As longtime readers of this blog know, I live a double life.
Days I’m a homeschooling mom with my seven-year-old daughter. Nights and weekends I get my eleven-year-old son back from school and I’m a schooling mom, asking what happened today in that mysterious, far-away land called “school.”
It’s a weird sort of existence, sort of like being a spy everywhere I go. On the one hand, I’ll be at a homeschooling meeting and someone will say something about how they can’t understand how people can send their kids off to be educated at a school. And I wonder how I can do that.
Or my son relates to me that one of the kids at school said that his mom said homeschooling is “stupid,” and I have to smile and tell him that lots of people don’t really understand what we’re doing, or it’s just not a choice that would make sense for them. But as any homeschooler knows, it’s not a choice that makes sense to us all the time, either, so momentarily I have to wonder: Is my choice to homeschool stupid?
However: this week, with my son done with his school year, I was officially to become a homeschooling mom of two. My son is taking some time off of school to focus on what he wants to study and do, and I want to see if I can have them both in the same house without discovering a natural way to create nuclear fusion.
However, my daughter had other plans. You see, she’s not a big fan of school, but she is a major fan of camp. If school could just be camp year-round, she’d probably be happy to go. Different activities every day? An emphasis on fun, creativity, and just plain silliness? She’s there.
So she decided to go to camp, and not just to any camp, but to a camp that’s three weeks long, almost all day long. Suddenly, as fast as my son’s school year ended, my life is flipped upside-down. In the morning, I pack a lunch for my daughter while my son hangs out doing… whatever he wants. I have to get my daughter to put her backpack together, get on the sunscreen, promise to reapply the sunscreen, and get in the car. Then off we go to kiss her goodbye, and back to our quiet house.
My son and I are well-matched in temperament. He and I can sit in the house all day, talking sometimes, but mostly in our own thoughts doing our own creative work, and feel that it’s a fulfilling day.
My daughter craves action, adventure, and high drama. A day with her is a roller-coaster ride.
You might guess that I’m not really the roller coaster type.
So for a few weeks, my new job of sibling reunification and homeschooling bifurcation is put on hold. My daughter gets non-stop, pre-planned action created by professionals. My son gets quiet contemplation and made-from-scratch lunches. I get a few more weeks to figure out how we’re all going to move ahead as a homeschooling family, one that works together, plays together, and tries very earnestly not to have any nuclear meltdowns.
Wish me luck!
