An Always Changing Homeschool

I'm in the mood to share a bit of our family's experience. I'm telling this to keep things real here. We are not a perfect family by any means. I never said we were.

This week we had some challenges. Looking back in 20/20 hindsight things look different. This was NOT pretty when it was unfolding.

It started with a busy February. In addition to Saturday classes to prep for Science Olympiad with the homeschool team he had Saturday classes for Boy Scout merit badges (three). He had tons of homework and projects like attend a town political meeting and write a report about it. He taught himself to use Power Point and I taught him the finer points of public speaking. This was in addition to our normal routine of homeschooling Monday-Friday.

My older son had some extra Boy Scout meetings on weekends for one-time-a-year events like two different Scout Sunday church functions, and the Cub Scout banquet to attend. My older son also had a special meeting for his Boy Scout Jamboree troop.

My husband had some business trips meaning I was a temporary single mom. My younger son had some sports events (three a week) that meant we were running around for that too.

As I do with my time, I helped my kids prioritize their time by looking at what was mandatory versus flexible. We then decided what had a deadline to meet and we did what we had to do to meet the deadlines, or at least we tried. We focused on the most important things and let the rest slide.

Last Sunday night I was so tired. After dinner I was looking forward to relaxing and going to sleep early. Instead my nine year old informed me he thinks his life is crappy. This kid has no clue how good he has it both for being in a loving family, having the opportunities he has and living in a nice home in a nice town, for starters. The conversation was hurtful, meaning, my feelings were hurt.


That was followed up by some slacker comments from my twelve year old who informed me he feels we do too many things and that our life is too busy. I asked him what was reasonable to him and he said six hours a day only, should be spend on academics, commuting to classes, the classes, Scouts meetings and any related homework (merit badge work, etc.) and it also included one hour of exercise (our new family exercise mandate). He said the other 18 hours should be free for eating, sleeping, and playing. Oh, how nice! Oh, how unrealistic!

It's kind of a blur at this point but I think then my husband stepped in and told our kids that they were being unreasonable.

Then the kids went to bed.

As if that was not bad enough, after that my nine year old came to me and confessed he did something bad. I swear this kid is the one giving me the gray hairs. Sometimes I am presented with parenting challenges that I feel I'm just not prepared for. I had one of those moments about, "Should we let this slide as typical kid behavior or is this a red flag thing that needs more serious addressing?"

One problem here is that my kids feel so comfortable telling me and my husband things that they tell us stuff that perhaps they should not tell us. I know all kids do certain things that parents often don't find out about. I honestly don't want to know ALL these things as I just can't handle what to do with the information. My kids do not like a guilty conscience so they tell us to get it off their chests. Great, then I have to figure out what the right way to deal with it is.

This was then followed by my nine year old telling me again that he has a rough life and not much to be thankful for.

I didn't know it but this was the night before that time of the month so just add that element to the mix and you may better understand that at that point I lost it.

I made all kinds of proclamations like, "I don't know why I bother to care so much when you are not grateful for what I've created here for our homeschool. If this is the way you feel I give up, you're going to public school and I'm going back to work."

Then the kids went to bed (again).

Then my twelve year old came back into my bedroom and confessed to something bad he did that he now felt guilty about. Oh joy, something else to contend with. I think at this point it was about eleven at night!

I then did some ranting and raving to him about low standards and the slacker mentality and wasted opportunities that other kids would be so happy to have.

I then launched into all that's been bugging me like the picky eating which is not resolved yet and unhealthy eating and all kinds of stuff. I set some new rules like no computer use Monday-Friday (this is on top of the established rule of no xBox360 Monday-Friday).

I vowed the kids would eat right. This was partly because the week prior my older son had some behavior food allergy reactions after eating soy. This had not happened in a long time. Well on this day he'd not eaten fruits or vegetables and probably had too many bread products and had a meltdown of the type like he has when he has a food allergy reaction.

My son went back to bed with his head hanging low, having apologized and proclaimed to eat right, exercise and study hard.

I was so angry (remember this was PMS time but I didn't know it then) that I then launched into my husband about every little thing that was bothering me. I had a little Pity Party about what I wished I had that I didn't, how I needed a vacation but we can't afford one, how hard it is when he travels on business (and he was due to go away again in 48 hours).

I ranted and raved and ranted and raved. He just sat there and listened. I wanted him to say something. I think he was stunned into silence and afraid to say anything. He told me the next day he had already put two and two together and that I must be having a bad case of PMS.

I was so exhausted but so angry that I couldn't sleep. I wound up staying up until one in the morning just trying to clear my mind of the negativity.

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Monday morning started off with a bang. I woke up sometime around six and was exhausted but could not sleep. I woke the kids up at 6:30 a.m. and proclaimed it was time to hit the books. Before he left for work my husband gave my kids a pretty long lecture about the need to study hard, to do well academically.

The kids apologized and begged me to keep homeschooling them. They gave me hugs and kisses.

So our homeschool was born anew. Instead of giving in to the request to do less, this week the standards were raised. The work load has increased. The slacker mentality has been banished.

In reaction to this new standard my older son prioritized for HIMSELF to focus on the two hardest merit badges he was working on. He worked hard to finish those up. His time management was not perfect and the night before his class he was still tweaking his oral presentation. He was upset with himself for also not taking the time to finish the fun merit badge but vowed to finish it in the month of March. He also set a priority to finish the difficult First Aid merit badge that he started working on one year ago but has not touched in the last nine months.

My nine year old is not showing much of an increase in a desire to hit the books but he has become more affectionate and is saying a lot of nice things to me as well as telling me he loves me multiple times a day. He grabbed my hand and held it in public (gasp). He has been more talkative.

At the moment I can report that we have a renewed sense of commitment to our homeschool and our health and wellness. We're eating better and exercising more.

You might think it's nuts to react to what some may label as burn out with INCREASING the work load but that's how my husband and I have chosen to address this situation, and so far it's working for us.