In January of this year (2018) we made the decision to pull our kids out of public school. Homeschooling was a dream of mine when I was a new mom, but quickly lost that drive when I had my hands full.
It’s crazy how life happens sometimes. We always have a picture in our head of how things are supposed to be, but they rarely turn out that way exactly. Oftentimes we fight against reality to try to shape our lives into that image in our head. Sometimes we just go with the flow. I’ve learned through the years that it’s usually easier to just go with the flow and adapt, but it isn’t always easy. Twelve years ago my first child, Emma, was born. I had grandiose ideas of how it would look to be her mother. I pictured myself as the apron-wearing mom that was shuffling between girl scouts and soccer while looking like I slept for 8 hours the night before. Ha! While we certainly had snippets of times like this, reality was nothing as I had pictured. Instead I was chasing a hyperactive two year old through stores, throwing my hair into messy ponytails and crossing my fingers that the clothes I pulled out of my closet matched as I raced to pull her off of the fridge….again.
When she was a baby I dreamed of homeschooling. When she was four I physically carried her to the bus and handed her over with a deep sigh of relief. I couldn’t wait for four hours of silence! Fast forward to last year. We had three kids and life was going smoothly. Our kids were older and life was starting to slow down. There was less chasing and more relaxing. I began to toss around the idea of homeschooling again. Then summer vacation came and the kids were rambunctious and by the time August arrived I was happily driving them to school at 7:30 am. “I could never homeschool. I’d lose my sanity. I’d fail them miserably and the world would fall apart.” Those were a few of the fears that popped into my head every time the idea of homeschooling came up.
Then, in January, a life changing event happened. My nephew had a seizure, and many subsequent seizures, at school and he was rushed to the ER by ambulance. Our local hospital transferred him to a pediatric ICU unit an hour away where he spent the next 5 days of his life. Our world stopped spinning. Everything that was happening came to an abrupt halt as we sat in the hospital praying and hoping he’d open his eyes again. The day this happened I had my grandma pick up my children from school, and I never sent them back. It was while I was sitting there in that hospital, watching my nephew fight for his life, that it hit me how quickly the world can change. Everything we’ve planned and everything we strive for can hang in the balance. Miracles happen. Five days later he was on his way home, smiling but with a long road ahead of him.
While fear may have been the driving factor that day, it’s been nine months since we began
homeschooling and it is going so much better than I every dreamed of. My sanity is still in tact and my kids are thriving in their new environment. Would it have worked as well a year ago? I’ll never know but I don’t think so. I think the choice was made at the right time for us for a reason.
One of my fears when Elliot was little was sending him to public school. What would kids say? How would they treat him? I know I've talked about this in previous blog posts, but I had a crazy fear of sending him off into a shark tank. However, Elliot adjusted so well and so quickly. He often had people ask "what happened" to his face, and he would usually say "those are my spots" even when he didn't have his "spots" from his treatment. He has fielded all of these questions like a champ. He's always exuded confidence because I raised him to. Even when my own confidence was lacking I'd pretend to be the most confident person in the world in front of him.
When we made that decision, I started to feel that fear again. Yet this time it was in the opposite direction. Will this affect his confidence in the future? Will he still be able to feel "normal" as he grows without a class full of peers that already know he has a birthmark? A couple weeks ago Elliot and his brother Ethan started Ninja Gymnastics class. He said to be after: "Mom, someone asked what was on my chin. So I wiped my chin but nothing was there. Then he said 'no, i mean your cheek' and I said oh, that's my birthmark. Then he said 'Were you born with it?' and I told him yes." And it was that simple. A normal conversation between two normal boys and he handled it like he always has.
xoxo
