Homeschool Adventures: Slowing Down

In some ways the past couple weeks have flown by; in some ways they’ve crawled by.

Several people have asked me how homeschool is going and I haven’t really had the ability to answer that question.

Two weeks ago, everyone went back to school. I had been meaning to write a post about it, but the day sort of came and went.  We spent what would have been our “first day of school” wandering the woods of a local park, spotting mushrooms and turtles.  Since then, the days have passed doing much the same thing.

One of the many reasons I wanted to homeschool was because I wanted things to slow down.

It’s not that the kids are growing up too fast (they are) or that I felt we never had time for any extra stuff during the school year (we didn’t).  It’s that childhood is an amazing time in our lives and I don’t want to rush that. We feel pressure to focus so much on results as parents and not so much on the process… the childhood part. That part we never get back.

The problem with the rushing is that it never ends. Forget about the discovery; it’s about getting good grades. It’s not about grades, it’s about college. It’s not about college, it’s about your Masters. It’s not about your Masters, it’s about your job. It’s not about your job, it’s about the job title, or the pay raise. It’s about the big house. It’s about your kids’ grades. It’s about your kids’ schools…

There’s always a next step.  But really, those next steps come all the same whether we rush through our daily life or walk slowly. And so I wanted us to let ourselves walk slowly and just be in the present for a little while.

Explore a little more. Try something new. Make time for failure.

But what has been surprising over the course of these two weeks is that, regardless of how much I wanted it, slowing down isn’t easy.  At least it hasn’t been for me.

It feels weird. We’ve felt a little out of sync with the world around us. I’m sure the kids have felt out of sync with their friends.

Over the summer, the rest of the world slowed down, so we felt in pace with our peers… but when Fall comes and things start picking back up for everyone else it’s hard to maintain that steady pace. It’s hard not to rush.

And so, occasionally, the panic sets in.

We aren’t doing anything. The kids aren’t learning… not enough… not the right things.

There’s so much knowledge out there and I’m not CRAMMING IT INTO THEIR BRAINS, testing them and moving on to the next thing.

They’ll never go to college if I don’t make them do workbooks.

They’ll be woefully unprepared for life if I don’t make them write essays right now.

And then I try to remember to breathe…

And trust my kids, myself, and this slowing down process.

And soak up the long walks, and seize the opportunities to try new things.

As firm as I feel in our decision to homeschool, and even though so far the situation has been pretty idyllic so far… I didn’t anticipate how difficult the adjustment would be.

So I apologize for being a little slow to post.  Time is moving a little differently than it was before.