The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By Missy

It’s raining here. Again. It generally doesn’t rain for three days straight in Virginia. Three days with an afternoon storm or summer shower, sure. But a continuous torrential rainfall? Nope. I don’t think we’re mentally equipped for it.

I don’t usually seek out a break in the rain from blinding to merely pounding, and then encourage the kids to go out play in the standing water, in muck up to their knees, but you start running out of options after a while. And when the options run out, so does the sanity. It got ugly.

Homeschooling, like a Virginia monsoon season, leads to a lot of togetherness.

Usually when you read a homeschool article or essay, it celebrates the triumphs, the joys. If there’s a mention of a struggle, it ends with an epiphany followed by success. Or, success followed by an epiphany.

Many editors request that manuscripts offer a problem with a solution. It makes sense. People frequently read magazines looking for answers, and, really, who wants to wallow in someone else’s frustrations? Even our blogs tend to reflect more affirming experiences because that’s when we feel energized and we want to celebrate.

In some ways, it’s a lot like a sit-com—problem identified and neatly resolved in the 20 allotted minutes (or 700-word manuscript).

But sometimes someone needs more than a condensed reality. Sometimes someone is looking for a truth that doesn’t wrap up quite so efficiently.

I think many of us carry the perception that, if we expose the raw process, we might scare someone off. We don’t stop to consider that, if someone is just starting out and is scared and uncertain and feeling very alone, reading air-brushed stories with perfect endings can be wildly intimidating. If we rush to that ending, they don’t get the process. They don’t get the frustration and the sweat and the possible tears. They don’t feel our fears.

Very recently, a mom posted her late night fears on a local homeschool list. You know those fears, the doubts that creep up on you when you can’t sleep, when your thoughts start crashing together and create new, even more awful thoughts…when you get on the computer and start reading and even more doubts creep in because everyone else seems to have all the answers and is so committed to homeschooling and so confident and so creative and so damn perfect. And, suddenly, you feel about an inch tall and woefully inadequate and your brain explodes with the knowledge that, no matter what you do, you’re going to irreversibly damage your children forever.

You do know that feeling…right?

So, here it is--the ugly truth about this monsoon. After three days of constant rain, I’m losing it. My patience isn’t short, it escaped from this house two days ago and is long gone. My boys can’t play outside so their excess energy is released inside. My six-year-old has discovered that he can literally walk up the wall by making a bridge in the entrance to the kitchen—hands on one wall, feet on the other, walk up. My four-year-old has discovered how much fun it is to run under that bridge. My six-year-old informed us he can go down the stairs head first; we stopped the four-year-old before he followed his brother. I have baked two loaves of bread everyday; unfortunately, none have made it to the freezer because…it’s gone. Never even cools off. The pictures in the living room are all leaning to the left, some a little, some a lot. I have no idea why and I’m not sure I want to know.

But, in the midst of the ugliness, my six-year-old has decided he can read. He’s reading constantly. He creates a museum tour for us each morning and ends with a story hour. He pulled out a word find book and works each puzzle slowly and methodically. He taught his little brother to play Trouble. And did I mention he wants to read constantly? Which requires that patience that fled a few days ago? Reality. We called the grandparents so he could tell them he was reading. We celebrated every time he read a new book and the pride and joy in his face was tangible, but it’s taking more of an effort than I want it to. I want to be able to patiently curl up with him for hours, but I have two other children who have their own joys and deserve their own celebrations and who have been shut up in this house with us and are just as restless as he is.

My daughter has escaped. In a fit of boredom, she discovered her beads (and then my beads) and has been shut in her room for two days, emerging every few hours to show off her latest creations. Her brothers descend on her every time she comes out, but she has the luxury of disappearing again. And I start wondering if I’ve condemned her to an adolescence filled with this need for seclusion. Or, if maybe I could join her, just for a little while until the rain stops.

Some days, some weeks, are like that. Sometimes you have to dig past the noise and the bickering and cling to those few precious moments when your kids were giggling together at their own silliness. You have to try to isolate the successes to realize that you are, in fact, moving forward, but it's not easy because it’s all rolled together. Sometimes you have to take the ugly, mix it up with the good and a little trust, and jump.

If doubts rise up, ask a few homeschoolers who have been doing it for a while. I’d bet that, even now, they still have doubts. They probably still lie awake some nights while their fears lead to more fears and maybe some of us need to share those fears or some of our bad days in order to normalize that part of the journey and remove some of the mystery.

Sometimes an individual’s only source of support is an on-line community and we need to not just offer resources but also acknowledge another parent’s strengths and help them find the confidence to trust their instincts and, in turn, to trust their children.

Tonight I sat outside for a few minutes, listening to the last drops of rain hit the leaves in our garden. Inside, even the laundry seemed loud and I needed that time outside to collect the few lingering remnants of my patience in the hopes that it will somehow expand during the night. I like being with my kids. I love being there, in the moment, when something wonderful sparks their interest, and I love being able to share so much with them.

I love when I can blog about finding fossils or riding horses; I love when I can write about a moment of pure, intense joy…but that joy is strengthened by all the other moments around it. The celebration of every small success is so deep because of the fear that preceded it.

Missy's homeschooling journey began when she realized that the walls surrounding her daughter's classroom were too narrow; there was no room for exploration, no space for stretching. Now, she and her three children stretch and explore the world together. My blog: caffeinatedjive

Comments

[MajaBee]

WOW. a late night plea with a ripple effect. I love the positive feedback it got (despite the profanities... yikes) and am grateful that other moms have opened up about their daily struggles. One of my favorite responses is "I don't play with my kids either!" HA!

[missyridgecarter]

Aren't you glad you opened up? You got so many people thinking and talking.

[MajaBee]

Missy, I decided to add a link to this blog in my last blog entry because I got the sense from your comment to my comment that it's ok to share. The more the merrier, right?

[Andrea (admin)]

Well done. Sounds like a day at our house, strangely enough...

[Marjorie]

That might have been me, might have been a number of other homeschoolers. I don't play with my kids -- it drives me crazy. But I love to watch them play, and I love them, and I sometimes participate when they ask, but rarely. I'm just not very good at pretend play. I traded my imagination for good grades in school. Bad trade.