Not a Gap and My Limitation with Homeschooling

I was worried because I'd thought my older son lacked some basic knowledge about literary analysis. Come to find out, when I tried to teach him, he already knew it. He was annoyed with me for trying to re-teach what he'd already learned last year at a homeschool co-op and he informed me so.

One pitfall of outside classes and homeschool co-ops SOMETIMES is the parent who ultimately is in control of the overall scope and sequence or whatever you want to call their entire education, sometimes is not told every single thing that actually was taught in the class we picked out and paid for. Homeschool moms who volunteer their time are busy enough doing the planning and teaching and don't always share everything with the parent. I get it. Then again, we are trying to mesh what is taught at home with what is learned elsewhere so a good sense of the content is not asking much, it seems.

I have been looking into options for co-ops or paid outside classes in our new location. Since there are a lot more homeschoolers here you'd think these opportunities would abound. I have so far figured out that there seems to be more availablity of individual classes hired out for a fee. This only makes sense since the demand for services has created a market. Where the market is too small for such things to exist, they do not exist.

What I have found, for example is, from 1pm to 2pm on Wednesdays a student may learn Chinese, but that's it, rather than being at a building for a whole day doing six or seven classes and having classes for multiple age ranges and also two or more selections per hour so that a student could choose from among a list. It is a pain in the neck to stop studies at home to run over there for one hour while the other kid wastes time then run back home to try to do more studies. The bad thing about the hired out classes taught by non-parent-teachers here, someone whispered to me, is that about half the time they quit part-way through the class if they get a better job doing something else or they quit for some other unshared reason. Even when the organizer of the class is a great person, she can't control the actions of outsourced teachers. When they just don't show up, the class hangs in the lurch. So I'm a bit hesitant now...

Well back to the short discussion I had with my son, for once it was nice to realize that my son knew what I'd wanted him to know and that my fretting over this "gap" was a non-issue! Now we can get on to more meatier topics for the class.

I am such a perfectionist and do worry sometimes that I'll not do a good-enough job with my kids. However there are good moments and real life examples of how my kids really are turning out not just alright but reall well and that is enough to keep me on the homeschooling path (for now at least).

I did come to the conclusion the other day that for reasons having to do entirely with me, I would prefer not to teach every single academic subject to my kids and don't think I can do a high quality job with it for this entire school year. If we can get through this schedule until the next round of outside classes starts (I assume that is in January) it may be a miracle. On some days the stress of the move combined with the stress of homeschooling has me teetering right on the edge...

It is good to know one's limitations. The limitations of the homeschool parent are not always about not knowing enough about the academic content, sometimes the limitations have to do with personality, group dynamics, and relationships. I have always said that it is my opinion that a parent's first responsibility is to be a good parent and secondarily to be a good homeschool teacher (if one has chosen that path). If it gets to a point where the homeschooling is ruining the family relations (or the mother's health and wellness) then the homeschooling has to end. If quitting homeschooling is what it takes to have a healthy and happy family relationship then so be it.