Sitting at the tire shop should really be more entertaining, don’t you think? They try - soap operas on the big tv hanging in the corner. The one playing currently (Young and the Restless) makes me think of my grandmother. She watched it daily, and I remember going to visit her and thinking how funny it was that they’d watch it twice a day sometimes. You see, they had one of those big satellite dishes and they could pick it up on two different channels - once in the morning and once in the afternoon. She used to joke that if she missed it in the morning, she could play “catch up” in the afternoon. Fun memories.
There are some parts of adulting that I’m not a huge fan of. Car maintenance would be really high on that list. However, we have another long road trip ahead of us, and good tires that are NOT snow tires would be really beneficial to have. I’m not a fan of hydroplaning in a big 12 passenger van. ;)
Now that I’ve been home for almost 2 days, I’m feeling a little less stressed from the last road trip. The 18 hour drive home across Canada (most of which was a little 2 lane highway, dotted with tiny towns) was long and tiring, and the addition of a head cold for me and the baby made it really tricky. All she wanted was Mommy, and all I could do was drive. Poor rascal. She and I are almost back at 100%, though, praise God. It’s starting to work its way through the other rascals, but I’m hopeful it will be as quick for them as it was for the two of us.
It’s the funniest thing. So many people were commenting on how brave or strong I was to do a road trip like this on my own with the kids, and it really surprised me. I guess it’s been a part of our life for so long that I have done almost everything by myself with the kids, that I don’t see what was so brave about it. I mean, I really, really appreciate the sentiment - it made the hard moments seem less hard, like I was justified in feeling stressed at that moment. But overall, I didn’t see anything particularly brave about it.
I thought a lot about that as I was driving, considering it piggy backed on a conversation I’d had recently with friends about homeschooling. Yes, moments were hard, but I had some major things working in my favor - one of the big ones being that the kids and I are together, 24/7. It’s just a necessary fact of life that my kids have learned how to step in and help me. Even if Mike didn’t work such a random schedule (which *has* gotten much, much better since our move, but the nature of an OB/GYN schedule is that it isn’t shift work), the very fact that we’re all home, all together, all of the time, means that my kids have learned what it takes to make a household run.
Can kids who attend traditional schools learn this? DEFINITELY! I did. Mike did. Many of our friend’s kids do. But, unlike a homeschooling family, I think it takes a little bit more intention to foster that kind of knowledge. If a teenager isn’t home with a toddler all day, he/she isn’t necessarily going to see as many examples of Mom problem-solving a toddler tantrum, or Mom coming up with games and activities for the toddler to do. My kids have seen so much of those interactions - how to accommodate little ones in regular, every day life - that it’s become second nature for them. A preschooler is panicking in the car? The 9 year old knows to start with a list of possible problems to solve, without any prompting from me: Is she hungry? Is something hurting her? Does she have to pee? Does she want a particular toy? Is she bored? Did something scare her? He knows to start at the top and work his way down the list, eventually landing on whatever it was that led to the panic, and helping her solve it. How does he know this? Because he’s seen me (and his older brothers) do this hundreds, if not thousands, of times in our every day life.
It’s second nature for my oldest to swoop in and pick up the toddler and include her in interactions with his friends, or help her get situated at a restaurant. It’s not because we expect him to do that at home (I try *really* hard not to ask the kids to do too much because I want to let them be kids for as long as possible), but it’s because he sees me and Mike do that over and over again. The 12 year old lets the preschooler help him with unloading groceries and knows that while it’s slightly frustrating to do that at preschool speed….there are ways to make that preschooler feel wanted and included while minimizing the frustration (“Hey, T, can you carry this bag of napkins into the kitchen for me? Can you line all of the cans up on the counter for Mom?”). He recognizes that if he lets the preschooler “help” him now, in a few months or years, that preschooler will be able to do it on his own and it’ll be even better as our family team. We’ll have another “player” to play the game, if you will.
This is the time of year where we start analyzing our past year of schooling, and start looking toward the future and planning the next school year. We’ve made it through the winter doldrums, and are starting to feel excitement about new growth and opportunities. It’s also the time of year where Mike and I sit down and ask, “What are our goals in educating this particular child? Where can we best accomplish those goals: school or home? What does this child want for his/her own future? How can we meet that wish?” It’s a constant discernment process, and spring time seems to be the height of it every year.
I remember when we first started homeschooling, and people would ask me how long I intended to keep them home. I’d joke about being scared that I wasn’t smart enough to homeschool high school, and answer with what was then my “serious” answer: We’ll evaluate each year, and I only commit to a year at a time. If next year, the best option is a traditional school, that’s where the child will go.
My answer hasn’t changed all that much through the years. We still evaluate each year, and we still ask the same questions. However, academics are now only just a piece of the puzzle. I know now that I can “outsource” any subject that I don’t feel prepared to teach (even Stanford has fantastic online/virtual classes for homeschoolers!), so homeschooling high school isn’t quite as intimidating anymore. We have wonderful social support networks in place - for me and for the kids. The amount of free time the kids have to explore their desires and interests has led to development in art, sports, and music. The kids have created their own businesses and have learned - through trial and error - how to develop marketable skills and succeed financially with those skills. They’ve attended business meetings, trying to “sell” their product to an investor, planning for those meetings and representing themselves during them. I do not dismiss that free time anymore as a waste in scheduling - it is just as important in our evaluations as their grades.
And the thing that was my biggest surprise when homeschooling is the now top of the list when we evaluate each child’s educational plans: the development of my children’s relationships with each other. I expected to get to grow our parent/child relationships when we first brought the boys home seven years ago. Part of our motivation to homeschool included this idea that we wanted to be a family unit, and try to prevent that parent/child relationship from turning into the “us vs them” dichotomy that we so often saw in our youth ministry teens. It was important to us that we tried to steer away from the “adults are stupid” teen mindset that seemed to permeate through popular media and culture. Will we avoid it completely? Of course not - some of that is just human nature as you’re learning and growing and becoming more independent. But we were hoping to foster relationships where we were seen as a team member in our child’s corner, not as the bumbling parent who couldn’t be trusted.
Watching the children develop relationships with each other completely took me by surprise. I’m not sure why - looking back, it seems natural that since they were in each other’s presence as much as they were in my presence, we’d see the same kind of relationship focus in siblings that we were hoping to see with the parent/child one. What can I say? I might be a bit of a slow learner. My children have taught me, through their own actions, the beauty of developing a love for their siblings, and the joy of fostering nurturing relationships on a horizontal level, not just vertical. My greatest hope as their mom is that these relationships continue to blossom and remain strong throughout their lives. Academics are important, but more important that their grades and book smarts is their ability to love each other for who they are as individuals, the good parts and the annoying parts. There’s no greater place, no safer place, to learn that than in the family home. We can’t choose the personalities and the temperaments of the members of our family. We can’t choose (most of the time) to only hang out with those people who are our natural friends when it comes to living in a family. We have to learn to make peace, to develop relationships, and LOVE those who might not be our top picks if we were to
choose our families.
Maybe one of them will grow up to develop a cure for cancer, or negotiate world peace, or create the next greatest thing for humankind. I won’t hold them back from doing those things, and I will help them chase down the tools they need to meet those goals.
But they’ll will *ALL* grow up to interact with society on a daily, even hourly, basis. They will *ALL* grow up and need to know how to sympathize, how to problem solve, how to help, how to serve, and how to truly desire the best for the people who annoy them.
Who better to teach that than a toddler?
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