My children learned all about computers without any helpful input from their computer-challenged mother.  They learned about computers as easily as they had learned to talk.  Power Point, Word, and Excel skills seemed to fall on them out of the sky.  They glided effortlessly from sitting in front of the TV adoring Barney, the big, purple dinosaur, to sitting in front of the family computer chatting with their buddies, knowing instinctively what bff, cya, brb, and lol meant.  (For those of you who didn’t have any computer skills fall out of the sky and into your brain, those are, respectively: best friend forever, see ya, be right back, and laugh out loud.)  

Okay, so the schools do have computers and teachers to explain them — teachers who probably never nearly ordered $8,400 worth of exercise equipment by mistake, but the schools aren’t the only game in town.  Libraries have computers and helpful employees.  Apple has classes at amazingly reasonable rates.

Better yet, buy a new computer for a few hundred bucks and set it on the kitchen table.  Your five-year-old will figure it out and teach you what you need to know.

Although, I became a bit obsessed about the whole “food in my front teeth” thing — couldn’t keep myself from grinning like a mad dog into every shiny surface just to make sure I wasn’t sporting lunch on my incisor — I was willing to make the sacrifice for the sake of the undeniable ego boost.

Then came the moment of reckoning.  I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it had something to do with a new budget and the realization that, as gorgeous as the tips of my fingers were, the gloriousness was going to cost me nearly $800 a year.  Eight-hundred bucks!  I had a Volkswagon when I was single that cost less than that.  The heater wouldn’t turn off, and I nearly fried my left foot a couple of time during an especially toasty summer, but the $800 vehicle ran!

Reality checked in like a roach at a roach motel.  The stunning nails had to go.  

Do you have any idea how long it takes for fake fingernails to grow out?  I’ve had winters that didn’t take as long.

Okay, so the point I’m making about homeschool:  If your heart isn’t in it;  if you are doing it only because all your friends are;  if you wake up every morning thinking, “I hate this!”   — You are faking it!   That’s an expensive problem, both spiritually and fiscally.

Here are a few cures:  

1.  Put your kids in school.  

2. Better yet, spend some time in the schools yourself.  If that doesn’t convince you that you are doing the right thing by homeschooling them, then refer to #1 in this list.

3.  Take a break — maybe a week to get yourself together, maybe a day a week.  I took nearly every Friday off.  (Okay, sometimes the kids watched educational videos, but they thought they were taking the day off.)

4.  Try something different.  If the textbooks you chose over the summer when you thought you were invincible now make you want to rip out their pages with your teeth and spit them into the toilet, deep six the books.  There are a jillion ways to learn, and textbooks aren’t even on my top 100 list for most subjects.  (More about this in my book later.)

5.  Pick a subject you love and concentrate on that for a couple of weeks.  The world won’t blow up if you don’t do math or science for a bit while you explore pottery, woodworking, or French cooking with your kids.

6.  Read a book about homeschooling.  I love Mary Pride’s first book, The Way Home.  Lots of wisdom for the beginning mom of a younger child.

7.  As it says in the movie, “What About Bob,” — Take a vacation from your problems!  Sounds nuts in this era of making up snow days — as though anyone learns anything at all on those last few days tacked on to what should be summer vacation — but really — bag homeschooling for a while.  Just do something/anything else.  Tell the kids they have a mini-vaycay because everyone, especially Mom, needs a break.  If, after a week or so of doing nothing even resembling school, you feel you can tackle it again, do so.  Beware, though, of the definition of insanity:  ”Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

8.  See about joining a parent/partnership with the local school system.  The teachers there are usually extremely pro-homeschool and thrilled to help out. (More about that in my book too.)

9.  Change it up.  See if the schedule you’ve set for yourself and your kids can be flipped somehow to work better for all of you.  If you are not a morning person, math at seven sharp probably isn’t a good fit.

10.  Write the following on a Post-it and stick on your bathroom mirror:  ”This is not a school.  We do not have to function as a school.”  

11. If all else fails. Refer to #1 and get on with the life you really want to have.  Not everyone is cut out for this, and that’s fine.

I heard somewhere that olive oil is great for fingernails.  I think I’ll give that a try.  

“I met this family once.  All the kids had Bible names — not Bible names like Matthew, Mark, and Mary.  I’m talkin’ names like Balthazar, Melchizedek and Bathsheba!  The mom home schooled all ten, count ‘em 10!  I’m not kidding ALL the kids were seriously weird.  I do NOT want us to become that family.”

Let me assure you.  That family was headed for “weird” from the first “I do” at the wedding.  Homeschooling did not make them weird.

Now that I’m at the other end of the homeschooling process, I can assure you that the huge majority of kids who are home schooled come from normal families and they can, and do, turn out great.  I know dozens of them, but let me just give you the rundown of my six  for starters (in descending order of age):

Erika — Didn’t get in on the homeschooling in our house at all.  She was already through high school when I started.  She went all 12 years to public schools, graduated suma cum laude from a private college in a total of two and a half years, and turned out just fine.  However, she is convinced she missed out and so is homeschooling her own children.  She has six kids too, but not all are old enough.  (I may interview her in the future just so you can get her side of the story.)

Jessica — Attended public school for eight years, then an expensive year at a private, Christian school.  At the end of her freshman year, she begged me to homeschool her too.  She was a popular, pretty girl with good grades.  I thought she had lost her mind, but I finally gave in.  It was a great decision (there’s more about that in a previous post) for both of us.  She and her husband have two children now.  One is in a small, private, expensive school — in her words, “…the closest thing to home schooling I could find and still not have to do it myself.”  (Their younger child is too young for school, but attends a small, private, not-as-expensive pre-school.)  Jessica, a real estate broker, and her husband Matt own their own businesses.

Thomas — Was the first of our kids to be home schooled.  (I explain what led up to that momenteous decision in my book.)  Thomas went through his entire school career (until college) at home.  He finished two years of academics in one school year, twice.  So, he “graduated” by the time he was about 16 and a half.  He started his own lawn-mowing business with a buddy about then because he had lots of extra time.  (He sold it to that same buddy a few years later when he entered college.  It is still a thriving business.)  

When Thomas took the state-required GED, he placed among the four highest in the state and was given The Robert Byrd Scholarship.  When he took the entrance exam at the college, he was offered two scholarships and accepted the highest.  He graduated magna cum laude with a BA in International Affairs, works full time, and is applying to graduate schools now.

Julia — Home schooled for 10 years and then went into the Running Start program (your state probably has something similar, I’ll explain ours in a future post.) at the college.  She worked at an optometrist’s office while going to school and graduated four years later at the age of 20 just a tenth of a point shy of magna cum laude with a BA in literature.  She now works full time and is buying a house on her own.

Kurtis — Home schooled for only eight years.  He wanted to attend a “regular” school, and so, after much agonizing on my part, I let him.  He had no trouble fitting in and was an honor student who loved being involved in everything the school had to offer from tennis to fund-raising projects.  He left there his junior year and did the Running Start program, but was happy to head back to the high school for his senior year.  He is now in a computer graphics-design program in college.

Lincoln — Home schooled for five years.  He wanted to go to school the same year his big brother Kurtis did.  I was a bit worn out with home schooling after 15 years and decided it made sense for all of us.  I took a job as a substitute teacher for the school district, (I’ll have to write about that nightmare in another post) and he headed off to the 6th grade at the local elementary school.  He loved it.  He is an excellent student and is going to begin Running Start  for his junior year in the fall.  (He volunteers at the hospital and wants to work in the medical field after college.)

So, not so weird, huh?  Just normal kids, and not a Melchizedek among them.  (Oh, and they wanted me to let you know that they are all unbelievably good-looking.)

I could go on and on about the terrific home schoolers in other families we know who have become amazing adults.  Maybe I’ll do another post in the future about some of them.  Better yet, maybe I’ll interview some of them!  Hmm, that’s not a bad idea, even if I do say so myself!

There is no one who loves and admires their husband more than I do.  However, it is rare that a husband, especially mine, has the time to really get in there and do the nitty-gritty homeschool work with the kids.  Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few.  

I get it.  Your husband can use the “us” word all he wants, but you and I both know the bulk of this endeavor is going to fall squarely on your shoulders.  So, if your husband is the “believer” in this equation, and you love him but think he’s nuts for even thinking this makes sense for your family, maybe he can help you convert.  Gentle persuasion and a lot of solid information has moved more than one mom to give homeschooling a try.

Believe me.  The first time my neighbor Cindy suggested it for me, I thought she was a fanatic, granola-baking freak-woman trying to make me into a fellow, fanatic, granola-baking freak-woman.  I didn’t make my own granola.  I still don’t.  And I didn’t want to homeschool anyone — anytime —  anywhere!

It wasn’t until I researched until my eyeballs nearly hung from springs out of their sockets that I inched a bit over to the idea — and I do mean “inched,” not even a whole big-toe’s worth.  (I cover this conversion more fully in the book I’m writing, so I won’t repeat it here.  Give me a month or so to get that up and running.)

So, here’s the real answer:  If — after you research, ask questions, read blogs, and maybe, if you are so inclined, pray about the possibility of homeschooling for just one nine-month period — you still feel as though you are being strong-armed into doing something you absolutely don’t want to do.  Then don’t do it.  

Homeschooling is a decision YOU have to make because, I kid you not, no matter how much your husband is onboard, in the long run, you’re going to be the soldier in the trenches.  

If, however, after all that research, asking, and reading, you inch over to the idea a bit, maybe not even a big-toe’s worth but just an inch, you might want to give it a try.  

It took about a month and a half of actually teaching my little guy at home to really convert me. It was mid-October.  I woke up one morning and realized that in that month and a half, working only 20-30 minutes a day, my little boy had already finished all the work required to move up to the first grade from kindergarten!

Jeopardy answer:  They’ve got a whole school year to fill up.

Jeopardy question:  Why do schools waste SO much of our children’s time teaching so                                           little?

In that moment, I was a convert.

You might not remember it as well as I do since I may have watched the movie (not solely to admire Alec Baldwin’s beautiful self, but that didn’t hurt) a few more times than the average person, but trust me when I say that it’s a great scene.

 Alex asks the pilot, shouting over the blades of the helicopter, “What about your reserve tank?  We’ve got five more minutes!” or something like that.  I didn’t memorize the exact words coming out of those amazing lips, but you get the gist.  It was life and death.  Helicopter versus the ocean depths.  Tension city.  What to do!  What to do!

I loved it.

 I’m sure — being an expert now that I’ve watched that movie so many times, the very real “point of no return” is critical for helicopter pilots.  But for homeschoolers — not so much.

So, you bought all the textbooks, hit the middle of October, and cried, “Uncle!”  

So, you found out that for you, homeschooling is of the devil.  

So, you really miss your job, the money, the prestige, and the mandatory coffee breaks; and your daughter wants to go back to school because she misses her friends, her prestige, and her coffee breaks.

It happens.

So:

Sell the textbooks on Craigslist or to someone else who is homeschooling.

Contact your old employer and give him the good news.

Head over to the public school and enroll your daughter.  Believe me, they get money from the state for every student.  They’ll be happy to get her, and she’ll easily catch up.

But first:

Take a deep breath.  

Think about it.

 Are you forgetting anything?  How about the reason you started this in the first place?  Your reasons might not be anything like anyone else’s, but there were reasons.  Use some of that reserve tank that my boyfriend Alec talked about and see if there’s any fuel reserve you might have overlooked.

If, after you use all your spare patience and stamina, you still feel as though you are out on the ocean with no hope of getting back to shore, then relax and do what you have to do.  

Homeschooling is not for everyone.  It’s one of many choices, and if you’ve made the mistake of choosing something that just won’t work for you and/or your child, don’t beat yourself up.  

So, back to the original question: Where is that point of no return for homeschoolers and their moms?  

Simple answer:  There isn’t one.

It works exactly the same for homeschooled kids.  

Being homeschooled doesn’t mean being buried in one’s residence never to see the light of day.  Welcome to homeschool, kiddies. Now, let’s lock all the windows and bolt all the doors.  That would be torture for children and their parents.  

I homeschooled five of my six kids for varying lengths of their childhoods (more about that in future post), and they all had well-developed social lives.  They had piano, dance and clarinet lessons.  They had many sleepovers, pizza parties, pool parties, afternoons at the park with friends, bike rides, and church functions.  They were in plays and choirs, and they learned to drive.  Among the six of them, they’ve been all over Europe and Africa.  They’ve traveled to Australia, Guatemala, Mexico, Malaysia, Nepal, Hawaii, and Japan!  (I’m sure I’m leaving out a few, but you get the point.)

Believe me, my kids got out of the house.

Of course, one of the reasons they could do all those things and go all those places was that they were — let me think, what’s the word I want? Oh yeah —  homeschooled!

 Our schedule was our own to make or break.  We were free as a family to do as we darned well pleased.  We weren’t limited to the Christmas, spring, and summer breaks the school system doles out.  If we wanted to go somewhere in January, we went.  If we wanted to take a long weekend, we took it.  If I wanted to call May 31st the last day of school, I called it.  

My sister, who also homeschooled her children, went to Disneyland in January nearly every year.  Talk about avoiding crowds!  

Don’t get me wrong.  Homeschooling is work — lots of it — but it is also freedom.  It is the freedom to manage your family the way you see best.  

And as for grounding, it works just fine for homeschooling parents too.

Those of you who have two or more preschool kids know that the average employee can’t really make enough to warrant putting their children in daycare all day.  The numbers just don’t work.  

However, if your children are all finally school age, that dynamic changes drastically.  Suddenly, working outside the home starts to make some sense — a little anyway.  If you work full-time, you’ll still have to pay for childcare before and after school.  That adds up.

(I’ve read statistics that say that a professional woman like a teacher or a nurse, working outside the home, even with school-aged kids still doesn’t make enough money to warrant leaving their children in before-and-after-school daycare — or comes out about even — because the family has to have a second car.  The reasoning is that they should just stay home.  That could be true, but  I have a hard time with that reasoning since most families already need a second car just to function.)

The truth is money is a nice thing to have.  However, as important as money is, your children are more important.  If you feel that you can manage either life without a second income, or think you have a way to make some money from home, the connection you’ll make with your children by homeschooling them is priceless.  I would not trade those years (15 of them!) for any amount of money now.  

There are ways to make money at home.  Case in point:  The fifth year I homeschooled my children, I happened into teaching literature and writing to homeschoolers in our church.  It was a word-of-mouth phenomenon that grew from one student, to three, to 24 students in four classes that met once a week around my dining room table.  The classes didn’t pay much, but they helped.  Some of the other homeschooling mothers bartered with me — my teaching for homemade pizza crusts, homemade desserts, and cleaning.   It all added up.

I also wrote (still do) a column for a small newspaper.  Not too much money, but, again, every little bit helped.  At least my husband knew I was doing my best to pitch in. I canned fruit in the summer and made most food from scratch.  We rarely ate out, and my clothes had to last a really long time.  I made myself go to garage sales to find essentials and grew to love the challenge.  We did fine.

Don’t kid yourself though.  Homeschooling is a sacrifice.  You have to weigh your commitment to it with your financial bottom line.  If you can justify it, go for it.

The kinder, gentler, full-tray children’s desks came into fashion about the time I headed into the fifth grade and weren’t much more comfortable for me or anyone else.  

School desks, however, do serve a purpose.  They keep the schooled kids in line, hands off each other, defining their space and place in the classroom.  For a school classroom with 25-30 kids to keep in some sort of order, school desks are the only way to go.  They don’t, however, make sense for your home.  

Don’t buy your child a desk and make him/her sit at it to do”school.”  It’s lonely, isolating, and tells them that learning is a separate thing from living in their home — the last thing you want to convey..  Everything about your child’s learning environment should say, “Learning is part of life — a wonderful, fun part of it.”  To that end, the kitchen table and the couch will do quite nicely.

Don’t buy a big chalkboard from which to impart your wisdom either.  Chalkboards are for school classrooms with lots of kids who all have to see the same, mostly mind-numbing, information at the same time.  You can sit by your child/children and help them.  

Oh, and don’t get an overhead projector either.  

In other words, DO NOT TRY TO REPLICATE SCHOOL AT HOME!  You’ll wear yourself  and your children out.   You aren’t playing school.   Your child is learning at home.  One is finite, the other infinite.

What do you suppose the chances were that little girl ever stuck her tongue in  another empty socket?  

That little girl learned, in a moment of time, that electricity  is a constant.  It does not promise one thing and deliver another.  Its promise and its threat are real.  You can count on every plugged-in lamp socket to deliver a massive jolt of electricity to every tongue stuck into it. 

The same must be said of parents, especially homeschooling parents.  They must be consistent.  Parents have to follow through — on threats AND promises.  More so than schooled children, homeschooled kids have to know that their parents say what they mean and mean what they say.  

If the rule is that the little Ethan has to finish three pages of math before he can play a video game, Mom better make sure she takes the time to check those math pages before the TV gets turned on.  

An empty threat is a homeschooling mother’s worst enemy.

Related true story:  When I announced that my oldest son was to be grounded for 10 weeks, at age 16, for getting a ticket for speeding in his newly acquired truck, he desperately tried to get me to give him some other punishment.  When I asked why he was so hysterical to have me change the punishment, he said, “I know you!  You’ll stick to that 10 weeks!”  

He was right.  I was electricity.  I delivered what I promised.  He could count on it.  He served every day of that 10-week grounding.

Conclusion: If you don’t want to go out of your mind while homeschooling, don’t make a threat you won’t carry out.  Make the consequences fair, but make them and stick by them.  Also, if you promise a reward, ante up.  You have to deliver on both your threats and your promises.

The fact that I am, and always have been, awful at math does not make me a bad person.  The same goes for you.  The ability to figure out an algebraic equation is not a prerequisite for homeschooling — even if you are thinking about teaching a child who is past the basics of adding and subtracting.  

There are a few options for homeschoolers with math-challenged parents.  Those options include the following:  

1.  Hire a tutor.

2. Join a group that collectively hires a tutor for a few children at a time.

3. Buy a DVD program that goes piece by piece through math and work your way up there with your child.

4. See if someone else who is homeschooling would like to trade your skills at English, Spanish, Quilting, Cooking, _________(fill in the blank) for their child in exchange for math lessons.

5. Check with your public school system to see if they have a parent partnership that can help.  Most districts do.  As a matter of fact, they often have monetary allowances to help you pay for private tutoring.  Parent partnerships can be the best of both worlds for many homeschooling families.  I taught drama at one of them and was a substitute at another (back in the dark days of subbing — more on that in a later post!) for a few weeks.  Of all the schools I taught and/or subbed, the parent-partnership schools were by far the most pleasant.  

6.  Start out early with your young child and learn as they learn.  There is no better way to learn something than to have to teach it.

7. Don’t worry about Algebra until you get there.  If your child is in the first grade, you can probably relax for a while.  Don’t let one subject deter you.  In the big scheme of things, Algebra is a small matter.