I Used To Be A Homeschooling Mom…

But all that’s about to change.  Because I just filled out enrollment papers for a nice little WELS Lutheran school a mile down from our new home. 

Today was their Open House, classrooms open, curriculum books laid out, teachers available to answer questions and give you a tour.  I’ve been interested in this school since last year when homeschooling friends of ours signed up their four daughters.  They didn’t just like it—they loved it.  So I’ve been curious, but admittedly skeptical, for more than one reason.  I mean, first of all, you can only quit home-schooling if you’re in full-on sin, right?  I spent most of last year wrestling through that one. 

You have to understand, I love home-schooling.  I love the theories behind alternative educational strategies.  I love books about why home makes for a top-notch education.  I love ordering home-school curriculum and I love drooling through home-school catalogs.  I planned to homeschool and started collecting materials before my first child was even born. 

There’s only one catch.  I can’t stand the actual reality of home-schooling. 

Maybe that would have been different if I had less children, or maybe if the last three hadn’t been a one-on-top-of-the-other pack of active tiger cubs boys.  Or, er, maybe not.  I use that as my excuse, but then I think, come on, Molly, would you really like homeschooling with only one child?  And I shake my head in the sort of sheepish wiggle that indicates, “Probably not.” 

Not homeschooling had never actually been a real option in my mind until last year.  Sure, I always said we “might not” homeschool for high school, but I didn’t really mean it.  Hello, I’m a home-school mom.  That’s part of my identity, part of what it means to be me.  I’d never entertained real legitimate serious thoughts of not home-schooling until last winter and it was so bad, I was only a hair-breadth away from just chucking them all into the nearby elementary school right in the middle of the school year.  I’m not sure why I didn’t.  Probably mercy.  Probably the fact that I knew that the culture shock would be hard enough without the stress of being tossed in after the classroom rhythm’s were already in full swing.  I knew that if they did go to a school, it should be in the beginning of the school year, which meant that I needed to take a deep breath and work to make it until the end of Spring.  So I did.     

When you think that home-schooling equals good parenting, you may want to quit but really have to figure out what quitting means.  Would it mean my children would all go to hell in a hand-basket?  Would it mean I didn’t truly love them?  And while I was ridden with guilt at my secret fantasy to never-ever-ever-home-school-again-for-the-rest-of-my-life, WHY was my friend, a fantastic Jesus-loving mom of five, same age as myself and with an obvious glowing affection for her brood, able to so candidly exclaim, “You homeschool?  Wow.  That’s great.  I could never homeschool.  It’s just not a fit for me.” 

How could she admit that so freely, with no trace of guilt, no apologetic explanation?  And why was that okay for her to say but somehow not okay for me to hear coming out of my own mouth? 

That’s sort of the scattered/long way of explaining how it took me about a year to be able to admit that I’m just not a homeschool kind of mom, and that not homeschooling doesn’t equal hating my kids.  Don’t get me wrong—the kids have done well at home.  My oldest scored top marks at her year-end standardized test last year, yadda yadda yadda, but, really.  I just…barely got through the year.  And, I thought, hey, this can’t be a good thing.  The kids have a mom who’s functioning on only half of herself.  I’m so exhausted just from being a mom—adding in school (as well as what happens to a house when we all are actually living in it all day long) and it just becomes flat-out too demoralizing to think about.  Depression.  I’m bubbly, I’m goofy, I’m excitable.  But I’m a depressed homeschooling mom.  Tell me I have to homeschool next year and watch me deflate. 

What a concept.  Not homeschooling might morph me into a better mom?  Woah.  I thought a “better mom” meant I was a homeschooler.  Perhaps that is true for some moms, but not true for others.  I think I’m an other.   

I also thought a lot about genetics, like how I would have hated homeschooling, social creature that I am, ever the lover of groups.  I also remembered last Fall, when my newly-turned-four son looked up at me matter-of-factly and informed us of his plans.  “Mom, I’m not going to be going to homeschool next year.  I’m going to go to a class for my school.”  The way he said, “class” was with big wide eyes and an eager grin.  I didn’t know what to say.  Where did he get that idea?  How did he even know what a classroom was?    

He’s the kid we’ve joked (behind his back, of course) about growing up to be either Nobel Prize winning Leader of Nations or the next Mafia Godfather, for reasons including the fact that the kid wasn’t made to exist anywhere but right where the action is.  Let’s just say that Israel didn’t get that from his father.  The right kind of classroom would be like rich loam for a kid like that, a place to plant his roots and drink deep.  Would the right kind of classroom do the same for my other children?  Homeschool has it’s positives and negatives, as do all other forms of education.  Would a classroom-based education be a better fit for the genetic hard-wiring of my kids?         

But how do you transition home-schooled kids into a school setting in the least painful way, and more particularly, what kind of school do you choose for them?  How do you find the “right kind of classroom?”  How do you know if you aren’t making a terrible decision?   

I don’t suppose there are any black and white answers to that question, because every family is different.  And as for us, we’re surrounded by schools–public, charter, and private, but for me, today the little private school down the road won me over.  It was like home-chool–smaller, family-ish, everybody knows everybody, warm, nurturing-yet-challenging, multiple grades in one classroom, bright classrooms…  

I walked into their Open House today, hopeful, but not expecting much.  I walked out with my arm full of papers to sign and dates to mark down on my calendar, and grinning from ear to ear.  There were no fearful thoughts of condemnation running through my brain.  In fact, the only thing I kept wondering was, WHY DIDN’T I DO THIS FIVE YEARS EARLIER??? 

Will it “work?”  Will the kids thrive?  Will it be a fit for our family?  I don’t have access to the future, so all I can say is that I’m excited about giving it a try.  For one thing, my husband thinks it’s a great idea.  Two of the kids are feeling really nervous, but the other three are jumping for joy.  School starts in two weeks, with even the youngest going to two mornings of preschool.  So I guess we’ll start finding out then.  And in the meantime, I have to start adjusting to being a school kind of mom.