I spent a while today writing the letter for withdrawing our children from school. It feels like I must be bragging/lying/exaggerating when I list off our qualifications, materials, and philosophy… but uhm… yeah that’s just true. We are, in fact, unusually qualified to home educate our children. We did this on purpose.

The kids are relaxed in a way I haven’t seen them relax in a long time. That’s nice.

I am currently somewhere in the middle of five books and only because I finished one a few minutes ago. Reading about being an intensive person, another PTSD book, a grimoire for kitchen witchery, and fruits and vegetables for Scotland. I finished the rereading of a fantasy book focused on friendships. For every twenty pages I plow through of the other four books I get through a whole fantasy book. Learning feels hard again. But I’m trying.

I made the kids negotiate what a school schedule is going to look like for them for the rest of this school year. It’s… a lot more relaxed than it was in the past. Partially because they are at grade level so I don’t need to be fussy. That feeling of panic I had about them not doing enough is gone. That is a gift we got from school.

EC now has a bunch of “funny” stories about the teacher accusing her of making up words because ECs vocabulary is so broad. Sure, there are some maths skills we didn’t perfectly nail but that would be true from any curriculum in existence. MC will have a bit of extra maths for a while but I’m not concerned and we will indeed work on handwriting. I am glad she can take off on reading without waiting for her handwriting to be good enough, She read the entire book series I gave her for Christmas (that I bought because I was told it was “the thing” for her grade level) on Christmas before mid-afternoon. Well. It’s kind of like when my mom refused to buy me any more of The Babysitters Club books. She’s not at grade level anymore, Toto.

Noah and I are having some feelings about the lack of opportunities to date, but here we are late at night on our own computers just… blurgh. He would respond with vigor if I wanted to pay attention to him. It’s not that I don’t want to. But I don’t want to. I’m tired. It’s not the kids it’s life.

It’s kind of funny that the school thinks that they need to be in school to get a proper education; I’ve planned 12 hours a week of direct instruction and they will progress as fast or faster than their peers do. So far the kids say the thing they will miss the most is not getting to do the dance section of PE. ONCE THE FUCKING BOAT ARRIVES I am going to dig out my copy of Irish dance instructions from the Plough and we can do kitchen dancing. Noah knows the basics, I can quickly pick stuff up again and teach it. It will be fun. Yes, we will be limited to stuff that needs four people, but that’s alright.

I’m struggling with being deep in my feels about life. I feel so much (internally imposed) pressure to try harder on reaching out to people but I also feel depleted. What does friendship mean?

Does friendship mean that you are obligated to show up a certain number of hours? That you are obliged to place a certain number of phone calls or send a certain quantity of emails or letters? I carry a lot of my friendships and I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t carry every relationship. Some people reach out to me more than I do them… not many… but a couple.

I feel like I’m at this interesting point in my internal cycles. I am utterly over pouring out energy into relationships. I’m over feeling I have to earn people or love or a place. If I have to work that hard to be loved I don’t fucking care about being loved. Is that awful? Is it healthy? I don’t know. I feel like this period of apathy is part of needing to separate, part of needing to figure out what I actually NEED as opposed to wants. I do need to be loved but I don’t need to be the life of the party.

Christmas was great. I don’t know if my kids were playacting for my benefit (will I ever trust that they feel safe enough to display their authentic emotions?) but they seemed euphoric and delighted about their presents. They got things they need and things they want and they are being given the gift of time and perspective going forward. I’m really glad we tried school. I don’t know that either child will want to try school again before university. We’ll see. I have zero desire to push them and that feels good today.

I am glad that they like me and I like them and we don’t really need the approval of other people. My kids give me a sort of validation no one else can give me, not even Noah. They want to be around me and they choose my teaching over that of other people. They see me as being the best opportunity on offer.

Damn.

The kids have noticed that their “friends” at school need them to be a very curated version of themselves in order to be tolerated. I mean, I have guidelines too–you will have table manners or else but when we are not in a restaurant… be whatever feels ok to you. I don’t need you to pretend all the time. I just need you to care about how you are impacting the people around you when they are trapped in a small space with you. Don’t be a selfish asshole. You can be loud and rude and obnoxious at other times when it is totally appropriate. Context dependent rules are a big deal. We talk a lot about how different settings require different things from our behavior.

School requires you to accept that authority cares more about minimizing the amount of work they have to do than keeping you safe. School would much rather have you shut up and accept being hit rather than stand up to bullies–if you do so you are now the problem.

My brother came up in conversation. (He can fart on command, this was relevant to our topic.) The kids asked why I don’t talk to him. I told them for a bunch of reasons that are detailed in the book they can’t read until they are adults. They said, “Oh you did bad things to him?” Nope, no I didn’t. “Did he do bad things to you?” Not really. “Then… why?” Because he is angry that I made other people stop doing bad things to me. “HE SOUNDS LIKE THE HEAD TEACHER AT SCHOOL.”

Yeah. We can withdraw from school.

I am by no means a perfect person. I fuck up. I do things I shouldn’t. I also work hard at not hurting people. I have learned to keep my opinion to myself when I think people are doing things wrong for the most part. I haven’t given anyone else parenting feedback in a very long time. We all get to parent as we see fit. Only our children get to evaluate us.

I like my kids and so far they like me more than any other teacher on offer. We will make friendships with people who share our interests (I heard about a nearby home educating family who really wants to try D&D…. Noah is great at DMing for kids…) and hobbies. Frankly the school kids here don’t do the stuff we do for fun.

I’m going to keep trying to go to the toddler activities. When I’m out of the house the big kids are going to work on programming. That’s a Noah subject and I don’t need to be present for it. If they finish their target for the day they will switch to art/music/reading. We have lots to do.

We don’t get bored. Well, I alternate between thinking boredom is a necessary part of life and thinking that only boring people get bored. We have a lot of unstructured time. We never run out of ways to fill it. Is that being bored? We make our own entertainment and we really prefer it that way. I’m taking some tips from the horse trainer lady on how to handle kid accountability on home schooling. (Her kids are in and out of school as it suits the needs of her family.)

The future is coming. Right now I’m not worried it will eat me. I’m pretty sure it will be less painful than what I have already experienced.