Values

One of the thoughts I've had swirling around my head for the last few weeks has to do with values.

When you homeschool, you have to live in contact with your values. You have to know what they are, you have to live by them, and you have to be prepared to defend them to your children, and to practically anyone who decides to question your right or ability to homeschool.

I have to know, on a daily basis, what is more important: a clean house, or school work accomplished? Groceries done, or a play date with friends? Making my daughter finish something or letting her try something new? Achievement, or experimentation? Discipline or going with the flow? Winning an argument or keeping the peace? Obedience or communication? Science or history? Writing or logic? Math or reading? Harry Potter or learn-to-read books? English books or French books? 

I didn't feel like I was constantly making decisions when my daughter was at school all day. Most of the decisions were made for me, including what time to get up, what time to go to bed, how much homework to do, and how much free time we had.

When I am responsible for what goes on around here 24 hours a day, I need to be crystal clear about what is important to me. I feel like every day is a living example of what is important: love, caring, patience, compassion, respect, healthy choices like nutrition and exercise, attitude, effort, work, and rest.

Someone mentioned to me that she wasn't feeling confident yet about her decision to homeschool. Someone else was worried about her child "keeping up" with children in school. I have a lot of empathy for these women. The way I see it, if you are comparing yourself to schools, it's because you basically agree with the goals and values of the schools, and you want to achieve a similar outcome.  I have confidence in what I'm doing because I DO NOT share the goals and values of the schools, so I do not need to compare my results to theirs. I do things differently because I have different values and because I am looking for a different outcome.

Thank goodness it's over.

I have just got to get this off my chest: I am SO RELIEVED that the
"holidays" are over. The fact that they are called "holidays" in the
first place is absolutely laughable. Whoever came up with that is
clearly not the person who does the cleaning, the decorating, the
cooking, the shopping, or the wrapping. Christmas is like a huge
project that has to be done on an annual basis, with a hard-and-fast
deadline, whether you feel like accepting the contract or not.

I know, I know, it's supposed to be a wonderful, magical time for
families to spend special time together and bond and so on. We happen
to be a homeschooling family, so we already spend LOTS of special
time together. Every day, in fact. All of my other important
relatives live really close by, so I see plenty of them, too. We have
dinner together all the time. The only thing different about
Christmas is that I have to do a lot of shopping, cleaning, wrapping,
and decorating beforehand, followed by some more cleaning afterwards.

The other issue that I have is that Christmas really throws me off of
my routine. I never ever imagined that I would be so attached to my
routine that it would bother me to abandon it for a week, but
apparently I am way more anal than I ever thought possible. After a
week off the routine, the kids were bored and hyper and driving me
crazy, and I was bored of spending all my time cleaning, cooking,
shopping, wrapping, eating, and socializing. I really wanted to get
back to MY life, which is with my friends, my kids, and my projects,
whatever they happen to be at the moment.

So, we took all the Christmas decorations down on December 30 because
I just couldn't handle having it hanging around anymore. We had a
fondue dinner with my brother and his wife on New Year's Eve, and by
January 2, I was BACK to regular life. The kids are back to normal,
and so am I. Dear hubby, bless him, goes back to work on Monday, and
things will REALLY get back to normal again. Thank God. I'm sure I
will come up with something new to complain about next week!