On homeschooling.

I’m writing because I don’t feel like doing

JACK.

SHIT.

on my school shit.  Who am I kidding anyway?

A few entries back, I wrote about the job that my husband will likely take and it will take him out of the house 5 days per week.  I wrote how much I am generally looking forward to that, even though I realize it’s bad…blah blah, I’m not fucking rehashing it.

I started to talk to my kids and some of them are upset.  Which makes sense, right?  Who wants Daddy gone five days a week? Especially since some of my kids are much closer to Daddy than to me.

I saw the face of my oldest son, as I briefly described what might happen, and I saw the pain in his face.

I will be honest.  My first response was:  Goddammit.

Maybe he will adjust.  Maybe they all will.

But maybe they won’t.  And then what.  

The what:  We’d have to move.  I mean, I’d have to, right?  No matter what, I couldn’t do hurt the kids that way.  I mean maybe they will adjust.  (PLEASE ADJUST.)  But if they don’t, if they really don’t….we’d have to move.

This presents with a problem.

It is unlikely that we could move into an area in our neighboring state where we would ultimately buy a house.  If we moved in the next few months, we would be looking at (somehow) renting a home.  Maybe after a year or so, we’d look at selling our existing house (which we would likely be renting out) and then buying something in our new home state.  The idea that we would find a home to rent and then be able to buy in the same area (read: same school district) is pathetically low.

What this ultimately means is that my children would face the prospect of attending one school and then, very likely, attending another school in maybe 1-2 years.

I have 8th graders going into 9th grade.  I have a 3rd grader going into 4th grade and a 2nd grader going into 3rd grade. I worry most about my almost-9th graders.  I moved when I was precisely their age and it was heart-wrenching.  I never recovered.

And this is how we wind ourselves to the title of this entry:  Homeschool.

What if I homeschooled my children for the first year if (after) we moved?  If I did that, then the issue of changing a school district would be eliminated.  If I did that for a year, then maybe by the following year, we would be more settled, we’d have a permanent home, and the children would just seamlessly return back to public school.  (There was some sarcasm contained in that last sentence.)

Let me be clear.

I

HATE

HOMESCHOOLING.

So maybe I’ve alienated you.  Sorry.  My diary, my space, it’s how I feel.  I’m not even saying it’s right to feel this way, or that all homeschooling people are just wrong.  I’m saying that if you are homeschooling, you must love your kids more than I do and hate your free, quiet time more than I do – because you get an incredible dose of your kids 24/7 and you lose every bit of non-kid time you have.  I mean, those are just facts.  Never mind the socialization piece (which I understand can be supplemented, and I also understand not every homeschooled child is some lost hermit), never mind that I rarely understand these parents who choose to homeschool to begin with.  Okay, teachers go to college to learn to teach.  Who the hell thinks I could teach my children 9th grade math?  I’m sorry. I have ZERO experience teaching.  I give full props to teachers.  If anyone could teach, then schools would just be open employment; anyone who feels like being a teacher could just come on in.  Want to teach social studies?  SURE, hell, go by a damned textbook from some curriculum site and hop to it.

Oh but they’re MY kids, and I know them best, and THAT’S why I could teach them.  Oh horseshit.  HORSESHIT.  Please.  Teachers in the classroom don’t know your little snowflake very well and most of them get pretty good grades.  It comes off as so elitist to me.  I have a family member who homeschools and I had to listen to how “bored” she thought her daughter was in regular school and how she simply HAD to homeschool to ‘challenge her’.  Oh, fuck off.  Stick it in your ear.  Your sweet little precious snowflake is perfectly smart, but come on.  You want to homeschool? Go ahead.  (To be fair, at least this family member was actually a teacher at one point) But don’t pretend it’s because your sweet darling couldn’t hack public school because it was “too easy”.  I see the shit she teaches her kids now and all I can say is yawn.  My kids are appropriately challenged.  The stuff they learn is hard.  Good for them.  If I had to put this stuff together, I would probably put my head in a blender.  Thank God for real, degreed, certified teachers.

And then there are these moments – admittedly fleeting – where I think:  Eh. I could do it.  I’m smart enough.  Just for one year, right?  Come on. I could give up all of that to save them from going to a new school for one year and not go through what destroyed me.  I mean, think of it.  I’d buy fresh super awesome curriculum, and I’d finally be organized, and they would sit and do their work, and it would be okay….and we wouldn’t be beholden to school calendars.  Right?  RIGHT????

Those moments, as I said, are fleeting.

I am scarred because I moved at age 15 to a new school and it destroyed me.  (Really.)  I never recovered.  I dropped out of high school.  Twice, actually.  I did graduate, a year after I was slated to graduate.  I graduated from night school (did NOT earn a GED, earned a regular diploma).  Not many people realize I am a twice-dropped-out-graduate.  Believe me, when you have letters behind your name, nobody gives a shit.  But I know this. I know moving ultimately led me to lose friends, never connect with people, and so many other bad things.

I have unusual kids. I have kids with trauma backgrounds.  Kids with special needs.  Kids who do not adapt well to change.  I have kids who are already crying that they don’t want to leave their school.

So then we don’t move, right?

Maybe not.  But maybe the pressure of Daddy being gone so much upsets them and maybe they want to move.  Can I guarantee they would never move school districts again? Probably not.  And maybe they would adjust better than I did (particularly my older ones).  I mean, maybe. I have serious doubts about my older son and my younger daughter.  SERIOUS, Mom-intuition-doubts.  I tend to trust those instincts because they are rarely wrong.  But they aren’t 100% right either.

We could move, and I could spare them the school district change, if we homeschooled.

If I bit the bullet, maybe I could do it.  Maybe I would hang myself with a shower curtain too.

No, no. I wouldn’t.

(I might.)

I actually do believe that homeschooling parents love their kids more than they love themselves.  Which I admire, but is not me.  I love my children very much.  I have fought for all of them.  But…I love myself too. I love my free time, I love what I can devote to myself in addition to what I can devote to them.  I give them a ton.  I am selfless, but I am not completely selfless.  I’m pretty sure homeschooling parents are way more selfless than I am.

I love the sound of the quiet house while they are in school.  I love the sound of the shutting door as my older kids catch the bus.  I don’t think homeschooling parents love that sound.  But I do.

Which means I probably shouldn’t consider homeschooling because homeschooling could be worse for them versus changing school districts.

I think I just talked myself out of it.

(maybe.)