Lessons in Responsibility for a grown-up kid

I am poor at managing.

I do it- at least, I try- but I'm not very good at it.

And I'm still learning to enjoy things that I'm not good at doing.

Which means I strongly dislike Managing.

The Things To Manage that I hold in my hand feel immense.

Whether God-ordained or self-inflicted,

Through choice or through circumstance,

Everywhere I turn, I face Things To Manage-

    Time to manage

    People to manage

    Money to manage

    And Things.  So Many Things.

Whether I chose to willingly reach for and grasp these Things to Manage

    or they were tossed into my lap,

Here they are.

All. These. Things. To. Manage.

I am but a child.

A forty-one year old child,

    still trying to find my keys.

Somehow, I went from being The Youngest in my family

    to being The Oldest in my family- 

    it's not half as special a spot as my sister asserted it to be. 😜

I don't want to spend my life 

    Managing Things

    Managing Time

    Managing People

    Managing Money

I just want to live

    and let others do the managing

    (of everything except me, of course).

Maybe someday, I'll manage to become a Better Manager.

In the meantime, may God help me become a Better Me.

All the things I try to teach my children about executive functioning,

    are things I need to work on, in me.

Also, of moderate significance, the font of choice for this post is "Shadows Into Light 2"

    

Celebrating Homeschool- Ten things I love about coordinating my children's intellectual development

In my young adulthood, I remember admiring families who were the picture of Homeschool Done Well. It went on my bucket list,  alongside all the other things that would require multiple lives to fulfill: "Homeschool my kids."

Alrighty, then, here we are. Living the dream. 

Like so many things in life, and especially in parenting,  how we choose to educate our children is a deeply personal choice, impacted by so many things, impacting so many things.

My husband had a picture in his head of Homeschool Not Done Well. It was NOT on his bucket list. So we still have conversations: IS this the best thing for this child, for this year? Is this still the best thing for our family? And although he clearly does not want the role of  Primary Teacher, he gets called, not infrequently, to consult in his role of Principal.

This is not the place nor the time for me to elaborate on all our reasons for choosing homeschool as the current best option for our family.

If you note the title of this blurb, you'll notice it specifically says "Ten things I LOVE about...."  So even though,  like most things we enjoy, there are days when The Dream explodes into a sort of Wild Nightmare, that's not what this is about. 

I specifically call it "coordinating my children's intellectual development" because it helps my mental/emotional endurance when I recognize that I am not The Source of all their learning.  I coordinate it.

We use countdowns all the time here. It's a way of measuring how long you have until you're done. 

So, here we go.....

TEN!    I love being present for those Moments of Discovery, when the lightbulb goes on. I love being the one who gets to hear their exclamation and see the sparkle in their eye. 

NINE!    I love the integration of Book Learning with Life Learning. 

EIGHT!    I love being able to dedicate my Mom Energy to actual education rather than fundraisers and hot lunches and school transportation, as we would for some of the local parochial school options.  (I remind myself of this routinely,  because some days, the trade-off looks appealing.) 

SEVEN!   I love the flexibility of being able to flex our school time around farming and our meat business obligations. 

SIX!  I love that the 7 year old learns alongside the 9 year old (for some things), and that the 4 year old learns as I teach the 7 year old,  and the 20 month old learns from them all.

FIVE!    I love that I get to learn right with them, in things like history. 

FOUR!    I love that we can customize each child's education without bucking the system.  Whether the child learns to read at 4 or 7 is less relevant than that they are moving forward in their personalized goals.

THREE!   I love that I get to be with them during the hours of their best energy.

TWO!      When we're done with school, we're done with school. No homework.  

ONE!   We get to Experience Life Together, and grow together. Not always the easiest thing, but it gives us lots of opportunities to practice love, and we're making lots of memories. 

BLASTOFF!!!  OK, this one's bonus. But I am SO THANKFUL  for all the resources that make homeschool so much easier than it would be otherwise.  Teachers, books, online courses, homeschool assistance programs, libraries, field trips- the list goes on and on. I don't teach have to teach them everything they will know- I just have to coordinate their learning experiences. This I can do. For now.

The End.

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(Written later)

I am using these Ten Things lists as a quick writing exercise, and an exercise in not having to overthink the details before I publish it.

But I miss things. In this case, I missed perhaps the most important thing I love about homeschool. 

The overarching reason I love homeschool is the ability to teach our faith in every aspect of our lives and learning. 

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