What should my homeschool look like?

I get asked about homeschooling a lot.  Many people have entered my home for one reason or another, and almost immediately asked, “Do you homeschool?”  I used to be one of those people, curious about this alternate universe and wondering if I could, or should, live there too.  What would it look like?  How would I know if I was doing it right?

When I decided to homeschool, I went looking for answers.  I was quickly tempted, disoriented, then discouraged by Pinterest searches.  It was full of contradictions.  Everyone claimed the best schedule or curriculum or method or blog or room layout or supply list.  I learned I needed less suggestions, not more.  One or two mentors was better than ten or twelve.  A straw, not a firehose, is the only way to drink in homeschooling.

Plenty of online strangers were more than happy to tell me the right way to homeschool.  But when I asked the mentors whose opinions I most value about curriculum or classroom furniture or daily schedule, their answers seemed nebulous. 

And now, as a mentor myself, I know why.

Because schedules and curriculum and classroom setup may seem like the logical place to start, but they’re not.  Not only that, but they are subject to change.  And they are unique to each family.  They were not the formula for successful homeschooling that I was searching for.

So what is?   What will make sure my kids get a quality education?  Everyone says to do what’s right for your family, but how do I know what’s right for us?

Start with your why. 

Pin down not how you’ll do this homeschooling thing, but why you’ve decided to do it in the first place.  Why you want it, why you’ll keep going when it gets hard. 

Then figure out your philosophy of education. 

Then look at your children (and yourself) as people, as learners.  How do they learn best?    What are their strengths?  What are yours?

Then write your mission, and a vision will slowly materialize.  Get clear on your why and on your commitment, and the how will take care of itself.

I remember wanting so badly to feel solid in the curriculum, schedule, and homeschooling method that would be right for us.  But the truth is, they will always evolve.  Just like everything else in parenting, the minute you think you have it figured out, it changes again.

But that won’t sound so scary after a while.  Because you’ll slowly realize what really makes a homeschool a homeschool. 

I have found that when the environment, the role model, and the relationships are sound, my children’s learning follows.  So the longer I homeschool, the less I worry about and research curriculum, and the more I work on myself and my relationships with my kids.

As Charlotte Mason famously said, “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.” 

Everything you think you know about school and education will crumble almost immediately when you begin homeschooling.  It will put your flaws and shortcomings under a microscope.  And it should.  Because homeschooling isn’t just for your kids.  It’s for you.   You will be forced to rethink your beliefs, broaden your views, and redefine things you thought were set in stone.  Just as we want our kids to learn to do.

Your children will learn exactly what they are supposed to, sometimes because of—and sometimes in spite of—your best efforts.  And a more beautiful, more compassionate, more intelligent you will rise from the ashes.  

Your only enemy is fear.  And your fears are imaginary.

So let your goal be not to mold your children a certain way, but to allow your children to surprise you.  Choose the child over the lesson.  Run with your strengths, and have the courage to let them run with theirs, no matter what it looks like.

Homeschooling will be nothing and everything like you imagined.

Be willing to surprise yourself. 

Because you will.

Mothers on the wall

I have three limited edition Caitlin Connolly art prints on the wall in my guest room.  They are entitled: “Mother Earth,” “Mother of All Living,” and “Mother Protecting.”   On early mornings like this one, I steal downstairs, turn down the covers, make myself at home in this room meant for others, and gaze at these mothers.

The common thread between them is the depiction of strong women doing the hard, vital work of life-giving.

They look at once raw and refined, centered and vulnerable.  Desperate and sure.

They’re all taking risks and making tough calls.

If that doesn’t define motherhood, I don’t know what does. 

When my first baby was little more than a year old, he stood up in the bathtub (against my warning) and slipped.  As he fell, his chin struck the side of the porcelain tub and split.

Without hesitation, I lifted him from the tub, wet a clean washcloth and tried to apply pressure to the wound.  He pushed me away, blood dripping onto the tile floor.  I put him to my breast, hoping the pressure from his face against me as I nursed him would be enough to stop the bleeding.

It was a swift, instinctive solution, and it worked.  After a couple of minutes the bleeding subsided, and he fell asleep.  But I didn’t like the look of the flap of skin and flesh I saw.   I knew he’d never let me bandage it.  Would it start bleeding again any moment?  How much blood is too much blood?

It was borderline. 

I wiped his blood from my chest and called my mom.  “How do you know if your baby needs stitches?” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I can tell you what my experience was taking your sister to get stitches when she was little.” 

She concluded, “If it’s under his chin, people won't notice the scar.”

She couldn’t, and didn’t, tell me what I should do.  Hearing her story both frightened and reassured me, and I suppose it did influence my decision somewhat.  But the call was mine, not hers.  I was the mother now.

The irony here is that as a daughter, I still believe mothers always know what to do.  But as a mother it rarely feels that way.

I’ve often reflected on that early parenting moment and the room it made inside me for instinct and doubt to coexist.  As steward over four children now, many decisions fall to me that affect both the present moment and the future.  Their future.  But the choice is mine.  And there’s no perfect answer.  

So I do it anyway.  And I do it afraid. 

Mothering is one tough call after another.  In all the time spent second-guessing (and I’ve spent a lot  of time second-guessing over my decade of parenthood), my instincts have always been right.

Or at least right enough.

So, like the mothers on the wall, I will set my intention, trust my instinct, and jump.

One

The space between how I imagine I do things and how I actually do them is a wide one.  Since I shifted my focus from organization to time management, it narrowed a little.  When I returned to daily spiritual nourishment, it narrowed a lot.  My expectations slowly began to morph from frothy and untouchable to grounded and solid.

Like rocks, they've each had their journey, yet seem to have been here all along.  It's only a few steps from the path to the riverbed.  I am drawn toward it, feeling a distinct rightness at being there.  More stones than I could count, but it doesn’t occur to me to count them at all.  In the midst of endless supply, the only number that matters is one.  

It calls.  That smoothest, darkest one.  I answer, pick it up.  It’s cool against my skin, flat and plain and lovely.  I choose a direction, spend the energy, and let it fly.  It will be what it will be.  For a novice like me, I don’t expect it to skip.  But a plunk and a clean splash are satisfying enough that I pick up another.  Another.  No deadline, no metrics, no impositions.  I’ve stepped out of that world to live here, in the green and brown and velvet moss, where the air cleans my lungs and pumps my blood.  I can work in this space, happily, all my days.