I thought about homeschooling for many years before we actually started. Like all decisions we make in life, I was scared I’d make the wrong one and regret it later. But the decision was a long-time coming.
When we finally decided to pull the trigger, it was the sum total of a few factors:
First and foremost, homeschooling was an answer to the ever-present day school tuition issue. Jewish day school tuition is burdensome, and yes, there are ways that schools can work to cut costs. Unfortunately, by the time that trickles down to me, the parent, it won’t have much impact.
Secondly, you could say I have a bit of a “dead-mother complex.” Excuse the vulgarity. It’s an off-putting coping mechanism I’ve developed over the years. When I was 8 years old, my mother died of a brain aneurysm. One day she was packing my lunch and kissing me before I went off to school, telling me I’d see her later. The next, she was gone.
It’s funny how one event can color the rest of your life, for better or for worse. She was in my life for so short a time, yet I carry her loss with me every day.
Then, at the age of 26, I was diagnosed with MS. I thought I got a free pass to a trouble-free life after the terrible events of the winter of 1989, but G-d obviously didn’t look at it the same way I did (turns out, we don’t get to pick our problems). Because of this particular wrinkle in time, I developed the wonderful habit of always thinking – feeling – the worst is about to happen.
It’s for both of these reasons that I check to make sure my kids are breathing every night before I go to bed, that I rush my kids to the pediatrician at the sight of a rash or a fever, and that I mentally prepare my funeral when I get a really bad headache. We all have our own brand of crazy – this is mine. I know that at any moment, it can all be taken away.
It was through this lens that I saw my job, teaching 22 children that weren’t my own, frustrated that I was spending the best hours of my children’s day away from them, only to shuttle them through the evening routine when everyone (including me) was tired and cranky. I felt like I was missing the best parts of their day, their lives. After all, my 10-year old son’s childhood was more than half over!
I started reading books about homeschooling (from the likes of smart Johns like John Gatto and John Holt) and was enlightened to read that the educational system as we know it today was built for factory working parents who needed their children cared for during the day. I started to see how our educational system as it is currently (of course, there are exceptions to this rule) is not preparing our students to be independent, creative thinkers, rather it is preparing them to follow rules and fall in line. It was frustrating for me to watch.
Then came the educational issues, the proverbial straw that broke the camels’ back. One of my children needed extra reading help, and it needed to come after her already long school day was over. She was exhausted and strung out from trying so hard to keep up in the classroom. What she wanted to do when she got home was blow off steam, not sit down and read with me.
All of these factors together led us to the decision to finally try homeschooling. The fact that we were paying all this money in tuition and my daughter’s educational needs still weren’t being met was the combination that pushed us to finally take the plunge.
And so here we are.
Two years in and I am grateful every day for this opportunity. Even on the hard days. Just like I love living in Florida, even in the heat of the summer, when mosquitos are biting and you break out into a sweat even before you make it to your car from the house, I still love living here. The humid, tropical air hitting my face each morning floods me with the memories of many visits to my grandparents’ South Florida condo when I was a child.
Homeschooling is the same way for me – there are hard days for sure, more than I can count. But at the end of each day, I am so grateful for the opportunities it affords me. To be able to learn the nuances of my children’s learning styles, to not have to wonder what trials and tribulations they met with during the day, but to know firsthand. And to be able to spend this time with them that I will never get back.
Thankfully, regretting my decision is not something I have to worry about.