Skip to main content

Why Home Education? (A Series, Pt 3)

 Today was one of those hopeful early spring days. In the 50s, warm sun, soft wind. You step outside and you smell the earth awakening from the long winter. 

Gus, who is 14, took the three littles (James, 5; Jane, 5; and Kate, 3) outside to play after dinner. It got dark and still they stayed out. He ran in for flashlights and patiently taught them how to play flashlight tag. He gently counted aloud with the tiniest one who can't yet make it to 20 on her own. He led them in shrieking gleeful chases around the yard. 

I looked at the clock and saw it was past their bedtimes, on a school night no less, and I did not care. How could I possibly interrupt this annual rite of spring? How could I tell my children to stop loving each other's company? Stop making the memories that form a childhood?

And this is why I want to Home Educate. Not because schedules are bad, but because during these years, schedules should not rule our lives. There will be decades upon decades when they are adults and they have to do all the things on someone else's schedule. For right now, why not let them simply be?

Note: I'm deep into reading the book: Call of the Wild + Free by Ainsley Arment. It's having an effect.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Flash Fiction - Guilt Free

And this one I wrote for the fun of it. It was delicious to wallow in such a world of self-indulgence I'll never know. This is flash fiction (less than 1,000 words). Guilt Free It was fudge sauce, thick and cold from the back of the fridge, dipped in gourmet raspberry jam—the kind from France with the understated label—straight onto a spoon and then suckled in my mouth, a frosty mug of milk tremoring faintly in my left hand, to be gulped in indelicate swaths allowing a dribble or two down my front, the first time I hit her. Not really hit. Shoved. A forceful push. A push that began with contact. The contact of my hand wedging so neatly between her small sharp shoulder blades, wedging in so that I almost could not retract myself from the catapulting force launching her into the tub. Not a hit—there was no smacking, cracking, sharp stinging rebound. No bruise. She’d laughed. She’d thought it was a game. Like when I clapped my hands together as she went up the stairs, cla...

Teaching "ouch"

I taught the girls to say ouch. When they first came to me their hair was a mess. Snarls, mismatched lengths where sections had been hacked off, thin and coarse hair that tangled in every hair clip I tried, etc. Due to a healthy diet and daily vitamins, as well as good hair products and regular brushing, their hair is now sleek and glossy. Jane has a cute haircut. Kate's hair is growing longer every day and curling into ringlets that bounce. I was so afraid of hurting them when they first came! I have naturally curly hair and my mother's is stick straight. She never understood how much it hurt when she pulled the brush straight through. I haven't let her touch my head since I could do my first clumsy pony tail. (At first, I held their hair so loosely while trying to do it that every single pony tail fell out minutes after going in. Looking back I feel like those people who don't know how to put a diaper on and it falls off when they lift the baby up!)  But eve...

The Stuff of Nightmares

For the past few months I've had this weird sleep pattern happening a couple times a week. I'm super tired and go right to sleep and continue to sleep for about 30-40 minutes. Then, I come rushing awake with my heart thumping, gasping for breath. My mind is flooded with anxiety about some tiny, specific thing like when you've already left for the trip but suddenly remember the crucial thing you forgot that absolutely must, somehow, be retrieved. I'm so anxious--and sleep-addled like when you can't fully come out of a nightmare--that it takes me 1 to 3 hours to go back to sleep. All the while feeling desperately tired and then angry that I can't get back to sleep. Because being angry sure is a relaxing way to soothe a tired brain to sleep. Yesterday we got a call from the Guardian ad Litum (the attorney for the girls). It was a brief check-up as it always is. He asks no questions beyond his first "how's it going"; wants few details. But, he is u...