Smrt Lernins

I’m happy.

No, really. I’ve found myself feeling almost unreasonably happy lately. Happy and content and like everything is going to be ok. This is a big deal for me!

Here’s a little something about me that you might not know: I spend a great deal of my time feeling anxious and worried and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve experienced postpartum anxiety after each of my children was born, with increasing degree of severity with each child, and it tends to last for quite a while after the fact, to the point where it might even be safe to call it “generalized anxiety” by this point. It tends to spike under certain conditions (long drives on the highway as a passenger, especially in traffic or at night, for instance) and at specific times of the month (PMS and mid-cycle). I’m not on a maintenance medication, but I do have a prescription for a “rescue dose” of Xanax to prevent anxiety attacks in situations where I know they’re likely to happen or control them when they do. I take approximately 12 pills a year and the pills are 10-25mg.

My baseline is probably a lot closer to what most people experiences as near-panic. Most of the time, I have a running mental monologue about all the bad things that might happen, could be happening right now if I’m not paying enough attention, will happen if I don’t stay in a heightened state of alert at all times. Sometimes I go through stints of having to almost compulsively check on the children at night to make sure they’re breathing, especially Babypie. I call it “bothering the baby,” because if I don’t see her chest moving, I have to touch her and put my hand on her chest until I feel her moving. Sometimes I experience anxiety as an overwhelming wall of sensory input: too much noise, too much light, too much movement. Relaxing has been…difficult. Anxiety goes along with itchiness for me, too, and I’ll often start breaking out in hives on my face or neck/chest when I’m building up to an anxiety attack. Sometimes I can nip it in the bud by taking a well-timed antihistamine; sometimes not so much. I don’t spend every minute of my day in full-blown anxiety, but I’ve spent a lot of time with it lingering underneath the surface.

Officer Daddyman has been very supportive and understanding, especially this go-’round, as he’s done a lot more reading about anxiety in general and postpartum anxiety/depression specifically. I know it’s not fun for him when I’m worrying unreasonably over something. I know how stressful it is for him when I’m shrieking and/or clinging to the door while he’s driving.

I feel like PPA has had a lot of control over my life, both because I have had to take it into account when I did things like travel or let my children do things that are even remotely risk-taking (I get really anxious about them on roller coasters, for example) and because it has played a big part in our decision making process about family size. My anxiety has gotten worse with each subsequent birth and I have a lot of fear about how much worse it could get if we had another child. I hate that it has that kind of power over our lives, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. If we ever did decide to have a fourth child, I’d take several extra measures to help prevent or quickly address the anxiety, but just thinking about the possibility of starting over from scratch with a fresh new bout of worry makes me, well, worry.

There are many other ways in which PPA does not control me, though. My friends and family are in the loop and know my stressors. I don’t feel ashamed of being worried about things, even ridiculous things. I can say, “This is unreasonable. I know it’s unreasonable. I can’t make myself stop feeling it, but I’m aware what I’m feeling is disproportionate or unnecessary.” I’ve developed the ability to tell people things like, “I might yelp while you’re drive. Please don’t take it personally. It’s not your driving. It’s my reaction to being a passenger.” I have tried to keep the vocalized worry to a minimum, to keep my kids from picking up on it. I do thinks that cause me stress anyway, because I refuse to stop doing things. I brought my Xanax with me to Disney World (crowds? rides? lots of going to and fro? Yikes!) and barely needed it, because I decided I was going to enjoy myself and anxiety be damned. I delegate the things that are hardest for me, too, like with the recent event Patchfire and I put on (with other friends) — I’m great at planning, then tend to freak out on event day, so I took all the pre-event tasks and then let everyone else handle the day-of-event activities.

Getting enough sleep, getting exercise, having time for myself — these all help a little, but nothing really makes a significant impact until my hormones start to settle down, which seems to happen at around 18 months postpartum. Babypie is now 19 months and change, and I’m finally starting to feel a little closer to my particular brand of normal. I often feel that, if it weren’t for the amazingly huge stressor of Officer Daddyman’s job, I might actually be somewhere closer to actual normal. The job is hard for me, because it gives me a sense of justification and rationality about my anxiety. Police work isn’t the safest thing ever and any time a police officer is killed in the line of duty, I can’t help but take it incredibly personally. When the Lakewood officers were ambushed and murdered, I was particularly grateful for those last few Xanax.

The upshot of all of this, however, is that I am finally doing so much better. I finally feel like I’m starting to climb out of the hole of constant and exhausting worry. I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel more stable, calm, and genuinely happy than I have in a while. PPA isn’t a permanent state, nor is it something I can just decide not to have, nor is it something to be embarrassed about. When I experienced it after Tank, I was very secretive about it. I didn’t like talking about my mental state not being exactly right. Now, though, I realize that it’s nothing that I’ve done wrong. It’s just the way my body and brain react to having babies. It may even be hereditary; apparently my paternal grandmother used to have anxiety issues (after at least one of her kids was born), often coupled with stress-related hives. I’m not a freak or even that unusual. Many women experience postpartum anxiety and/or depression. I just happen to be one of them.

Wellllll…so we kind of had a slacker week, relatively speaking, at McLernins Institute of Advanced Lernins. Since coming home from Disney, we’d been making major progress, but between my weekend activities (a HUGE event I helped run) and the awful chest cold that’s been dragging me down this week, I just couldn’t be super motivated to continue at our prior pace. We took it nice and easy this week, but I think that was a nice break for everyone.

A few highlights from our week:

Captain Science is finally making progress in math again. He finished pgs 101-104 in Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra/pg 49, Lesson 32 in Fred’s Home Companion. He did the cities of Advance, El Campo, and Gadsden. He attended a Math Olympiad meeting and worked on problems there in preparation for the upcoming tournament. He also watched the lesson from Khan Academy on the distributive property, worked problems sets from that, and did additional problems with Officer Daddyman. As much as I hate to admit it, I think we’re encountering a little of that “not developmentally read for Algebra” thing you hear about on the WTM forums. He has all the skills necessary to do the work. He can work through it each time if reminded of the need to use the distributive property. There’s something conceptual he’s struggling with. I think we may have cracked it this week, but only Monday’s lesson will tell.

In language arts, Captain Science only spent two days working in Essay Voyage, and covered the Correct Sentence and Punctuation lessons in Chapter 3 (Unity). He read a section in World of Poetry, but didn’t write any poems this week. He read the first 30 sections of Beowulf. I don’t remember if I assigned any Caesar’s English II or not. My head is spacey.

He did some more reading on the middle ages in History: The Definitive Visual Guide. This week, he read about Medieval Europe, the Black Plague, and about William the Conqueror/Battle of Hastings (1066!). We’re doing an overview of medieval history and he is then choosing the topics he’d like to study in depth. I have so many resources that I thought it would be fun for him to just go crazy-go-nuts amongst my books.

Science-wise, Captain Science completed the last of the stuff on rocks and soil and moved on to the water cycle. He did the rock mastery test, along with a review of parts of the lesson, then completed the water cycle unit, the application, and the worksheet packet. I need to snag An Inconvenient Truth from Patchfire so that he can read that. He’s doing supplemental reading from Science: TDVG as well.

Tank did some letter matching this week, worked on Halloween pictures, and played some games.

Babypie discovered My Little Ponies.

Oh, and we also watched The Black Stallion together. That’s enough, right? We did enough?

So, I’ve been doing this whole blogging thing for about 13 months now, and am now (including this post) two posts shy of my 300th post! I think that calls for some manner of celebration. Perhaps I’ll bake a pan of these (because while I’m not all that gaga for The Pioneer Woman, I am pretty darn gaga for cinnamon rolls).

I’m also at close to 2000 non-spam comments! You like me! You really like me! Or you hate me, which, in the blogosphere, plays out in about the same way — lots of comments, some relinking, a little smack-talking (or a little butt-smacking, whatever floats your barges) and a great conversation.

I’ve covered a few controversial topics that generated some great discussion (seriously, who know that libraries were such a source of passionate debate?). I’ve written a lot more humdrum posts that generated one or two half-hearted “sounds like a great day” comments. I’ve made one post that resulted in a flood of spam from angry WAHMs who could benefit from a copyeditor (though, who couldn’t?) and some Xanax. I’ve discovered that some homeschoolers feel very strongly about their commas, their choice of dictionaries, and the word “teach”.

Now what?

I’d like to get back to regular “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler” and Secular Thursday posts. I want to finish the Secular Homeschool Archetypes series. I want to get back into a habit of reading and commenting on everyone else’s blog (in fact, comment with your favorite post you’ve ever written on YOUR blog so I can read it!) and have some more guest posts.

What else? Where do I go from here? What makes a blog interesting these days?

Patchfire’s post about honest reporting (about your children and yourself) reminded me that one of the requirements for homeschooling in Georgia is that I must write an annual summary or report on what we covered this year and on Captain S’s progress. They can’t require that I give them these reports, but I have to write them and then hang on to them for three years. Record-keeping isn’t my area of supreme excellence, of course, but that’s where the blog will come in handy. All I have to do is refer back to my weeks and weeks of Weekly Reviewins and voila! I shall have all the information I could possible require!

All the information on Captain Science that I could possibly require, that is.

Captain Science isn’t the only one who started homeschooling this year. This year, as my blog subtitle indicates, has also been an educational process for me. No one requires any sort of report on what I’ve learned, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take the time to assess it. So, what has Smrt Mama McLernins learned about homeschooling (and herself) this year? What did I learn about being a secular classical homeschooler?

1. Color-coded schedules: what works and what doesn’t. Our color-coded schedule was a great idea in theory, but didn’t work out so well in execution. Too tightly scheduled, not enough time for transitions, and not enough flexibility for Captain Science. He needs more control over his order of activities. Next year’s schedule will still be time-blocked, because that really does help us get through our day in a timely manner, but it will be color coded into “core subjects,” “electives,” etc. and Captain Science will be able to choose the order in which he does his work, and more transitional time will be provided. For example, on Mondays we’d have three one-hour blocks for “school work,” separated by 15 minute breaks, followed by a half-hour lunch, another one hour block of work, then piano. Tank’s schedule would be broken up more and be in shorter blocks, with synced lunches.

2. We had an unacceptable dearth of hands-on stuff. We did so little of this and I really regret that. Projects, crafts, etc. need to be pre-planned and scheduled into our week. Other than writing samples, we have very little to physically show for our school year. No fridge art, no dioramas or whatever to display. This simply will not fly, especially next year, when my artsy little Tank is homeschooling with us. We need specifically blocked-out times for arts and crafts and we need to integrate a physical component into our history lessons. I don’t think we need to make sugar cube pyramids or anything like that, but we do need to find some more hands-on methods of doing lessons.

3. Captain Science owns his work, not me. I am one damn impatient woman. Impatient for Captain Science to get through his work quickly, impatient for him to do it the right way the first time, impatient for him to put in maximum effort rather than half-assing it. On Dawdlin’ Days, it’s all I can do to not just scream “OH MY GOD, just finish your dang WORK already!” at him, whilst running around and tearing at my hair and possibly taking up chain smoking. Ultimately, I’m not the one who controls how quickly he finishes the work. I’m not the one who controls how well he finishes the work. I can set time limits and repercussions for violating those limits. I can set standards for the work and have him redo it when he doesn’t meet those standards. At the end of the day, though, I can’t make him do something in a timely manner or with a high level of quality…or at all. Deep breath. Release. Provide guidance. Provide boundaries. Provide repercussions. Trust him.

4. Broad but shallow or narrow but deep? Did we spend too little time on each of too many subjects at a time? Did we spend too much time on too few subjects? Officer Daddyman and I have discussed this and in looking back over the past year, I see that we had periods of both. We started out with too much focus on history. It dominated our day, our life, our house! While classical homeschooling is typically history-centric, we were sacrificing other subjects just to drag out history. We also had a point where we were trying to cover 6+ subjects in a day, which meant that we couldn’t put any quality time into each subject. One way we dealt with this was by streamlining the subjects. For example, instead of three or four small language arts segments covering different things (grammar, vocabulary, writing), we switched to Michael Clay Thompson’s language arts curriculum, which integrated or coordinated those areas.

5. What’s popular isn’t always right, but it sometimes is. I probably won’t be buying into Sonlight or Math U See any time soon, no matter how many people sing their praises, but I wish I’d listened to the other parents on the advanced learner/gifted forum sooner. I know that I initially scoffed at how everyone was jumping on board the MCT train…oh, aren’t they trendy? Then I saw a video of Mr. Thompson talking about giftedness and why/how it should be nurtured, and I realized that his curriculum wasn’t popular because it was trendy, but because he had really clued in to some essential elements of giftedness. What other curricula have I dismissed due to its popularity that, in retrospect, I might discover could be a great fit for us. I won’t let a curriculum’s popularity/trendiness keep me from checking it out.

6. Friends in unlikely places. I thought that I’d find my home in the secular homeschooling community. As my many posts about feeling alienated or out of place would indicate, this wasn’t the case. I did, to my surprise, find some wonderful friends in the Christian homeschooling community. Despite vast differences in our personal lives, our specific academic materials, and our spiritual/philosophical beliefs, the many things we do share has given me a true sense of community. I also thought that it would be in the academic homeschooling community that I’d make my friends, but I could several unschoolers among the ranks of my Sisters in Homeschooling. I can’t even list all the wonderful (mostly) women (and a few men) I have encountered in the homeschool community…from all walks of life. In the end, it’s hasn’t been about secular or Christian, classical or unschooling, but about commonality of humor, respect for each other and our children, and a belief that we each want to do what is best for our children. If we don’t have humor as parents and homeschoolers, what do we have?

7. It’s ok to quit the stuff that isn’t working (before you hit crisis/loathing stage). A curriculum isn’t a marriage, right? I’ve had to learn and relearn this one. In October, I wrote about how much we loved Writing Strands and by January, I was writing about how much I disliked it. How many months of that time in between did I force us to keep on with an increasingly incompatible curriculum? I don’t know for sure, but next year, I will give myself permission to quite before I have to write a big dramatic post about how much I hate said curriculum. I promise. This time, I really will.

8. I don’t totally suck at this. Captain Science learned a lot this year. I learned a lot this year. We still like each other. Daddyman and I still like each other. The world hasn’t collapsed, the house hasn’t burned down, and I haven’t had a nervous breakdown. We not only can do this, we ARE doing this! We’re really, truly homeschoolers…and we’re doing just fine.

Today is National Teacher Day, which comes, somewhat predictably, in the middle of National Teacher Appreciation Week.

As homeschoolers, we are each our child(ren)’s teacher…excepting those unschoolers who eschew the word “teach,” of course. I’d like to take a moment to tell you teachers-in-your-own home how much I appreciate you.

Homeschooling isn’t easy. You do it anyway.

Your day isn’t done at 3 o’clock or even 6 o’clock — it’s not done until your children are all tucked in bed, and even then, you often stay up for hours going on plans for the following day or preparing for the weeks and months ahead. You don’t get summer vacation. You don’t get a two-week break at Christmas. You can’t draw a line between your job and your personal life. You can’t walk away from the work and the children when the day is done. You do it anyway.

You don’t get paid to do this. You don’t draw a salary and you don’t get a pension at the end. Your “salary” is intellectual growth of your children. Your “pension” is the well-adjusted, well-educated adults you have raised. Your “benefits” aren’t in the form of health insurance and paid leave, but in the amount of quality you spend with your child. The nest egg you’re building for the future isn’t financial. You do it anyway.

You don’t have a union. You have to scrap out the support where you can find it, through online forums or local homeschool groups. You have to be your own advocate, figure things out on your own, or ask for help from others like you. It can be an uphill battle the whole way. You do it anyway.

You don’t have a mandate from the State. You may even be at great odds with your state by choosing to homeschool. You fill out forms, jump through hoops, and then fill out more forms about jumping through hoops. You may have to put your family and your life up for scrutiny for someone else’s determination of whether you’re fit to homeschool. You do it anyway.

You don’t have someone developing an approved curriculum for you, setting academic standards for you, or giving you the exact information your children should learn. You don’t have it that easy. You have to figure it out on your own. You can’t just teach to the test, satisfied that the test scores will be the end to justify your means. You have to determine what you can use, what you can afford, what standards you will set for your children. You have to find a way to teach them everything they need to know for college and for life. You’ll probably miss a few things, and you agonize over which things you’ll miss. You do it anyway.

You don’t do it “their” way. Your job isn’t always respected. You don’t get special license plates. When someone asks you, “What do you do for a living?” your answer often isn’t what they want to hear. You’re subjected to a rigorous line of questioning about what you do and what you teach and why. Your motives are suspect. Your methods are scrutinized. Your rigor is challenged. You do it anyway.

Day in and day out, you do it anyway. You continue to educate your children, despite others’ misgiving, despite criticism and unwanted commentary. You invest time, money, and energy that you may not actually have in making sure your children have a thorough, meaningful education. You reach out to others like you and offer them help, advice, materials, support. You raise your children with character and creativity.

You’re homeschoolers. You don’t give up. You do it anyway.

Happy Teacher Appreciate Day, to my community of wonderful home-teachers. You’re loved. You’re appreciated.

I don’t mean the things that we long for, but the things that we homeschoolers tend to overlook.

When I had to get up at 6:15 to get Captain Science off to school in a timely fashion and received a backpack full of reminder notes every day, life was quite different for us than it is now. More predictability. More routine. That’s not to say that we don’t have a routine now, but it’s different each day of the week, as we have co-op on Tuesdays, science at Patchfire’s house on Thursday, piano lessons two days, things here and things there. It’s not 7:45 to 2:15 every Monday through Friday. It’s not on someone else’s time.

This sort of nonreliance on the schedule of others is wonderful in almost every aspect, save one…we’re totally, completely responsible for keeping track of stuff for ourselves! That means that, sometimes, things just don’t get done. We don’t think about them. We don’t remember them. Here are some examples:

1. Picture Day. There is no official homeschool picture day. As a result, Captain Science is almost through with his 4th grade year and has not had formal pictures made. We keep saying we’re going to get them done, but that just hasn’t happened.

2. Hair cuts. Without planned picture days and school field trips, for which I didn’t want my child to look like he was being raised by stewbums, hair cuts tend to fall by the wayside. I wasn’t the best about scheduling them regularly as it was, but at least three times a school year (for first day of school, fall pictures, and spring pictures), Captain Science got a really nice hair cut. Once we got that “picture day is coming” notice, we’d schedule the hair cut. Now, it’s more like Officer Daddyman spends weeks complaining about Captain Science and Tank’s ever-growing hair, I swear I’ll make an appointment to have it done, Daddyman gets frustrated and just takes the boys to his barber, at which point I complain about their hair being too short. OH THE JOYS OF HOMESCHOOLING!

3. Watching what we say. If the boys were in full time public school, I think I’d watch my mouth a little more carefully. Since they’re home so much, I have developed an unfortunate tendency to just say the things I’d normally have saved for times I wasn’t in their presence. My worst offense is, “So’s your face,” which my brother says is the appropriate response to absolutely everything (and the response to “So’s your face” is “Your mom”). Captain Science will announce, “Mama, I’m done with math,” and I’ll say, “Oh yeah? Well, so’s your face!” Captain Science will say, “So’s your mom,” and Tank, who is the classiest among us, yells, “So’s your BUTT.” I know I should correct it, simply because it’s not socially acceptable for my kids to say that, but it’s not like they’re going off to school and saying it to their teachers, right?

4. All that important non-curriculum stuff that kids still need to learn. Did you know that you were supposed to make sure your kids memorized their address? I know I totally didn’t think about it until Patchfire told me Eclectic Girl was six before they realized that she didn’t know her address. Oops! Public schooled kids get it drilled into them in kindergarten, but our homeschooled children are going to grow up with no clue as to where they live. Someone needs to put together a checklist of non-curriculum stuff that our kids need to learn. That list will also include how to spell their last name, their parents’ names, and their phone number.

5. Cops and firemen. Unless you’re luck enough to have an Officer Daddyman in the house, your kids may be missing out on the awesome public school experience of fire fighters and law enforcement officers coming out to the school to teach your kids about safety and how to dial 911 while mama and daddy are sleeping late (they say that’s not what they’re doing, but you KNOW that’s what they’re doing). There’s always the option of trying to get your co-op in to the fire station, I suppose.

6. Fire drills. You should be having these for your family anyway, but I bet you don’t. I know I don’t. At school, your kids would be having fire drills. They’d learn to “stay low and go” and to “stop, drop, and roll.” Maybe when you plan that visit to the fire station that you aren’t actually going to plan, you can make sure the firemen address those topics.

What things do you think that you’re missing as a homeschooler? What critical gaps in your child’s education (academic or social), appearance, or experience are you completely overlooking?

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.

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!