Welcome to my very first homeschool blog! We are a homeschool family of 4. There is me, my husband, and my two wonderful boys who are almost 9 and almost 3.
We began this journey in February 2006 when my oldest was in 1st grade. At that time homeschooling was nothing more than “a solution to a problem”. Skylar, has always been a challenging child to raise. I had been dealing with some usual and many unusual problems since he was around 4 months of age. I’m going to leave out gory details. However, if I had ever had him evaluated we may have found things like, SID (sensory integration disorder), ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), ADD (attention deficit disorder), depression, impulse control problems and the usual prescription of school related problems. However, I chose to allow him to grow without “professional interference”. He seemed to do fine in preschool. In fact I thought some things had improved. I attribute this the most involved, active, wonderful preschool teacher that has ever lived!
On Skylar’s first day of Kindergarten orientation I really noticed something very strange going on. As soon as he realized where he was he IMMEDIATELY became withdrawn and retreated to a small square of carpeting with some toys. He would not talk to the other kids and he would not smile. He would not speak with the teacher or any other parents. I tried really hard to encourage him to “be like the other kids”. Hindsight tells me that was stupid. He wasn’t going to be like the others. Ever. Kindergarten was his (and my) worst nightmare. We were called in for at least 1 meeting every month. Only to talk about Skylars “behavior problems” and how she would implement a ridiculous solution. She was a 15 year teaching veteran and she claimed to have “never seen these behaviors” before in her classroom. Ever. More hindsight tells me that she is either crazy or a liar. At one meeting she even told us that she didn’t envy me the day he got keys. Skylar spent half (or more) of the year on a tiny square of carpeting during “choice time” (playtime). When he was good, he was allowed to “invite” a friend to play with him. Imagine spending playtime ALONE. He cried on a regular basis. He became extremely depressed, said things like I don’t want to live anymore. I hate myself. I can’t do anything right. At one point he said he woke up and saw god and god told him that his parents were going to die. And lots of other statements that you would never want to hear your child say. He was extremely depressed and it got very scary. At this time I was pregnant with my second child and not really sure what to do. I really wanted to help him but I didn’t know how yet. When he went into first grade not much had changed. Although the teacher was nicer and more understanding he was still repeatedly in trouble for very minor things and constantly feeling terrible about himself. I kept telling myself that after first grade I would homeschool him. I needed time to prepare pulling him out of school. Things got really bad and I decided to bring him home in February to be with me and his new baby brother, Milo. And that is where we began homeschooling and turned it into our lifestyle. What was once a solution to a problem, is now a journey with a very certain beginning but has no ending in sight.
This lifestyle also started out as a ‘temporary fix’ to a longstanding problem with public school…now it’s the only way we’d have it!
BTW, have you read anything by Jonathan Mooney? I’ve found both his books to be amazingly validating for parents of kids who aren’t ‘like everyone else’.
http://www.jonathanmooney.com/
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I don’t know why I hadn’t read this before but I was skimming your titles in your archive and here I am. We started the same way, with the idea that HS wold be temporary until he was “old enough” to do school. Hahahaha! Funny how quickly we change, huh?
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