Essay

Moving Toward “What’s Next?”

By: Susan Gabrielle, 5/17/2012 12:14:01 AM

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I was sweating as I dropped my son off at his first day of school. After a cooler-than-normal summer, the sudden heat of autumn radiated up from the playground blacktop. I could tell he was nervous; so was I. The difference: my son is a 7th grader.

Back up a few months.

“Uh, Mom? I might want to go to real school next year.”

I knew these words were coming. Yet my preteen son approached me tentatively, cautiously. He seemed to understand the words might break my heart.

For the past ten years I had worn the label of HOMESCHOOLING MOM. This was not just a title for me, but my whole approach to schooling and children. When my daughter, who is three years older than my son, was headed off to kindergarten for the first time, I made a friend who explained she would be homeschooling her twin daughters instead of sending them to traditional school. As we talked, I realized her ideas were also my ideas of how school should be- hands-on-learning, field trips, classic literature, friends across all age groups. At the midway point in the kindergarten year, I took my daughter out of school, and we began the home education journey.

While I wanted this to be a “way of life” like I had heard about at the yearly homeschool conferences I attended, we could never quite live up to the traditional homeschool family. In the idea story, the mom stayed home, knitted, drank cup after cup of Earl Grey tea, and sat by the fireplace reading Robinson Crusoe aloud while her children listened with something bordering on admiration.

For the years my children were young, up to about age 10, they were fairly content to do this. But as the world encroached in on our little reverie, they wanted to be more like everyone else- listen to the same music, wear the same clothes, and have the same complaints about teachers and classes. I worked hard at finding them opportunities to get together with other kids, mentors, and adults that would be good influences, but for them, it just wasn’t the same.

The turning point came when my daughter told me, the summer before her sophomore year, that she wanted to try traditional high school. My “no, no, no” became an “Ill think about it”, which became a grudging “I guess so.” While it was a huge school of 2200 kids, she made her way and grew in confidence. It wasn’t ideal, but she gained some skills she wouldn’t have necessarily gotten at home.

And now her brother was following in her footsteps. After the first couple of weeks of school where he was “still thinking about” whether he liked it, he too is flourishing. He’s made close friends who have the same interests, and loves his teacher who is an infinitely patient father of three.

After the initial shock of being without children all day, I’m no longer sitting around mourning the loss of them. Rather, I’m celebrating the finding of me beyond the homeschool mom.

Changes In Life

Becoming the woman you were meant to be

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