Yeah. We are “trying” to keep going to school for another month but our hearts aren’t in it. The kids are doing a lot of talking about what they plan to do when we start home schooling again. They each have solid plans. They are quite certain how they want to be spending their time and they are not happy with how much time school wastes.

EC is setting herself a whole bunch of art projects. She has a fairly specific list of skills she wants to master and styles she wants to practice. She would not be able to work on any of that with how many hours a day she has free while going to school.

MC is ecstatic about the keyboard and plans to spend a bunch of time playing every day along with working on computer programming and more maths. She says she will work on handwriting–it will be more fun to do when she gets to pick her topic. She is excited that she will be allowed to read at her level instead of being forced into a lower level reading group because her handwriting isn’t good enough.

I mean, I know we will run into problems again at some point. They are children and their sense of motivation runs out. We all have some executive functioning problems and that’s a serious concern. I need to transition a lot more of that management onto their shoulders; that was one big net positive of school. When EC forgot her computer she had to deal with the mess up, not me. When they forgot to pack the lunch that I made them… they had to cope without me.

They are both noticeably less stressed and upset than they have been over the past month. They asked if we could go ahead and start home schooling stuff over break; do we have to wait? Well–most of the things you want to work on for your personal benefit aren’t the things I police. Yes you can do as much of that as you want over break.

We have meet ups scheduled with home educators. The kids are enrolled in an acting/dancing/singing course that starts in January. We will get connected to the local community. We will make friends. But school isn’t going to be it. I’m sort of glad I didn’t bother getting more involved with the PTA. It would be harder to tell the school/other parents “Yeah this place sucks and we are opting out” than to just tell the Head “My children aren’t happy here and I see no point in making them miserable for the sake of ‘conforming to the system’. I believe with my whole heart that schools are trying to force children into 20th century modes of living and the 20th century is over.”

And the bullying. I’m going to document all of the bullying through January and say that I don’t see a good reason to continue subjecting my children to it when the school isn’t handling it.

I don’t send them to school to get hit. But they are getting hit. That sounds like school to me…

It really doesn’t help that the “feelings” teacher doesn’t like my kids and she thinks there is something wrong with them because they prefer adults to children. Dude, that was 100% how I felt. It is utterly normal for gifted kids.

My kids are 2E. They are more challenging than average; believe me I know. For a wide variety of reasons I am more qualified than most to accept and handle their needs.

And if you think that home schooling means they will never fit into society, apparently you don’t know very many people who have been home educated. They grow up into quite normal, wonderful people who don’t resent the idea of learning the way that a lot of other people do.

Do I want to home school again? Not really. I’m tired. But I want my children to be happy and self motivated. I want my children to not be hit. I want my children to not grow up being told that they are fucking morons or that they should go on a diet. I want my children to think that playing with dolls is more fun than worrying about their selfie game. I want my children to have an intense and deep knowledge of their surroundings. I want them to feel safe and to spend a lot of time outside. People who spend a lot of time on social media (based on statistics and studies) feel more lonely and tend to be more paranoid about what bad things can happen to them.

I’ve had a lot more negative experiences than average in this life. I’m still not afraid of being outside or doing things alone. I’m incredibly confident. I can survive and thrive even if a lot of bad things happen. I want my kids to feel like that.

I want my kids to feel like there is a big wide world made up of mostly good people and they should go out and explore it. I want them to feel like there are a lot of problems that they didn’t make but they can help solve. I want them to feel like a life where you give back feels better than a life where you complain about not being given enough. I mean, yes…. eat the rich. But we are very lucky. We are some of the luckiest people on this planet and that means we should use that luck and try to spread it around. How?

Kiddos, in this life people rarely give you responsibility in a way that matters. You take responsibility for things. You take responsibility for your own actions and fixing the mistakes of others. You take responsibility for finding ways of helping people large scale hurt the planet less.

No one will come up to you and gift wrap an opportunity to be a good person.

You have to just do it.

And maybe, if you waste less of your time in school you will come up with more ways to do that sooner. It’s not that school is all bad–it isn’t. Most parents are not in my position with regards to educate their children and I don’t mean to denigrate or mock that. School is a necessary institution for the vast majority of children.

But it isn’t necessary for my kids. I made sure of that. I worked very hard to make that true.

I don’t need to force them to be in a situation that is to my benefit and their detriment. I can do better.