November 1 marked the first day of a brand new experience for everyone in my household. We started Gabby homeschooling. We really felt that the public school system was failing to to give her the education we feel she deserved. They were teaching yes, but only to what the standardized tests said were important. Creativity was squashed, accusations were thrown (by the teacher at students) instead of playground balls, and my 6 year old had homework EVERY night. And on top of that she had a weekly spelling test to study for. I didn't have that much homework as a college student most semesters. So rather than see her despise learning at the ripe old age of 7, we decided to take her out of an instution and teacher her in a way that she can enjoy and look forward to.
That being said, our first day of schooling got off to a rather rocky start. First Aj is fighting off a nasty cough that she cl=aims debilitates her. Next off, we finally got all the kids dressed and loaded up to leave and I look at the car and it seems a little lopsided. Oh yes, a flat on passenger side. So after much jacking, prying, swearing get teh flat off but can't get teh spare from under the car to release. Our awesome neighbor let me borrow her car and I drove out, got the tire and got it back on. While I got all that done, my awesome wife got all of gabby's school instruction done for the day! She worked on her reading, writing, science, and later in the day she painted some clay figures we made a couple days ago for her art. We also taught her about money and how people pay for stuff with bank cards and she helped me cook dinner. There is SO much to learn by living that people either don't notice or just expect you to know that school skips over it's amazing.
Our distant cousins have twins that were in gabby's grade and they were apalled that we would even think of homeschooling. I told a good friend about it and she equated it to when she switched over to a mostly vegan diet. It makes people uncomfortable when you reject the norm because you don't feel that it is good enough for you. So instead of listening to our reasons why we are pulling Gabby out, our cousin just told us what a mistake we are making and how could we think to ruin our daughter's life.
So in closing, I hope I inspire or challenge you to take a look at your life. Is there some aspect that the norm isn't good enough for you but you haven't changed because it is outside the social acceptable behavior? I won't lie that it will be easy, but I can say with almost complete certainty that there is someone like you somewhere that you can talk to and find support and ideas with.
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