Public School Snow Days and Sanity

Today was the third day in a row that the county schools have been closed due to an ice/snow storm this week. Yesterday, before the county had made the decision to close today, I heard some parents bitching about having to have the kids home yet another day. [You didn’t hear me bitching about having to feed their children yet another cup of hot chocolate because they all seem to gravitate toward MY house. But I digress…]

I’ve been mulling over this seemingly universal opinion these parents hold, and today I had a bit of a revelation. I formulated two opinions on the subject:

1) Their kids don’t know what to do with themselves when they don’t have school.

2) The siblings don’t know how to play together.

Yes, this is a huge generalization, but is there truth to it?

Perhaps the problem lies not in the children, but in the parents. Could it be that the parents do not know what to do with kids when they are home?

Over the last 8 months since school let out for the summer, I have had to learn to be with my kids. After several years of public school (and preschool, and daycare), I did not know how to play with my kids. I feared being with them all day every day, because I hadn’t been so good at it before. In some ways, I feared that they would not want to play with me or have me be such a big part of their lives.

Together we are learning to truly enjoy each other and have fun together. No, we do not spend all our time together smiling, laughing, reading and playing games. But we do spend a lot more quality time together. The more we are together, the more I realize how much they missed having time with me. I can’t get those years back, but I can surely work to make the future the best it can be. I’ll call these “The Snow Days.”

February 16, 2007 | Filed Under Rants, Moods and Attitude, Parenting | 6 Comments 

Freedom

Missy just posted on Life Without School about the luxuries of freedom she now feels by homeschooling. As I read it, I thought Yes! Yes! Yes! That is exactly what we are experiencing. My rose-colored glasses are working quite nicely these days. Oh wait! I don’t have them on. That’s my real life I’m seeing! Things really did change for the better, and I’m so relieved.

We’ve been on this homeschooling journey for about 6 months now, and I have to say that what I appreciate most is our newly found freedom. Like Missy, we have been on both sides now, and there is a lot to be said for following natural body rhythms and having the time to take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities available in the DC area. I can see all my public school friends shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “Yeah, but that’s not a ‘real’ education. Kids have to experience the undesireable as well so they can grow up prepared for life.” Obviously I don’t buy into that point of view. I agree that kids need to be prepared for the difficult aspects of life, but I don’t believe that means experiencing angry teachers, mean kids, and oodles of boring busywork at a young age will accomplish that.

But I’m not writing this post to argue that point. Today I want to declare that we are truly enjoying our lives together. We have FUN. We learn about cool stuff. We go to neat places. We visit interesting people. We hang out on the skateboard park during the day when we have it to ourselves (and our cool homeschooling friends). We go on a two week beach vacation in May. And sometimes we even stay in our jammies the entire day. [The truth is, staying in our jammies all day is the real reason we homeschool.]

Jammies Read more

February 12, 2007 | Filed Under Rants, Moods and Attitude, Homeschool Issues | 7 Comments