OH, The Shackles, They Are Restrictive.

What should homeschooling look like? What should my homeschool look like?

We’re having some struggles here at our homeschool. Maybe it’s growing pains? Maybe it’s that Mom is tired? Maybe it’s just Spring Fever, I don’t know.

I’m starting to wonder if our school looks like it should. See, it seems to be a constant struggle with Will. And when I think about it with a larger perspective I think perhaps the problem is not with Will, but with the system.

Will is a good boy, everyone tells me this. I see it myself. He help set up the gym for the Valentine’s Banquet last week after a long day at co op. He didn’t have to, but he did. That is just one example, there are many like that, so why do we struggle so much at home with school? He is not rebellious, he does not have a bad attitude, and he does not wear only black play video games all day. He is a good boy.

He is doing much better on his Algebra lately. Sir D and I have had our laser focus on his algebra. He is also doing well in his writing class and Biology. We have had our laser focus on those subjects. Know what we have not had our laser focus on? History. Know how much history has gotten done in the last three weeks? Yeah that would be a big fat 0.

So off the handle I flew. Other high schoolers have 6 subjects that they must accomplish simultaneously! How is he ever going to handle college? You have to do it ALL and you have to do it WELL!!!! Then I left for my Ladies Bible Study…on forgiveness.

I started thinking, if he’s having a hard time getting his Algebra done and wants to put some less important things off for a while to focus on that, why is that wrong? Just because the public schools do it a certain way does not mean it’s the ideal way, right? Anyway, we are homeschoolers.

The fact is, even though I’ve been homeschooling for 11 years I still struggle with how to do this thing.

I think the problem is, we can do what we want in the early years. We can throw off the shackles of convention and do it the way we want. We can teach our kids the way they learn best, using the materials that work the best. But then we see college looming heavily on the horizon.



We start to shackle ourselves once more. We try to fit our round pegs into the square system.

Why do we do this? How are we supposed to prepare our kids for their future when they must pass through the artificially square system we’ve pulled them out of in the first place, to get there?

For Will history is mostly just a lot of reading. If he needs to put the reading on the back burner for a while to get the Algebra done and that big term paper finished, why is that a big deal? Don’t we do that as adults every day? It’s called prioritization.

I am still very much a product of the system I was educated under. I try to throw off those shackles, but some of them seem to be invisible. But they restrict none the less.