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Uncovering Homeschool Myth #4

    1. Our kids are unsocialized 

    2. You have to be patient, organized & crafty 

    3. We breed like rabbits

    4.  We all wear glasses and live to be on the “Geek Squad”

    5. We keep our kids in a bubble so they won’t see or hear   evil

So now that I've played Tim Hawkins for you, I'm going to change the subject.

Are you familiar with the story of Seabiscuit?

Seabiscuit was bred a race horse. Except when put on the track, Seabiscuit went every way but straight. He was wild and unruly, walked with a strange gait and was just slow. But something about the horse caught the attention of a cowboy named Tom Smith. He says the first time he saw him, the horse looked straight through him.

I have a daughter kinda like Seabiscuit. Set her down with “school-work” and she’s all over the board. From the day I first put words in front of her to read, my daughter has fled the scene like a dog chasing a squirrel. Thinking she was being rebellious, lazy, obstinate or missing a few tools in her toolshed, I pressed in harder. I tried every curriculum I could get my hands on, buying the sales pitch that this one would be the magic solution. 

Finally, I decided it’s not the curriculum…it must be me. I am the wrong fit for my daughter. I’m not trained; I’m not the professional. It would be better for her to learn under someone else. So I tried to turn in my 2 week notice to my husband, but he wouldn’t accept it. He listened to my complaints, dried my tears and together we made some changes.

What I found was that underneath the giggles, wiggles and fingernail polish lay a brilliant, sleeping giant of a mind.

Kinda like Seabiscuit. Here’s a clip of the story from Laura Hillenbrand's book Seabiscuit:

“With long, careful schooling, Seabiscuit began to figure things out. Once he was no longer being coerced, his instincts bubbled back to the surface. His innate love of running returned. Pollard used the whip not as an implement of force, but as a signal: one glancing swat on the rump at the eighth pole, another a few feet from home, a cue that it was time to hustle. Seabiscuit began to wait for it and respond with lightening quickness. ‘So long as you treat him like a gentleman,’ said Pollard (his jockey), ‘he’ll run his heart out for you.’ Though the horse was still goofing off and pulling tricks in his workouts, his speed was excellent.”

Putting this in the perspective of education, I believe kids have an innate desire to learn. Just like Seabiscuit was bred to be a race horse and therefore had a natural desire to run, our kids, too, are "bred" for something special and it's our job to point them in the right direction. We "treat 'em like a gentleman" and allow their natural love of learning to bubble to the surface.

With homeschooling, we don’t care if our kids make the "geek squad" or not – yeah, sure, I’m sure some do. But that’s not at the heart of homeschooling. At the heart is the desire to unleash our kids to learn – to start that fire burning deep in their souls and fan it in as many ways as we can.  Is it scary? Hard? Oftentimes un-definable? YES!

One of the biggest races of Seabiscuit’s life wasn’t even at an “official” racetrack. It was between he and War Admiral. The day before the big race, Biscuit’s jockey, Red Pollard, suffered a should-be career ending accident and was laid up in a hospital bed. In his place, “Ice Man” Wolfe was set to ride Seabiscuit in this once-in-a-lifetime race. The two talked strategy over the phone. They both agreed War Admiral had more natural speed than Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit usually started slow, then caught up towards the finish line. That wouldn’t work here. If they let War Admiral get away, Seabiscuit would never catch him. So instead, they would break Seabiscuit hard and fast from the start and bet he would beat War Admiral to the first turn. Pollard told Woolf to “gun to the lead, but to keep him in check on the backstretch…” 

To Woolf’s complete surprise, Pollard instructed him to actually let War Admiral catch up. 

"Once a horse gives Seabiscuit the old look-in-the-eye, he begins to run to parts unknown. He might loaf sometimes when he’s in front and thinks he’s got a race in the bag…Seabiscuit is the gamer horse.”

I hate to give away the ending, but it proved true.

Some say Seabiscuit was the greatest horse that ever raced. Had it not been for farmer Tom Smith, Seabiscuit would’ve been destitute to live a life as a lead pony. How sad and unfulfilling that would have been for Seabiscuit!

Somehow, I fear, we have mainstreamed education to the point of putting kids in at one end of the assembly line and then spitting them out at the other, forming them to look just like the mold. 

Again, homeschooling may not be for you. But I hope you decide that for the right reasons. 

Homeschooling is not about winning every race and producing what we think are good scores in life. It’s not about being the smartest kid on the block or district. It’s about, when you have a Seabiscuit child, you don’t let them be OK with being a lead-pony when they were created to be a race horse!

Dear Meme,

Today marks two years since we lost you. I still miss you –

I miss you when I take my first bite of chicken spaghetti,

And when I smell broccoli cheese soup simmering on the stove.

I miss you at Thanksgiving when someone else is sitting next to my Papa. 

It’s not right for you to not be hovering over my shoulder offering me another roll.

3 Ways to build Margin not Balance

I bet if you compiled a list of all your daily responsibilities, activities and “need-to-do’s”, you would soon be looking for a chair to sit down in. Staring at that list is like peering down into the Grand Canyon – it just goes on and on. If not anchored, you’ll lose your balance.

That’s how I feel at least. The demands of being a mom and teacher to my kids, plus the maintenance of owning a home and a dog, often times leaves me toppled over. That’s when I resort to re-organizing my schedule to see where I’m blowing my time budgets. Still, no matter how I try to spend within my means, I’m still exhausted.

Uncovering Homeschool Myth #3

    

  

   

    1 . Our kids are unsocialized 

    2. You have to be patient, organized & crafty 

    3. We breed like rabbits

    4.  We all wear glasses and live to be on the “Geek Squad”

    5. We keep our kids in a bubble so they won’t see or hear   evil

I could use this space to talk about my sex life.

Or, argue the cons to birth control…

But I’m not.

Instead, I’d like to uncover the underlying reason why this is a common home-school myth. Deep down inside all of us lay a funny little quirk we like to do in our spare time: Categorize people. Like filing away papers to be stored in a cabinet for tax season, we file people away into their proper folder. It sounds something like this:

Just to be with You

I’ve had a long standing rule in my house that “wake up” time is at 7:00 a.m. I need my sleep and space in the morning so everyone is to stay in their room till then. Before my oldest son turned three, I had a clock in his room with stars marking the 7 and 12. I followed this timely gift with a conversation about when the little hand points to the 7 and the big hand points to the 12, that means it’s 7:00 and you can wake up! For the most part it worked. At times, even now, one of the kids will push the envelope and crack open the living room door at 6:55, just to check the validity of this invisible boundary. I usually let it slide, but then in a couple days, 6:55 turns to 6:50 and then to 6:45. Before I realize it, kids are jumping in my bed at 6:30 and I’m ready to blow my top. We re-establish this un-movable boundary because I am just a person who has to wake up slowly and calmly, without dealing with “I’m hungry” and “She touched me!” right out of the starting gate.

Uncovering Homeschool Myth #2

   

1. Our kids are unsocialized(click HERE to go to this page)

    2. You have to be patient, organized & crafty 

    3. We breed like rabbits

    4.  We all wear glasses and live to be on the “Geek Squad”

    5. We keep our kids in a bubble so they won’t see or hear   evil

“I don’t know how you do it. I just don’t have the patience to homeschool.”

When the Alarm Clock Fails

 Before turning out the lights to end the day, I had Adam set the alarm for 7 a.m. My parents are in town and my dad wanted to go jogging with me in the morning. Being able to hear the birds sing rather than dodging two way traffic is my preference, so getting out the earlier, the better. At 5:30 my body jolted up, peering through blurred, squinty eyes to see what time the clock said. “In case the alarm forgets to go off,” I thought, “I need to wake myself up.” I did it again at 6…and again at 6:30…finally at 6:45 I thought, “The alarm is set, just trust that it will work.” Sure enough at 7:00, the alarm rang!

When you Find Yourself Waiting in Line...

Standing at the checkout line at my local grocery store, I realized I, again, picked the wrong line. Wrong line, that is, if my goal was speed. Right line, if I wanted to watch the crowd of people I passed in the isles now wave goodbye to their friends.