Epiphany

I always know something is not quite right in Anita-land when even an ambien doesn't make the insomnia go away. And if I'm honest, it's been coming on for a few days. I think the arrival of autumn did it to me.

I started having a conversation with myself about the kids' education. Is this what I want to be doing? Is this what they want to be doing? If I could do it any way I wanted to, how would I do it? Now, what makes that "ideal" feel impossible again?

Lately I've felt like our older kids have been falling away from each other a bit. I suppose that's normal when they get older, but I'm not ready for it. I want them to remain best friends. Not that they are at each other's throat all the time. But there isn't as much kindness happening as I'm used to. That lack of kindness is slithering its way down to the second set of kids. I don't want them to follow in their big siblings' footsteps if those footsteps are lacking compassion and camaraderie!

I just felt "blah" all day. I couldn't pinpoint it. Something is off in Gillispie land and I think it needs to be fixed.

So when I lay my head on the pillow tonight and tried to go to sleep, thoughts of family and school kept going through my mind. I want the "school" in my home to be loving and fun, and also appropriately firm and expectant. Right now, the program the kids are in seems more about the goal (complete X% of lessons this month) than the experience. There are times when one child is very interested in the lesson of another child, but I have to shoo them away because they need to be working on their lessons. I don't want to do that anymore.

We're using K12 curriculum, which I think is a pretty decent curriculum. I don't have any gripes about that. But the Oklahoma Virtual School (public school at home) is proving not to fit with what I want for my children. The oversight is too much for me. It makes me feel stressed, which makes its way down to my children. Last week, as Samren had a 104 fever I was quizzing him on spelling words because we just HAD to do spelling that day or we would be behind. Poor kid kept falling alseep on me and I woke him back up. That is not the kids of educator I want to be, and more so, that is not the kind of mommy I want to be! That was an epiphany moment for me, even though I am only just realizing it on this sleepless night.

I wanted this program to work for my kids because it's easy in a lot of ways (not the schooling at home public school crud, but the actual teaching). Everything is planned out for us each day. There is nothing for me to plan. And the kids have gotten the hang of it. They get through their lessons every day. But there is little JOY in it. The public school's looming "goals" are always present, like the money we could have been saving with Geico! LOL!

After laying in bed for an hour thinking about all of this, I went up to talk to Taevy. She really is a kid who I can talk to. She has good insights and this was about her education. I asked her, if you could do anything different about your school situation what would it be?" She thought about it for a while and then said, "Mom, I know we learn a lot of stuff with K12, but I thought I was going to have more fun doing school together. I wish we were DOING stuff instead of on the computers so much." I said, "Exactly."

We also talked about how our family doesn't seem to be quite in sync right now. The sleeping situation upstairs isn't quite right. It might not fit into some social worker's box for "appropriate" but my 8 and 9 year old opposite gender children would still rather share a room if given a choice. And guess what? So would my 2 and 4 year old opposite gender children! So after all of this moving around we've done up there lately, it seems that Taevy and Samren will once again share a room, while Bright and Kendi will begin to share a room. That will leave a free room that we can turn into a library/reading/homeschool/play room.

I haven't talked to Eric about this yet because he's not one to wake up from a good sleep and endure one of my midnight revelations. But last week when I was talking about some frustrations with our school program he said, "Just quit." without any hesitation. It will be a pain to send back all of the free materials we were given, but oh well. There is no money in the budget to buy another "canned" program this year (at least not this semester) but oh well. We can do it. At the beginning of the year I was scared to put a piece-meal program together because of all the work it would be to plan every day. Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I will simply have to make time for it. I have a feeling that, this way, I will look more forward to school with the kids as well. =-)

Whew! Feels good to get that off my chest! Now maybe I can sleep!