-racial times” nonsense. We don’t. Having a president with his own diverse background doesn’t completely eliminate racial (or socioeconomic) tensions and disparity in this country. It was just so much easier to talk about diversity when we were in a group that was actually diverse.

I’m not a very crafty parent, which is somewhat incongruous, as I am a crafty person. I sew, knit, crochet, make Waldorf-style dolls, dabble at quilting, but I don’t really do kid crafts. It should come more naturally than it does, because I’m also a 12-year veteran of Girl Scouting, including several years as a camp counselor to 2nd and 3rd graders. I know how to finger weave, make paper bag hand puppets, make my own candles and all of those great crafts, but it just never occurs to me to do them.

I never sit down and think, “Gee! I sure would like to have the kids make their own crayons today!” I don’t make tomato sauce and make that mental leap to, “Wouldn’t it be fun to use this as finger paint on butcher paper?” I seldom, if ever, come up with holiday, seasonal, or weather related craft ideas on the fly. Even things like painting and working with clay don’t pop into my head as an idea for filling time. The Tank came home from preschool yesterday wearing a beautiful necklace made from dyed, dry pasta of different shapes and sizes, and I never, ever would have thought to make something like that.

Why are some parents like that and others aren’t? I have friends who routinely set up seasonal sensory tables for their children, who make their own playdough on a whim, who always have an idea for something like paper pumpkins or turkeys to provide holiday-relevant activities, who festoon their mantels with garlands made from paper leaves colored and cut out by their children. I’m an intelligent person. I daresay that I’m at least a moderately creative one. I like to think I’m even a fairly fun mom at times. Why don’t I even think about making designs from glue and shaking cinnamon and glitter on to them? Why don’t I make felt “paper” dolls with my kids? Why don’t we make and bind our own books?

Am I missing a creativity gene? A parenting gene? Am I somehow wrong-thinking and a right-thinking parent would do these things? I feel guilty when I see all the crafts my friends do with their children, because I worry that my kids are missing out on some special part of childhood that a better or more progressive/involved parent would offer them. I don’t remember my mother providing us with endless craft activities as we grew up, at least, not outside of Girl Scouts. I always thought that was what Scouting was for. My boys don’t do Scouting (Captain Science tried, but we quit half a year in, because it was every bit as bad as I’d thought it would be, and then some). I know I’ll want to lead a Girl Scout troop for Babypie at some point, and I’m sure we’ll do make all the milk carton ice candles, clothespin reindeer, and paper plate masks there that a little girl could desire, but what about my boys? Are they going to suffer and be uncreative individuals for a lack of crafting in childhood?

How do I find the motivation for this? Do I even need the motivation for this? Will macaroni jewelry be the dividing line between the wise and the foolish, the enlightened and the worldly, the creative and the dull? Does so much depend upon a tissue paper mosaic of a red wheelbarrow, glazed with homemade finger paint, beside the pipe cleaner chickens?