Is there anyone more starry eyed than the mother of a newly minted five year old, researching homeschool curriculum?
I suppose my idealism was tempered somewhat by the presence of a baby who, at that exact moment in time, didn’t believe in sleeping and frequently required me to wear all 20 lbs of his darling, chunky self in order to nap. But still, I was ready. We were going to start “real” school. I went to the practicum, I filled my head with classical education ideals, I became slightly overwhelmed by how exactly I was supposed to implement memory work, but it was going to be great.
And then that fall we decided to sell our house, we moved in with family, my husband quit his job, we moved to Wyoming, Covid hit, and while the school year wasn’t a wash — we did math and phonics and I had a fluent reader1 by the end of the year — it didn’t look how I thought it should. I was failing.
Little did I know that in our next four years of homeschooling, we would move several more times, live with family again, have two more babies, weather some odd medical crises and finish it off with a cross country move.
If I’m honest, it’s very easy for me to spiral down a self pitying hole about how much I’ve failed my children, and how pathetic our homeschooling is compared to (Instagram, my friend with two kids, the mom in the co-op, the other random person who wrote about her lesson plan, literally anyone I meet on the street). Whether it’s our extenuating circumstances or just normal limitations it seems I can’t even live up to my own standards. Last summer I spent the whole summer working on curriculum development for our co-op2and by November I was barely keeping up with the minimum of the structure I’d designed.
Now here I am, mid-July, in a new place, but in my usual funk, dreading all the back to school and curriculum talk, and feeling inadequate when a fellow mom shows me laminated, color-coded grammar flashcards and I wonder if I even know where our spelling curriculum is. I can’t even manage our daily life right now, so how am I possibly going to add schoolwork into this mix?
But, as I keep thinking through these “failures” of mine, I’ve been mulling over a question. Are my children actually struggling or behind because of my “failures”, or do I just feel insecure because our homeschool isn’t very aesthetic? When I’m trying to judge how badly I’m failing, what’s my measuring stick3?
Too often I find that what is really going on is I’m falling into the ditch on one side or the other. I’m either letting things go in an area that’s not particularly fun — like putting my phone down or dealing with small behavioral issues before they escalate — or I’m comparing myself to someone else’s family with completely different circumstances, numbers of children, or temperaments.
My children are doing just fine. It’s my pride that’s struggling.
I would love to impress some unknown audience with how thoughtful and beautiful our school days are. What really happens is that I yell more than I’d like, I ask for forgiveness every single day, and the only things we reliably get done each day are Bible, handwriting, math and listening to audiobooks. The basics aren’t aesthetically pleasing. My boys adorn their math books with dinosaurs, and doodle swords in the margins of their handwriting. The toddler and baby trash the rest of the house, and I usually have workout clothes on. We do school at the kitchen table and I do my best to keep our supplies organized, while always wishing for a little more space.
And, you know what? We make progress. We get the other subjects done as we can, in some version of a loop schedule. There’s always a new fact being shared from the latest round of library books, they learn art from the ubiquitous Art for Kids Hub, and I am humbled, because every single day I feel inadequate.
It’s hard to know, am I actually falling short? Or am I doing the best I can, but it still feels difficult? I think the tension lies somewhere in the middle — I can constantly look for ways to improve, but also know that I’m never going to feel like I’ve arrived.
And perhaps that last bit — the pervasive sense of inadequacy — is by design. As I pondered this topic last week, the image of a hobbled horse, it’s feet tied, kept coming to mind. Curious, I looked up the purpose of a hobble in horse training, and this is what I found:
“Hobble training is a tool to help my horses and mules learn to be quiet in uncomfortable situations, such as would occur if a leg were to get caught in wire. An animal that can stand steady and accept pressure without struggle or panic is well worth its place in any string.… Effective hobble training helps [horses] become better at having things wrapped around their legs without panic. Being steady, calm, and collected during trying times is a tool that every horse needs to have in their saddle bags.”
Hmm. Is it possible, that like a skilled horse trainer, the Lord knows I need to be hobbled to practice “accept[ing] pressure without struggle or panic”? I am often literally hobbled — have you ever tried to walk across the kitchen with a baby hanging on your legs? But even when there’s no one actually grabbing my legs, I am more restricted than the families I see galloping all around me. I envy their freedom to move, the packed schedules that don’t need to account for naps, the temperaments that aren’t so sensitive, or don’t need as much recovery time, the agility of not herding a bus full of children through the grocery store. I wish I could run faster, when so much of the time I am asked to stand still, accepting the discomfort of pressure without motion.
Conceptualizing this steady pressure as a training exercise seems useful. When I can’t do everything I want to do, perhaps this is for a reason. Patience is a discipline developed over time, and without the fortitude to tolerate discomfort maybe we are apt to be like flighty horses. I don’t really know what my hobbles are training me for, but I imagine most horses don’t quite get it either. Being the intuitive creatures they are, if trained carefully they’ll trust the process, and learn not to spook at things that aren’t really threats.
Sometimes I imagine what our homeschool days would look like if I could have had my own way. I’d probably have pushed my eldest son much too hard and not emphasized outdoor play nearly enough. I’d probably have taken on a much longer to do list, and been swept away by new and shiny curriculum. I’d be over committed and cranky when we still didn’t get things done. If I had my own way, I doubt I’d actually have taught my children anything more, but I can almost guarantee we’d all be more miserable. And so, in all these ways I’ve been prevented from being successful, I can look back and see that God must have known better than I did what our family really needed. Of course there’s a time for more rigor and discipline in schoolwork, but the relational, emotional and character work we’ve been forced to do through change and hard things has been a curriculum I couldn’t have and wouldn’t have designed.
I don’t feel idealistic going into this year. I feel tired. If there were another option that were a good fit for our family I’d gladly sign up. I will probably sink into a day long fit of self pity when everyone posts the obligatory first day of school pictures, because I will wonder yet again, if I’m failing my children by keeping them home. And then we will somehow manage to start school, and the days will unfold, some good, some magical, some downright awful, and most just middling. But I will show up, and we will be together, and somehow, my failure will be enough.
As my good friend4, Sarah Mackenzie says,
This is pretty much how I feel most mornings.
All these children.
All these needs.
Only one of me (and a tired, overwhelmed, in-over-her-head version of me, to boot).
Jesus could have fed everyone instantly. He could have taken away their hunger. He could have, out of nowhere, presented them with a feast fit for kings .
But He didn’t.
Instead, He told the disciples, “Bring me what you have.”
So they brought Him a basket with a few loaves of bread and a bit of fish.
And yet…
HE MAKES IT ENOUGH
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Lately:
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Reading: I loved this essay from
. I’ve read too many news articles (haven’t we all?) and would love to fast forward through the next few months. Sigh. The week feels like it passed in a blur, so I’m not sure what else I read. I need a new book to get my reading going again — still waiting for all my Libby holds, and with my luck they’ll all arrive at once, and then I’ll only read half.Cooking: We now have access to raw goat milk (!!) and so far my children seem to be tolerating it, which is huge. Now, by tolerating, I mean they’re not having allergic reactions. They’re having plenty of other reactions, ranging from gagging to dramatic whining. It’s a work in progress, I guess. I used the milk in these sheet pan pancakes (never, ever flipping pancakes again!) and I think real milk must make a big difference, because my husband didn't even think they tasted gluten free. I have also been experimenting with yogurt and cheese. The first round of yogurt was a massive failure, but on my second attempt I used a culture from New England Cheesemaking Supply and figured out that my Instant Pot really doesn’t bring the milk up to the correct temperature. It was much more successful, though a little runny. I’m considering trying to sneak it into popsicle form with some fruit. The chèvre also turned out so well! My only caution is that I did not realize how long milk would take to cool, so I was up until 11:30 pm, sticking a thermometer in the pan until it got to 86 degrees. Otherwise, like most of you, we’re on the “anything that can be a salad should be” summer food plan, with a side of “I hate ground beef” for the pregnant lady.
Working: One of these days — hopefully before school starts— I’m going to get the other publication morphed into a section over here. I just have to sit down and make it happen. I think I’ve gotten some good tips on how to do it and am looking forward to a bit more streamlined space. I’d love to put together a summer food roundup, or perhaps something pregnancy specific, but my ideas have not matched my time allotment or energy.
Listening: I always enjoy the Lazy Genius episodes, but in her latest, she mentions this idea of having kids “notice and do”, i.e. working on training your children to actually look around rooms and notice what might be out of place and then take care of it without being told every.single.step. We are going to be working on this. My goal for the rest of the summer is to give a home to any item I can, so that it will be a little easier for my children to share the responsibility of putting things back where they belong.
I also really enjoyed this episode on training for birth. I’ve recently started some prenatal workouts again (I love this free plan!) and it was good motivation listening to them talk about birth as the athletic event that it is.
That’s all for now. We’ve got guests rolling in for the weekend, and work is picking up, so who knows what the weekend holds. Are you starting to wrap your brain around school yet or still in denial (can you do both)? Let me know in the comments :)
This had almost nothing to do with me. This particular child made it halfway through AAR and then started reading anything with words on it. I probably would have had to work hard for him to NOT learn to read. It turns out that mileage in learning to read varies widely by child, my second is finally reading to himself at age 8 and it’s taken considerably more effort and patience.
In hindsight, I would say two things. 1) Do not agree to anything your future self will need to execute if you have a baby under the age of 3 months. 2) If you can, take the summer off, or at least give yourself all of June, you really need a mental break.
I think about this podcast episode from Read Aloud Revival quite often, where Sarah talks about how to answer the question, “Am I doing enough?” which, of course, is too big of a question to answer. Are you doing enough to what? What is it that you’re aiming for, and how will you know when you’ve gotten there?
We’re friends in my head, obviously. If Sally Clarkson is everyone’s grandma, Sarah is everyone’s big sister.
If you're doing Bible, handwriting, math, and listening to audiobooks every day, well done! Last year, we graduated our eighth child after thirty years of homeschooling. My children have grown into adults that I *like* and I'm enjoying this stage in our relationships. One of my daughters, in a text last night, thanked us for always being there as parents, and said our children were more grateful for us than we could ever know. (This was not an easy child to raise; few are.) One reason we homeschooled was so our children would know each other and be friends, in spite of their births being spread over a nineteen year period. That's been a beautiful thing to behold. They've been in each other's weddings, and the younger babysit the older ones' children. Hang in there. 😁
As a homeschool mom I totally feel you on all this. As a homeschool grad I can also say the following:
1) all the upheavals you’ve described are truly destabilizing for the kids in some ways. Having them in school, which means switching teachers and curriculum every time you move, certainly would not have been very academically successful, either. So you’re not meeting your dream homeschool visions but the alternative of kids in school would have been very counterproductive. A very low-key homeschool approach was probably the healthiest option given all the rest of things. They will look back and remember strong bonds formed in adventures with siblings instead of being scared in new schools all the time!
2) This sounds a lot like my homeschool days and I think it’s fine for elementary school. I do think it’s important to ramp things up through middle & especially high school but there are SO many more options these days for online classes, audiobook texts, etc., than I had access to and some of the labor intensive parts of upper levels can be effectively outsourced.