Hopping on the homeschool train.

Eve’s has had more than her fair share of rough days at school.

She gets distracted easily so she beats herself up emotionally over not being “as smart as her sisters”. (Not true, but perception can be powerful.)

She gets in trouble on occasion for doing something impulsive (but completely innocent) and dies inside at the humiliation of being disciplined and STILL not understanding quite why.

She feels the desire to wiggle, and fidget, and express herself freely but has to suppress it all in a public school setting in favor of “not making waves”.

Since about 3rd grade she’s come home from school on several occasions begging me to homeschool her. “Please mom,” she’s said. “I can’t go back there tomorrow.” I told her I’d think about it and that it was not a decision to be made impulsively. And then she’d get a good night’s sleep and head out the door the next day with only a little prodding, consoled by the fact that not every day turns out as badly as the day before had.

I didn’t really want to homeschool her, despite my willingness. I figured the hard-earned lesson of pushing through a difficult situation would be lost if I gave in too easily. Plus, she LOVES her friends. Without the school community to bind them, would those friends come around less and less? It wasn’t worth the risk.

And then COVID happened. And as I sat with her to go over the school work the district provided to finish out the school year, it was clear that there were some serious gaps. I watched her take HOURS on her own to complete assignments that should have taken just over 1 hour.

I listened to her verbally flog herself when she didn’t grasp a concept easily or couldn’t quite come up with the descriptive words she thought would grant her an “A” on a writing assignment. I cringed inside a little when she admitted that she never asked for help on an assignment.

I might have cried when I realized that public school simply wasn’t working for my daughter.

So when the school district came up with a plan for the fall school year that gave us plenty of options-all of them inferior to what school would normally look like (understandably), I made up my mind.

If Eve wasn’t thriving in an optimal public school environment (and I do believe that our local schools are close to optimal in many ways), she certainly would flounder in the current circumstances.

It was time to homeschool. And I was actually giddy about it.

The rest is history. I have shifted my time and energy away from our local elementary school and invested it entirely in my two youngest children. We’re combining efforts with other families through co-ops so that Eve still gets the benefit of associating with and learning from other kids and teachers. And she has a soft place to land when she struggles emotionally. Academically, she is thriving. Absolutely thriving.

Instead of 7 hours a day of school, we average about 3, leaving plenty of time for field trips and pool time and play. It is just what the doctor ordered.

At this rate we may never go back.

P.S. It was amazing to me how once I’d made the decision, everything literally fell into place. One thing after another from the curriculum we chose to the co-ops we formed and even the space we converted into our “classroom”.

One tiny example is that as I was shopping for furniture, I would find exactly what I wanted on Wayfair and then I would check Craigslist, “just in case” I could find something similar for cheaper. Every time I found either the exact same item or something better. For cheaper. Things like that may seem trivial. But, to me, they’re like little love notes from heaven helping me see that we’re on the right track.