Category Archives: school

The feedback is rolling in

One of the benefits of homeschooling ending is that my children are starting to gain some perspective. My kids are starting to feel like they can evaluate the process and they are telling me how they feel about it in retrospect. I’m sure at some point they will start listing complaints (human nature) but so far they are glowingly positive.

“Mom, I really underestimated how good of a teacher you are.” “I thought you were being mean and picking on me and now that I have a different teacher I see that you were actually sooooo patient.” “I used to think I was just average but you told me I was really good at (subject) and now I see that you were right.” “Mom, you wouldn’t believe how little these kids know about nutrition. They don’t eat vegetables. They think fruit is disgusting. They don’t even know what a carbohydrate is. When the teacher says that you need a little bit of sugar in your diet they assume she means a candy bar. They won’t consider fruit. I really wonder about the state of their bowels.”

I told them to keep their mouths shut about their shock when they know something that other people don’t know. Folks are taught things in different orders and with different intensities all over the place and if you act like there is something wrong with someone for not knowing something that you know then they will be assholes when you run into something you don’t know that is easy for them. Both of them said a variation on (separately because we tend to have these conversations one on one instead of in a group): “Oh I’m being careful with my facial expressions and I’m trying to not say a word about them not understanding this. But mom. NO VEGETABLES?!?!” “A kid was telling me to throw my veggie sticks in the garbage and I said that would be pretty silly because my body needs the fiber. THE KID ASKED ME WHAT FIBER IS, MOM. I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT.”

And we are having great conversations at home about chores, earning money, debt, and interest payments. We are learning about why it is smart to save up for things you want in advance instead of owing money because then you end up having to pay so much more. They feel the pain because I have been letting them feel the pain for a little while. EC said that as much as this process isn’t a load of laughs she is glad she is learning this now instead of when it could impact her ability to pay for electricity or buy food or pay rent. I told her that’s why we are hammering this so hard now. In Scotland you are allowed (not encouraged) to move out at 16. That’s 4.5 years away. That’s not really a lot of time and any day now she is going to decide I am stupid and I don’t know anything so I have to hurry up and get these lessons in before puberty kicks into high gear.

She says she really doubt she will ever think I am stupid. I said, “You used to doubt you would want friends more than you want to spend every minute of your day with me and here we are.” She said, “Hm. That is true. You do have a habit of predicting my behavior really well. Maybe I will start thinking you are stupid after all.” Then she stuck her tongue out at me. Then I talked about why it is developmentally necessary and she gave me her “Hunh I hadn’t thought about it like that” face. I love that face.

MC is feeling super smug because she was gifted with a bed and that made her “setting up her room” budget go much farther so she’s feeling like a whiz at money. I’m trying to caution her against hubris and instead put extra money in savings so that you don’t blow it on candy and toys. In the long run you won’t be happier about those purchases and right now you literally can’t see your floor because of the huge pile of mess. If you add a bunch of new toys you are going to wreck them right quick from stepping on them and then you will be annoyed about your wasted money. She’s considering my point but she sure isn’t picking up the floor and putting anything in her drawers.

She’s going to ride that gravy train of I-am-not-allowed-to-tell-them-to-tidy-their-rooms-for-a-year until it breaks down.

The constant travel meant we had to maintain a level of tidiness that was extreme even for me. When you go through an airport if your bag is a giant mess, you drop things and lose things. If you try to pull a toy out to play with it on the plane and 19 little things fall out, you won’t find them all to put them away. Everything had to be sorted into their proper smaller containment devices so you can keep your things. The kids really chafed at the extra work. They asked if they could have a year of grace to celebrate having their own space. I said fine. Their birthday present for me next year is cleaning their rooms. They said that sounds fair. Ha.

Which makes it funny that Hurricane EC has a room that is tidier than any space she has ever been in for her entire life. She picked out a whole bunch of organizing furniture from the charity shop and her stuff is tidied to within an inch of its life. She says she prefers it this way. I had to stop myself from putting a hand on her forehead and asking if she feels ok. She says that she finally agrees that I am right and it is much easier to find her things this way.

I keep my laughter for behind closed doors.

MCs hand writing has come along super nicely in the past two weeks of actual school. Apparently the teacher erases what she writes and won’t let her turn in stuff that isn’t legible. I said “I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR SOME TIME.” She says, “Yeah… it’s a lot more embarrassing to have to rewrite stuff in front of my classmates and my teacher tells me that I will miss break to recopy if I don’t hurry up. That’s a lot more motivation than just sitting at our kitchen table all day.”

MC is also receiving a lot of the same lectures on attitude and behavior at school that she has received at home and she is having an interesting time adjusting to that. She keeps feeling like the teacher dislikes her. I ask her if she thinks I dislike her. She says “Oh no, you are my biggest fan.” I tell her to replay in her brain how many times I have given the same damn lecture. Then she says, “Do you think it is possible that the teacher gets upset with me because she wants me to be my best self?” Yeah kiddo, I do.

Every time a teacher says anything rebuking to either child in the smallest way they are convinced the teacher is going to call me so they can get in trouble at home too. I keep telling them that the teacher is very unlikely to do so unless an issue escalates to the point of causing harm to someone and that’s really not what is happening here. The teacher is trying to guide you towards appropriate behavior and that’s not about dislike.

They are learning and that’s good. They are learning that I am not the only one who will judge them and give them feedback. Holy cheese toast they need that lesson.

I feel like overall I got what I wanted from homeschooling. There were times when it was incredibly stressful. There were times when it was overwhelmingly hard. But I wanted my kids to know a certain set of things. I wanted to know that if they didn’t know these things it was my fault. I didn’t want to blame a school for not teaching them things about their bodies and brains and how to function. I wanted to have the time and space to teach them the things I think a person should know.

By and large we have a family culture that has inculcated them in the knowledge I feel is most important.

I don’t think I can or should homeschool my third child to provide the same education. I am going to have to fit my lessons in around the school schedule which will be in many ways much harder. But I am toasty fried and I want my child to make friends and fit into the social order here.

I do not miss the homeschooling community in California. I am happy to be out of it. There is so much dysfunction, so much neglect masquerading as “educational freedom”, so much petty infighting over social rank.

I think there will be bullshit here and I just don’t smell it yet. People are people.

But there is a special flavor of hypocrisy in mostly upper class Californians. I can’t be part of it any more. And that’s ok. I don’t have to be.

Like Ursula I am wasting away

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I have lost a solid 10 lbs since I left California. I am eating cake when I want it, candy bars, daily massive quantities of tea with 3 teaspoons of sugar in every cup. I am not on a diet. But even with days that I barely move from exhaustion I am up to averaging 4.5 miles/day. As my tolerance builds that average will go up and I will have fewer collapsed from exhaustion days. I am working on meeting the neighbors. I have now met a few houses down the road (no one up the hill yet) and I have chatted with several of the folks who walk past our house for exercise or to commute.

I got to the school super early yesterday and talked to several parents/grandparents. “Hi I’m Krissy and I’m new here.” It’s like old times. Only now I follow up with, “What should a new person know about this community?” I am getting some fascinating answers I won’t write down because if people find my blog and see themselves quoted it could go sideways. But the answers are great.

The general consensus is that yes I should get a dog if I want to do a lot of exercise on my own because no it would not go well if I defended myself like I would in California. But a dog is allowed to attack someone on my behalf. Social mores, yo. I am happy that I was reading that right. I am a bit freaked out that it is true. I will be getting a dog. But first: cats. I want the dog to come into a house with cats so that the dog adjusts to this being the norm. Which means we should get cats soon. Our house is going to be pretty insane for a while as all of the humans and felines and canines adjust to one another. I am going to need to spend a fair bit of time at home helping everyone learn appropriate behavior. Everyone involved will need to understand that I am the alpha. Mama sure wears the pants in this family. I wear them under my skirts. (Noah gets to wear pants too. Trousers as well!)

Noah is working on meeting people for his purposes as well. He is less focused on neighbors and more focused on computer nerds far flung around the country. The kids are having a great time meeting kids at school. One of ECs new buddies suggested that if we (ECs parents) are willing to pay for the airline tickets that EC could go to Spain with them for school holidays. I declined that gracious offer. But I think the kids are sliding into place at school just fine. My kids are really unhappy that there will be two weeks off of school after this Friday. They want to be in school. It’s hilarious and wonderful.

I am diligently working on getting the recycling out of the house now that I know where I can walk it to. I would like the back log of recycling to dwindle before the boat stuff arrives because then I am going to be swimming in a sea of cardboard. I will be advertising that lot on freecycle because they are all lovely standard sizes and super sturdy.

I think we will use the school holidays to start seeing about getting cats. And to practice bike riding. And to rest and read books. Excellent. For once I am not sad at all about the Christmas creep. Given that we want to go slowly with our budget we bought four pieces of garland and two strings of lights yesterday. We have a huge house and no decorations. It will be fun to have stuff trickle in. Time to eat.

An absolutely glorious meeting

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I met with both teachers, the classroom support worker, and the deputy head teacher (basically the vice principal). Everyone was upbeat, positive, and complimentary. The general verdict is that my children have incredible social skills–they are settling in shockingly well. They have seamlessly joined the pack of kids playing games and the teachers expected more culture shock. They are extremely appropriate in class and have not been asked to settle down once. All of the things that could use some extra help are things that are basic differences between the US and Scottish school systems so nobody is batting an eye.

As I have long told EC, she is far above grade level. Her math skills exceed the school’s ability to test and the teacher was quite surprised by just how fluently she is able to explain everything she knows. Her reading comprehension is untestable by their standards. She could probably move into secondary school level one and be at grade level or above. (That wasn’t explicitly stated, just repeated mentions of “We can’t even test her level.”) I want her to have a year of primary school. Her handwriting isn’t perfect but it is average. She is enjoying the fact that she is already the first one done with math assignments and she is turning around to explain things to other kids. The teacher says it is clear her reading comprehension is much higher than she chooses to express in writing at this time. I said wait until she has a computer in front of her; she types like the wind. (She will be assigned a Chromebook tomorrow.)

MC is already sharing at school that they doubt their abilities because they are not at ECs level. I said, “Yup that is a constant struggle and it has been lifelong.” For math they are a couple of months behind where the dead average is, but given that we abandoned math entirely six months ago… that’s dandy fine and no one in the room doubted that they will catch up super fast. For reading comprehension there is a drastic difference between what they can express verbally and what they can write. So for homework they are going to focus on writing and skip most of the otherwise assigned stuff like spelling. The teacher knows that for reading ability and general comprehension MC is very much at the top level but thinks it is wise to put kiddo in the middle group for now so that kiddo can finish the reading lightning fast and spend the extra time working on writing.

I did bring up some of the gender stuff. I said that MC is very gender fluid and that’s an adventure we are fully on board for. The whole staff said that sounds great and they will support that in every way possible.

The staff expressed that my tour of duty of educating the children is over. (Not their language at all. I am paraphrasing because it is going to take a long time before I can mimic Scottish cadence.) They expressed that the best thing I can do is listen to how their day is and encourage them to keep trying their best at school. The staff will handle all of the support they need and they want the kids to just relax and play outside of school. I’m pretty sure my relief was palpable. Homework will be very minimal compared to US standards and it really is up to the kids to do.

I am absolutely in love with this school. The staff is kind, supportive, and enthusiastic. I feel like it will be easy for us to be successful here. I think my kids are going to do well. They already have a few kids in class they think they would like to develop friendships with.

Awesome.

That was super nice to hear!

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I asked my kids how they feel they are doing compared to their peers academically. Middle Child says, “You are right that I need to practice hand writing more, but the math was super easy and the class is reading books that I read years ago.” Eldest Child says, “I can do the math in my sleep, the teacher says I have amazing hand writing, and I finished my assigned work early and was able to help other students with their work, on my first day!”

I asked them if they feel I prepared them well for what they are going to see in school. They both said that they really appreciate how I have guided them towards learning because this all looks super easy and like they are going to be able to coast for months before they see anything hard. They thanked me for being a good teacher.

That felt really good. I have felt a lot of anxiety wondering if I was failing them in the home schooling process. I have worried myself into a frenzy trying to make sure I teach them enough so that they don’t show up and feel stupid/unprepared/singled out for mockery.

Instead they show up and feel very confident that they are among the advanced students. Eldest Child’s reading skills are many many grades above the average it seems. I thought so, but it’s hard for me to be sure with them at home.

Middle Child just needs to practice writing more. To be fair, kiddo has just reached the age where Eldest Child decided that hand writing mattered and started improving dramatically. My kids don’t do very well with being pushed to “start learning” something before they are ready to abruptly hit mastery. I follow similar learning curves and I fought back in school over this topic my whole life.

I am really curious how school is going to go for them over the long run. But their first day was absolutely amazing and they are both thrilled to pieces that they get to do this five days a week going forward. They both met people who might become friends and they want to be there.

MC said, “I used to think Saturday was my favorite day of the week. Now it will be Monday!”

I honestly with my whole heart believe this would not have happened this way in California.

Wonderful first day

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The kids came home glowing, full of positive stories. They are really annoyed they can’t stay for a full day tomorrow because they want to.

I am really glad we moved here and I think we picked the right school.

Today is the day.

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In just over four hours my kids will be walking onto a school campus as enrolled students. They will be P5 and P7. Here P7 is the final year of primary school before being sent off to secondary school. There is no middle school here.

I am already enjoying some of the differences in Scottish schooling. We were having trouble finding some of the supplies I consider “mandatory” for school in stores. Jenny told me that schools don’t ask families to buy them after we went to three stores looking. The schools provide what kids need.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Wut? Schools provide pencils and paper and notebooks? I… You are using words but I am not understanding you.

Schools here do not give parents any contact information for teachers. If you want an appointment you call the office and the office negotiates with the teacher and they get back to you to let you know when you can come in. As someone who used to get calls and emails from the parents of 150 students that sounds amazing! Good for Scottish teachers!

The kids are going to start with half days as they acclimate to school and the teachers slowly learn where they are academically. The school is literally incapable of giving them placement tests to just see where they are because such things don’t exist here. There are occasional national tests but the school doesn’t have access to them and my kids are in the wrong grades anyway. So… there just aren’t big evaluations for their current levels.

I’m telling you, I’m excited.

Middle Child was crying at bed time. They were trying to be quiet about it, but they are super nervous. I pulled them over close to me and I talked to them until they fell asleep. On a fairly repetitive loop I told them that when they don’t feel they have enough faith in themself they can borrow some of my faith in them. I told them that they are strong, brave, hard working, competent, smart, funny, creative, thoughtful, kind (which is not the same thing as nice!), friendly, fun, interesting, adaptable, sweet, loving, patient, and really good at learning new skills. I interspersed this list of adjectives with saying, “And you know I am judgemental and critical. I don’t give praise unless I believe it to be absolutely accurate.” The first time MC giggled when I said that. After that they just relaxed. I would pause sometimes and say “When your belly starts to hurt because you are anxious, remember to smell the flower (pause for big inhale through the nose) and blow out the candle (slow big exhalation through the mouth). You can’t control other people. You can’t control the world. You can control your breath. If you control your breath you will be able to control your body even if your feelings are being rough. I have faith in you. When you don’t have faith in yourself, listen to these tapes in your brain and borrow my faith in you. I know you are….. (long list of adjectives).”

Eldest Child was already asleep or I would have talked to both of them.

And Her Sweetness only had one middle of the night wake up. That’s almost like a full night of undisturbed sleep…. She is feeling much better. I am in a lot of pain.

The kids will start waking up in about 45 minutes, maybe more like 60. I am going to hurry through my shower in the meantime so I can spend my morning on “cheerful cheerleader” mode. You can do it! You are going to succeed at this new life stage the way you have done well on so many others! I know you can!

I am their inside voice. That’s what mothers become for their children. I have not been doing a great job of being relentlessly upbeat for a while here because I am worn down and exhausted. This morning is a (very short) sprint, not a marathon. I can do this for them. Then I can take a few hours to slow down and just be in toddler mode.

When toddler mode feels like a fucking vacation you might just be living your life wrong. Too much work and stress, yo.

Yesterday we bought several more table cloths at the discount store. This is so when Middle Child makes a huge mess on the table they will just change the table cloth and I can stop being a critical brat about their absolute lack of table manners. My kids definitely know that I am critical and judgmental. So when I say positive things, it’s not because I enjoy blowing sunshine up your skirt. We have a handheld dustbuster so that the mess on the floor is not a big deal.

I need to stop being an asshole about messy eating. No really.

Life is a balancing act.

At the end of the positive speil I told MC “You will make mistakes. You must make mistakes. Mistakes are how you learn. Mistakes are part of being human. When you don’t understand something, write your question down in your notebook. Questions are good. You are good. You will mess up as you learn this new process and that’s ok and necessary and part of the process. Don’t be afraid of messing up. It’s like crashing your bike. You learn more from the crashes than you do from always getting it right. You learn what too far means. It’s ok to screw up. You will do better next time.”

After like 10 minutes of this repetitie loop of adjectives and blather about mistakes kiddo wasn’t crying and their body was relaxed. They finally stopped clutching my hand like a life preserver.

Ok, based on the noise from upstairs I don’t have 40 more minutes. Hurry up and shower, Krissy.

Sick babies are so much work.

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Welcome to Scotland! Here is your first illness. It’s predictable. But I would sure like a full night of sleep one of these nights. Between general discomfort, getting kicked in the head, nightmares (mine and other peoples’), waking up to change underwear because I can feel the OH MY GOD GUSH OF BLOOD, and a baby with a fever who wakes up crying while needing to nurse…

I am so tired. I could really use a solid week to just sleep through life. But I have three little kids so suck it up buttercup.

The head teacher (basically the principal for the USians in the audience) for the school we are going to will be leaving at the end of this term and then the school starts the search for a new head teacher so the school suggested we probably should get started now instead of waiting and trying to enter amid the chaos. Fun! We went and toured the school yesterday. I will bring back the filled in paperwork on Monday and the kids will start on Tuesday.

I have to say: the school sounds super fun. There are a ton of community-building programs that to my ear sound like “We know that not all of our kids have all of the support that might be ideal at home so we just provide this to make sure everyone has what they need.” Awesome. I’m happy to be part of it and I will be eager to see how we can donate/contribute/volunteer to help these programs go well for everyone.

We were sent home with three free school shirts so we don’t have to go buy them. That was quite nice.

We met the teachers the kids will be with (well, 2/3 of them because Middle Child’s class has two part time teachers) and briefly waved at the upcoming classmates. I’m excited.

I’d be more excited if I could sleep.

I am still elated to be here but I’m really really weary.

The house continues to come along. I now have 30 baby locks installed. I should have bought 40. We have agreements in place about what will happen if you lock your sibling into a room with a baby lock. (Lines. Lots of lines.) I was pretty harsh with the kids this morning about my feelings about how they have been only doing chores under great pressure lately; it makes my life suck tremendously and then I have no desire to spend fun play time with you. Is that what you want? No? Then don’t make me ask you ten times to do your chores.

The kids have fewer chores right now than they have had in years so I’m feeling pretty cranky about how hard I have to work to get them to do anything. This is not working for me.

I have a bank account. I learned things about Scottish banking and how it differs from the US. We had a really fun chat with the lady at the bank about credit and investments and politics and technology. She says she wants to get in touch with us outside of work and have coffee because she is a recent immigrant to this city too. I think she is also looking for friends. She is from Poland and she had a really refreshing point of view about the world. I’d love to hang out with her again.

I have been pleasantly surprised by how many immigrants I have run into already. This is a vibrant city full of imports. That’s fun.

I am spending so much time talking about the nitty gritty of Silicon Valley company politics. This is my tired face. Lots of folks want to talk to me about Facebook and Google and why social media is complicated. I understand now why my brother told me 20 years ago that I was a very advanced computer user then. I know so much more now. I have these gut level panic reactions to a lot of computer security conversations.

That was a good thing I got from Sarah. I have to acknowledge how much that woman taught me about how to keep myself safe. Life is so complicated.

I am tired. I want to hang out with Jenny but I am exhausted, snippy, bitchy, and this baby won’t get off my boob. (Plus I am super against sharing illness if it can be avoided.) This is one of those times when parenting is not convenient.

Mattresses will arrive in 4 and 6 days. (Two separate shipments.) My super comfy wonderful chair for my bedroom will arrive then too. This chair is awesome for reading and I intend to use it for that as much as possible. (If I miss deleting random periods I apologize; I don’t know why they are happening.)

Internet is still flaky and inconsistent. No video chats yet. We aren’t on proper wifi. Thank goodness for the Skyroam.

I am strongly considering a dog. This is a massive change for me. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy you might. ask. A few reasons: I could seriously use an exercise buddy, sexual assault is just about the only crime on the rise in this country and I do not feel secure that if I kicked someone like I did my old neighbor things would go well for me, also Her Sweetness tries to follow every dog we see home. She is utterly enchanted with dogs. Additionally: a dog can’t be left for travel. I’d have to stay home! My kids are separating from me in a way they have not done so in the past and I have to stop micromanaging them; it is considered good dog ownership to control a dog. Cats won’t put up with that shit. I literally would have to go outside every day, which would be good for both physical and mental health.

Lots of reasons. I’m still in the considering stage. Not this month. Not next month. Maybe not this year. But it’s on my mind a lot. Maybe after Her Sweetness potty trains? I don’t know. Feelings.

For now I am curled up on the toddler bed with my sick baby. Bless the strong slats.

Now I feel like we’ve arrived.

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Today is our first day of being on a normal-for-us schedule instead of a frantic work schedule. We get up and do our morning hygiene, get dressed, have breakfast, do chores, then academics until lunch. Afternoons are free. Ok, Noah has his own schedule slightly separate from the kids and I.

Of course Her Sweetness thinks this sucks because during chore time she pretty much has to play independently. I keep telling her that play is her work and this is her independent work time… She does not yet believe me. She will. I have trained up several children in this manner already.

I am feeling so happy today. I didn’t get the last piece of furniture put together yesterday because my elbow hurts like fire. It’ll get done before Middle Child’s dresser arrives from Ikea. Then those pieces will get put together and I will start haunting the charity shops looking for a dining room table and chairs that will fully meet our needs. Maybe a big chair for the dining room that will hold 2-3 butts if we stack.

We don’t need anything else. At this point we don’t want anything else.

Ok, we still haven’t even opened the garden studio or seriously thought about what we will want out there… but we have time. So much time. That’s not urgent.

Y’all. WE HAVE A WHOLE BUILDING OUTSIDE WE HAVEN’T OPENED YET. Ok so it’s the size of a large room, but still.

We are not going to run out of room here any year soon.

I had a really lovely conversation with our neighbors over the weekend. They agree with my reading of the catchment maps, the fence across the street is the dividing line between the schools I want us to go to (primary and secondary) and the ones I don’t really want to go to. Excellent. All of our neighbors have gone to the schools I would prefer. Excellent. That conversation was friendly and fun and I have more hope than I had after we were less than ideal customers for their vehicle renting company. I don’t think they are holding a grudge. Our eagerness to pay for our mess ups hopefully helps. Also: no more renting vans.

Last night we renegotiated chores with the kids. I am pushing Noah to not look for a remote Silicon Valley job that will expect 60-80 hours a week of work. Our passive income is already in the $20,000-$30,000 range. If he writes another book, if he teaches some classes, if he does some consulting… I think we will be more than fine. The average income in this city is under £30,000/year. I want us to be normal here. I am not shooting for being one of the wealthiest families in the town. I think he will have a lot more fun if he cobbles together income from stuff he is interested in rather than forcing him to work for a big company that will expect him to just about turn over his soul for an obscene amount of money.

So we renegotiated with the kids. We are paying them for a lot less. We also put all of the chores into four separate buckets. Some of the buckets are fairly intense (dishes 3x’s a day) and some are not (vacuum the house and clean the common bathrooms once a week) so each of us have some weeks with a bunch of chores and some weeks with not so many. We have planned that rotation out through the end of October when we will talk about how we are each doing with the schedule.

I am fairly excited that the kids are responsible for their own rooms and laundry and I don’t need to police it because they are not shared areas and I don’t have to look at the work if it doesn’t get done. Sounds like heaven.

If something terrible happened and we couldn’t acquire food from a store we can last a good month on what we have in the freezer/pantry. My prepper heart is at peace.

We blocked the holes at the bottom of the fence. No children will fall into the burn. (A burn is a small stream.) This is good and brings me a lot of peace.

The big kids are still asking to sleep in the same room as us. Right now we have the air mattresses in the lounge and we are all in there together. That feels very ok as we are settling in. They have been through so much in the last year. MC was telling me that they have big feelings because they feel like they “shouldn’t” need to sleep near me at this age because most of their peers are sleeping independently already. I said that just because most parents will not permit cosleeping doesn’t mean the kids are always happy about it. Our family is doing what works for us and it really doesn’t matter what anyone else is ok with. My kids will outgrow needing me this way. I don’t know when, but I have great faith it will happen. Until then I see no reason to force the separation.

Last night I slept better. Being near the end of the chore cycle feels so good. I still can’t wait to get my dreamy mattress.

Today for work I am sweeping all the hard floors and mopping. I cleaned up the table and high chair and I am going to tidy up the counters. I’m feeling pretty happy about being the one to establish the baseline of what a “clean kitchen” looks like.

Our pantry is full, but isn’t bursting. There is still a little bit of room and the downstairs kitchen isn’t full. That feels like a good place to be right now as we figure out what other things we would like to acquire going forward. We have room but we aren’t in need.

Today I think the house will be tidy enough to walk around and take pictures of it to share with friends. I am a neurotic person and I don’t share pictures of the explosions of mess.

I am happy we have a desk for the computers to live on so that screens don’t go in bedrooms. I want us to change our relationship to how we use screens. We have done a lot of “feeling trapped so I will distract myself with the screen” stuff over the past few years and given all the lovely opportunities to go outside and make art and have quiet space around our bodies… I want to change that. We are so very lucky.

I have been noticing a lot of holes and cracks in the walls. Someone else might feel cranky about them. I feel relief. At first I was worried the house was a little too perfect and anything I might do might mess it up and then I am bad. Instead I feel like the house is perfectly imperfect. I can do things. I can improve things. If I make a mistake, well it clearly isn’t the first one and the house is still breathtakingly wonderful.

I haven’t started trimming the garden back for autumn yet. The former owner told me October/November is best for that. We still have beautiful bright flowers all over.

I am so very happy.

Well this sucks; ok not everything sucks

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We were just about over jet lag. Then illness strikes. Her Sweetness has a fever and she is super cranky; I assume she is in pain too. Eldest Child is having intestinal problems. I have full body pain (as someone with chronic pain this is enough pain to make me want to sit very still in a chair and cry–I am medicating for pain with tylenol and ibuprofen alternated), a low grade fever, and I am producing a river of snot with the associated coughing, sneezing, and sore throat. If you have followed me for long you know it has to get BAD before I medicate with these drugs because I am so afraid of my tolerance level going up.

I don’t think we will see much of Bangkok and I am very disappointed.

The food has tasted great. The garbage is omnipresent and overwhelming. The traffic patterns are reminding me of Kuala Lumpur only they are very different? It’s closer to KL than Japanese traffic patterns. The gridlock is massive. I can understand why the advice around driving here is don’t.

We are right next to RCA (Royal City Avenue) which is the designated clubbing/entertainment/tourist area. It’s a short walk down a relatively safe stretch of sidewalk. Relatively safe because the motorcycle taxi service has a stand in front of our building so they have to go back and forth on that stretch of sidewalk. If you pay attention and get out of their way it’s ok. And all the motorcycle drivers love Her Sweetness. They want to cuddle and hang out with her.

Her Sweetness is my most reserved child. I used to think Middle Child was incredibly reserved because I compared them to Eldest Child. Holy sauce buckets was I underestimating the amount of reserve a child of my blood can display. When people try to touch HS she cries. She wants her people and that’s it.

I am going to have to stagger downstairs and do laundry today because I am about out of hankies. Dude. I travel with more than a dozen hankies. Hankies are life. (We also have a full laundry basket. But the hankies will be the motivation.)

I was a serious bitch yesterday and I feel kind of embarrassed. I am sick and the kids were pushing me for attention and to do work for them. I blew up about how unfair it is that when they are sick I let them lie still and do nothing until they feel like doing things and I am not allowed any rest. I sort of feel like I “should” have found a nicer way to express this. But I tried a variety of “I’m not feeling well” and “I can’t do that” before I started getting harsh. There is this complicated balancing act where I try to be as nice as I can be to them until they just refuse to recognize that I have boundaries too and then I’m really not so nice. Because fuck that. I get to have rest when I am fucking sick and you can go in your room and play and stop bothering me. No I don’t have to pay attention to you today. You can bloody well cope with me taking care of myself today.

It’s weird. I feel guilty and proud of myself? I need to set these boundaries. I set them as softly as I could. I escalated ,when they completely refused to allow me boundaries, to being more forceful in my language. I did use the word fuck a lot. “I am fucking sick and I need to fucking rest. You don’t fucking need me to play with you. You can fucking play by yourself.” That was after a couple of hours of using soft language and having MC continue to head butt me and be rude and demanding and aggressive about wanting to play.

MC has asked me to use the word fuck less and I’ve been doing pretty well so this flood of fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck was definitely a sign of degrading ability to communicate. But I feel like my head is in a vice and if you don’t leave me alone and stop talking to me I am going to literally melt down and start screaming which would really suck in this tiny apartment. I have limits. I don’t talk to you like this even once a year. But I am sick and I need to be left alone to take care of me.

My kids genuinely think I am a river of love and support and work and they can’t understand when I can’t do that. It’s a weird dynamic. I feel both good and bad about it. I am not sure I am presenting them with a healthy, balanced view of what parents should be like. My mother under-responded and neglected me. So I half kill myself doing the martyr schtick so they never know a minute of boredom or want. I am hurting myself so they never have to be bored. That’s not healthy either.

I really can’t wait to have my own bedroom and for them to go to school. We need to start separating. I feel like a mother bird who is exerting more and more pressure to get the baby birds to get the fork out of the nest. I need some space, kiddos. I love you. I need some space for me too. I matter too. I am not the most important person in our family but I am not the least important person either. We need balance. If we sacrifice my health on the altar of “Happy Family” then this family is going to fall apart soon. I have to be healthy enough to carry my side of things.

I suspect this is related to just how hard I pushed my body over the past few months culminating in the last week. I have done a lot of work. We leave Bangkok on the 9th and we arrive on the 10th because it is another 30 hour travel day with getting to and from airports. Today is the 5th. So close yet so far.

The former owner of the house and Jenny’s Super Spiffy Husband (JSSH) both sent us long explanations of how to set up utilities and services. We are so incredibly lucky that we are following Jenny. She has helped in ways big and small that blow my mind. I feel like we are sliding into Scotland on greased rails. This could have been a nightmare. Instead it is a series of steps. Yes, we feel tension and stress as we go through the steps because lots of things are out of our control… but things are actually going as fast as they possibly could. We made the decision to move to Scotland, got absolutely everything done, and now we are returning in less than three months. That is miraculous in terms of government bureaucracy. Greased. Forkin. Rails.

And once we arrive… we have no deadlines to hurry up and get anything done. There are no foreseeable sprints in my future. We don’t need to hurry up and get anything done. We need to get things done as quickly as we get them done. I mean, utilities getting set up might be the most “Uhhh do that now” step. But furniture and cookware and all that stuff can trickle in. We will probably go shopping on the 11th to get some things, but not a lot. Realistically we will go to the store every day for a while and we will get what we get. Sometime in the first week we will probably hire a van and clean out the charity shop of anything we can use and do a massive grocery shop but it’s not a big rush. If it happens on our second day or our fourth day or the seventh day… whatever. We are right between three stores that are all dandy for supplying us with food we can eat without stress. I’m just not worried. It’s a lovely feeling. I will slowly acquire the things we need to keep house. Drips and drabs. It will be easier to do most of this shopping after the shipment of our belongings arrive so I have the big double stroller.

I got a double bike trailer that can be used as a stroller so that I can pull the baby AND groceries. This is my compromise on not having a car. I am already aware of how awesome Tesco’s delivery service is (THANK YOU JSSH!) but I really like going to the store. And I want to experiment between Tesco and Aldi and Asda. I will get a little notebook for comparing prices. We are going to be trying to be that tight with our budget.

I’m not sure if I told y’all this. Noah’s current obscene California salary is going to last till January. Then he’s going to work on books, teaching, and maybe a wee bit of contracting on the side. We have enough money in petty cash for 2-3 years of run time if we are very conservative and we hope we can figure out him working for himself. This is part of why we decided Taipei is not wise at the moment. If we are trying to live on £40,000/year all of a sudden spending $6000 on a trip to Taipei seems… uhhh not in the budget.

I have lived on much less. While snowballing our debt we lived on a similar amount of money at the beginning of our marriage. We will see!

On the money front: I was watching a session of Scottish Parliament yesterday and there was a lot of hand wringing over how they can’t get enough people to work with mental health care for children. The waiting lists are long and they are incredibly stressed out about it. Do you know what I have a unique background on? Helping kids with mental health problems. Sure, I’ll have to hit up the local university for some specific training and degree hoop jumping but that doesn’t scare me. Maybe when Her Sweetness starts nursery in a year and a half we will have four people in school in the house. That would be kind of cool.

I would like to have a job. I would like to have a job specifically because I dream of a conservatory added to the house and if I don’t figure out how to earn the money for it myself Noah will feel like he needs to get a remote job from California for ridiculous money and then he will work 60 hours a week and I will be very sad.

I don’t need to earn the money in the first couple of years. In my head I wouldn’t be ready to start that kind of project for at least 3-5 years. That gives me time to go to school and get started in the field. I will be 100% hiring out the work and the former owner gave me the name of the person who could probably build it for me because he did all the other remodeling in the house.

This is not abandoning the idea of IDB (Incest Database) but it is helping to keep me busy until then and helps me gain qualifications that will help with the research and it helps pay for retirement stuff so Noah doesn’t have to supply 100% of our retirement safety on his own. I still think I couldn’t really get going on IDB for almost 20 years. Not the way I want to. 20 years is a long time and I could do a lot of valuable work between now and then.

I want to be part of the community. This would be a really great way for me to meet people and find a place for myself.

I don’t have a plan yet. I am not rushing. I am waiting to see how things shake out. I am coming up with ideas, potentials, hopes, and dreams.

And nothing is in a big rush. No sprints. Settle in slowly. Exercise. Establish house. Help the kids adjust to school. Wait for HS to be old enough for nursery. Enjoy the next year and a half of extra alone time with my precious last baby. I feel lucky and blessed.

I won’t be doing much today. Noah has a speakers dinner tonight. We have instant noodles in the apartment that will probably be most of our food while he is doing his conference. I should go down to the 7-11 (holy shit these things are ubiquitous internationally) and get some yogurt and juice and maybe other snacky foods. Maybe I’ll do that run while I’m dealing with laundry.

I feel so bad. I did more yesterday than I probably should have. Today I can’t. As I plan to go to the laundromat and do grocery shopping. I am such a twit.

These things have to get done. It’s not optional. Being the mom is not always fun. But it is always worth it. I did not have children because I wanted convenience. I am so very loved. It’s worth it.

Even if sometimes I have to say fuck fuck fuck fuck to be allowed to rest.

I think it is kind of useful that EC is reading these Warriors books because the mama cats take no shit and that is causing her to change how she views me. It’s hilarious.

I have been dizzy on and off for days. My body is so unhappy. Her Sweetness is waking up every two hours to nurse and I don’t feel like it is fair to complain given how sick she is.

Miss Jenny picked up our keys. The solicitor has been paid off. We have a home to go back to. A home that pretty closely matches drawings I’ve been making about my dream home for years. I am so lucky.

We are going to be highlanders! We start this next phase of our lives on the day I turn 38. Seems like a good time for a rebirth.

Handing off the externalized brain

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Question: “Kids self motivation/executive functioning/need for control- how do you do the schedule for the week? Do you personally just make it up in your head and dole it out? Talk about it as a family? Once a week? Every morning? How do the kids get input? How to you decide what’s happening? How is it communicated to the kids in an ongoing way?”

We have, of course, tried a whole bunch of different ways of setting up their task list. We all have a lot of resentment over having worked with the charter school because both kids sat down and gamed out a whole year of curriculum for themselves (long-term planning around projects, how subjects would be evaluated after study, and what books/methods they would utilize to pursue different educational goals) and the Educational Specialist said “Wow you are my only family who actually did all the required work.” We are really bitter. The kids super struggle with “What is the point” after that experience.

For a while post-charter school I insisted on continuing to follow a long-term planning method and the kids just dug in their feet with a big “Fuck it.” No matter how much they had scheduled they did less and less of the work they were supposed to do. Not because it was too hard, not because they couldn’t… they would rather stare at a wall and get punished because “What is the point”.

So over the course of this year we have gotten less and less structured because they are really bitter and long-term planning was truly killing their love of learning. This is tricky on a variety of levels because my kids previously had a really deep love of learning and trying to jump over hoops for the sake of jumping over hoops made them burned out and bitter.

What we are doing now is sitting down on Monday with a day planner and talking through “What would you like to learn this week?” They still have a variety of learning methods and subjects they cover. It is not consistent from week to week. Some weeks they do a lot of math and some weeks basically none. Some weeks they work on other languages a lot and some weeks they barely touch it. Some weeks they study a lot of history stuff. Some weeks they ask for a lot of science documentaries. Some weeks it is tons of art history and drawing practice.

I have been trying really hard to let them set their goals. I don’t decide how much work they have to do. But once we spend an hour sitting together and planning they need to do it. I am really rigorous about follow through. It’s ok to set a few small goals. It’s ok to set big goals. You will do the work you lay out for yourself. Some weeks their work takes them an hour a day and some weeks it takes closer to four hours a day. I think this practice is important because they are learning what amount of time things take them. They are learning how to take into consideration “We have x plans and we will be tired after them so what do we want to do the next day?”

They track what chores they do and their homework in day planners. We have tried a bunch of other methods and this is the way they can be most consistent. Doing it online did not work out at all.

“Let’s talk about some systems that would give him more control over his time right now, there isn’t a need to wait for a house. With both of the older children you are in the throws of the transition from parenting young children to parenting teenagers. It’s not an easy time. So much managing, so much letting go, so many balances to get right.”

They control most of their time. They decide when they are going to get their stuff done. I am available to help with academics until around 1/2 in the afternoon and if you haven’t gotten your stuff done at that time you need to do

I ask questions like “Are you sure you can get all that done in two hours?” (Our purported goal for academic work in a day.) I will say things like “You haven’t done any (subject) in a while. Do you think maybe adding some this week would be good so you don’t forget?” Sometimes they agree and add some and sometimes they say they say they really don’t want to and I let it go.

I am big on project based learning. I am really into things like them drawing a comic book about a historical topic which means they have to do a bunch of research so they can explain what was going on. They’ve done different programming projects (EC made a really neat animated music video… that was taken down because she picked a song with a swear word. *smack forehead*)

We have a bunch of different approaches to math and they kind of move around and through them. They are not linear in their approach and this is going pretty well at this point. Text books were killing them.

House chores are renegotiated every so often (sometimes weekly, sometimes every few months, sometimes when we move). I list of what chores have to be done and they volunteer to do what they want to do. At this point they are getting paid for their chores and that is a mixed incentive. They are more prone to get up and do their chores without asking (which is great!) because they get a monetary penalty for me having to nag. But there are days when they just don’t care and say “I don’t care about earning any money today.” Last night I told MC that it was great that he didn’t want to get paid for his chores, he still got to do them and I just wouldn’t have to pay him. He said that sucked. I grinned. (It was about 10 minutes of basic tidying after dinner. He had been out of the house for about 28 hours. It was a good plan for him to do a chore even though he didn’t want to. He drops habits easily and doesn’t like picking them up.)

(Fuck. I lost a chunk of text here and recreating it is hard. Or it moved around and now this is repetitive? I don’t know. I need to get off the computer and I don’t have enough brain to fix it.)

I wait around in the mornings to help them. If they haven’t done it by 1/2 in the afternoon I say you must do it on your own because I have moved on to doing my own work and you don’t get to interrupt me to help you at that point. I kind of hang out doing interruptible stuff in the mornings so that they can have academic support at need. They pick what academics they do. They pick when they do chores. They pick which chores they are responsible. But once they say “X is my responsibility for the week” I hold them to it even if they kind of change their mind by Thursday. You can entirely renegotiate on Monday.

“They also need to be allowed to develop long term planning skills. Like multi step projects, using to calendar, lots of ways to encourage it if you’re afraid they are having trouble.”

They absolutely can do this. But the charter school made them bitter. The ES put together their portfolio to hand in to the state before they were done with their projects and she said she didn’t care about seeing the end results. They were completely fucking crushed. It hurt them so much. They worked so hard and she acted like the end result was pointless. They internalized that in damaging ways. But they know how to break a project down over months. They know how to plan it out on a calendar and they can do that like 80% independently. My job is mostly to say “I think you need to build in buffer time here, here, and here because projects always run over.”

“I’m going to caution you about your use of the term “self esteem”. Doing work for other people and thinking that makes it ok to take resources is a transactional relationship. “Self esteem” is valuing yourself because you are an individual who deserves to be valued, regardless of her productivity. You don’t have to pay for your existence. If you and Noah used to scorekeep, that’s just an additional layer of transactional. You’re still scorekeeping, it’s just more about yourself. That needs to be let go.”

I am super duper achingly transactional. I had to earn my keep in foster homes or I was kicked out. This is absolutely bone deep. I know it is a problem and I do not know how to let it go. I really struggle with my growing disability. I have bought my friendships over many years and I don’t know how to trust that they will continue if I don’t do work.

I don’t know how to let that go.

You are right that EC needs to learn how to come and ask for help with stuff instead of me volunteering the help. That’s going to be hard on both of us. But we are definitely to the point where I am enabling her not having to learn how to ask for help. MC does get more practice with deciding which of his emotions to share and he is better about speaking up when he is distressed as a result.

“Exercise, rest, your projects and things you want to get done in this life- I want to hear more about how you guys plan your time so I can help with that.”

We have different seasons. Sometimes a season lasts weeks and sometimes months or a whole year. I’m definitely in the multipotentialite realm. We have some goals as a family and we sit down and game them out (like travel. We have long conversations about where to go and why) and we each have our separate goals. Exercise comes and goes for a lot of reasons. When I am pregnant… my body decides that the parasite is the only thing I can support and as the pregnancy progresses I spend more and more time in a chair and everyone else struggles to cope with that. When I overdo and my body decides it is time for a long rest period whether I like it or not, everyone else slows down too.

We like going for long walks as a family. We tend to split into pairs and have intense chats. It’s really nice. We all come home from walks happy and feeling connected. (Which pairs changes sometimes by the week or month or day. We rotate a lot.) When one person is injured (like MC twisting her knee on the way into Japan) everyone else tends to slow to a stop. We are not good at leaving someone behind.

The PT exercises I am supposed to do take time, space, and focus. I often struggle to find all three at a time. I have not been consistent about doing them since we left California and I can tell that my body is degrading again from the strength I had built up.

We alternate between planning things out on paper or sending emails back and forth to track planning conversations for longer term stuff. The kids really like email planning conversations because they give the kids a feeling of importance.

My projects are kind of dumped on the family every so often. I found my old pictures! I cried with joy. Proof of all the huge house art projects, the gardening progression, the marathon training, all the places we travel to…

Sometimes I sort of ditch folks for a few weeks and expect them to just keep going without me. Like when I was laying out tile for the bathroom. I… didn’t do much directing or helping with homework for a bit. Get your chores done. I’m busy. The kids still did the vast majority of their stuff but some things fell through the cracks and I had to just accept that.

I read a book when I was first preparing for teaching. It explained that the very best teachers don’t have to be present in their classroom every single day and their students keep on learning without them. This was how I handled teaching and this is how I try to handle parenting. I teach a lot of structure, rhythm, and routine. Now you keep it up whether I am standing over you glaring or whether I am busy, ok? But pretty much everyone in my family has ADD. (MC was not diagnosed but the evaluator spent 15 minutes talking to him in his favorite “You are giving me all of your attention” environment and that was not very useful as an evaluation.) Look a squirrel is a big problem. But we all form new systems and follow them for a while really easily. We just want to change the system frequently or we get bored. Thus planning every Monday because longer than that gets boring.

We have layers of systems. There are hygiene/sleep layers. We have exercise patterns (morning/afternoon or what kind we are doing for a while). We have food preparation/planning/eating/cleaning up systems. We have academic/learning goals and methods. There are chore patterns.

The trouble is triage. How do you keep the same priority system over a truly long period of time? We do various shuffling based on why something becomes more or less important for a while. Consistency is not our strongest suit but we aren’t that bad either.

I worked with a lot of families as a teacher. We truly aren’t that bad. But getting us back on track isn’t my easiest work and I struggle with resenting it.

Our sleep cycles drift a lot with light patterns. We stay up much later (more like 9) in the summer and in the winter I am often in bed around 7pm. Breakfast is usually around 8am except when it isn’t. I struggle with feeling like flexibility is good and feeling like flexibility is bad.

So tl;dr the kids do their own planning in many parts of their lives. They buy their own clothes with a set budget. They figure out how to spend their money for school supplies and books. (Previously these were just set parts of the budget and now they are trying to earn how much money they get so they can decide how to spend a larger chunk of money at a time.) They set a lot of their socializing schedule with other people but sometimes they get dragged to what I want to do.

They have more control over their lives than I ever had until I was basically an adult. I struggle with this not being enough.

Perspective is hard.

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I struggle with receiving advice from people who have kids in the same age range as my kids. It’s kind of like how I don’t think anyone should write a parenting advice book while their kids are under 18: you don’t know how your methods work out in the long run.

Today a friend who has an adult daughter just a bit younger than me wrote to me about her concern. She didn’t phrase it at all as if she was criticizing me. She said, “This is what I did wrong and these are the long term consequences for me and my child.” I really appreciate that.

I need to have course corrections from outside sources. It’s important. It’s mandatory so that I don’t fuck up entirely.

Some days I am making the best bad decision I can because I do not have the ability to make a good decision.

That is absolutely shitty. My children will pay for that.

“All that I wanted from you was to gimme
Something that I never had
Something that you’ve never seen
Something that you’ve never been
But I wake up and everything’s wrong” – “Work”, Rihanna

My friend says she is afraid I am regressing (because she does) and I’m lashing out at my children (like she did).

I cannot imagine a kinder way to criticize me.

I live in abject terror of ignoring my kids, because my mother was severely depressed and she paid almost no attention to me, positive or negative, for months or years at a time. So I give my children negative attention when it might be healthier to take space from them. Because of my wounding.

There is no fair here.

And most of the people who told me they would help my kids by showing up…. they didn’t. And I don’t feel like it is ok to demonstrate my disappointment to them. I have to assure them that they are fine. Even though I am not fine partially because people keep fucking lying to me. Then I flip the fuck out and my kids bear the brunt of that.

It is not fair.

Today the plan is to do two hours of academics then the kids are going outside to play, whether they are done or not. I need down time. I need to rest. They don’t NEED me to pay attention to them all day. If they get their stuff done they can go spend time with their friend. If they don’t, they can choose being alone.

That is the best bad decision I can make today.

And I feel like this is so much crueler than soap in the mouth or kneeling on rice. Because that is my perspective. But folks are arguing with me. Folks I respect.

I don’t know the right thing to do. I went from one form of abuse to another to another. But I’m supposed to know the right thing to do. Even as people tell me that the right thing is boundless energy and give… and they will support me so I can do that…. then they don’t and I have to keep giving no matter what I am or am not receiving.

Ok.

Growing pains and mistakes

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Many of my friends are traumatized people. When they respond to me or give me feedback… they are not taking careful stock of what I am doing and reacting to my actions. They are responding from a place of wounding. That’s not wrong and it’s not bad and it’s not always irrelevant… but it’s important for me to keep in mind so I don’t flagellate myself to death because they are upset at what I am doing. Their reaction is more about them than me. But I take it hard.

I try hard to ask a lot of different kinds of people about my behavior for that reason. I try to ask people with a wide range of backgrounds and experience. I try hard to regulate myself more strongly off of people who have actual relevant experience in whatever issue I am trying to deal with at the moment.

Sometimes I really fail at that and I spend days raging at myself and feeling like there is absolutely no hope of me ever being better because I have triggered a traumatized person. That’s not very useful for me, my husband, my kids, or even my friends.

I’ve been reading more psych books. Because I’m trying to find the middle path.

No, offering my children a variety of not-so-comfortable inducements that they can try and reject at will is not the same thing as spanking them for being bad. It just isn’t. We are trying things because I am out of cope and some of the things we try are going to be less than optimal and they will fail.

That’s fucking life and it isn’t the same thing as child abuse.

We tried it. The first day they thought it was very useful to them and they wanted to try again. The second day they didn’t like it and they felt kind of bad about it and they said they didn’t want to do that again.

Ok. We won’t do that again. My goal was not to inflict pain or punishment on them. It was to create a less comfortable environment.

The fact that folks would be totally ok with me drugging the shit out of my kids to have a similar kind of behavioral impact is utterly bizarre to me.

I am trying to figure out what lines need to be held. I am going to mess that up sometimes. We renegotiated academic goals about a month ago. We halved the work load. I tried to hold the kids to what they agreed to because that is my job. But it may be that once again the goals we set are not the right ones and we will have to adapt.

I am freaking out partially because I have not stood next to people who did this well. I am faking it. I don’t know what the hell I am doing. All my classroom experience did not prepare me for this part. In a classroom, the standards are arbitrarily set by the state and the students measure up or they fail. I am not setting arbitrary standards for my kids. I don’t have “You must be x proficient” goals for them and thus we are flailing really hard as we figure out what our goals should be and how hard I should insist on meeting the goals the kids claim they want to reach.

This is a process.

But I need to stop screaming.

I don’t have rest. I don’t get much support. Almost everyone who says, “I will help you by doing x” has turned out to be fucking lying and I need to stop allowing anyone to claim they will help me with my kids. It just results in me hating my friends with the fire of a thousand suns because almost no one follows up on what they say they will do.

The people who have absolutely rigorously met the standards they set for me are rare. I can pretty much count them on my fingers. I think that the fact that they go off of one hand is something that I should be celebrating instead of being so upset that the number of people doesn’t reach my toes.

But people keep making promises and not keeping them and that hurts me.

I don’t feel entitled to that hurt and that’s part of the problem. I don’t let myself admit to myself just how much these people are hurting me until I am exploding with rage all over the place because I can’t suppress my feelings anymore. I try hard not to get angry about people saying “I will do x with the kids” and then never doing it because I want to honor that people mean well. They want to be helping me. But the reality is that most of the time they want to feel helpful not be helpful and I need to stop looking to those people. Really almost any people.

We need to find a way to balance this so we can be self sufficient. That is not what I have been trying for…. ever.

The psych book I’m reading right now Born To Be Good talks about how in the US people define themselves as individuals (I’m an artist, a runner, a dancer, a writer) and people in other countries tend to define themselves through their relationships (I’m a daughter, a mother, a wife, a friend, a cousin) and a lot of my problem has been that I have been trying as hard as I can all of my life to define myself through my friendships because the daughter/sister/niece roles failed so abjectly for me.

But my friends have not been able to turn and be stable for me the way that family relationships do for other people and that’s been really destructive to my entire mental health.

Leaning this hard on my friendships for my identity and my self worth has resulted in decades of feeling worthless and like I should kill myself because no one is ever going to prioritize me like I do them. I hurt myself showing up for friendships when I should be selfish and care for myself and that’s stupid.

For the last couple of days I have been trying to process for myself that 50% of all people who hit grade 12 in school are below proficiency. My 5th grader is already writing essays that rival many of the 17 year olds I taught.

Maybe I don’t need to be so worried about them being “at grade level” and doing all the busy work of going through school. My kids have a very solid grasp of grammar and math. They are approximately at grade level. They would probably be B students if they went straight into school right now for the last few months of this school year.

Why am I so freaked out every moment of every day about failing them as a teacher and not preparing them for what they need to know? Because nothing I did was ever good enough to make my friends show up for me in the ways they constantly claimed they would so how can I know if what I am giving my kids will be enough for their future so they can show up and do what they want to do?

Maybe that isn’t entirely my battle to fight.

My kids have been digging in their heels and doing less and less. They were told weeks ago when we reset the metrics that they had to be current in order to go hang out with the babysitter. They then messed around on the boat and did nothing and got a week behind. They have not been interested in catching up since they got here.

Why am I wearing myself out trying to force them through the work necessary to earn the free time they want to have? This is so stupid.

I know that they can get all of their work done in 2 hours a day with time to spare. Maybe I need to give them two hours to do it then kick them out to play outside by themselves while I have down time. If you don’t get your stuff done so you can go with your friend, sucks to be you. Play by yourself and get out of my face. I act like I owe them constant stimulation and entertainment and so do they. And it is turning me into a psycho harpy. This is not working. I can’t be 24/7 stimulation for 3 kids and have anything left for my own health.

I don’t think we should lower the standards to nothing and completely unschool. But I also think that if they want to fail and not earn rewards…. I should let them. I have not been letting them. I have been hurting myself dragging them to their rewards.

Why. What am I teaching them?

That I care way more about their happiness than they have to. I care more about their happiness than my happiness or Noah’s happiness or my health.

Why.

Because I am afraid that if I don’t they will treat me like my friends.

You know what? I am leaving the fucking country because I am so angry about how my friends treat me. I have chased people for years begging for their love. I’m doing the same thing with my kids.

This is stupid.

Well fuck me.

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Not educating your kids is neglect, you can lose them for that. Forcing your kids to learn is abuse. You can lose them for that.

Well fuck everything.

Maybe less hysterical, we’ll see.

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This year… the kids don’t want to do academics. But they have lofty goals. If my kids told me they wanted to grow up and be a hair dresser and a mechanic I would not be so obnoxious with them about academics. They want to be engineers and politicians according to their stated goals and that means you fucking have to do academics.

Why am I freaked out all of the time? Because I’m never doing one thing. I’m taking care of a nursing baby (which is a lot of fucking work), cleaning up, helping with homework, being a travel agent, and I’m supposedly disabled and I should be doing many hours a day of body maintenance. Do you know what I haven’t done in a week? Any of my fucking exercises because there is fucking always three things more important. Dealing with rental cars and shopping. More baby care. Big kids refusing to do academics unless I stand over them and scream. I am back up to 121 emails (like half of them are requests for me to review every stupid company I touch. They don’t want my reviews. Y’all suck.)

I feel like I am always a day late and a dollar short.

Like a month ago we negotiated with the kids to slash their workload massively. Much lower daily goals for work. What happened when we negotiated that? They stopped doing absolutely anything and are now three weeks behind again and I want to put my head through a window.

So they don’t get to see their babysitter until they get their shit together. They have already blown 7 possible days with her and they may not bother to work today and miss more days. We are here for 27 days.

I can’t make them care. If they don’t get it in gear by the time we are in Japan, we will have to shorten the trip to Scotland and come back to the US. Our traveling adventures can’t happen if they refuse to make any forward progress. I’m not asking for up to grade level. I’m not asking for a normal “school” work load. But you must do something. If you refuse to do anything productive at all, we are not fucking doing this. We will move somewhere cheap because I am not going to enjoy anywhere we move and it might as well not cost a lot of money. Which means the schools are going to be rough. I’m sure my kids will get the crap beat out of them for being weirdos as is the standard American experience.

Oh well. I can’t save you from you getting consequences and I am tired of trying.

I’ve been talking to a buddy who is a horse trainer. She tells me their lives are too comfortable and I need to start making it very uncomfortable to not comply. Don’t hit them. Don’t abuse them. But… they have a lot of comforts and they don’t need any of them.

She’s not wrong.

I don’t think they need to get so much choice and freedom for a while. They currently think they are the bosses of me and I don’t fucking think so.

If this shit continues I am absolutely going to kick them out at 18 and say “I don’t talk to people who treat me like shit.” And that would suck all the way around. Maybe some soap in the mouth so they realize that dressing me down all day long isn’t ok is the lesser evil.

So yesterday we talked to the kids about how things are going. The kids know they aren’t doing what they say they will do. Like EC didn’t do 1 day of work out of the 10 days we were on the boat despite spending 6+ hours a day “working on homework”. I am infuriated because this shit fucking sucks. Being stuck in the room doesn’t bother her. She has a lot of fun. My buddy suggested kneeling on rice for 15 minutes to keep her from doodling and having fun the whole time.

Today her math is done by 9:45am because I told her at 10 we would start 15 minutes of rice to help her not be distracted.

I don’t want to enact negative consequences. I want them to just want to do the thing. But they don’t. They set up long term goals, and they ask me to help them reach those goals. Then I have to be the heavy being a butthead to drag them kicking and screaming towards their stated goals. This is not fun for me.

I think we should figure out an online math tutor. Maybe if she had outside accountability and someone else saying they are disappointed in her…. she would care more?

MC has been treating me really badly. When the old babysitter arrived for dinner (I barely let the kids talk to her, she was here to visit me not you) she commented on how shocked she is that their behavior has gone down hill so much. They are incredibly rude to me and it’s not ok. The other day I was eating lunch and grading MCs homework and he sat in a chair in front of me and just started kicking me. For entertainment. This shit is his norm right now and I am about to explode and beat him.

Maybe soap in the mouth isn’t so bad.

He says he wants to be respectful, but currently he is not managing that at all. He is too comfortable in his established routines. Something needs to change.

I desperately hope these negative consequences are not going to be long term strategies. I desperately hope we can do this for a few weeks or months and change our patterns of interacting.

We’ll see. If things aren’t different in 6 weeks I’m picking some town in Oregon or Idaho or Washington and we are just moving there. Not into a fun forever home. Into somewhere cheap so they can attend public school for a year and we’ll spend that year figuring out what to do next.

We wanted to spend 2 years traveling so we could find a forever home that feels good. Maybe we can’t get our poop in a group and we don’t get to do that.

Life is complicated.

I can’t help but feel like part of this is fall out from the fact that if I had tried to hold boundaries with Sarah I would have lost her years earlier. I had to accept whatever shitty treatment she felt like giving me or I would have lost what minimal support she gave and that was too painful.

I don’t feel good about myself. But. Time to do more work.

I think I have failed at home schooling.

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Or maybe it worked for a while and it isn’t working any more. The kids don’t want to do work anymore and the effort it takes to force them is hurting our long term relationship. It didn’t used to be like this. I am feeling so sad. I’ve been waiting for the kids to turn a corner and just… do their shit all year and the only time they work is if I stand over them seething. If I sit down for a minute and stop badgering they stop doing anything.

I can’t do this any more.

I’m always happy to answer questions. I do not appreciate having to stand there and say, “What is the next number you are supposed to write down. Now, what kind of math problem is this? Write the symbol.”

EC is 10. This is bullshit. I can’t fucking do this.

I did not object to this level of help when they were preliterate or when they were learning to write. But she’s a very good writer at this point. She doesn’t make many math mistakes. She just doesn’t feel she should have to hold a pencil and write things with it unless she is under duress and I feel like shit all the fucking time. I hate myself more with every passing day. I feel sick to my stomach.

So yeah. We will move to some town. I won’t be trying to make friends. I won’t be exploring new, interesting places. I will sit in a house all day with a baby then spend my afternoons and evenings forcing kids to do homework instead of spending 12 hours a day yelling about academics.

I feel really sad and like a failure. I don’t think this is going to result in much happiness for me. I don’t know if it will result in happiness for my kids. But I can’t keep yelling like this. It’s been a whole school year of it and it really isn’t ok. I feel so bad. And I am unable to do anything to motivate my kids. I can’t make them care.

April is booked in Japan. I literally don’t have a plane ticket bought after that. I still want to go to Scotland to visit Jenny, but maybe I can only be there for two weeks.

We can’t just pick a country and start school there because of residency issues. It would take too long for us to be allowed to stay, we will miss the start of a school year. So we have to go back to the US.

There aren’t very many places in the US that I can handle living in the weather. That’s a serious limiter. Probably central Oregon.

I anticipate a black depression while we live there. I don’t think I will be capable of doing much other than keeping the baby alive.

It is so stupid for me to want things.

Plan and plan again and throw all of those away.

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I don’t think we will be able to travel. I think the kids need to go to school. I am failing and that’s not ok.

Boarding school would be $120,000/year for both kids. Can’t afford that.

I don’t want to go pick somewhere random in the US and I feel existential terror about moving where I know people. It’s not going to go well.

People don’t like me when they have to spend much time with me.

Stress.

This is a trip, not a vacation.

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I am pissed. This has not involved rest for me. I needed rest really badly. But my kids decided that instead I get to spend all day on academics. If I don’t spend all this time on academics they will fall further behind and EC is already in “catch up” mode so falling further behind isn’t ok.

Catching up was the plan. But they lied about their progress for a quarter of a year and that was a time period where they should have been busting ass. They will be caught up soon. But I am going to be on duty until they are caught up. That sucks. I really needed rest. Oh well.

And we are in one of those developmental “disequilibrium” times. Which pretty much means my kids are squirrely as fuck, arguing over everything, and not being good about being responsible for their bodies in general. It is normal, appropriate, and developmental. Honestly it is probably part of why they tried lying like this.

But I told EC that she is now on her third chance. If she ever lies to me about academics again we are done home schooling. This is a privilege, not a right. If I permit her to lie to me and slack off like this… I am harming her. I am neglecting her. I will not neglect my children. If you need to be in school so someone else can ride your ass… fine. We can do that.

But I think Stanford is right that she is going to develop emotional problems. And that’s going to be her burden to bear in life and not mine. I can’t make this easy enough for you that you never have to try and do work. Just…. no.

The food is good. I feel upset and alienated so I can’t tell if people are being work-nice or actually nice so mostly I’m just not talking to anyone. Because I feel bad in myself about myself.

I feel so incredibly disappointed and angry. I feel absolutely devastated that the only way I can have any kind of vacation is if I schedule it without my kids.

That feels so bad.

Because if my kids are included they will find ways to wreck my day.

EC is absolutely capable of doing 6 pages of math in 4 hours. Most of this trip it has been more like 1 page in 3 hours because she is pissy she is being forced to work.

This sucks so much. I am so upset.

And nooooooooooooooooooo medication.

What a great vacation.

It is not helping in any way shape or form that the first flight to get here was full of verbal abuse from strangers. I was called all manner of awful names. A bitch told me I was a moo cow who should be back in my pen. There was this asshole who spent the entire flight going through offensive stereotypes trying to get a reaction. He didn’t shut the fuck up. Noah and the kids slept through it. I had to stay awake to be able to react to the baby stirring instantly. That sucked.

So I’m kinda hating people and feeling hostile and angry.

I have some really big feelings about appearance stuff right now.

And that’s not getting into the group of hispanic men in the airport who spent a lot of time ranting about how people like my family are ruining the world. I can’t say they are wrong.

I feel like dog shit.

Doing work is haaaaaaaard.

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I asked the kids to make sure they had all the stuff they have to turn in for this grading period done before they went to Texas. I was assured that they had it all. FMC was lying through their teeth. They had half of it.

So we’ve had a stressful week. They spent about 10 hours not really making progress on an assignment yesterday as they cried and told me how unfair and mean I am. They can do one of these assignments in 1-2 hours if they choose. They kept restarting the first two sentences and crying. Why? I don’t know.

So when we were getting close to dinner and they still weren’t halfway through the penultimate assignment and they were still derailing to tell me how awful I am… I snapped. I started screaming.

It is not my fault you are in this position. You are in this position because you chose to lie about being done a week ago. So since you lied to me and are proceeding to make my life miserable because of your lie… you are grounded for a week. No screen and no sugar.

And tomorrow morning you get to wake up and finish your work. If you don’t finish by the time your ES shows up… you are grounded for two weeks and that includes Christmas.

I’m not fucking around.

Do. Not. Lie. To. Me. And if you do, at least have the courtesy to not turn around and yell at me that it is unfair that you have consequences for lying. That’s not ok.

I’m not going to play this bullshit game.

So I feel meeeeeeeeeeeeeeean and like I need to be this mean. It would have been better if I could have just enforced this without screaming. But holy shit the whining and yelling at me yesterday was more than I could handle.

So in the past hour kiddo has finished the first assignment and is almost done with the second assignment. Apparently they woke up with a fire under their butt. They are no longer whining and stalling they are just concentrating and writing.

They don’t want to be grounded for Christmas. Oh good. They are still not eating cookies at the cookie exchange party. I’m a hard ass.

I tell my kids frequently that home schooling is a privilege. If you want to home school you have to be responsible for your education. I am not going to breathe down your neck and force you to comply with doing work. Do it or you can go to school and be micromanaged by a professional teacher who is BEING PAID to boss you around like that. I’m not being paid to micromanage you. I’m here to help you if you want to do the work. I’m not ok with dragging and forcing you through an education. I will not do it. Work or go to school.

Every so often we need a reminder that I’m serious. I’m not going to do this harsh babysitting/punishment thing constantly. I’ve only had to yell at my kids on two or three days this year about school and I’m unhappy about it being that much?

If I were better I wouldn’t have yelled those days. But I hit my limit sometimes.

Sigh.

EC had her shit together this time. I was impressed. She didn’t even need reminders. FMC is only seven and this is their very first time in their life being held to school standards like this on a regular basis. The fact that I’ve had three days of fuss in their first academic school year…

I need to be a little more patient. They have mostly done pretty well. And I didn’t ask EC to do this shit at this age. It actually makes sense that FMC is testing the boundaries to see what happens. What they are discovering is that I’m kind of a nasty bitch if you lie to me. I can tolerate all kinds of failures and mistakes without raising an eyebrow. I don’t expect perfection. But don’t lie to me.

And now kiddo is done. Sigh.

We’ve talked about how next time they won’t lie and say they are done because it didn’t make the work easier it made it a lot harder. And they are really sad about being grounded. So next time… they will be honest about not being done yet. I asked them if this work would have been hard if they had started a week ago with many days before the ES came. They shook their head and said it would have been really easy. They even spontaneously added, “I wouldn’t have cried at all.”

Yup.

That’s what we are shooting for. The not crying. The not stressing. The not feeling terrible about deadlines. We had time.

Lying makes everything worse. Don’t lie.

And now they are doing their 15 minutes of online reading program and they are done with academics for the day by 7am. That’s going to be a better day for them….

Testing documentation

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I got an email from our educational specialist (ES) today. She tested both kids last time she was here. The results both surprise me and don’t and I feel like a huge asshole.

I expected Future Middle Child to not do well because they aren’t reading yet. If we had tested Eldest Child before we left on the road trip… she would have been at a similar level for grade. My kids are late readers and that impacts their ability to take tests. FMC did so poorly on the reading test that I wasn’t given a result and instead I was told that kiddo needs to start remediation… which I’m unhappy about. Kiddo is where I expect them to be. I don’t think forcing them through not-very-effective “support” is going to help. I think it is going to make the process of learning to read shittier. They tested at the 65% for math and that shocks me because they stand behind their sister giving her answers to her math problems that are two grades ahead of them. I think it is because they don’t read and that messes up their ability to test in anything.

I feel like a huge asshole because I’m shocked by EC’s results. Uhm. She is higher than I expected by a lot. She is at the 98% for math and the 97% for reading. I……. honestly expected her to be at closer to the 60% for math. She complains all the fucking time about doing math of any sort for any reason. She tells me all the time how bad she is at math.

Uhhh… guess not.

She started out 3rd grade significantly behind. The Stanford evaluation proved that. She was way below grade level in every area. That was one fucking year of trying to do academic work.

I expect a similar dynamic from FMC and I’m seriously bummed that I put them in a charter school this year to fuck with my system. IT WAS WORKING.

Ok, I thought I wouldn’t tell EC her actual test scores. (I took a break right there to go talk to her while FMC is asleep.) I asked her how she thought she did. She’s all “Meh. Probably around 60%.” Ok, if you are going to underestimate yourself by that much… I need to tell you the score.

I feel bad that I have communicated my low expectations so accurately. I’m a shitty mother.

She is ebullient. We talked about how this is not about her being “smart”. One year ago she was tested as below grade level in every area. Stanford wanted me to get her into tutoring because she was so below grade level and I saw, “Naw I just haven’t started teaching that yet.”

EC attaining this is about the hard work she has put in. It’s not about smarts. It’s work. She has worked very hard for the past year and it shows. It has tangible results. FMC has not yet begun that work and it shows.

And that’s how it should be.

Before you are taught something of course you do poorly when tested on it.

But when EC is struggling with a math problem FMC stands behind her and rattles off the answer to the problem.

I think this is going to get interesting.

I told EC that I am very proud of her. She attained this on her own because she was willing to work so hard. Her face lit up like the fourth of July.

Err, if it isn’t clear from elsewhere in the post the scores aren’t 98% out of 100% of points earned. That’s the percentile for how the kids did compared to the expectations for their grade.

I wanted to get my kids caught up by 4th grade so that if they had to transfer to a school they wouldn’t be ashamed of being “stupid”.

Achievement partially unlocked. My 2nd grader is on track where I expect them to be. And my 4th grader god damn did it.

I didn’t do it. She did.

I mean… there’s this niggling part of me that says “I’m fucking brilliant and so is Noah so of fucking course our daughter is this fucking good at this shit.” And then there’s the bigger part of me that says, “You know how you’ve been underestimating her and acting like she isn’t that smart? You fucking suck rocks.”

More than one thing can be true.

I need to write Noah’s grandmother a letter. She will appreciate hearing this more than basically anyone else.

That’s a lovely milestone.

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Today my daughter was talking about something… I can’t quite remember how we got to this, but I handed her a textbook I read in my junior year of college so she could find out how different the original stories of Beauty and the Beast are from the Disney version. She said there were a couple of words she didn’t know, but that was fun to read.

Two years ago she couldn’t read a Dr. Seuss book independently. Now she’s reading from my college textbooks and understanding almost all of it.

I’m glad I trusted her to learn at her own pace. I’m really glad I didn’t push her beyond what she felt she could do.

I don’t fail at everything.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: school

The feedback is rolling in

Like Ursula I am wasting away

An absolutely glorious meeting

That was super nice to hear!

Wonderful first day

Today is the day.

Sick babies are so much work.

Now I feel like we’ve arrived.

Well this sucks; ok not everything sucks

Handing off the externalized brain

Perspective is hard.

Growing pains and mistakes

Well fuck me.

Maybe less hysterical, we’ll see.

I think I have failed at home schooling.

Plan and plan again and throw all of those away.

This is a trip, not a vacation.

Doing work is haaaaaaaard.

Testing documentation

That’s a lovely milestone.