This is the post I have put off over and over because I was unsure of what, exactly, to write.

Then a few people caught my passing reference on Twitter to homeschooling the T-Bot and I received requests for information.

So, yes. I am now homeschooling the T-Bot. The problem with writing about it is, I am still not quite sure why. I mean, obviously I am aware of the events which eventually led us to pull him out of school overnight. But that was just the climax of a very stressful school year-plus-six-weeks, where everything and anything seemed to go horribly wrong for him.

I have gone around and around and around thinking about this. Just over a year ago I sent the school a happy, outgoing, confident little boy who was very excited about starting kindergarten. A little socially immature and not quite there with language, a little excitable, but generally well behaved in both home and social environments. To cut a long story short, that is not the child they handed back to my care at the end of every school day.

I hoped things would go well this year. The T-Bot was back to his normal self over the long summer vacation and was excited at the prospect of making new friends. Instead, he became doubly anxious, at home as at school, and everything just, for want of a better phrase, blew up.

I can’t assign blame. There are too many factors to consider. Consider a child already prone to anxiety, a large, impersonal school environment with an extreme emphasis on independence from a young age, a strict “zero-tolerance” policy, daily teasing and minor bullying, subtle lingering problems with language, cultural differences, immaturity, boredom with those interminable worksheets, a fear of tests and failure, an intense longing to fit in combined with an almost total lack of guile (he tripped me so it must be cool to trip him…. oh, I got caught), being a six year old, being a boy.

One thing I do know. These problems are mostly environmental. And that calls for a change of environment.

I am just sorry I didn’t do it earlier. Why didn’t I? Because truly, I didn’t want to homeschool. With my last child just starting in the preschool system, I was *this* far away from getting my independence. From next year I would have been able to work, uninterrupted, all day, every weekday, rather than carving out time here and there and mostly after 9pm.

I have been having brief pity parties. My life expectations changed overnight so I think I am entitled. But then I have also been in awe of the T-Bot and how, in a fun and relaxed learning environment, he is so motivated to learn. That’s all I am asking him to do, is learn, the best way he knows how. I am not ordering him to memorize 20 meaningless phonograms, complete two graded tests a week, fill in worksheet after worksheet with drawings of eight things next to the number eight or three things next to the number three, walk around our house two steps behind me with his hands behind his back. Jump through any No Child Left Behind style hoops at all. I do ask him to sit still, concentrate on what we are doing, listen to and follow the instructions. I do ask him to read and write about things that interest him. I do ask him to look at math patterns and how numbers are interrelated until it clicks and he has one of those “wow” moments. I ask him to look at word patterns the same way (did any of us truly learn to spell “work” by memorizing that when -or is preceded by w it can sound like -er ??) . I do ask him to do worksheets, in 5 minute bursts, emphasizing all the way that it will not take long. And when we have finished all this, as a treat, I let him do science experiments.

In the end, I guess, the reason for homeschooling the T-Bot turns out to be very simple. The local public school was unable to teach him in an appropriately stress-free environment.

At the time we removed him from school I was halfway through reading Richard Lavoie’s The Motivation Breakthrough. It was the book which gave me the courage to finally make the break with the public school system. Not because the book advocates that - far from it - but because the solutions in the book require some flexibility and ingenuity from both educators and parents. And how can I ask that of an elementary teacher already feeling the weight of the required standardized testing? How can I ask that of a system which has no provisions for seeing past mediocre test results to my sons real and very apparent abilities,  a system with an authoritarian bent which prefers to repeatedly punish minor transgressions rather than take a good hard look at making school fun so that children are interested and engaged?

I have been reading other books too. About boys and why they are failing in ever greater numbers, being given questionable diagnoses in ever greater numbers. Being drugged in ever greater numbers. I think everybody with a boy - no matter what his character - should read at least one of these. The Minds of Boys is a good one but there is plenty of choice.

I know there are people out there who will read this and think I am an apologist for my child, probably just a lazy boy with disciplinary issues. Obviously these are people who know far more about my child than I do. Let me just say this. There are children that fit in fine in a public school environment. And then there are those who don’t. I just feel fortunate that, like it or not, I have the opportunity to create the appropriate learning environment for my son. I am confident about his future now, because it is in my hands.

And truly, we have all breathed a sigh of relief.