The Challenge for Homeschool Moms with Teen Boys

A homeschool mom friend of mine (who has a son 1.5 years older than my oldest) and I have been discussing parenting through the teen years with the added complication of homeschooling and also the male factor.

We both feel that homeschooling is the right and best educational option for our kids at this point in time, to meet their unique needs.

With homeschooling you are together a lot, unless you have hired out tutors to outsource the teaching, or do a lot of cooperative homeschool teaching in groups or use community college part-time or some other arrangement, you are with your kids a lot.At present neither of us is doing much outsourcing at all.

We are both aware that it is normal in the teen years to seek development of one's own identity and that it is normal and right to have some pulling away from the parent in order to gain more independence and to try to define oneself as one's own person, to shift the dynamic from parent-child to parent-young adult. But, when homeschooling this can be harder. Also to complicate matters the teen wants some separation from siblings so the group dynamic shifts and more conflict starts to happen, probably due to a pressure cooker effect: wanting more time apart and alone or away from the sibling but not being able to have that due to the nature of what homeschooling is: a lot of time all together.

We have been discussing ways that such separation can take place.

Both of us have our teens doing a sport with same-aged peers this fall on a competitive level (not some infrequent and short duration group homeschool thing with kids of many different ages). My son does Boy Scouts and I have been pushing for attendance at all camping trips so that 36 hour spans of time are with peers for friendship development and peer group time as well as breathing room between my son and me (and his brother). My friend's son does a fun activity that can span from one full weekend day to two full days a week.

Both of us allow our kids to have time alone in their bedrooms during the day.

Both of us have been trying to get our own selves out of the picture sometimes. This is hard for me living in this much-smaller home than we're used to but I go in my bedroom and shut the door and read a book or watch TVsometimes to just give my kids some breathing room. I also go outside or in my bedroom to talk on the phone with friends.

I have been intentionally going away from the house and leaving my kids with my husband on weekends so they can have more father/son time together.

We have arranged that my husband picks our son up from sports practice so the two of them have some alone time together.

When running errands on weekends sometimes one parent takes one kid so that there is more alone time with that one parent.

I also run short errands and leave my older son alone at home doing his homeschool lessons.

Those are all the ideas that my friend and I have come up with so far and we have been carrying them out. If you have other ideas, let me know by leaving a comment please.

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The other day at the neurofeedback appointment the psychologist brought up this exact issue and mentioned homeschooling makes this separation and normal teen development harder to achieve. I didn't intend to sound defensive but maybe I did.

I just explained that of primary importance to me is our relationship with each other and homeschooling is secondary. If homeschooling gets in the way of normal development and growth of a teenager I'd quit homeschooling.

I also said that if in the course of homeschooling that too much stress was placed on me to either make me start to go insane or to become physically unhealthy that I would quit homeschooling to save my own self. I would also quit if I were to become a nasty person who resented her kid's existence or if I felt I could no longer be a calm good parent to them.

The therapist said he supports homeschooling in general and also can see why it is the best choice for our older son right now during his treatment time for the Lyme Disease induced neurological problems.

He also said that mom represents the home and family to a teen boy and that dad represents the outside world. He feels that teen boys need more time alone with their father and they need to feel some separation from the mother. I first sensed that pull away from me and toward my husband in the tween years. Right now it seems that our older son just wants time alone. It is hard to squeeze time in with my husband who is away working (door to door) about 65 hours a week, not counting when he travels on business and is away for days at a time.

Plus the normal pulling away from mom is harder to do when homeschooling is taught by mom. We are both a parent and the teacher. Sometimes I feel like it is too much time together and sometimes it feels like too much responsibility for me to oversee everything. I run the risk of sounding like I'm nagging or expecting too much when I'm asking for basic right behavior and rule compliance for everything: for adherance to family rules for home life and typical parent overseeing his responsibilities with Scouts and sports and then also all the school work for learning too!

I have heard others discuss this topic about healthy childhood development and a need to separate from the parents. Some use this as an argument against homeschooling (at all grade levels). Truth be told I think our society at present pushes this down way too early such as saying that babies and toddlers need daycare for social growth or that preschool or Kindergarten is the right time for that. I think that for the most part up to about age eight or nine there is absolutely no need for a pushing away and in fact detrimental results can happen if a child is not ready to break a strong healthy attachment and one is forced upon the child.

I think that the really important time for such growth is the teen years. I think that it is a real issue for homeschoolers to consider. Yes, it is one thing to have a good relationship with your teen where they keep speaking to you and are not shy about saying they love you and they actually also like you and want to be with you perhaps more than typical schooled teens, but it is another if the teen is stifled and cooped up and not allowed to start to spread their winds with more independence and more time identifying with peers than with the immediate family.

The teen years are a perfect time for more exposure to the outside world and to start to have more hard knocks to contend with. Learning to navigate the real world by short exposures balanced with enough time with parents to help make sense of the experiences and to hear some ideas about how to cope with them is a good thing. For us this has been a gradual process that has been years in the making, from those times playing at the playground without me hovering over my five year old to now, when I leave my son alone while I grocery shop.

What I am trying to describe lies somewhere in between throwing kids into a lion's den or into a Lord of the Flies like experience at a too-early age and letting them flounder since they don't know how to handle situations, and at the other extreme is the helicopter parent who is overly controlling with the kid and with everyone who comes in contact with them (coaches, teachers, etc.), and makes every decision and bosses their kid around so they can't even think for themselves.

I'm trying hard to parent my kids well. All I can say for sure is that active parenting is exhausting and parenting a teen can be so frustrating and confusing sometimes!