My son is 10-years-old. He’s in 5th grade. He loves recess and his friends. He loves the sidebar conversations they have during lunchtime about Pokémon and video games and silly things. He hates brushing his teeth and never remembers to pick up his clothes and would eat some variation of pasta for every meal if I let him. And, up until two weeks ago, he went to a perfectly normal school. He’s a typical 10-year-old.
Sadly, what isn’t typical is his anxiety and his worry.
His worry has been about grades and long tests and overwhelming schoolwork. His worry has also been about me and his dad. It tears him apart to leave either of us. You see, his dad and I divorced last summer. Even with as amicable and compassionate as our divorce was, we wondered if we would escape the hard side effects it has on children. And, luckily we did escape. At least, we thought we did. Then, we rounded the corner into the last half of the school year and things started to fall apart. At first, my son couldn’t concentrate in school. It had always been an issue but never like that. Then, his good grades began to slip. Honestly, they didn’t just slip. They fell right off the side of a cliff. We started with a new therapist and even still his worries and anxiety and fears circled like sharks every day. Until one day, after weeks of tears and tantrums – neither of which he could control – we came to a decision. For the sake of his sanity and ours, we pulled him out of school.
Here we are, in the 11th hour of 5th grade, homeschooling our very typical yet very unique 10-year-old.
Literally within hours of making the decision, I put out what can only be described as the Bat Signal to all of my friends on social media. And, they didn’t let me down. Within hours, I had countless emails and messages from parents dealing with the same life choice. Parents who had decided to homeschool. Parents who wanted to homeschool but, like me, were terrified. Parents who felt trapped, who knew in their gut what they should do, but didn’t know where to begin. Also like me. Over those first few days, we all shared experiences and ideas. One of my friends used a word that I clung to like a life raft. She said “We had to spend the first week or two ‘unschooling’ our daughter.”
Unschooling.
I imagine it would mean something different for every child and every parent. But, for us, I knew exactly what it meant. Regardless of the amazing teachers and wonderful friends, my son had grown to hate school. It’s a strong word but it fits. His anxiety made him hate it. His struggles made him hate it. And, while he loved the place and the people, it was the fear and the pressure that were pulling him down deeper and deeper each day. That pressure had escaped other children but had chained my child to the bottom. So, I immediately knew what unschooling should be to him. It should be the unraveling of the hate. The lifting of the pressure. The return of his love of learning. But, the most important thing of all, the return of his bright and shining self-confidence.
I am absolutely determined to see that self-confidence in him again.
In the few days since we started homeschooling, he’s done lessons on the anatomy of a seed. We planted a garden and talked about germination and perennials versus annuals. He’s been to the Chattanooga Public Library and picked out not one but two books on Christopher Columbus and eagerly dove into them. He’s aced math worksheets (with peace and quiet and time) and he’s written a newspaper article on pilgrims coming to the New World. Does it all seem very simple? Yes.
Does my kid need a little simple right now? Mamas, you have no idea.
Yes, my background and degree are in Education. No, I’m not flying entirely blind here. But, boy, it sure feels like it some moments. Some moments I wonder what I’ve done. Some moments I come this close to regret. But then, at other moments, I see a tiny glimmer. He discovers something he hadn’t learned before. He sits in calm and enjoys his schoolwork. He puts on my garden gloves and plants things. Is he learning exactly what they’re learning in his old class? No. We’re revisiting and relearning some things. Because he needs to remember what it’s like to succeed. Trust me, he’s had enough failing. I need him to remember what it’s like to shine.
I know there are those who don’t approve of our decision.
I get it. Truly, I do. But, listen. We all have to do what’s best for our own children. And, what’s best for my child might be something completely different for yours. We should celebrate having the courage to make those hard, different decisions. My son’s dad said to me recently “We don’t get better when things are great all of the time. We get better when it gets hard.” Mamas, this is hard. School was hard. Now, homeschooling is its own kind of hard. Every day I take a deep breath and accept that it’s just all hard right now.
