Back in the days of OH I COULD NEVER EVER HOMESCHOOL (haaaaaaaa!), my aversion to this idea was multi-pronged. Basically I was convinced that: A) I am not patient enough to be my child's main teacher. B) Curriculum planning is probably hell on earth. C) Spending all day, every day, with my child would strain our relationship. D) Working and homeschooling are incompatible, even though I work from home. E) There is not enough Excedrin in the world for this. Spoiler: I was wrong. I mean, Excedrin comes in really, really big bottles (especially at Costco!), plus there are ways to deal with all...
The adjustment to the new school year has been... well... a little rocky. It's been a month, so you'd think things would be evening out about now. Of course, if you actually knew my children, you'd realize that one month is about enough time for all unaddressed issues to come to a glorious, face-melting head of WOE and GNASHING OF TEETH, and that's pretty much exactly how it went. [Related: I have never wanted a long weekend to end as badly as I did this past weekend. Instead of feasting on charred meat, we spent our extra day wondering if we could, perhaps, just move away when the kids...
I'm sure this will come as a complete shock to anyone who's been reading here for longer than a day or two, but Monkey has a small group of friends with whom he gathers every few weeks to play Dungeons & Dragons. This band of merry nerdlings is made up of the nicest kids imaginable with even kinder parents, and we especially appreciate having this group now that some of us are no longer at Hippie School. With Monkey truly homeschooling most of the time this year, every get-out-and-be-social opportunity is even more important for him more than ever before. And he just really loves D&D and...
I'll be headed into our first special education meeting of the season later this week, and it should be a real doozy. Chickadee's guidance counselor has been changed, since last year, and she has a new diagnosis, and we want some additional testing, and... well, you know I always make cookies, but I think I'd better be certain to make REALLY GOOD COOKIES for this one. I pull no punches when it comes to dealing with the school. Five minutes after meeting the new guidance counselor, I was saying, "Look, I'm going to be a pain in your ass. I know this and I'm telling you. I'm here to advocate...
I had a nice chat with one of Monkey's virtual teachers this year (uh, she is not virtual, she's a real person---a real teacher---but she works with the Virtual School, I mean) wherein I said something in passing about how this is our third year of homeschooling, and she uttered the dreaded phrase: "Oh, I just DON'T KNOW HOW PEOPLE DO IT. I could NEVER homeschool my kids!" I have an arsenal of standard responses to such statements: that I didn't think I could until I did, that one of my kids is still in public school, that we utilize a lot of resources like Virtual School, and---my personal...
There's so many things I wanted to tell you about our camping trip, but somehow I got stuck on a title. What could possibly convey the depth of emotion in just a few words? How could I make it clear what these few days meant to us? Somehow Paradise by the Dashboard Light got stuck in my head, and then I started thinking that "Pigs and Cards by Mosquito Bites" might work, but then you'd have to know that I was thinking of the song, and also that it's a very different kind of paradise, and... yeah, it got kind of complicated. Just trust me that IN MY MIND that all made perfect sense. In the...
I went through a long (longer than I will admit) period of time when the phrase "all kids do that" made me furious. Irrationally, completely, insanely full of RAGE. It seems to be used, most often, for someone to dismiss a special need or parenting concern with a not-so-subtle overtone of "you're overreacting." To be fair, I think many purveyors of this dreaded phrase are trying to be... comforting? Supportive? It isn't always meant as "calm down, crazypants." Sometimes it's meant as a kind of solidarity or empathy, a sort of "I feel you," albeit one that rings hollow because they don't, not...
Monkey is home again! You may not know this, but I really, really like that kid. He's swell. He's also funny and extremely good-looking (in my completely unbiased opinion, of course). And I have a real weakness for humans who used to live inside my body. That said, our family motto when it comes to playing games has long been, "It's not a game until someone's crying." And... well, let's not mince words: It's usually Monkey. True, he's the youngest, and yes, when you're Mr. Rules it can be hard to accept that there's an element of chance (or a rule you don't like), but it's made me into...
Something kind of exciting happened here this week, and I wrote about it over at Alpha Mom. I'll give you a hint: My teenagers are no longer speaking to each other in person using their mouthparts. Our electronic overlords have taken over! And in a weird way, I guess I'm okay with that. Mostly.
