Magical Thinking

Our old kitchen table finally bit the dust. It had begun to resemble a see-saw more than a table when, with the slightest bit of pressure, one end would droop to 4 o’clock and the other end would shoot up to 10, maybe 10:30. We’ve tried fixing it but the fix never lasts and I’m tired of picking up the loose screws it keeps dropping to the floor like an incontinent pet. It did make some delicious old creaks – the kind of creaks that only a table handed down from your grandparents can make, but I found this “chaulk board” table on Craigslist for fifty bucks and had to have it. It is so cool! And whatever else happens, we’ve got that dinning room table thing taken care of.

I’m pretty sure it’s going to solve all of our homeschooling problems, too.

It’s stupifying how persistent that kind of thinking is:
“If I just had a study I could close the door on I would get more work done.”
“If we only had a fenced backyard and I could send the girls out to play they wouldn’t fight so much.”
“If I could just find the right filing system then I wouldn’t drown in paperwork.”
And the latest “If I just had a nice dinning room table to sit at and do schoolwork at like T has, then we would sit down and work there every day!”

It’s nice to know I’m not alone. A friend of mine, who is also homeschooling for the first time this year and who has a lot more money to throw at the problem than we do, is on her third curriculum for her daughter. We discussed this as she was on her way to Ikea where I was supposed to meet her only Pete got sick and we couldn’t go, but damn it! I’m sure that we would have found all sorts of homeschooling solutions if we could have gone. Today we are off to Half Price books, the poor man’s solution to switching curriculum.

Seriously, though, things have shifted around here in a big way. Going to the unschooler’s park day two weeks ago was the best thing we’ve done all year (and, go figure, it didn’t involve buying anything at all.) We’re off to another park day today or I would write more about it. At some point I want to come back to
• joining the co-op
• our weekend with T
• my meeting with Jewish Family Services
• thoughts about taking Peach out of school next year and keeping them all home with me
• yes, you read that last one right
Hey! I’ve already thought of a title for that entry. I can call it “More action than you can shake a stick at!” Oh wait… that just sounds wrong.

One foot in front of the other

You can usually tell when things start getting desperate around here because that’s when I start taking long overdue action. We finally made it to the unschooler/homeschooler park day yesterday. I’ve known about it since the summer and yet have never made it one. It seems like something else came up every week. It was especially difficult to make myself go at this late, when the initial excitement of homeschooling has worn off and I am feeling completely at a loss. But I went anyway, even though it was a crazy day, with freelance stuff to do, a meeting, P leaving town for the weekend, all of us getting his cold… but I went anyway. Footwork, right? And of course once we were there we had a really nice time and it was totally worth it.

I was only able to stay for an hour, but I was able to make some good connections. It’s amazing what a small world it is – on of the mothers I met is a yoga instructor at the studio where P has been showing his paintings for 5 or 6 years. She has a daughter close to D’s age, and the two of them hit it off right away. The really cool thing about that connection is that they haven’t been to park day at Cottonwood for more than a year, but had decided they wanted to start going again. Coincidence? Maybe. The other women I met is a great source of information. She’s got four kids and has been doing this for years. She calls herself a homeschool consultant, but as of yet is not charging for her services. Does that sound weird in writing? It sounded awesome in person. She’ll come to our house – talk with us about our schedule, our goals, our lifestyle etc. and help us come up with a homeschooling plan that will work for us, even if it’s just for the next few months.

Those were the only two people I had a chance to talk to, and they both do a nice mix of homeschooling and unschooling (though technically I suppose none of us can really claim to be unschoolers if we’re doing any schooling at all. I guess it could be called relaxed homeschooling or something.) Anyway, the point is that they weren’t all hardcore unschoolers. Maybe some of them were. It was a pretty mixed group. There were a couple of people there who seemed to have their identities wrapped up in being “alternative” and those folks definitely had a holier-than-thou attitude about the group of folks next to us whose kids all go to the same school (RISD had the day off). When Patrick and I got a chance to debrief later in the day he was like “I know why those kids aren’t in school. Because otherwise they would get their asses kicked.” It was interesting to watch Peach ingratiate herself with the group of school kids, even though she didn’t know a singe one of them. She ran off to play all their organized games, like sack races. It was like she instinctively knew which group she belonged to.

I found out about a homeschooling co-op that isn’t too far from here. It looks like it’s too late to register for any of the classes this semester, but we can go and check it out. The prospect is both exciting and overwhelming. I don’t know that I have the energy to become emotionally involved in another co-op right now. But the idea of having some structure for D seems good. That and the involvement with other kids. That amount and that kind of socialization seems ideal (or as ideal as we’re ever going to find or afford). She could use a few friends who have an idea of what she’s going through.

I wish that I had the energy/time to sort out my thoughts about all of things that we have tried this year and why most of them seem like such complete failures. It’s hard not to feel that old familiar shame for having “failed” at this so far. It’s such a bummer to find out that, even when I think I’m detached, it turns out that I have all these expectations. I realize that I keep writing the same post in here over and over, how I feel like a failure and yet how we both have learned a lot about what doesn’t work. It was encouraging to be around other families who are doing this, who have been making it work and so I’m trying to just look forward to the next meeting instead of kicking myself for not having gone sooner.