First Day of Homeschool

Today was long.  VERY LONG!  I would love to sit down and write a well thought out recap of today’s events, but I don’t want bore you to tears or bring myself to them.  

That’s not to say that today wasn’t fun, because it had its moments.  As a seasoned homeschooling mom said to me the other day, take my grandiose expectations of homeschool that were way up here *hand over head* and bring them down to reality *hand at chest level*.  I think we might have reached my knees.  

Ok..so it wasn’t thaaat bad.  Tannis completed her assignments and almost entirely without my help (she’s so grown up), whereas Andrew needed the learning coach, oh..wait, that’s me, for almost every lesson. Turns out, Andrew and I don’t communicate all that well and within a few minutes of our first lesson, he shut down.  That’s how he communicates he is frustrated.  I thought I did a better job as a parent teaching him to ‘USE HIS WORDS!’   I didn’t want to react as my ‘parent-self’, which would have included a ‘boy, don’t you give me any of your attitude‘ or ‘go to your room if you’re going to act like that‘.  Instead, I had to let him know that it was ok for him to tell me that I was doing a lousy job of explaining the directions even though I was reading from the book…word for word. Somehow, we managed to come together and find some middle ground.  And as he was finally working through one of his assignments on his own, I saw his face twitch and contort while he was concentrating, and he’d fidget in his chair, tucking one leg under his bottom and then back out in front, and finally I watched as he ran his fingers thru his hair, a triumphant sign that he figured out the problem and I nearly started to cry.  I can’t believe all these years and I had never noticed my son’s idiosyncrasies while he was hard at work figuring out what ever problem was before him.  And I felt honored to be there at that moment. It truly is an honor to see your kids blossom right in front of your eyes.  I felt the waterworks coming, but I pinched my lids shut for a moment to hold back the tears.

And then I felt overwhelmed because the moment was over way too quickly as we were moving onto another subject and another endless stream of questions….

I’m grateful to my kids’ teacher who called me today to see how the day went.  I tried to warn her that she was the first adult contact I had that afternoon, and then I started blabbing my fool heart out. Bless her for listening to my erratic soliloquy, jumping from one subject to another. She certainly spared my husband an earful!

As I would any other first day of school, I took pictures.  The kids were anxious to get started so their smiles waned as I kept going back for ‘one more shot!’

I guess eye lids weren’t the only thing I pinched that morning. Pinching bottoms at just the right moment, turns those frowns upside down… for me anyways!!