6/12/2016 0 Comments When to quit HOMESCHOOLLet's get this straight. I'm not a quitter, but I do know when enough is enough....well eventually. But before that, I frequently worry that I'm not doing enough, not being organised, not 'teaching' properly, not providing enough proper opportunities for the kids, that they'll not get into University, that I'm letting them down for future jobs, that I can't sustain this, that they're not getting a good enough cross section of life. Sometimes those thoughts make me want to quit... But not today. I've quit worrying instead. Today, we are having fun. Yes, even me. Today we are just being and moving with the casual and relaxed pace of children. They are so much slower than we 'grown ups' are. We rush around desperately trying to 'save time', 'find time', 'make time' for all the things we HAVE to do ( or at least all those things we deem to be vitally important at the time). Most of it isn't really relevant, or necessary. The majority of it is merely self imposed deadlines. Maybe that's the stuff we should quit.
The kids know what is important... they play and play and play. In the playing they learn. It was Lego star wars today... in the process they found their long lost light sabre and celebrated its return with a resounding "WOOHOO"; made a series of land and space ships and compared contrasted the various pros and cons of each craft; had an epic interstella battle where good triumphed over evil but not until a few peoples lives were sacrified. They also made up an imagination game with troll dolls and created a Troll show; Wilby watched 3 episodes of Bear Grylls survival guide, whilst Maya listened and sang along to her Kareoke machine. Side note: Wilby now knows that if you're stuck in the desert and you find a termite mound that you can get your daily protein needs from eating two termites. He also discovered that the Rocky Mountains are in North America and you can't drink the water there because it contains nasty viruses such as Giardia. I know he learned all this because he made up a quiz game for me to play and guess the answers!! I also noted that Maya can sing in perfect pitch and knows ALL the lyrics to ALL the songs. I am working on balancing their needs with my own tho...that's the really tricky part. There are 'games' that I want to play, places I want to go, things I want (read 'need') to do. Striking a balance between my wants/needs and theirs is a daily challenge. It mostly relys on me revising my value system, constant questioning of my inner critic, clarifying to myself 'is this really necessary today?' is it 'make or break to do this RIGHT NOW?' Usually the inner critic is silenced when I advise he/she that the world wont come to an end if I don't get the washing done today. I also find I need to explain in a very calm way that sometimes in life we have responsibilities that need to be followed through and that knowing when and how to do this is part of being a grown up. I don't know if this is the right thing to say. I'm sure there are better ways. I don't know them yet. I've also discovered that when I take my foot off the accelerator and slow down to the kids pace, the perfect time to do what we all need seems to just 'happen' and everything gets done... without the angst. I didn't have to yell to get them to do what I wanted to do today... it was just a natural progression throughout the day. The only time I raised my voice was out of sheer desperation to make a "i have to go RIGHT NOW" pit stop at the bathroom after taking too many herbs for bound up bowel the night before!!! I almost yelled then... and yes, I did use a little argy bargy to hustle them to the car so we could find the bloody public toilets, afterwhich I regained my composure and we returned to the laundromat to pick up the, now dry, washing. There are absolutely times when mums' needs DO come first!!! Anyhoo... today we did well. We learned, I washed clothes, while they played I worked and finished three blogs for one of my writing clients, we enjoyed quiet time and the air con at the local library which let me rent the washer for our new house, laughed together at my desperate toilet incident, and tonight we are enjoying the festive season with a tree lighting and carols together. Today we quit with the worry, the rush, the stress, the tension and rolling with the easy energy of being together without the pressure of harrying and hurrying through life in a blur. Boy it feels so much better this way!
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