New Phase: Ups and Downs

Homeschooling is hard. For some people, maybe it's not.

I remember when I was reading about pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. Reading about it was easy. Predicting how someone with average intelligence would sail through it was easy. Getting through it adeptly with grace and ease, not easy. Lots of tears. Lots of panic. Lots of despair.

Homeschooling looks hard, sounds hard, and probably could be easier than I'm making it. But [huge sigh] I'm struggling with my strong-willed, argumentative, always-thinking-outside-the-box son to get him to do what he needs to do each day. Dare I wager that all parents struggle, albeit in different ways, to get their kids to do things or learn something important? That's probably the hardest part in the early days of homeschooling. That and trying not to throw something when his eyes glaze over.

Like with pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, there are moments of great joy while slogging through hours of lessons at home. After a two-hour briefing on the history of Western civilization from Ancient Rome to the beginning of the Renaissance, I fully expected him to say "I'm so glad that is OVER!!" So when he said, "That was fun! I like history!" I wanted to pour chocolate syrup over him and lick him from head to toe. And, during Spelling he said, "I don't know a word for 'to provide all that is needed', unless it's 'supply'?" After a particularly grueling dose of defiant protesting and my justified rant on how miserable I felt, he turned on the charm and randomly inserted "I love you, mom" into the rest of the day's lessons.

Small moments of bliss that nearly make all the tears worthwhile keep me wondering if I can handle this, and if so, for how long? I'm measuring my hatred of giving up against my love of my own sanity. Will it come to that?

So as I take a lesson from my own history, I welcome the flashbacks to the despairing first few months of motherhood and the wise women who said, "it will get better." It did. And this will.