Sometimes the postscript is longer than the post.
I would like to see older homeschoolers represented online with the same enthusiasm. Why? Well, because I’d like to have my reality reflected, too. I’d like to be inspired. I’d like to be reassured. And if it was a slightly more glamorous image than reality, my heart would welcome that, too. A little salesmanship of the day-to-day. Calgon, take me away…
Lets do better. I’m busy. So are you. It’s harder to find the anecdote, perhaps, or to remember to pass it along. But we owe it to ourselves to memorialize this homeschooling stage as well as we did in the cuter years, and we owe it to each other.
I posted this link on my Facebook page and it sparked a thoughtful conversation, and I thought I’d share it here too. Our FB discussion centered on the difficulty of protecting and respecting the privacy of our older kids—their stories are their stories—while acknowledging that many of us do crave the experience-sharing and resource-sharing we enjoyed in our homeschooling blog circles and discussion boards when all our children were small. It’s a line I’ve walked cautiously here. I’ve often written about my decision to blog less about my older children as they’ve moved into their tween and teen years. (Metadiscussion junkie that I am.)
At the same time, I’ve missed it, the long education-philosophy chats* and the nitty-gritty resource-sharing. (Education philosophy and resource-sharing junkie that I am.) I don’t know how one threads that needle—respecting kids’ privacy while blogging freely about the thoughts and activities that occupy our days—and I always enjoy a peek into others’ homeschooling lives.
What do you think? Where’s the sweet spot on that fine line?
(UPDATE: My FB friend Angela chimed in with a link to a brand-new blog, hilariously titled Homeschooling Mother Clucker, that aims to find that sweet spot. I’m thrilled. I’ve missed Mother Crone.)
*While it’s true I’ve missed the ed-method threads that dominated the early years of this blog, around four years ago I deliberately dialed down my musings in that direction, in part because once I found my groove, my whole tidal homeschooling thing, I didn’t need to think out loud quite so intensely; and also because I ran out of energy and time for the occasions where the discussion turned to debate. We found what fits our family culture and I didn’t have any desire to proselytize nor defend it; it simply was what it was, is what it is, an ebbing and flowing rhythm of structure and freedom that suits us. We shift gears so often I can’t begin to tell someone else how to drive. 🙂 And lots of times, “thinking aloud” comes across as opining. I’m keenly aware that every family is different (even different from itself, season to season), and school works best for some, and unschooling works best for some, and rigorous classical ed works best for some, and a messy hodgepodge works best for others. One of my favorite comments I’ve ever received on this blog was from Bonny Glen reader Sashwee, who remarked (in my post about comics making you smart): “This confirms my impression of your approach to education, non-dogmatic, open to what’s good in whichever vessel it is borne.” I so appreciated that comment, because it gets at the heart of what drew me to home education in the first place: the freedom to custom-tailor education to suit each individual child within the context of a close-knit family life. For us, right now, in this season, that includes having Wonderboy happily enrolled in a special-day class at the public school around the corner, and sending Jane to spend the summer in Texas, soaking up another family’s culture and getting her first taste of the working world at an internship at a software developer, and allowing thirteen-year-old Rose long spans of hours for writing her Warriors fanfiction and other tales, and charting a high-tide of math, German, and history lessons for Rose and Beanie, and then chucking that plan out the window for a week of obsessive gaming when the big Glitch housing reset occurs. And now this postscript has turned into a full-fledged post, but I’m going to be lazy and leave it dangling here at the end of an entirely different topic, and maybe the combox discussion will wind up as comfortably jumbled as my family’s approach to life and learning. Jumble away, my friends.