(Note to my currently homeschooling friends: Please take this post for what it is -some thoughts of how the shift out of homeschooling has played out in our family. I don't write any of this to try to sway you from what you're doing - as long as God is still calling you to teach your kids at home, I'll be a praying for you as you follow His lead! Homeschooling has some awesome parts . . . and some hard parts, just like any schooling choice. Our kids have good days and bad days, whether teacher is mom or Mrs. X. You can still air your frustrations about the bad days without me giving you the "if only you'd put them in school you wouldn't have to deal with it" eye. I remember those days (and they still show up in smaller amounts over homework ;) ) You can still share that awesome day when God brought everything together in this perfect unit study that you couldn't have planned - I remember those days, and will be rejoicing with you and encouraging you to hang onto them when times get rough!)
Ten years ago when we first thought about having children, I never dreamed that I would end up staying at home with them. God's plan turned out to be a little different. Ten years ago when we were began to start a family, I thought we would be in control of the number and timing of children we'd have. God's plan turned out to be different. As I opened baby shower gifts from my class of middle schoolers, I assumed my baby would be in preschool in a few years and then step on the bus the first day of kindergarten. God's plan turned out to be different. Once we began homeschooling, I had visions of teaching them all the way through. His plan for us, at least for right now in this season, with these kids, has turned out to be a little different.
I'm now 2 1/2 months into this sabbatical time. In many ways, it has been just what it needed to be so far- a transition from one time of life to the next, a cocoon for the metamorphosis to take place. For the kids, as they adapted to school routines and schedules, to the ups and downs of classroom dynamics and being around lots of other kids all day long. For me, as I struggled to follow God's leading to have them there while still hearing the inner critic whispering the accumulated arguments picked up from various books and blogs that by signing them up, I'd signed over their souls to the enemy. For our family dynamic, as we adjust to the shift of no longer running separate tracks, but being brought together on the same one.
That part sounds really strange, I know, especially since homeschooling is often described as bringing the family together. The reality of how it played out with our specific situation, though, is that while it kept the kids and I together, my husband often felt left out. His job required him to leave the house before 6 each morning, long before the kids (and too often, I as well), were up, and his long commute meant that he'd arrive home at night just in time for dinner and bedtime stories. A change in locations at the beginning of this school year had shortened the commute, but we still led fairly separate lives. In the past few months, that has changed. We're all getting up early now, and our day starts together as a family. We include Bible time and prayer to prepare us for the day, and then my husband and kids head off for school. Some days they leave together - since he teaches at a different building, he can take them with him and they take a shuttle bus over to their building. Some days they come home together, reversing the process. Homework can be a great equalizer for parents. At the same time their dad is becoming more involved in their learning, I am learning to become mom over teacher. In some ways I had let the role of teacher overtake that of mom, and always was on the alert for education happening. Those moments still happen - but there's a sense of relief that I don't have to track them all. We can take the moments of watching a bird building its nest outside the window just for the joy of it. When we are all back home together in the evenings, there's a different sense of togetherness now. There are good days where it comes together, and there are the days when someone is cranky and we forget to pray and I'm snappy and life is too busy - but overall, we're more on the same track than we've been before.
There's a big shift in how I gear my mind for the day. 3:30 in the afternoon used to be "send the kids up for some quite time and take a deep breath myself time". Now, 3:15 is "put my mom hat back on because the kids are coming through the door and they need me to be fully present". And the daytimes . . . well that has turned out to be the time when it seems I'm going through God's personal school of change and preparation as He gets me ready for new directions and graduate school. But that's part 2.
