I saw an Instagram post today that got me thinking about homeschooling. @lauren_stadler posted it in her stories but the post I am referencing originally came from @siloandsage that said “Formal lessons are just one way kids learn. Don’t put your home education into a box.” She was offering ideas for homeschool that went beyond kids sitting at a desk doing worksheets. You can learn math via cooking and learn spelling through playing Scrabble, etc.

And I don’t disagree with it. There was an excitement in homeschooling that you could, as she says, “count it all”. All the things you were doing as daily life were part of school, and this, somehow, was better than what they could be getting somewhere else. It wasn’t a conceited belief on my part. It was more like a gut feeling, an instinct that said right now my children were better off with me.

When I see those posts now it absolutely exhausts me. Like I feel the exhaustion of what it would be like if I were to try what we did then and do it the same way now. I don’t have that kind of spunk or energy. I remember thinking that the growth, restraint, and adjustments made and needed in the first full year of homeschooling had surely taken five years off of my life. But after that we settled in.

Not all of my kids have had the same experience. As my oldest has told me, homeschooling wasn’t bad, but LuHigh was better. For him it beyond a shadow of a doubt was. The others have had more evened-out opinions. There are pros, there are cons, to every school option. They have all done well whenever entering “real school”, which gives me the assurance and confidence needed that the school part in our equation was doing it’s job. I’m not changing that.

But I hope to do now more learning alongside them, in the way of also working through the books and the lessons. With no classes of my own my mind is freed up, and that is the way I like it to be. When I look forward to the days with anticipation not dread. That is the best part to me about being home. The possibilities are endless, the creative outlets are live-giving. And being with those who taught me most about love.