Tag Archives: homeschooling

The Baby

3 Replies

In true form for me, I was last-minuting some household duties and realized I needed to get my baby signed up for college classes for his junior year of high school.

The baby.

As we wait on hold with the college, I ask him what fun things he wants to do this year now that it’s just him and his ol’ ma. The last one to go through this little homeschool where we read good books and cry together over high math and learn most of the best lessons in the hayfield or on the barnyard.

I think about the days when I was so high strung trying to teach his older siblings that his busyness and need to constantly construct was an intrusion on the school day.

That was before I knew the value in letting them learn how they best learn.

Before I knew how important it was to let their mind fill with things that interested them and to let their creativity flow over the things they were passionate about.

Those are things he taught me, this baby of the family.

The caboose on this crazy train is the one who somehow always brings us all together, either from his sweet and tender-hearted peacemaking, or in allied annoyance at his whistling, tapping, rapping, banging, knocking, or constant need to share the worlds of trivia that swarms in his head and grows while he sleeps.

The baby of the family.

I’m married to one, and it wasn’t until I had one of my own, straight from my womb, -this one has to be the last one, the doctor said after that hard, hard delivery- that I finally understood the beauty and the gravity of the baby of a family.

As a firstborn, I’m the one in control. I’m the one who calls the shots. I’m the one who steers the ship, makes sure everything is just so, that everyone is taken care of, that all the details are tended to.

And years of being married to a roll-with-it, slap-it-together, plan-on-the-fly guy…we argue a lot and why doesn’t he just GET ME? Why doesn’t he just GET IT RIGHT?

But then these babies come along…one…two…three…and the uptight mellows some and the need for perfection gets pushed down to the bottom of the basket right along with the rest of the dirty laundry, and this marvel comes along, this little bundle who ties us all together…who puts a pretty ribbon around the whole package.

His coco brown hair smells of newborn and I brush it with my lips when I walk the room with him in the middle of the night.

Norah Jones plays on the old Bose stereo we play low in our room because she helps him sleep, and his siblings dote on him every waking moment. His big sissy thinks he is her baby, and his other big sissy confides in him, and his big brother takes on a fatherly role and carries him to the changing station for me when it’s time for baby to have a new diaper.

Somehow things change with the baby.

And now, things are still changing with the baby, and when I start the process of his school paperwork, -here we are just a week out from school-year time, I realize he is the last of the students in my little homeschool, and the last of our brood to grow into adulthood.

Somehow in the days between the one when he was born and today, three of my four children have grown into adults.

We have raised a family.

They don’t tell you how quickly it will all go.

Oh, they try. Those grandmothers and the wise women at church.

They tell you Just wait.

Cherish every moment.

But they say it in a way that makes you feel like they are so wise. So seasoned. Like they know how hard you’re working, but that even in that knowing, they know something you just don’t, and maybe never will; something you can’t quite put your fingers on or your heart around.

They assure you and tell you that one day soon, it will get easier, but just you wait. And you feel that one day in a future lifetime, you’ll enter into a world that only the wise, seasoned ones have ventured, and it all feels so foreign as you stand there before them, receiving their warm hugs while breast milk leaks into your bra and rolls down your belly and a little one clings to your knee while the other one runs down the hallway. And maybe your eyes are a little bit forced and wide as you expend every ounce of energy trying to make your face look normal and like it isn’t desperate and longing and feeling beaten and bruised by this life you chose that has you feeling like every day is another chance to run another marathon before you even heat up the skittle for the grilled cheese sandwiches at lunchtime.

They know though. They’re just gentle with us. They don’t want us to be afraid, because they know that really, we already are scared.

We see how fast the years go, even as the days inch.

We see how much they grow, how much they absorb, even as it feels like dinner is a lifetime away.

And the pace of it all makes us fearful.

Because as these children grow, what we don’t realize in the everydayness of dirty laundry and dirty floors and brushing hair and teaching manners and making sure they play outside and don’t eat their boogers but that they do eat enough vegetables…

what we don’t realize is that we are growing right along with them.

We forget that part.

Or maybe not forget; maybe just don’t have time to ponder.

But that is what the wise ones know.

That we are raising those precious ones, yes.

But we are also raising ourselves.

We are growing into women who will one day be wise. We are growing into aunties and sisters and friends who will one day laugh at the days to come, and who won’t worry about changing our face so that others won’t see our fears or how close we’d come to the brink of questioning our sanity as we broke up one more squabble…

No, instead, we are growing into women who will instead embrace. The friends, the fears, AND the uncertainty of our sanity.

We will have walked through a battlefield, a beautiful, wondrous, rolling battlefield…

and we will realize we have grown right along with our children.

That’s what the baby does.

The baby makes a mama realize that really, it will be okay.

That the dirt under the fingernails isn’t neglect; it’s proof that we played.

That the odd blurts and sayings aren’t an illustration of being undisciplined; they are evidence of a free spirit and a decision to embrace life in all its weird and awkward moments of humanity.

That the being late, or being early, or not being there at all isn’t evidence of either being high strung or not caring; it is a flexibility that has fully accepted the fact that life is sometimes really what happens when you’re busy making plans.

The baby makes the firstborn relax.

The baby makes the firstborn enjoy life.

The baby makes the firstborn remember.

That it DOES all go so fast.

That we DO have to cherish every moment.

And that we WILL make it.

So, as he drives me home at the end of a long day -his brown hair long and carefree, blowing in the wind of the open window, I listen to his chatter and smile at the amount of material he covers in our ten-minute drive.

His mind packed full of trivia has to unload it all now and then, and when he feels a connection with someone, he tells of all the things he’s learned in this big world, and soon I’m learning about armor-plating on dinosaurs, which leads to the ideal material for ammunition, which leads to the composition of bullets, which rolls into a brief discussion of radiation and radium, and soon we’re on to the weaponization of diseases by various governments, which delves us into the conspiracy theory side of life as it pertains to the JFK assassination and Ruby Ridge. I make him put a pin in MK Ultra, as my brain is tired, and anyone who has spent more than five minutes with my baby knows the feeling.

He overwhelms with information.

He teaches.

He shares.

He puts a bow on this package of life, and he shows what it means to be part of humanity.

All sides of it.

He loves.

We’ll get him enrolled into his college classes, and I’ll spend my last two years as a homeschool mom with this kid who has really been the one to teach me.

I’ve been casually resting my hand against the headrest of the driver’s seat, and while his long locks blow in the wind, I weave my fingers through the end of his curls and remember his baby brown hair and how it felt on my cheek all those days I cradled him.

How did this all go so fast?

How have I graduated three out of our little homeschool when I was just teaching them how to read, how to count?

How do I have adult children now, young people who are forging their way in life, learning how to lean into their own faith, their own decisions, blazing their own paths?

How are we in the season where we yearn for occasions when we are all in one place at one time, and we stop the clock when that happens?

How is he all that is left of the long years of childhood, those years that seemed to stand still for so long, cradled in the sweet and gentle spot where families are raised?

How are my babies all grown and changing every day from those under my charge to those who are becoming my best friends in life?

How is it just he and I now in this world of mother and child?

He talks and talks, and I laugh at all he knows.

At all the ways he is different from me, but that he is out of me.

He is of me.

How did it go so fast?

What are we going to do this year, bud? It’s never been just me and you.

He opens the sunroof and talks about petrichor and why it smells the way it does after rain, and how much he loves Alaska and her dark forests in the summertime, even as I get a strong whiff of autumn coming through the open windows.

It will be a long winter.

They always are.

But somehow these ten minutes make it all seem a little shorter, and I feel a little wiser.

These days are short, but our years have been long, even as fast as they’ve gone by.

Maybe I have some of the wisdom now of the older ones.

Maybe I’m starting to understand.

The battlefield of motherhood is beautiful.

He doesn’t know it, but as he drives and keeps chatting on and on, I quietly twist his curls up a little bit more around my fingers…

…and I pretend that he is still my baby.

“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb.” – Jeremiah 1:5

The Day I Quit Trying

4 Replies

We sat at the kitchen table and both of us cried.

That was the day I quit trying.

The steam rolled out of my coffee cup and my tears fell and mixed with the hazelnut creamer.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

He hunched over the table, his mug untouched.

“Me neither Mama.”

Here we were, not yet halfway through the school year, both of us ready to quit kindergarten.

It was my fault. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was pushing him too hard. Or maybe not hard enough. Kindergarten was a lot more difficult than preschool. This wasn’t fun for anyone anymore. I was failing him.

The discouragement filled the house.

The tears rolled down our cheeks and we both sat slumped, me over my coffee, him over his milk, both of us resigned and weary at the kitchen table that early winter morning.

When we’d officially registered our boy as a kindergartener, checking “homeschooled” in the box on the paperwork, I was sure he’d be reading the Scripture passage for the Christmas program at church in December. Positive of it. I even told my husband that.

“He’ll be reading strong by December for sure.”

He was a precocious child. He’d been read to every day of his life. He knew his ABCs and he knew all his sounds. I was a strong reader. Why wouldn’t he just pick reading right up and take off with it?

Scan

But it didn’t come that easy. I began to notice the subtle cringe when we brought out his Pat and Nat books. I puzzled over why he couldn’t sound out the simplest of words, ones he’d already sounded out before. I pushed. If we could just do it enough times…

I’m ashamed to say, there were tears on the face of my little boy more than once when it came time for him to work on reading.

After weeks of popping in a Dora the Explorer tape for the toddler after putting the baby down for her morning nap, then grabbing him and cuddling up on the floor with his reading box only to have our session end badly, I was done. I’d had it.

Something inside of me died a little as I told myself I was wrong to think I could ever homeschool my children. I was sure I was doing them a huge disservice and the public school, the professionals, could do a much better job.

Part of me gave up.

Which was a huge blow to my mama heart. Because I really loved homeschooling. We’d done it the year he would’ve been in preschool…just to try it on. I wasn’t sure how it would all work, logistically, should we send him to the local elementary school. Having a baby, a toddler and a kindergartener to get out the door in the dead of darkness and at temperatures below zero would’ve made our mornings something I didn’t want for our peaceful little home.

On top of the easily explainable, those logistical arguments for homeschooling, my heart just wasn’t ready to set my boy out into the world. I didn’t have to. So why would I want to?

I was his teacher. I was the one who taught him his alphabet, taught him how to bake cookies. How to count to twenty, the names of all the road signs, and the brands of all the different cars. At home we learned his colors, his shapes, favorite Bible verses, how to feed the dogs, how to open doors for ladies, how to make a bottle while Mama changed a diaper, how to gently hold a baby.

In the hush of our home, he was learning the foundations to the academic skills he’d need someday for college and vocation, but more importantly, he was learning all the character skills he’d need to be a good man, husband and father.

967212_10200203635754518_953744307_o

I didn’t want to – I wasn’t ready to-  hand him over and let someone else be responsible for teaching him how to read, how to do big math, how our country came to be, the latest theory on the origin of humans.

It was my job.  In a different situation or a different place, I might feel differently, but with this child, at that time, I saw it as my job and my husband agreed. We’d keep him home.

So when it didn’t go as planned, in my mind it was naturally my fault. I defaulted back to the “someone else could do it so much better than I” self-talk.

Somehow at the kitchen table that morning I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten that Scripture verse I’d underlined in Isaiah when the babies first started coming. That one that had greasy finger marks by it and wrinkly paper from the drying of teardrops. That one that always brought comfort, always assured me, right there in 40:11 it’d remind me…

…He gently leads those that have young.

How could I have forgotten that?

Over my coffee, God reminded me again that morning, and that was the day I decided to quit trying.

Pat the Rat was going up on a shelf, I told my son, and relief flooded his face. Before the seconds-ago tears of disdain were even out of his eyes, joy spilled through and pushed them rolling down his cheeks to the big smile waiting.

He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart…

I gathered my boy close to my heart and we hugged long. I asked him to forgive me for pushing him so hard. Told him I wanted to be a good teacher and that I needed to figure out how he learned. The way I was doing it wasn’t the right way. Told him I wanted him to always love reading and that if we kept going this way he would hate it so we weren’t going to keep going this way.

I released him from my expectations.

And three months later he started reading.

Not the Pat and Rat books, they never came back to my boy’s reading pile. But his new book, one that proudly graced his nightstand, a complete volume of Dick and Jane he’d started reading at night with his Dad. A three-sentence chapter every night. Relaxed, cozy in his bed, close to his Daddy’s heart. Most every evening for six months.

By the same time the next year, he was on to emergent readers, excited to learn new words and read “big books”.

By the time he was in third grade he had a stack of chapter books as tall as him on the nightstand and carried one everywhere he went. His Hardy Boys collection was his prized possession and he’d proudly tell anyone that he’d read every single one.

It wasn’t that my boy couldn’t read.

I just had to figure out how he learned. And how to know when he was ready.

I had to know when to push to make it happen or when to quit trying so it could happen it its own time.

That’s my job as his teacher, as his mama.

Thankfully God doesn’t take a learning curve for His firstborn. He doesn’t have to travel through the hard lessons of parenting like we do. He knew what He was doing and knows what He is doing and He tends us like a shepherd and He gathers us up. When we’re not ready He knows, but when we are ready He’ll push gently and always, always, He carries us close to his heart.

And He’ll lead us when we have young.

551763_3777777443899_1555133859_n

Our fourth child just started kindergarten here in our little homeschool. I’ve learned some since that tearful morning long ago. I’m a drastically relaxed version of that first-year homeschooling mama. And thankfully, in spite of that first year, my firstborn is a relaxed and happy student. In the sixth grade now, he loves to read. He loves to learn. He loves to do his schoolwork in the home we learn and love in.

And my girls, my middle students, they delight in reading to their little brother and helping him make new words. Pat the Rat has made an appearance or two but there’s no pushing this time. When it goes back on the bookshelf, it isn’t because there have been tears involved.  It’s because it’s just time for a new book. There are no high expectations of when my kindergartener will read or how he’ll read or what he’ll do once he starts reading. He’ll read when he reads.

Until then, we’ll keep on doing what we love to do. We’ll learn new things. We’ll play new piano songs and bang on the drums. We’ll stretch ourselves in math. We’ll study the foundations of our country and we’ll create beautiful art work. We’ll enjoy the Bible and we’ll love on the library and we’ll learn how to write better and we’ll grow in grace and knowledge.

And when it comes time to read we won’t cry.

We’ll smile.

533200_3779156358371_460506278_n