I came to homeschooling with different struggles and different preconceptions.
I came to adulthood with different experiences. I traveled to different places. I was enrolled in eleven schools before graduating high school and lived in nineteen places before I was twenty.
I’ve learned that everyone around me has different frameworks in life.
They saw different music concerts than I did growing up. Their musical devices are filled with music I might never listen to. And we might read different genres of books.
They experience family relationships differently than me. They have different educational backgrounds. They chose to have children for different reasons, and a few didn’t have children at all.
“I try my hand at being myself.”
Bob Dylan
So it shouldn’t be any wonder that we approach this homeschool lifestyle differently either.
Some are a little more liberal, some more conservative. Some more regimented, some more carefree. Some prefer textbooks, some prefer historical fiction.
We’re different. Surprise!
We already knew we were. So we’ll not expect uniformity in our homeschool approaches.
When we listen and we speak from our hearts, we learn from one another. We might hear a gem of help from unexpected places, and have our path move in a more peaceful, freeing, and useful direction.
That’s the beauty of being open to know (and be known) by others.
There are always gifts to be received in the nuggets of wisdom that others share when we’re open to hearing them. There is a wealth of experience we can tap when it’s not just coming from our story.
So I’ll try my hand at being myself.
Ours is one story in an anthology of many stories. So we need to offer our stories, allow ourselves to be ourselves, so we’ll give much, and receive much.
The problem with my chapter is that I’m not always clear on who myself is. I think in writing the story I have to honour that, that role is ever changing. I find it interesting to be 40 and have young children. I think my children experience a different parent than if I had, had them when I was 18. I could say they have a more mature parent, but honestly I think in some ways they have a more disengaged parent -one who is trying to find herself in this new half of life while helping her children round out their early education. Not saying it is bad or good – just interesting – the tangle comes in being true to oneself, ones philosophy of home-schooling and child rearing and, even more so at this age, being ok with seeing that morph into something unique and different quite frequently.
I see it too. We’re not static in our stories. We’re always morphing into greater awareness of ourselves…unless we’re not, of course. There is no completion, or perfection. But when were fairly thankful and gracious, we have a lot to give (with a healthy helping of boundaries of course).