A Big Decision

For years, since third grade, my daughter, Ry, has begged me to put her in homeschooling of some kind. I have taken her seriously, and yet, not seriously enough. I think about it briefly, then default to the status-quo, to what's-expected, to what's-considered-normal by my peers, to what seemed easiest so I "didn't have to deal with it".

For years, I have said something that amounted to--not in these words of course, but it might as well have been--"It doesn't matter that you are miserable, that you are not learning much of anything, that your grades are poor, that you're demoralized, bored, and wasting your childhood away in an institution where you're a number to the staff and a target to the underage blossoms of violent-dysfunctional home lives who want to bully you. Hey, everybody else goes to school and it didn't kill us, so it won't kill you... you'll survive."

But this summer, something changed in her: some demarcation of maturity, of intelligence and thoughtfulness, made an impression on me. And as a result, one day something just changed in me. I suddenly realized I was looking at it all wrong.

Survival isn't enough. So what, "she'd survive" -- oh brother! I'm sure you could say that about children who graduate barely literate, too.

I'm sure you can say that about children who are so bored with the academics, and so traumatized by the social clime, that they flunk out, that they end up chronically depressed and angry. What would the modern assumptions say to that? "Clean up your attitude young missy. You're supposed to be miserable in this nearly pointless situation. I need a babysitter and the government wants to indoctrinate you and the school wants to get paid for you. What makes you think that YOU have anything to do with it?"

Gosh, and to think, when she was born, I wanted only to see her find joy and love in life, to learn like crazy and "grow like a weed" as Frank Zappa once put it.

Do we apply that 'survival' logic to other things? "Well yes, the dinner I'm making you eat is mildly poisonous and will make you vomit, but it's classified as food, and you'll survive. Don't complain. We all vomited sometimes when we were children, and we survived, so you will too." That's ridiculous, but it's equivalent logic. When you send a kid to school allegedly for education, and for every 35 hours they spend there, they get the equivalent of 2 hours education and 30 hours social drama, that doesn't seem like any genuine interest in their education was truly the issue there.

We all assume that however school was for us, it's that way for kids. But that isn't necessarily so. As kids and culture get more street-wise and hard, what we used to consider the schoolyard is starting to look more like a war zone. And sometimes, the overall neighborhood we lived in during school was fairly decent, whereas today, we may or may not live in an area that is as nice. It's not enough to 'assume' that 'whatever it is' my kid is dealing with, doesn't matter. "Aw, toughen up!" we say. "Suck it up, don't let people bully you, tell the teacher you're bored and want more work, everything will work out."

And if it doesn't? Then another year passes. And then another year. And then another year. And next thing you know, your kid is 12 and they seem slightly undereducated, severely disenfranchised, and they come home from school every day morosely depressed if not in tears, and unable to come up with a single thing they learned or found interesting that day. Every... single... day.

I doubted myself. I doubted home schooling because I knew nothing about it. I doubted my time (I work full time, though from home), and my qualifications (I have 'some college' but probably don't remember most of what I learned in high school, which wasn't much frankly), and I worried.

I worried my father and stepmother would freak out (and they probably will). They will Have An Opinion™ and anybody with parents knows what I mean. They often seem to expect the worst of me, and so I've come to expect the worst of them: that they will just be waiting for me to fail, that they will be dissing me, and the homeschooling. I'm 42 years old -- pretty old for a mother of a grade 7 middle school student -- but I still care what my parents think, especially as they are my only real 'support', economically and physically.

(I have a boyfriend but he's on the other side of the planet, so while it's nightly emotional support via phone or email, it's not much practical help at the moment!)

But I wondered: shouldn't there be a time that your child reaches a certain 'age of reason' when you're willing to believe in them? To give them the chance to prove that they can do something they've been begging you about for years? Just to TRY, while they're still young enough to actually make it matter?

I realized that all my reasons for refusing her for years were about me, and my insecurities, and what people might say, and not wanting to deal with it. They were not reasons based on the actual situation, that being "the quality of her education". That IS supposed to be the whole point of it all, right? And if I'm actually concerned about her education, environment and depth and rate, then home schooling is not only a consideration, but a logical choice.

I've looked for private schools. Charter schools. Other peoples' home schools. I live in a small town, and there aren't any to speak of. Home schooling is not my first choice; it actually is my last choice, but now I realize, if I actually care about her education (never mind her mental health), it is my only choice.

So I told her I would let her make the decision. I gave her all kinds of warnings about how it would probably be much harder work than school, would require discipline, that most would be independent because I'm working so I can't do a lot except in the evenings, that if I'm responsible then she is going to learn a LOT of stuff they probably wouldn't have bothered with in her public school, and so on. I told her I didn't know what I could afford in materials, I didn't know her level of edu (it varies a lot even within a given grade), or her learning style, and it was possible the first year would be chaotic.

She was very solomn when she assured me that I didn't need to wait for her decision; she had already decided, she wanted to do it. We shook hands on it. Then she hopped on her toes like The Frog Princess out of the room. So that was it: A Big Decision was made.