Well, We Stopped Homeschooling
Actually, I should say I stopped homeschooling. There was never any “we” involved. Lots of lipservice, lots of “sure I can do that” or “I’ll help with that”, but never any actual help. It was just me.
Mike’s been pushing me to get a job (again) or find a way to bring in money from home. Never mind that before we had kids, before we got married, we had discussions about this and it was ALWAYS agreed that I would be a stay-at-home mom and that we (note we) would homeschool. If things got tight, Mike would get another job. That’s what I was told again and again.
Welcome to reality!
The really funny part is when we’ll catch an episode of Dr. Laura and there’s a couple on there complaining about basically the same thing (husband wanting the wife to put the kids in daycare and get a job)… Mike starts ranting at the radio saying things like “No, YOU need to get another job, YOU need to take care of your responsibilities, she’s already got a full-time job taking care of the kids”, yadda yadda. When that happens, I just stare at him in shock. Apparently it’s one of those “do as I say, not as I do” things.
So anyway, I’ve begun working online again, building websites and such. Now trust me when I say that this is not a pay-per-hour endeavor. Usually your efforts don’t show any results for months (unless you’ve got enough money to play the Adwords game and pay per click), and it takes a while to build up a good network of sites and get some profitable traffic rolling through. Basically, this means that I’m at my computer every waking minute attempting to “bring in some money” because I refuse to get a job again and come home to find out the boys have had peanut butter sandwiches for dinner for the third night in a row, no housework has been done, no dishes have been washed, no laundry’s been picked up - essentially no effort has been made to help me whatsoever and it was just a “babysitting” of the kids rather than a “parenting” of the kids… and Mike apparently is also refusing to get a second job. One of those passive resistance things, you know. He simply doesn’t bother trying to. Instead, he sits on his computer playing Runescape all night long.
I just couldn’t do it anymore. It’s bad enough even trying to keep up with 4 people who refuse to pick up after themselves, help do anything around the house, hell they don’t even bother to throw their laundry in the hamper or throw their trash away (it just gets set on whatever horizontal surface is closest, even if that’s the floor). Add to this trying to spend as much time as I can “bringing in money” because this house came out to be a hell of a lot more expensive than we’d planned on it being especially with the utility bills added on… and then on top of all that, try to homeschool two rowdy, energetic boys who would rather be playing Xbox or Runescape than doing anything that could be remotely connected to the word “work” with a 2-year-old who wants to play at our sides. Something had to give, and it was the homeschooling, unfortunately.
I’m hoping that we can bring them back home next year. Perhaps by then Mike will have gotten a raise, or my efforts online will be generating a nice self-sustaining income, or maybe even I’ll just have finally exerted some fantastic mind control method to get all 4 of them (and yes, I’m including Mike) to actually help out around the house and quit treating me like their personal maid/slave.
As far as school goes, they’ve been in for a week now and it’s been kinda bumpy as they get used to the structure and the environment, but they’re enjoying it. The only consolation I can give myself is at least I’m going into this with my eyes fully open, I know what to expect, and I can still yank them back out at any time if the situation warrants it.
So far the teachers (they each have one teacher all day long, no changing classes) have been great, calling me when I ask them to, even going so far as to give me their personal cellphone numbers so that I can check up on things or get a homework assignment that one of them “forgot” to bring home. They also both are aware that the boys were homeschooled up to this point, so they’re working with the boys to get them acclimated to the regular expectations - like raising your hand and waiting to be called on rather than simply blurting out the answer. Brendon’s teacher is fine with giving him alternate things to do when the other children are learning their letters (he reads past a 4th-grade level), such as practicing his handwriting or giving him something to read to himself. Personally, I can’t believe that 1st-graders are learning their letter sounds and blends… what is Kindergarten for?? But such is school. On a functional level, Brendon could be moved up a grade or two at this point (which his teacher agreed with after doing her own assessment on him), but on a maturity level, he’s still just a 6yo who wants to play. And of course, all of the things like standing in line and raising your hand are completely new to him, whereas in 2nd or 3rd grade the teachers would be fully expecting him to follow the simple unspoken rules of being in a class.
Kelsey is struggling a bit, not because he’s behind in anything, but simply because he hates to write. He’d rather be told something and instantly store it away in his head than having to take the time and effort to write it down. Here at home, that was no real problem; we’d just discuss something, throw it into different situations, maybe visit back on it once or twice in a fun “okay prove to me you know this” kind of way a week or two down the road. (Usually it was him quizzing *me*!) It’s like he’s got a recorder in his head; anything he hears, it’s stuck in there. He didn’t like writing, and I wasn’t going to force the issue and have him throw up a wall. Oral reports were fine for me; we could wait until he was a little older and a little more patient (with himself and in general) to work on the handwriting. But now, he’s in a class where you have to write all throughout the day, and he’s just plain slow at it. (Mainly because he doesn’t want to do it.) But he sees all the other kids writing things down and they don’t seem to mind doing it, so he puts in a little bit of effort. However, when he sees the kids around him finish writing and look up, he’ll stop writing too… only problem is, they’ve written everything down that they’re supposed to, and he’s only got 2/3rds of it written down. We’re working on it here at home after school, having him do things like write his spelling words 4 times each and such. When I told him that I used to get in trouble in school and my punishment was to write a sentence like “I will not talk out loud during class” 500 times over, I thought his jaw was going to become permanently dislocated. 
After that, he didn’t think having to write 14 spelling words 4 times each was all that bad.
I tell ya, if only they’d let him have a laptop at his desk instead of writing down his notes… he’d be done getting the notes down and be waiting for the other kids to finish writing, lol. He’s no speed demon on the keyboard -yet-, but he does type much faster than he writes.
Anyhow, I really should update this more often so that I don’t write these russian-novel-length posts. Here’s a pic of the boys on their first day of school.
What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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