A time to celebrate?

A time to celebrate?

You've all seen the photos on the first day of school. You know the ones I mean... the ones where mums and dads are seen cheering as they send their kids off to school.

Yes, they are light hearted and meant to be funny, but it leads me to the situation I'm faced with now that I'm a homeschooling mum. It all revolves around our decision to home school. I'm not the first homeschooling parent to have this problem nor will I be the last.

It involves our choice to spend more time with our kids than the parents of mainstream schooling parents do. "You must really love your kids if you want to spend THAT much time with them!" one parent commented to my homeschooling friend. Well, yes, we do really love our kids, that's one of the reasons we've chosen this for our family.

It's a long time between cuddles.

Think about the time children spend at school. Six and a half hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks a year. That's thirteen hundred hours at school. The question is, do you want your child in a school or with you for all that time? The answer for us is no. I want to spend time with them. They are only going to be this little once, you NEVER get this time back! So yes, I want to spend that amount of time with my kids. Sure they drive me crazy some days and I'm counting down the hours until my husband gets home but those days are getting fewer and fewer. The toddler years were quite hard for me especially having two toddlers only 15 months apart. The days were long and they needed and wanted my attention most of the day. Sure we all got a nap half way through the day... that's the only thing that got me through some days, but I'm finding them to be easier to deal with on a daily basis. That's not to say Elliott doesn't have a melt down over the slightest thing, but the melt downs tend to be briefer, less often and less intense than they used to be.

Ever feel like this?

Kids are hard work. Anyone with kids knows that, and homeschooling my kids is going to be hard work. I have no doubt that sending my kids to a public school would be the easiest option for our family. I mean I would have more time on my hands and I'd be getting paid more. But the question is, "is the easiest option the best option?" For us, no it isn't.

Then there is the constant questioning from people. I sometimes feel they are asking the questions about homeschooling not with the desire to understand the answers but rather the desire to mock and ridicule you with the wording of their questions. Questions like "aren't you afraid they'll turn out weird?" In my time as a teacher I've seen more than my fair share of weird mainstream schooled children, so I don't think homeschooling is a contributing factor to their 'weirdness.'

It seems that home schoolers are constantly having to give thorough, well thought out, essay style responses to 'why?' Why do you home school? It seems that 'because this is what's best for our family' isn't enough. Turn around and ask the same parent why they mainstream school their kids and you'd be looked at like you've got two heads. They never have a thoughtful response ready in essay form for me to print out and read... double standards! As my hubby says "We (society) out sheep the sheep for the sheep need a cattle dog to keep them in line, whilst we keep each other in line" through ridicule and social pressures. 
 
"My kids are little sh##s!" I hear many parents say, as though they had nothing to do with raising them! I think all kids have difficult behaviour for some reason or another. Be it they need attention, are bored, are hungry, having conflict with the siblings and the list could go on. Our job as parents and teachers is to find out why they are misbehaving and take steps to minimize the child's negative behaviour. I honestly believe that what children want from their parents is time and attention. Whenever our boys have been misbehaving, it usually comes down to have they been receiving the time and attention from us that they need and deserve.

I hope you've found this post to be informative. Please feel free to share and post a comment.