I can’t believe how homeschooling has changed our family for the better. I can’t believe that I just wrote that last sentence either, but it is true. We are all so much more relaxed and happy. Starting with timetables -  there is no more scrambling in the morning to be ready for the school bus and I don’t feel I have to be strict about bedtime either, worried about how tiredness could affect the T-Bot’s performance the next day.

But obviously that is not the whole story. Mainly we are no longer on tenterhooks. Will he be upset going to school? Will he come home with accusing notes from the teacher today, detailing how he refused to work, neglected to work, was sent to the principal’s office? Notes full of undertones about how he is lazy, unmotivated? Will he climb off the school bus with his little hands balled into fists, angry? Will he wail all the way home, unattended, until he finally reaches a safe place where someone will give him a hug? Or worse, arrive home his face shuttered, eyes blank?

That is all I will say about before. We are now firmly in after and everything is OK. Home schooling would not even have been a possibility for me if the T-Bot was not a joy to have around the house. After a few short weeks at home he is calm, serene. When I tell him it is time for school, he sighs.  “Oh maaaaan!, not spelling! You know I don’t like spelling!”. But he sits and he cooperates (mostly … he is after all, a six year old boy and a little quiet resistance should always be expected… ), as we sound our way through words, even though it seems like torture to him.

The T-Bot is having trouble mastering spelling. He has no such troubles with math, or reading or science. His bedtime reading right now is an adult book, “The Human Body” and he has chosen to study in depth the chapter on pregnancy and birth. Thankfully, conception is not included. Let’s leave those explanations until he is seven.

Today we discussed ultrasounds and I showed him the first ever photos I ever saw of him, 20 weeks before he was born. In First Grade the school part of homeschooling should take up about an hour a day but between the struggle with spelling and all the extra research we have been doing we usually overrun by hours.

I have had my moments of panic, and they take me by surprise because panic is not really my thing. The problem is not with the homeschooling as such, it is with the impact it has had on my time. Hours a day which would previously have been mine to spend working, doing housework and running errands are now no longer there for the taking. I struggle to keep downstairs tidy while upstairs almost every single toy my children own is on the floor. Every evening I clear a path to their beds with my foot. There are piles of laundry in every nook and cranny and some usually sitting waiting in the washing machine. We have three Apple remotes and all of them are lost. Every day The Wictor asks for his favorite show on Apple TV and I lose another 10 minutes looking searching fruitlessly for those remotes before giving up.

But then the family rallies around. Today The Daddy arrived home to find me angrily pulling clothes out of the washing machine and immediately left with Baby Sister on a mercy dash to the supermarket for licorice, ice cream and fruit cobbler. When they returned, Baby Sister gave me big hugs and then all three children went off quietly into the yard to play. They play together so well these days. They have become a team. Somehow the washing got finished, the dinner got cooked. Bathtime and Bedtime passed smoothly and I decided to give myself the evening off. So really, all’s right with the world.

And then the change in the T-Bot makes it all worthwhile. This afternoon I asked him if he was happy. Usually this question would be met with a shrug, but he gave me a big grin and said simply

“Yes. You are taking good care of me”.

Could a parent ask for more?