Two years ago we had one daughter in reception, one in nursery, and a little toddler emerging out of babyhood. Our days were filled with school runs, school engagements, playdates and little people, and that’s the way I thought it would and should be for us for a while. After all, that’s what people did right?
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But this tug on my heart wouldn’t let me settle in fully. Truthfully, I missed my eldest daughter. It felt like I had two parts to my family, living two very different days – the part with our eldest with us before and after school, ferrying to and fro and rush, rush rushing to get where we needed to, and the part with the younger two, the slower kind with more play and less rush, the one where we got to snuggle on the sofa and read, or linger in the park collecting conkers.
The afternoons mostly leaned towards a heady mix of tantrums of highly strung emotions. Our eldest was emotionally spent, and without meaning to took it out on her sisters, who also needed to adjust to her being back after a day’s adventure without her, and who struggled with constantly being pulled out of naps to get to where we needed to be. It felt strange, this fragmented family life, and I mourned the fact that my daughter spent most of her time away from me. But I thought the mourning was a rite of passage all mums of school aged kids had to go through, so I kept on rushing, and moving, and connecting with school life as best I could.
Then one cold day in February, our sweet big girl came down with some horrible bug that had her sofa bound for three days. We didn’t have to rush to school, we didn’t have to rush through breakfast to get out the door. We didn’t have to do anything. We were just together. And although it was horrible to see my usually vivacious child so unwell and lethargic, the thought dropped into my heart – what if it could always be like this? What if we could be together every day, rather than running around dropping her off and picking her up and navigating the emotional angst and compartmentalised time?
I remember being stood at the kitchen counter, looking at my three precious girls snuggled up on the sofa, around our not so big and very snotty, sleepy oldest on that fateful sick day. I remember flipping open my laptop on a whim and banging “home-school” into my search engine. I remember feeling like it was something to be done furtively, like it was wrong to even look into it. And I remember thinking, “What if I start something there is no going back on?” But I started digging anyway. And the digging led me down rabbit trails that I couldn’t tear myself away from, and into questions I couldn’t stop coming.
So I read. I read deeply encouraging, challenging and genuine life-changing books like Sarah Mackenzie’s “Teaching from Rest”, Susan Macaulay Schaeffer’s “For The Children’s Sake” and pretty much anything by Sally Clarkson, including “The Mission of Motherhood“, “The Life Giving Home“, “The Life Giving Table“, and the huge but super helpful “Educating the Wholehearted Child“. I learned about Charlotte Mason’s life giving educational philosophies and ideas, devoured Cindy Rollin’s account of home schooling her nine children in “Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification” and pondered whether I could ever be brave enough to educate using Julie Bogart’s outside the box ideas in her inspirational read “The Brave Learner“. I discovered the beauty and benefits of regularly reading aloud as a family from “The Read-Aloud Family“, and marvelled at one inspiring home-schooling mama after another on instagram who were making brave decisions to create and cultivate their chosen family cultures.
I read and I read and I read in the early mornings, while the kids played around me and on me, and in the last shadows before bed. I devoured the stories of other mother’s who had bold convictions about educating their children at home, and the merits thereof. And as I read, this wave of nervous excitement and intent grew inside, pushing me towards taking a risk that could change our family life for the better. Could I, should I do the same? Would it be utter madness to take our daughter out of school and pursue a lifestyle of togetherness at home? One where we were able to fit school around our home life, instead of the other way around? Or would it be madness to not try?
Most nights I would pour out my ideas and questions to my patient, enduring husband. And I would always ask – “What if, what if this crazy idea worked? What if we could educate our kids at home, and give them the time and space to play, to be together, to learn together? What if it wasn’t a crazy idea, but the most natural extension of parenting and motherhood there was? What if I could stop reading about it, and actually do it?”
In the midst of all the reading and questions I fell pregnant with our fourth child. The familiar but no less debilitating, gut-wrenching exhaustion and high-low hormones kicked in, forcing me to slow down even further. All writing ceased. All anything ceased unless it was absolutely essential frankly. In many ways, our fourth baby forced my hand into making a decision about home schooling. I had spent the first precious six months of my third child’s life ferrying her to and fro in her car seat, her high pierced screams shattering my insides while I battled traffic to get our oldest to and from nursery in bumper to bumper traffic. She needed to be held, perhaps more than any of my other girls had, but I couldn’t because I was always rushing from one place to another. I vowed I would not let the nursery / school run ruin another fourth trimester, that I would not just endure those precious few months with another newborn around life and commitments out of my control. I wanted to indulge time with my baby, and allow my children to do the same. I found great affirmation in articles like “The baby IS the lesson“, and in the squares and honest captions of other insta-mums juggling teaching with newborns. Friends thought it madness to have everyone home with a new child on the way. I came to the conclusion it was madness to not be together in such a precious, life changing season.
In some ways, it was one of the most difficult decisions we’ve ever had to make as parents. In others, it was the most obvious. The more I read and planned and dreamed and prayed, the more confident I grew that this was the right road for us. I gave myself till June to do all my research and make absolutely sure this was what I wanted to do, rather than pull her out on a whim and send her back if it didn’t work out. And come June, my mind was most definitely made up.
So when the last week of term rolled along, we let our daughter’s school know she would not be joining them for Year 1. By this point, we’d had several conversations with all our girls about our thoughts on home school, and our eldest was fully on board and happy with our decision. I think that initially she was torn between missing her friends and wanting to be with us, spending much of the last term asking to not go in, saying she was “ready for home-school mama!” All this to say – we did it. We walked away from her last day in Reception into a new education adventure as a family, and haven’t looked back.
Thanks for getting this far! If you are interested in hearing more about what life looks for us since we jumped into homeschooling, you can read on here.
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