Parents of children who attend public schools wonder if their child would be better off in a private school that just isn't in the budget right now; parents of private-schooled children wonder if their child should have gone to the super-elite private school that denied their application.
As parents, we just want our children to have the best education and best opportunities possible. This worry never bothered me so much as when we embarked on the journey of home-schooling.
I recently went through a phase of worrying almost constantly whether I had made the right decision in pulling my daughter out of public school.
I recently went through a phase of worrying almost constantly whether I had made the right decision in pulling my daughter out of public school.
I work full time as a nurse (12 hour shifts, 3 days a week--and lately have been putting in overtime), so we home-school on my days off. I work the midnight shift, so when I get home, I go to bed for a few hours. Sometimes munchkin wakes up and turns on the TV before I get up. This creates a problem because she doesn't work as well afterwards. She is more argumentative, and more restless. She wants to do the bare minimum and then go back to TV, or playing with her toys.
Occasionally, I let her. I tell myself: "We will make it up tomorrow" or "The baby is fussy, and neither of us can concentrate on school work right now." Most of the time, we do make it up the next day, or the one after that...occasionally it is a week or two before I feel that we are caught back up.
It is during these times that the devil sits on my shoulder and tells me that I am a failure. And I listen to him. I begin to beat myself up, wonder if she needs to be back in school, wonder if I am holding her back by not doing school 5 days a week...
And then, one night she crawls into my lap with a National Geographic Kids reader about Polar Bears and begins to read to me. She sounds out words she doesn't know, and uses the pictures to help her guess at the words she cannot sound out yet. She surprises me with the speed she is able to read, and her ability to recognize a word (she previously didn't know) when it shows up again. I realize at this point that I am doing the right thing, she is learning and is reading at grade level as she should be. It's still not going to be easy; things worth doing rarely are. But for now, I can flick that old devil off my shoulder and be content in knowing that I am doing what is best for my family.
Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
And then, one night she crawls into my lap with a National Geographic Kids reader about Polar Bears and begins to read to me. She sounds out words she doesn't know, and uses the pictures to help her guess at the words she cannot sound out yet. She surprises me with the speed she is able to read, and her ability to recognize a word (she previously didn't know) when it shows up again. I realize at this point that I am doing the right thing, she is learning and is reading at grade level as she should be. It's still not going to be easy; things worth doing rarely are. But for now, I can flick that old devil off my shoulder and be content in knowing that I am doing what is best for my family.
Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Homeschool mamas, do you ever feel this way? How do you remind yourself that you are doing ok?
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