SCHOOL PT 2

The answer to the question, "Do I want my only son to graduate at seventeen?" came quickly and hot and was a little harsh: "Absolutely not."

I projected into the future with this one, thinking that all his friends would be driving around before him, which meant riding in friends' cars instead of being a leader and in charge of his own vehicle.

Then I came back to reality pretty quickly and realized my kids were in school for six to seven hours a day and would come home with homework that they would end up doing for an hour every night. They absolutely dreaded it. It was always, "Let me be a kid, Mom. I don't want to do this."

They had to read for twenty minutes, they had sight words or spelling words, and usually, they had a page of review to complete as a packet that needed to be turned in on Friday.

If they didn't have a snack and complete it directly after school, there was no going back; it wouldn't get done.

Our schedule was slammed, and it felt like every day was Groundhog Day.

I quickly became known as the scooter mom. The kids and I would walk to school every morning, and they would ride their scooters, weather permitting.

One, because we desperately needed that morning sunlight if they were going to be stuffed under fluorescent lights all day, and two, to get some energy out and keep their minds focused once they got in the classroom.

I would drop them off at the gate and carry the scooters home. Then, I would fly inside, change for work, drive over the intercostal to get into the office, work while they were in school, and then turn around to fly and pick them up.

I wanted off of this rollercoaster and quickly began researching options. I reached out to moms I knew who were currently doing homeschooling, and I called my childhood best friend to get her advice. I called her mom, talked to my neighbor, and reached out to anyone I knew for help.

That way, when we finally pulled out in the summer and made the decision, we would be prepared. Or so I thought.

Here is what I knew: I didn't need a teaching degree, a room dedicated to a classroom, or an expensive curriculum.

But here is what I didn't realize: there are massive differences in all of the different homeschool curriculums (more on this later), the time it would take to get them caught up, and the holes in education that they were missing.

Olivia needed to learn to alphabetize words, break down and read challenging words, round to the nearest hundred, tell time, identify money, and regroup numbers.

Noah couldn't identify letters or tell me the sound they made, he couldn't read anything—and I mean anything—he couldn't correctly write numbers like six and nine and couldn't count to one hundred.

Talk about defeat. We were deflated like a party balloon after New Year's Eve.

We were all stressed.

This is the opposite of what I heard homeschooling should be. I heard it should be fun and engaging, take one to two hours a day, and then we would be off doing other things.

This was so far from reality.

I can look back now and laugh, but this was not us a year ago. We were not here.

We were in the trenches.