Being a homeschool mom has blessed my life by being able to spend more time with my daughter, meeting some great women, and learning to have some patience. I have grown a lot since we started this journey and use to get upset about a lot of things that really don't matter. We still get the usual questions that we all dread.... "Why aren't you in school today?" "Don't you worry about her not being socialized?" "Are you qualified to be a teacher?" "Why aren't you in school now?" And the list goes on and on.... It's quite funny that when you give a stranger an answer to their questions it is always the same responses! "OOOHHH" (you are one of those) or "That's wonderful, you are such a lucky girl!" Depending on how the day is going we have some fun with it. Some days she tells them, "School is SO overrated so I just don't do it!" or "School? What's that?" She likes to see their reactions. Since giving the honest answer sometimes has a negative response she figured she would just say something to shock them so they won't have time to give a reaction. The truth is we will never get it all right. We will always be judged and blamed if they don't succeed, when they can't answer some of their specific questions asked about history.... But we don't have to perfect and know it all. You can do this!
Raising a tween who is very independent, acts like she is grown at times and has hormones that are up and down equals to be very challenging days. But the most important is to stay focused and to remind myself that she is getting an education, hands on learning, life experiences, and loving her free time with her friends while learning through every experience she is having. Some people think it's all about play and no learning or all books and no play. That is not the life we live at all. Our days are spent mainly from 8 am to 2 pm doing a variety of things from curriculum, field trips, play dates, project fairs, library, science projects, crafting, sports, homeschool classes, co-op, donating our time, life lessons, and just simply living life. It's not about how much you do, its about how you do it. The most important lesson I've learned since becoming a homeschool mom is to stop comparing myself to what others do and worrying about what they are saying about how I do my schooling. It doesn't matter if you follow a curriculum, un-school, do classes online, etc. it is YOUR journey and YOUR children's journey. No one else can tell you how to do it but YOU. We have to learn our kids learning style and go with works for you and your children.
