I have been wanting to write a post about our journey through home school, our decision to send our kids to public school and now our choice to send our kids to the small private school about 25 min from us.
As we began having kids A and I started talking about whether we wanted to home school or not. A was adamant about not sending our kids to public school or any school and I was open to options but to respect my husbands desires I started looking into homeschooling our oldest W even before he was school age. I wanted so badly to be the home school mom with the great home school room, all organized with my pupils being attentive and succeeding each day. I ordered some preschool curriculum and set out to do “preschool” when W was 4. This meant that year I had a 2 year old and newborn also to tend to. This really wasn’t something I should have tried looking back on it. I think I just wanted so badly to succeed. But in the middle of that I failed and crashed and burned.
After the preschool curriculum failed I continued to search for the “right fit” for me and my son. I bought all kinds of different preschool curriculum and continued to crash and burn. When W was kindergarten age I got a hold of a curriculum called teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons. Now this was my cup of tea. Though his grandmas both taught him a bunch, we breezed through that book and finished in a good amount of time. As we began 1st grade I was weary. I had a 1 year old, 3 year old, 5 year old and a 7 year old. Things were rough with our marriage A and I were working through anger issues and stress from A’s outside work and My home school overcame us. W barely got the chance to succeed. We took a lot of “mental health” days and went to the zoo or our science center to “get away” from the intensity that was home life. I would say that that year he fell way behind. I remember having visions of all of my 4 kids ages 7,5,3 and 1 sitting outside under the shade tree on a blanket reading about Napoleon or James Elliott. But in reality I would get everything set up and by that time the 5 and 3 year old had run off and were getting into trouble of some kind.
When you finally admit you can no longer do something yourself. Especially something that you had visions of doing for years to come it takes a lot of humility. But it is also very freeing to give that responsibility to someone whose job it actually is.
Continuing to submit to my husbands will for me to home school our kids I ordered curriculum for W and D for the next year. I was excited about it all and could not wait to get started. I realized soon after that, that my emotional health was spent. I was reacting to small things in big ways by screaming and I couldn’t handle it anymore. One month after much time of trying to convince A to send our kids to school we decided nothing would hurt to at least go and see what the public school was like. We liked the small size that it was. They only have K-2nd grades and a total of about 50 students. We loved the setting and felt God give us peace to send the boys there.
After the first week we realized it wasn’t as quaint as we thought. Bullying started and our boys began to lash out. (I believe they were doing what they saw their parents doing when we were dealing with our issues). We wanted to stick it out through the whole year, hopeful that it was just a season. We disciplined for any issue that was brought to our attention but we really felt they were teased and not understood and the staff didn’t give us much help in actually resolving the problem between the students. We reached out for help and nothing was done about it. This makes me so sad because our boys were pegged as the bullies and we knew they were lashing out for the teasing that was being done. It was a great learning experience but we are thankful the Lord has directed us differently this year.
I’m not going to fool myself into thinking it was just the kids in the school we went to last year. I am not going to pretend our kids didn’t had some issues with all the parts of school. Social, academically, and respect for the staff. But I also know my kids can do better than that and I have the understanding of grace and love for those boys. I also know that in a Christian community with parents who have like minded discipline and staff that are God loving people, it gives kids pegged as “bullies” in public school a second chance. So this year we get that second chance. We are attending a very small Christian school about 23 minutes from our house.
This school has a total of 25 students. Our boys class has a total of 7 kids, grades 1-3. The staff love Jesus with all their hearts and they partner with us as parents to teach this to our kids. The Lord has blessed us immensely with this school and I am excited about getting a new start. We are also “healthier” as a family. We are “healthier” as a couple and our boys are “healthier” and doing much better at working through disappointment. I am anxious about the academics. This school uses a more advance curriculum. But I know God has called us here and I also know our boys thrive on being challenged and they are both extremely intelligent. We might have some hard work ahead of us but I am confident that the teachers will be right along side us helping our kids through any struggle that might arise.
I don’t think that public school is bad. We had a very bad experience and I know there are many great schools out there and not all teachers are like the ones in this school either. This school could be perfectly fine for many other children. It was just not a good experience for us. I have no hard feelings. I know we had an all around tough year with my moms death and our family struggles it was not all the schools fault.
I also want to say that homeschooling could be perfectly fine for someone else. I love home school and really wanted to succeed at it. God had other plans for us and each year we will make the decision for what the plan should be for a our children and each year each parent does the same for their child. So whether you are homeschooling, are a public school family or a private school family Keep doing what you are doing and keep up the good work! But especially Love on those kids of yours!
Signing off from one woman to another.
Jenny Wren