A friend of mine told me a story that has stuck with me. She has some things going on in her life that she doesn't like. Some are out of her control, and some are just part of her personality, things she needs to overcome through an immense amount of personal effort, and may never overcome. I think we all have our big weaknesses like this. After watching a beautiful, well-educated, seemingly perfect-in-every-way cousin of hers, and lamenting to her brother that she knew she'd never be that way, he told her, "We just had a bigger hole to dig ourselves out of." He was referring to deep family issues, but I think it applies to any trial we may be facing. It's great when people can be the best and live up to the ideal most of the time, but we should also celebrate when we overcome hardships and mount them as average citizens instead of much worse.
How does this relate to homeschooling? Well, our family has had a rough patch. For almost the last two years (we're trying not to blame it on the city...ahem). So many unexpected trials at once and one after another. Just thinking about it makes me tear up and be grateful we all survived emotionally and spiritually. The hard part is that the biggest trials are things we really can't talk about at all, so you'll have to take my word for it. It's been rough. Before these trials, I always thought that since I knew what was best for my family, I could just work harder and harder if things got rough. I could push through anything and make it work with the brains God has give me. But lately my life is starting to remind me of a game of Rummikub I once played with some friends in high school. I overestimated my intellectual ability and took tiles from here and there, then from everywhere until I had completely remade the game and made a mess of everything and couldn't even put it back together the way it was, and the game ended with no winner.
Of course, this time I am not the only player, and I'm not in control, it's not "my turn", as it were. Don't mistake me, I do believe I am responsible for my children. But I can't control everything that happens to them or me or their daddy.
I still deeply believe in homeschooling and I wish every mother who had the ability to homeschool would do it if they could. Through many talks with Sean, and lots of introspection on my part, we may not be ready yet. It's difficult for me to give up something so dear to my heart, even if it's only tentatively for one year, but it may be best for our family. We're on the path to recovery and things have been so much better for us, but something inside has broken that needs time to be mended.
The conclusion is that we're still not sure what we'll do. After the last talk with Sean, when he told me he's worried I have too much on my plate (and I truly am slow in all my reactions, including recovery from trials), I started looking into schools. Just thinking about it makes me sad, but I'll need to get past that. We're not even sure that putting Trevor in school will be the answer, which is also difficult.
The school that Trevor would go to is only 4 blocks away. And it is also rated a 2 on greatschools.org (my own elementary school was an 8 the last time I checked). I also happened to find this article written in May about it: Sheridan Hills. It states that it is in the "bottom 5 percent performing schools in the state." Yeah, right. Going from homeschooling to giving my kids away to not just a low-performing school, but among the worst schools in the state? Not gonna happen. If my kids are going to be away from me for hours a day, it better be for a good reason and a good alternative. So we're looking into charter schools in our area. With the discoveries I've made lately about Trevor's personality, I'm afraid he would be lost in the public school and I want to make sure he'd be getting the type of attention he needs. I'm hoping we'd only have to do this for a year, or even just a half a year, until we get through a few things on our plates.
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