Doubting Mamas

by Hillary Harvey, January 15, 2009

Winter is not my season. With the first couple of storms, where we were stuck inside all day, I tried to be a good sport about it. I took Zoë outside to throw snow and go sledding down the hill in the back yard. I baked things and made things. But it was also the holidays, and there was a lot to do. Today I find myself stuck inside all day due to yet another rainstorm, which sticks in ice chips to the roads.  My beloved Prius (its totally inept tires slip on dry roads in the summer) has an inability to leave the driveway on such days.  And when I can’t go out, that’s when I want to.

Yesterday (our first day back to lessons after the December break) was a bit like pulling out my own teeth one-by-one because of all the review I'd planned and because of my own lack of practice with patience during our month off.  Today was more smooth and fun. After lessons, we did a little science-art project on butterflies with some fun research on this site. (Check out the video.)  But finally, I put on a Chrysanthemum video from Netflix. I felt guilty about putting on the TV, even though it was after-school hours.  I felt guilty mostly because I just couldn't deal with Zoë anymore. It was one of those days where nothing would hold her attention and everything required my setting it up and participation.  I think my guilt was worsened by the fact that I read that children shouldn’t be exposed to more than 1/2 hour of TV a day! I mean, when you hear that, you know what a horrible parent you are because your kid watches WAY more than THAT! Even if everyone you know in your life calls you a TV Nazi.

Some of my friends send their children off to school in the morning, and have the entire day to complete thoughts in virtual quietude. Their children are gone for 7-9 hours a day at the local kindergartens. Those friends spend those hours at a regular desk job or at home and in coffee shops, working on personal businesses and projects, running errands. To spend the entire day able to complete a thought without having to be interrupted for a piece of toast or to unzipper someone's pants so they can go to the bathroom... To spend the entire day laying out a task, accomplishing it, putting it away, moving on to the next without getting up to set someone else up with a task of her own so she won't come at the work with smudgy hands...

Driving home from the city last weekend, I said to my husband, Owen, "So what do you think about homeschooling again next year? Do you think it's been too insane?" We’d gone out with friends we’ve known since college, and I was still feeling the sting of insecurity from when they’d asked how homeschooling was going, how long I was going to do it, and basically, what was I thinking?  Although I count these people as my oldest and truest friends and consider them extended family, and although I’ve never always had everything in common with them (most of them aren’t married and don’t yet have kids and many of them had enjoyed their schooling), I still feel uncomfortable being on such an incomprehensibly different path.  I don’t live for homeschooling.  It’s not the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.  It is certainly rewarding and engaging and makes each day that much more exciting and vivid.  But, much like parenting, it’s challenging, hard work that takes more out of me than I sometimes care to give.  And it’s harder to answer about how it’s going to someone who isn’t and wouldn’t do it.  I’d love to be honest, but if I don’t sugar-coat it a bit, who knows what they’ll think?!

Owen recently looked into schools in the new neighborhood where we are planning to move. There's a Catholic grammar school up the street, and he was excited that Zoe and I could walk there from our hoping-soon-to-be-purchased new house. Up until then I hadn't thought about not homeschooling next year. It didn't occur to me as an option. But with it out there, it was tantalizing: the morning stroll, the handing over of the lunchbox, the kiss and wave as she ran inside the building in her little uniform. But instead, Owen answered, "No, I think you're doing a great job. I don't think school is really an option anymore." My mouth practically fell open. Owen has been my exclusive partner for 14 1/2 years now, and yet he still surprises me. "It was John Taylor Gatto, wasn't it?" I said. (He has a new book out now.)

How can I simultaneously exist in the excitement of a new "semester" of homeschooling while also feeling the dread of "can I keep this up another year?" We have been saying all along that this is what we're doing for kindergarten, and that we will decide future years as they come. No one said I needed to decide about those future years right now. Yet I find myself wondering about it, wondering if I will be able to handle the added work and pressure of teaching Zoë first grade, wondering if I will be able to keep coming up with ideas to keep us busy and interested and learning.

Maybe I am just feeling overwhelmed after reading this book about homeschooling through to college. Reading about homeschooling on the one hand makes me feel informed, prepared and ready. The Classical Curriculum is the one that we keep happening upon accidentally and loving to the point of obsession. Developed by a mother and daughter (the mother having been a school teacher until taking her three children out of school because the teachers were telling her that she was hindering the children’s progress and popularity by working with them at home, and the daughter having been so well-prepared academically by her mother that she went on to doctorates at Oxford and advisory roles at universities and colleges before homeschooling her own children and writing books about it), "a classical education tries to equip a child to join the Great Conversation, to understand and analyze and argue with the ideas of the past." How cool does that sound?  How much does that sound like my family and our personal goals for ourselves and each other?  To have a conversation with your child about something you’ve just read about, to watch her mind process the information and come to realize all that's there, there's nothing better. But reading about doing it for years on end is a bit overwhelming.


Is it just the winter, or is it just the fact of being so frighteningly close to first-time home ownership, or is it just that I'm seriously not cut out for homeschooling?  Or maybe I just shouldn't read "helpful" books?  I'm just not feeling all gung ho about homeschooling at the moment, and maybe that's just fine.  Maybe I can just do it without being gung ho about it, or maybe it is the end of the era.  There does seem to be a price to pay for homeschooling: quiet, sane time for oneself.  Though how much of that would I get if I were at a regular desk job?  Because you know I wouldn't be homemaking.  And does the lack of time for oneself compare to what I’d miss sending Zoë to school: more time away from her than with her?  So it's a price I pay, this time-with-child, that has both ups and downs: ups, that I adore being with her; downs, that sometimes I do not.  What are you going to do?