Do you walk to school or do you take your lunch?* (Or why we are homeschooling now)

Why does it often take us so long? Sometimes it really bothers me that it takes us so long to wake up, eat breakfast and start our day.  I mean, if we are all downstairs at 7:00 a.m., why is it sometimes 9:00, or later, before we are gathered ready to start our learning?  Is it a prime example of wasted time, how we squander moments when we could actually be utilizing them to greater advantage?  Or am  I merely revealing my type A personality, proving to myself that I feel the incorrigible need to be forever productive?  Most likely the latter.  Family ought to be a comfortable place, a place where you are allowed to just be.  While our days seem full and busy, full of individual responsibilities, it is the role of family to allow each to breathe, to enjoy one another’s company, to be thankful that we are safe and together. So why does it take us two hours to eat breakfast and collect our books? Foremost, we are not particularly go-getters in the morning.  I sit over two to three cups of coffee, thinking, planning our day, but mostly mustering the strength and stamina necessary to get us through seventh grade math and a writing task.  A is petting the cat while lying on the floor.  G is reenacting superhero battles over and over in the dining room where he has more space. S is scrambling an egg and somehow using two or three extra bowls.  Each child eats separate breakfasts and prepares it themselves, and while this is great practice in life skills, it is also not the most efficient.  I need to make my peace with this.

The truth is I am weak, but our days are fairly productive except, of course, when they aren’t.  Does that last sentence remind anyone else of Dr. Seuss?  We choose not to overextend ourselves with outside activities.  We surround ourselves with positive people we admire- mostly people from our church.  The kids have plenty of time to play, get on the iPad, lie around the house, construct things around the house from blocks, legos and random objects, create their own comic strips at 8:55 in the morning, and have plenty of time to be bored. The simple fact is it is ok we are slow starters.  We are far from squandering our time in the mornings.  I need, instead, to be savoring it.  Really, at least partially, this is why we began homeschooling.   Before we began the homeschooling adventure which has increased the chaos and noise level in our home exponentially, I read article after article advising me to write down for posterity our personal reasons for choosing home education.  The articles promised it would serve us well in times of uncertainty. I offer to you, reader of this post, a private peek into our family’s thoughts.  This is why we choose to make pancakes or scones on a weekday, why we take two hours to eat breakfast, why it is more than ok for us to bump aimlessly into one another from room to room in the mornings until we are sufficiently awake.  Just a caveat: I know many families who tackle these objectives admirably while sending their children to public school.  Keeping our kids home was not our only option, but it was the one which called the most obviously to us, beckoning a new vision for what our family could look like.  We are still living by hope and faith, eager to see how our children and family develop.  Here are my words I jotted down three years ago.  Most of the reasons are salient today.

Our Reasons to Homeschool

Family –

To regain our sense of family love

To renew our relationship with one another

To allow us to enjoy our children at their best times of the day, and to alleviate the stress of the morning scramble for the school bus and the afternoon fights over homework.

Education – 

To be in control of what and how we taught our children, including life skills, spiritual teaching, character lessons, multi-cultural topics, an international worldview, and a strong focus on their own individual academic interests.

To enjoy being directly involved in the boys’ learning and self-guided study

Due to a concern at losing them in the public school system, not wanting learning to become a drudgery, but a joy

Social – 

Due to a concern with placing A in a middle school setting too soon (that is fifth grade where we live).

To give our children more distinctly positive social opportunities

Some of you may disagree home schooling to be a viable answer to these issues.  Some of you may not even recognize or share any of these concerns regarding your own children.  That is understandable.  We may not always feel the same way as I did three years ago, or as we do today.  But this is why we are doing what we are doing now.

Doing nothing for two hours in the mornings may not be an option in a few years, but indubitably I do not miss chasing down the school bus or scrambling for a lost homework paper after cramming down toast and jam.  I can  choose to see days with slow, lazy unproductive beginnings, or I can appreciate my family all together functioning as a unit, albeit imperfectly.  My boys can wake up slowly if they choose, and they are good friends.  I don’t think I want to change that.

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!

Psalm 133:1

*The title of this post is a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Growing up, my dad would always ask these sort of nonsensical questions, which on the surface, do not seem necessarily related.  Back in his day, however, those kids who did walk to school were also allowed to go home for lunch.  So, if you brought your lunch, you probably did not walk.  As homeschoolers we sometimes go for walks, sometimes we take our lunch, sometimes we hit Subway or Chipotle, and sometimes we just stay home for lunch.