Here we are in what would be the 7th- and 3rd-grade years of the girls homeschooled lives. Violet (the 7th grader) is at this point pretty fully a high schooler, academically, and our schedule shows it. Between her usual desire to do EVERYTHING and the higher level of both input and output expected, she’s having to step up her game. It’s not all unicorns and rainbows, but I’m pretty proud of how she’s making her best effort much of the time.

One thing newbie homeschoolers are frequently asked is: “What will you do when they need to study algebra/physics/some other thing you are obviously too stupid to understand yourself?” We heard this question first when our daughter was six; though she was indeed profoundly gifted, it was hard not to be insulted by the assumption behind the question. It seemed likely that we had a while to worry about that stuff.

The time has come, however: she’s surpassed what I can do without a few extra hours of study in my nonexistent spare time. Algebra is long behind her (she taught herself, and I was able to be reasonably useful through a good chunk of algebra II,.) She insisted on studying both chemistry *and* physics this year, largely because folks in our homeschool community have organized such fantastic opportunities that she couldn’t turn either one down.

I couldn’t be happier. Her chemistry class is run by a young man who supervises the labs at some local community colleges. He clearly loves what he is doing, and he also does a great job of getting the students to think about science as problem solving and not merely memorizing a lot of terminology and facts. Learning to do high quality lab reports may be some of the toughest writing she’s ever done, and from what I’ve heard the standards are pretty high.

Her physics teacher is a theoretical physicist who works in the research division of a multinational corporation; once a week, he meets with my daughter and two other kids to help them through Kinetic Books Principles of Physics, in addition to assigning and grading homework and coming up with some cool short- and long-term projects to try. For their chapter on vectors he brought them each a pirate map and assigned to figure out . . . well, a lot of stuff I am *not* too stupid to understand, but too busy. (Right? Right.)

Their teacher is having fun: he’s got three incredibly enthusiastic students who can’t wait to come talk physics with him. The kids are having fun: they get to learn at the high school level from someone who loves his field, and then they go out and play on the swingset for a while before we head home. Violet may never be a physicist, but she gets to have one for a mentor this year and understand that physics is not just a fixed body of knowledge you need to study to graduate, but a diverse and alive field populated by interesting real people.

Oh, and she’s taking an advertising class at our co-op taught by a former brand manager at another multinational, and a programming class taught by a software engineer for a major open source software company. (Of course that second one is her father.) And her former art teacher has offered her private lessons in oils.

Add to that another year of what I’ve started to consider her homeschool homeroom, Online G3, and she’s surrounded by amazing and generous adult mentors. I cannot believe how lucky we are. I know we could have put together other solutions for these classes if we had to, but I’m thrilled that

1) She’s in new surroundings where she has to push herself a little, not for a grade but to get what she came for, and

2) She’s learning that people–not just books and computers–are a great educational resource, and

3) I’m off the hook for motion in three dimensions, because two dimensions were already beyond me.

Will Victoria also homeschool for high school? The future’s unclear. But at least I don’t have to worry what I’ll do when she gets to algebra. Her interest in welding, on the other hand, worries me a little, but there’s time.

Right now my girls are upstairs marching around to Star Wars music, each of them playing several characters in one of their several complicated role-playing games.

This morning they were reading, the 12yo her physics text and William Blake poetry, the 8yo one of her new history books. I think she’s read 5 short books since the box arrived yesterday — two of them while cuddled up in the hammock with me while I re-read Game of Thrones, trying to remember what happened when the series started so long ago, before half the main characters died.

As the Star Wars theme repeats itself, I can’t help but think, hurray for not-back-to-school. Yay for us that this didn’t end this week and won’t end after Labor Day.

I won’t always feel like this, I know, so I have to document and remember. Winter is coming.

The NPR Science Friday segment has E. B. White reading a great passage from the book and wonderful discussion of the intersection of science and imagination.

The author mentioned he had set out to write a book about the natural world and several children’s books—Winnie-the-Pooh, Wind in the Willows—but E. B. White provided more than enough material. I wonder how often the best children’s books have an intimate connection to the natural world; even The Hobbit and A Wrinkle in Time seem to fall in that category. Makes me want to go raid the bookshelves!

p.s. I cannot even write a tiny paraphrase of that lovely line from Charlotte’s Web without tearing up a little.

We went to a family day at a local art museum—something I’d never usually consider, because I hate crowds—because they had LARP.

Brief digression on LARPing.

I had never heard of LARPing until very recently. It stands for Live Action Role Play, and I guess it is what those people with homemade shields and capes over their tank tops and basketball shorts are doing when you drive past the city park on the weekend.

My 12yo is LARPing 24/7. Not with shields or capes. It is sort of a relief to know there is a word for it, though there are also words for things like “delusional” and “dissociation.” I have no idea what she’s doing, usually, but she and her closest friends inhabit a fantasy world that has them role playing in person, online, and generally every free moment of the day. Should I worry about this? Probably. But I don’t, yet, because hey, she’s 12. The Bronte kids made up another country and told stories to each other about it for years, and look how great they turned out. Right?

Patron Saints of LARPers?

***End digression***

So we go, and I make up my mind on the way not to be a lame parent who stands around watching kids have all the fun. I made that decision because I often have been that lame parent, watching, participating from behind the camera.

“You go ahead, I’ll watch.”

So when we got to the sword-making table, I grabbed the stuff and made my own. I made a double-ended light saber ala Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. (It is truly pathetic, but it is mine.) Eggmaster made an awesome axe. Violet made a ninja-style sword (apparently they don’t have a hilt), and Victoria made a lovely sword with ribbons hanging off it. We leapt around on the hill dueling while I sang the spooky Sith theme music, cheerfully whapping my kids with a giant foam tube wrapped in duct tape.

Victoria then decided she needed a shield.

(“I am a Jedi,” I said to them. “My shield is my mind.”
“I thought you were a Sith.”
“Oh right, same thing.”)

Sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting for her to finish her shield allowed me to look around at the other shield- and sword-makers in the tent. Right next to us was a woman pressing her design ideas and color choices on her son. Her son who looked to be 12 years old at a minimum. Behind her was a woman who had taken her son’s shield, with the very cool fiery top I had seen him force the volunteer with the box cutter to cut out of cardboard, and laboriously use black electrical tape to create a thin black line around the flames at the top. I didn’t see the kid—who clearly had his own ideas when he translated them to the shield cutter—anywhere.

I was reminded of Victoria’s recent first communion prep, when we were sent home with felt and a white banner and instructed to personalize it. I helped Victoria cut out the smaller shapes, but she chose what to put on there, and she put it on herself. (Oh, and I stitched them a little after the glue dried, just to be sure they didn’t fall off.)

Naturally when we went to church for the Mass, we saw banners that looked like they were running on battery packs: glittery, sequined, with tiny precision cut pieces of felt in lovely mosaics and perfect replicas of Times New Roman 14 pt font.

Whatever: maybe having a family member make a banner like that made the first communicant feel special and loved. Still, I kept an eye out for the ones that were obviously child-made and gave them an extra admiring smile.

And who knows: maybe all the parents in that LARPing tent had developmentally disabled children who can’t hold scissors. I won’t judge any of them—individually.

And I don’t want to criticize them for hovering or being impatient with their children’s obviously childish efforts. My thoughts were not “leave your kid alone!” They were, “I bet you really want to make your own.”

This is something that happens to adults.

“Aw, you go ride the carousel, I’ll watch and take pictures.”
“Go up and dance to the band, I’ll watch and take pictures.”

Take a ballet class, play an instrument, join a team, try fencing, make your first misshapen piece of pottery, act in a musical: you do it, I’ll put it on Facebook or in the scrapbook.

As a homeschooler there are even more temptations:

“Awesome! A Latin class! Latin is so cool!”
“Wow, let’s do a unit study on Asian countries and their cuisines!”
“Look at this great Teaching Company series on masterpieces of English Literature!!”

I can’t deny it: just as a benefit of parenting is having an opportunity to revisit the greatest hits of your childhood, a benefit of homeschooling is having an opportunity to learn a bunch more interesting stuff yourself.

When your kids are very little, however, they require a level of engagement and attention that doesn’t allow you to participate in the activity the same way they do. Their job is to participate; your job is to supervise. They show an interest; you facilitate their exploration of it. And it is fun, and wonderful, and life-enhancing for you to be the person who does stuff both for them and with them, but sometimes that pattern sticks. Low energy, high-intensity kids, busy days, and worn-out nights turn that pattern into a rut. The need to create, however, is strong, and channels itself where it can, even into a little kid’s LARPing accessories.

I can’t judge any of those shield-stealing, banner-making parents, because it’s a rut I’ve fallen into more than once, and probably will again. But once you’ve seen it, it keeps getting easier to sidestep it, especially because making your own turns out to be a lot more fun and a lot more satisfying. (Even if your husband does make fun of your light saber noises.)

Learn guitar, practice the piano, audition for a play, study art history, tap dance, write an essay: I’ll do it, you kids try to keep busy while I’m at it.

September 10, 2006. About 6 months into the homeschooling adventure, getting some use from one of the first toys we got to celebrate leaving school.

Moving into the sixth year of homeschooling, talking about the unit circle and reviewing trigonometric ratios. Dad still can’t contain his enthusiasm for talking math with his girls.

Different dining room, different hair styles, different glasses: look at how much that kid has grown! What I love is the summer afternoon discussion made possible not so much by homeschooling but by the whole family being at home. Not all families have the luxury of having one parent around the house, let alone two, but for us it has been a way of life for most of our kids’ childhoods.

When Violet was first born, I mainly worked from home, but I had a freelance job that took me out of the house twice a week. Eggmaster rearranged his schedule to be home. Over the next few years, as Eggmaster went back to school and I started freelancing more, we each worked about half time, sharing child-raising duties and making not quite one whole income between us. I said we were a 3/4th income family.

Even when Eggmaster worked out of the home, we would all pile in the car and drive him together, and we were fortunate that his schedule allowed him to work any time, as long as he was working. Just over three years ago, he started working from home full-time again, which makes homeschooling so much nicer.

For one thing, I have another adult to vent to when it’s all too much. He takes the longer view and reminds me one day of trouble doesn’t mean our children will be living under a bridge someday. I can’t be so sure about the two of us, but I hope for better for them.

I can also escape the house without worrying about the kids (though now they are old enough to handle themselves). Or I can take one kid somewhere and leave the other one home: little sister doesn’t have to get dragged along to big sister’s stuff, and vice versa. As big sister gets so busy with high school-ish stuff, that really helps.

The best part, of course, is that they get him too. I have learned to be fascinated by math since starting homeschooling, but that’s all I can share. I can be interested, but I can’t be knowledgeable, especially not now that truly advanced math gets ever closer to our reality. I am also not passionate like he is. And when I listen to him teach Victoria a drum beat or record a song with Violet on his electric guitar, I cannot imagine a happier sound.

Any parent can be an involved parent, of course, but I love that we are all here together, living and learning and playing at 2:00 on a Thursday afternoon.

We rode on an Alpine Slide, which is like a sled you ride down a track, usually on an unused section of a ski hill. You take a chair lift to the top, then slide down.

Note: this is not me or my child

So we’re waiting in line at the chair lift and a talkative six-year-old starts chatting us up. Victoria takes this in stride, nodding and giving him lots of “mmmm”s and “oh”s, which takes the pressure off me. Twelve years into parenting and I still get confused when children I don’t know start talking to me. Have you never heard of Stranger Danger, Chatty Kathy? Shall I tell you about it now?

ANYway . . .

The boy can’t get over the fact that empty chairs keep going up the mountain. “The chairs just keep going up, but there’s no one in them. I just don’t understand it.”

“mmmmm,” says Victoria.

“I just don’t understand it. Why isn’t there anyone in them? I just don’t understand it. I just don’t understand it. I Don’t. Under. Stand.”

Victoria is silent for some time. She then turns to him and says:

“It’s just like the meaning of life. No one knows what it is.”

They both watch the chair lifts silently from then on, until it’s our turn to go up the mountain.

We have 2 Lego Hogwarts castles and minifigs galore from smaller sets. Violet read the books so much for a time that I debated hiding them so she would read something else. We have multiple family activities that are based on a deep knowledge of Harry Potter, and for one crazy summer we homeschooled by pretending that Violet had been invited to participate in a Hogwarts correspondence course, which involved me writing letters from each of the professors, trying to imitate their voices, and arranging for their delivery by a sort of owl post.

Many adults I know have been looking back at the principle actors/characters growing up, often with a hanky handy. This one got to me:

What all these “look back at the kids over the years” moments remind me of is that the Harry Potter series has been, at its heart, a coming of age story. As the last books were coming out, reviewers and readers were making lots of comparisons to Narnia and Lord of the Rings, Lewis and Tolkien. We talked about it on the blog, on a page I kept separate to hide any spoilers: Harry Potter Talk.

It would be impossible for a fantasy series not to be heavily influenced by the most significant fantasy series of all times, but I still think these comparisons are unfair and misguided. The Harry Potter series, as I said back then, is a much more personal story than that, and Harry’s biggest job—the job both Dumbledore and Snape were trying to help him do— was to grow up right. He needed to grow up kind, brave, and humble while knowing all the while that he was The Chosen One.

It’s what all kids need to do. Each child, in her own mind, is The Chosen One, the center of her own story, yet growing up well means recognizing her independence as well as her dependence on others, and embracing her true power while putting that power in service of something other than herself. This is the battle Harry Potter fights, and that kids are fighting all the time. It’s the crux of every book: can Harry develop his full powers, and can he make the right choice about how to use them?

That question, ideally plus loads of magic, is the journey of childhood, in which even the biggest superstars of the adult world can only play a supporting role.

It’s been great. We’ve met great people in person and online. I have made wonderful friends and so have the girls, Violet and Victoria. I like to think that deciding to unplug from school opened the door to my husband, Eggmaster, thinking harder about where and how he wanted to work: not too much later, he got a new job, and then we moved to a neighborhood he loves.

But regrets, I’ve had a few. Not just parenting regrets —good god, who doesn’t have those —but homeschooling regrets. They might look familiar to anyone who’s ever picked up a homeschooling book, those newbie mistakes that you have to make for yourself. And make them I did.

To commemorate five years of homeschooling, here are five mistakes – and a great deal of rationalization to go along with them:

1. Doing too much too soon
I did say these would look familiar, right? We did our mandatory “deschooling” period, but I wish it had been longer and a lot more fun. Then again, I wish I were more fun and relaxed in general.
However, this deschooling thing is hard to get right. Like many PG kids, Violet felt like she was starving to death in school, and leaving school was supposed to be her opportunity to feast. After a month of no “school” she was excited to try Chinese and start reading history and learning some interesting math. And I was eager to prove to naysayers that it would all be OK. So we dove in, and by a process of accretion soon ended up doing too much.

2. Not getting the right support for homeschooling
It’s taken us a while to find the people who bring the Kleenex box over when it’s all too much and who laugh evilly with us at inappropriate times. There were people who knew about resources that might have helped us “feast” on learning without getting too schooly, but we couldn’t find them.
Our first homeschool group—now it can be told!—kind of fell apart soon after we joined, not least because of a little hanky panky among spouses who were not, at the time, married to each other. And who knows why it took me so long to connect with the gifted homeschool group – oh no, wait. I think I know why. Because we’re all skittish and introverted and group-averse, at least until somehow we get to know someone and then it’s just a big freakin’ love fest. And I hate driving, and then we moved, and we always had too many commitments.
I wish we had succeeded at connecting with a supportive group from the very beginning, but our own temperaments, our unique needs, and the general frostiness of Minnesota social life made it a slow process.

3. Not getting the right support for giftedness
After 5 years navigating g/t world, and PG world, I’ve learned an awful lot, and damn it could have been useful 5 years ago. I have several friends who participated in gifted toddler and preschool forums online, something that I would never have considered in a million years when I had a gifted toddler or preschooler. Not that I ever thought of either of my kids in that way when they were those ages—no, my adorable four-year-old who was reading adult books and asking for French and Italian dictionaries for Christmas was just “bright,” and I ruled the district “gifted school” out of our school considerations because I didn’t want to be one of “those parents.”
Except that those parents turned out to know a lot of things I needed to learn, and I had a lot of catching up to do when the school forced us into doing some testing. I read around, but I didn’t make connections with the people who could have helped me—and the people who would have been happy to talk to me about what most didn’t want to hear.

4.Working too hard
We started homeschooling at a pretty stressful time in our lives. So stressful that I don’t want to give away a lot of the very private details. While the last five years have been filled with a lot of joy, I have also spent way too much time feeling burnt out. Over the years, many of my own favorite pastimes have slipped away. This is not how homeschooling has to be, of course, but high-need kids plus limited support tends to equal exhausted parents. It’s also easy to get caught up in the “who’s most burnt out” game with other homeschool parents—after a while it comes to seem like the only form of accomplishment and entertainment. Turning things around after you’ve depleted all your inner resources is hard work.

5. Comparing
Back when I first started blogging I read tons of homeschool blogs. Had them on my reader, cruised them daily, bookmarked them all for great ideas. I have learned a few things since that time:
1. I am not crafty. I will never do a project featured on Soule Mama, especially not with my children, who would probably refuse to follow instructions and mess everything up anyway.
2. I do not follow instructions. I’m sorry, I just don’t. The girls and I put together this cool magnetic marble roller coaster yesterday and we were absolutely hilarious. I would point to the instructions and Violet would nod and say “oh, right” while looking at the ceiling, and I could not get angry with her because I am the same way. As my husband said when he came to rearrange the coaster that we had put together backwards, so that the beginning and end would not meet, “Details matter.” But I have a hard time making them matter to me, so trying to implement some of the fantastic things I have seen from La Paz or Elizabeth Foss has been a Epic Fail. (Though I can hope that I have been inspired by them indirectly!)
3. I am not sweet. Homeschool bloggers are, by and large, a sweet bunch, and Catholic homeschool bloggers in particular. I admire them and look to them as role models. But after 40 years, the evidence is in: God did not make me that way.
4. My kids are not like other kids. (Neither are yours, obviously.)

Five years later, I still make tons of mistakes, but mostly they are not these mistakes.

And with any luck at some point soon I’ll be able to mark the beginning of the next five years with five things I’ve done right.

Some choice examples:

“Inspire envy” — how, exactly? Envy for the spittle that comes flying from my mouth during a surprise spasmodic coughing fit? For the menthol coating on my teeth?

“You got it in you” — well, yeah, I guess I do. That’s why I’m on these antibiotics.

“Get back in there, champ!” — unless “there” means “bed,” you, cough drop, can fuck right off.

“You’ve survived tougher.” — I suppose I have. That’s a positive thought. I can make it, as long as I take good care of myself, drink lots of fluids, and get plenty of r—

“Power through!” — Hey! WTF Halls Cough Drops?! Is this how you ensure you get repeat customers, encouraging people to run themselves down even further?! I call foul.

It’s not enough that my antibiotics are filling me with unfocused rage — now my cough drops have to mock and goad me?

“I’m saveing money for colledge.” “You know you ought to help.”

So yeah, you can find me under the covers, possibly with a glass of wine.

On the plus side, I do think the 7yo is going to make a great grifter someday.