I hate blogs that make homeschooling seem like it’s super duper fun and always goes well. Moms who only blog about their good days, I feel, are doing a great disservice to the image of homeschooling.
Yes, homeschooling is a wonderful thing…and yes we do often enjoy the freedom to do what we want…but every day is NOT sunshine and roses. We have crappy days just like the rest of the parents out there. And not talking about those days is like lying.
I get it…homeschooling already gets a bad rap from many people…so bloggers want to present the positive side. Especially since any negatives are seen as a direct result of homeschooling failing…vs just a bad day. Something going wrong in public school does not prompt all public schoolers to yank their kids and ditch the whole system…but for some reason “Then put them in school!” seems to be the immediate response to homeschooling going bad. Like homeschooling is just a silly fancy, and should not be given the full gamut of possible solutions that would be suggested to a public schooler.
This is why homeschoolers are hesitant to share their bad days.
But…I think it’s important to share bad days, and how you’re working through them. If we don’t, it’s like telling newbie homeschoolers that they’re doing something wrong when they have bad days. That couldn’t be further from the truth! We ALL have bad days! Bad weeks or even months sometimes!!
So yesterday I had a bad day. And surprisingly, it really didn’t stem from my kids. At least not primarily. They did have some bickering yesterday that about pushed me over the edge…but I was already in a bad mood.
No, yesterday was a direct result of me and my feelings being just bleh all day. It was one of those days that just felt like I was doing everything wrong, noticing EVERY.SINGLE.THING around here that we have not gotten to…everything that wasn’t going swimmingly.
So it was a day full of doubts. A day full of “I suck”. And “I’m never going to get this right.” And, “I should be doing this better….why is this so hard for me??” A day of doubting my own new system because I’ve fallen off the wagon recently of staying on top of the prep work (which affects the whole system greatly).
BUT. Let me tell you that I managed to make my way through it. And surprisingly, my kids managed to actually get all of their stations done despite me! So there’s that.
Then my hubby came home and I took a trip to the library to return all the books we never got to (because I suck) and were now overdue (because I suck)…and I just needed to get AWAY so I could breathe and regroup.
While there, I did not plug into a book or podcast, like I usually do. I let my brain go and actually managed to feel better about my day because of it.
We were moving into a study of ancient times, but no one got super jazzed at all the books on Ancient Rome, Greece, China, or Egypt that I had brought home a few weeks ago…and I was limited to just 20 min or so to browse since the library was closing….
Then I had an epiphany!
I ended up in the biographies and I thought….”Hey! Why stick with just a certain time period? And why do we need to go chronological? What if I bring home a bunch of biographies on interesting people from all over time and see what piques our interest??
And that’s when my day got better.
A new idea had formed, and I excitedly picked out a bunch of neat books on interesting people (some I had never heard about!) I focused a lot on women, but also pulled out some books on men as well.
And here’s what our “Read” station now looks like:
And I’m excited again!! Instead of focusing on the negative of the day, I ended with a fire burning under me to get to these books and learn all about interesting people! Now, hopefully, my enthusiasm will be contagious! My daughter is intrigued my the 18th century female architect book I found! That’s a start!
And then, when I look back on my day, I see it wasn’t ALL bad:
My wild boy child partner at mancala
My extremely creative daughter working on her latest project during her brother’s drumming class
My whole point of this post? I have crappy days where I feel like I’m completely floundering. The key is to recognize this is a temporary feeling, we all have bad days, and see if you can’t find something to help you turn things around and get fired up again.
Or, heck, just hang in there and make it through the crappy day and tomorrow will most likely be better!
So with that in mind, I’m ready for a better day today!! Wish me luck!
P.S. I wrote this entire blog entry while on our exercise bike. GO ME!!! 🙂
