I have wine and hope

It has been a month since our journey “officially” began. We have been teaching on and off for over a year, but this is our first time going all in. It has been…….hectic. Our house is a complete disaster, I feel like I’m losing my mind, and with everything that is life added on top of school, we don’t get much time to relax. However, this has been an amazing month.

Often, I feel like ripping my hair out, crawling into the bathroom with chocolate and wine, or just flat out bawling. The amount of frustration this has placed on my husband and I is basically indescribable. We are always striving to be at the top of our game. It seems like an impossible task. We have to be everyone for our kid all the time.

Yes, it would be infinitely easier to send her to school and we would possibly retain our sanity, but we would lose so much. This was never an easy decision for us. At one point, it wasn’t even a decision. It just wasn’t going to happen.

 Not long ago, I was a dead set against homeschooling. I vehemently hated the idea. I didn’t want my daughter to become one of those weird kids. I wanted her to have all of the advantages that public school would give her. With every passing day, it became increasingly clear that my daughter would follow in my footsteps if we sent her to public school. That was something I didn’t want. I desperately wanted her to learn what she could, rather than what she was told. I could tell just watching her that she would excel at school. Like me, she would likely be told that she needed to slow down, stop working ahead, wait for others to catch up, that she needed to prove her intellect before they would allow her to use it, and so many more things. I hated my life in public school. My family supported me in so many ways and I adore them for it. If it weren’t for them, things likely would have been much worse. I started to question if it was necessary to send her at all. If she was going to be like me and rely on her father and I to challenge her on top of school, why not just be her school and challenge her there? I started to question everything I knew about homeschooling.

It started slowly at first. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to homeschool. Just that I was curious why a friend of mine would choose to. Why would she choose this weird life for her children? Why would anyone? Were they insane? I started researching all of my doubts and putting facts behind my beliefs. The more I looked, the more I realized that I was wrong. I really was. My decision didn’t just FEEL wrong, ALL of my facts were wrong. After having solid facts from peer reviewed studies, I knew what the best choice for my daughter was. The difficulty in our decision didn’t stop there.

I spoke with my husband about my feelings. While he respected them, he was adamantly against homeschooling. Not just slightly. At first, he wasn’t even willing to talk about it. He never wanted this for our kid. Ever. He had been homeschooled and it was awful for him. He wanted to make sure she didn’t have the same experience he did. Before we even starting trying for kids, he had made it abundantly clear it was not going to happen in our family. As my heart changed, I had to pursue this and that meant changing his heart, as well.  It was difficult and took a lot of convincing, but with a ton of research and nagging (okay, begging) on my behalf, he begrudgingly agreed to a trial year. One year that I could test it out and see if it worked for us. I had to make a lot of promises to get just this one year. Promises that it would be different for our daughter than it was for him. Promises that I wouldn’t have made if I wasn’t so dedicated to this.  

We still have a long way to go, but we are both more dedicated to this than anything. Somehow, this little girl turned us into a homeschooling family. My husband has become my greatest supporter. He even takes over days teaching her to give me a break. We put everything in on this one trial and it has turned into a life. He stands up for us when others doubt. He helps as much as possible when he is home. He sacrifices time with our daughter so that I can stay home and teach her. He does so much to make this possible. This has turned into something that neither of us are willing to give up and it is a striking difference from where we were a year ago.

Despite all of the trials already mentioned, I have no idea how I could ever send her to public school. Yes, I want to scream, cry, lock myself in the bathroom, and throw in the towel every single day. However, I also get to see her smile when she accomplishes something. I get to see pride in her eyes when she learns something new or gets an answer correct. I get to hear her squeal with joy when she tells her dad all of the new things she learned today. Perhaps, the most amazing thing of all, is that I get to be there for every single journey. I get to experience things most people don’t even know they’re missing out on. For her, she has the chance to experience things she never could before. In only a few weeks, she has surpassed all of our expectations. She is doing so many things and understanding so much more than she did just last month. She has always been smart, but these last few weeks have given her so many things that her little mind craved.

I realize public school is not horrible. For some, it works amazingly well. However, for us, I could never imagine sacrificing all of the things she has gained just to save a little sanity. One day, perhaps she will be a genius doctor that finds the cure for homeschool educators that have been driven to insanity by their adorable, psycho, fun, frustrating children. Until then, I have wine and hope that one day, this will all be worth it.