My Secret Desire
Whole Life Unschooling. Child Led Learning. Life Learning. All great concepts. I love them all. I practice them. Every day. Every minute of every day. I am IN the moment. I am creating learning experiences for my children. I am making sure their environment is full of stimulating thoughts and new concepts so that they have a large arena of interests to chose from. And know what? Want to know my deep seeded secret? Are you ready for this?
Sometimes, I really envy those traditional homeschool parents who follow a curriculum. They research and they find a glorious package for their family. They order it. It comes to their door, neatly, in a box. (I bet it even has a bow on it.) Then, over the summer, they plot out what they are going to do every month/week/day and then they hit send and it lands on everyone's calendar.
Oh the glory of that! I tried that. Once. Four years ago. It didn't work. We returned it within 72 hours. It didn't work for us. But sometimes, while I am making oobleck and having discussions with my 7 & 16 year old about non-Newtonian matter (after seeing it on Pintrest and thinking this is cool...and gluten free...so we can do it. How do I make it educational? Quick..do another look up!)..sometimes, I wish life was sent to me in a box. Simple. Clean. Easy.
My life is not simple, clean or easy. My life consists of 2 dogs, 1 a puppy. Honey Bunny who deals with bipolar, high functioning aspie issues, anxiety, anorexia and teenage hormones to top it all off. There is Boo Bear who is a joy to be around. Her laughter sounds like the tinkling of bells-but she has ADHD and probably dyslexia (it runs in the family in over 90% of it on both sides). Getting her to sit still is like asking my puppy not to chase after a squirrel or chase his tale. It doesn't happen. Then there is Hubby who, God bless his sole, is my love and my life, but is a 45 year old middle aged man who falls asleep watching television at about 8:30 and snores away until about 10 where at such time he basically crawls into bed to fall asleep again...with some shoot em up kill em show on.
Then, there is me. Yep. Little old me. In this example, it's 10pm, where we just left off snoring hubby stumbling down the hallway. I still have laundry to switch over, a dishwasher to run, a teenager to remind to take her meds and remind her boyfriend to go home by midnight because I'm tired tonight and would like to be awake when he leaves (not that they are having sex, it's just a parental thing I still feel like I need to do...be awake while he's here). Boo Bear is usually going strong at 10pm. She wants to play. She wants to do Reader Rabbit. She wants to play Littlest Pet Shop. She wants to do BrainPop. She wants to have a dance party.
Oh for the love of GOD...I want to go to sleep! I've been up since 6:30 dealing with Muttly 1 and Muttly 2. No matter how cute they are, I am the one up and dealing with them. Hubby has already left for work at that point, or is about to leave for work or is in the shower or is traveling at 6:30 in the morning, on any given day. I'm usually up a few times a night for nightmare comforting, or anxiety comforting, or at the moment I have a broken wrist, so I'm comforting myself. Sometimes, I'm even comforting Hubby, but usually I'm too cranky to do that in the middle of the night because if we are sleeping in the same room/bed, then his snoring is keeping me awake until about 5am and then he decides: Ohhh..lookie here! I have my wife in bed! Let me snuggle close to her with my fire hose. Dude...keep it away. I'm about to kill you is what I'm thinking at that point.
So, again, sometimes I dream of that curriculum in a box, which comes to my door, maybe with a bow, and school is from 8:00 - 3:00 and then we have a "life."
Yeah, that's not happening any time soon. It's 9:00pm right now. The dogs are about to come in whining at the door actually. The boyfriend is upstairs with Honey Bunny. Boo Bear is at a sleep over, for now....Hubby is traveling until next Tuesday and the day after tomorrow, I'm packing up both girls and the boyfriend for a 13 hour drive straight through to Connecticut to drive my parents down to North Carolina where they are moving a town over. The day after we arrive in Connecticut, we turn around and drive BACK to North Carolina now with 2 elderly people, their elderly dog, a 16 yr old, a 17 yr old and a 7 yr old-stopping every hour for my Dad to get out and stretch his legs so he doesn't have another pulmonary embolism land in his lung like it did on Thanksgiving.
Yep...no life in a box for me!!! :) But, truth be told, I'm happy about that. It didn't work for us.
Sometimes, I really envy those traditional homeschool parents who follow a curriculum. They research and they find a glorious package for their family. They order it. It comes to their door, neatly, in a box. (I bet it even has a bow on it.) Then, over the summer, they plot out what they are going to do every month/week/day and then they hit send and it lands on everyone's calendar.
Oh the glory of that! I tried that. Once. Four years ago. It didn't work. We returned it within 72 hours. It didn't work for us. But sometimes, while I am making oobleck and having discussions with my 7 & 16 year old about non-Newtonian matter (after seeing it on Pintrest and thinking this is cool...and gluten free...so we can do it. How do I make it educational? Quick..do another look up!)..sometimes, I wish life was sent to me in a box. Simple. Clean. Easy.
My life is not simple, clean or easy. My life consists of 2 dogs, 1 a puppy. Honey Bunny who deals with bipolar, high functioning aspie issues, anxiety, anorexia and teenage hormones to top it all off. There is Boo Bear who is a joy to be around. Her laughter sounds like the tinkling of bells-but she has ADHD and probably dyslexia (it runs in the family in over 90% of it on both sides). Getting her to sit still is like asking my puppy not to chase after a squirrel or chase his tale. It doesn't happen. Then there is Hubby who, God bless his sole, is my love and my life, but is a 45 year old middle aged man who falls asleep watching television at about 8:30 and snores away until about 10 where at such time he basically crawls into bed to fall asleep again...with some shoot em up kill em show on.
Then, there is me. Yep. Little old me. In this example, it's 10pm, where we just left off snoring hubby stumbling down the hallway. I still have laundry to switch over, a dishwasher to run, a teenager to remind to take her meds and remind her boyfriend to go home by midnight because I'm tired tonight and would like to be awake when he leaves (not that they are having sex, it's just a parental thing I still feel like I need to do...be awake while he's here). Boo Bear is usually going strong at 10pm. She wants to play. She wants to do Reader Rabbit. She wants to play Littlest Pet Shop. She wants to do BrainPop. She wants to have a dance party.
Oh for the love of GOD...I want to go to sleep! I've been up since 6:30 dealing with Muttly 1 and Muttly 2. No matter how cute they are, I am the one up and dealing with them. Hubby has already left for work at that point, or is about to leave for work or is in the shower or is traveling at 6:30 in the morning, on any given day. I'm usually up a few times a night for nightmare comforting, or anxiety comforting, or at the moment I have a broken wrist, so I'm comforting myself. Sometimes, I'm even comforting Hubby, but usually I'm too cranky to do that in the middle of the night because if we are sleeping in the same room/bed, then his snoring is keeping me awake until about 5am and then he decides: Ohhh..lookie here! I have my wife in bed! Let me snuggle close to her with my fire hose. Dude...keep it away. I'm about to kill you is what I'm thinking at that point.
So, again, sometimes I dream of that curriculum in a box, which comes to my door, maybe with a bow, and school is from 8:00 - 3:00 and then we have a "life."
Yeah, that's not happening any time soon. It's 9:00pm right now. The dogs are about to come in whining at the door actually. The boyfriend is upstairs with Honey Bunny. Boo Bear is at a sleep over, for now....Hubby is traveling until next Tuesday and the day after tomorrow, I'm packing up both girls and the boyfriend for a 13 hour drive straight through to Connecticut to drive my parents down to North Carolina where they are moving a town over. The day after we arrive in Connecticut, we turn around and drive BACK to North Carolina now with 2 elderly people, their elderly dog, a 16 yr old, a 17 yr old and a 7 yr old-stopping every hour for my Dad to get out and stretch his legs so he doesn't have another pulmonary embolism land in his lung like it did on Thanksgiving.
Yep...no life in a box for me!!! :) But, truth be told, I'm happy about that. It didn't work for us.
Can I say how much I love the honesty here??? I sometimes feel the exact same way, I look at people who just send their kids off to school and wonder what a "normal" life is like... those are the days when I'm feeling frustrated, tired, out of sorts... then I realize how much I love learning with my kids and stand by my decisions. But I'm glad I'm not the only one who sometimes thinks this way!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoy it. All of my posts are honest. I'm so tired of reading how perfect every bloggers life is. Mine is not perfect. It's messy and real and yes, sometimes I honestly miss the moments where all the kids went out the door from 8-4 and I went to the bathroom myself and the house stayed clean and the laundry was done and put away---and then I remember crying as I had to put a crying child onto a bus or the fights over homework or the damn early ass mornings and late nights making lunches factory style. Nope. Don't miss that. I will take the laughing mess rather than the neat crying.
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