I QUIT!

When we started school back up this past January, all I got was push-back from my kids. Nobody wanted to get started in the mornings. When I pulled out their curriculum, all I got was whining and complaining. As we had worked through the fall, I'd noticed more and more resistance.

I've been there before. I've been doing this homeschooling gig for a long time. But this year for some reason, I wasn't feeling as flexible... I had my curriculum picked out, printed out, bound, and by golly, we were going to do it!

My kids were not enjoying themselves.

And neither was I.

I started to think I just needed to put them in public school. Over the winter break I had been thinking about it and when I got push-back on the first day back in January I just felt done. I had prayed about what to do, and instead of the immediate "you are supposed to keep homeschooling all of your kids" answer I had always gotten in the past, there was ... silence? A pause? I was unsure of the answer and that's not very common for me. So I thought it must mean I was supposed to put them in public school!

I called the school and left a message for the principal to call me. It took a couple of days, and then I finally got a call back. I knew the principal at the local school was a woman... but the person who called back was a man. After a minute of talking, we realized that it was the wrong school. There are two schools with the same name near within about 20 miles of where I live and I'd called the wrong one. The next week or two I had four more attempts to call the principal. After the 5th unsuccessful attempt, the thought came "five failed attempts should tell you you're going in the wrong direction".

That same day, a great friend of mine reached out to our homeschool group and said she was putting together a group to focus on "The Well Educated Heart" educational philosophy. I had followed this philosophy for just a little while before I went back to more structured curriculum... but I knew this was part of the answer. And then I understood. I hadn't gotten a clear answer, because I wasn't asking the right question. Yes, I was still supposed to homeschool... but not the way I had been doing it. I needed to get back to focusing on educating my children's hearts before worrying about educating their minds. I needed to get back to what I've always known but forget so easily in the moment... relationships first. Duh. Relationships first, Angie. That's like my mantra... and I was forgetting it.

The next day I QUIT.

I quit trying to force things. I put away the curriculum. I got out the great, living books. I took a deep breath (figuratively), and went back to a focus on agency education instead of forceful, demanding education.

Everybody is much happier. And I don't just mean the kids.

Now when I am making my schedule for the day, I am deliberately putting in more time for play. More time for one-on-one learning & snuggling up for me and each child. More read-alouds. AND I schedule time for my own learning. In the past month and a half I have read a few books, completed a birth doula training, a certified birth assistant course, and am starting on my certified midwifery training! They say be the example to your kids of somebody who is loving learning, and I am... and I am amazed at the influence it is having on my kids and their desire to learn and study!

My goal for this next month is to schedule more outdoor time, more playing games together, more cooking, art, and music. Those are the things that touch the heart. Those are the things that make connections between all sorts of things through the learning processes. And those are the things that create really fun and vivid memories.

What do you want the feeling to be in your homeschool? Do you need to have a shift of focus like I did?

Best of luck!

You can do it, Mama!

~Angie