I Homeschool. Hey, I'm No Fool!

For serious, President Lincoln.

I have been very hesitant to write this particular blog. People are sure to judge, but that is okay. I am homeschooling Boy#1 (and 2, 3, and nephew#1). Tax increase and higher insurance premiums mean we can not pay the tuition. So, good-bye therapeutic school.

There is no way in Hell I am putting that child in public school. He would get eaten alive. So, his psychiatrist is okay with homeschooling and I am okay and he is okay and away we go. The thing is, I enjoy homeschooling. In many ways, the decision makes me very happy. I also think the school he attended was not able to handle his episodes and they greatly underestimated his potential. Most people's argument against it is "worry for me". Yeah, well. Big Girl Panties.

The episodes. If I keep my act together and space out the medication just exactly right, he is fine. If I screw up - forget it. He actually has been able to verbalize that if he has the medication spread out, he doesn't do what it is he does. There is just deterioration involved with this horrifying disease. I don't know what it means, and I don't want to stipulate.

The teaching. I am an okay teacher, especially if I have good materials. Boy#1 is actually very good in math. He has severe dysgraphia, which makes his handwriting unintelligible. So, the first week I wrote everything for him while he worked it out. I have transitioned to him writing. I told him it was important to work it out because it will use lots of parts of his brain and it is worth it. I really love homeschooling because I can make up something like that and it sounds good and it might be true and it gets him to keep going - I do not have time to Google everything I say. So, I'm teaching these boys of different ages and we're moving along and it is all going to be alright.

Reading. Oh, reading. It is a challenge for all of them. I haven't been able to assess Boy#1's reading skills at all. We'll see. I read as much as I possibly can, so I am privately convinced it is their way to drive me nuts.

That was a bunch of stuff that is probably not terribly interesting.

I told The Father that he needed to teach them some PE skills. As in, how to not get hit in the face when someone throws a ball at them. There was some talk about "lost cause", etc. I said, "If I can teach them to calculate perimeter, area, circumference, and square roots... They can learn to catch a ball.". (i really hope nobody asks them to calculate any of those things any time soon. just know i am trying.)

The Art of Making Impossible Choices Confidently

Cogs and Gears
Spin round my brain at night
Whispers and Fears
Are what keep my mind alight
Insomniac nights are when
I discover I am a poet
The prizes and fame I dream I could win
Fuck that - I am a poet and I know it.

I claimed on FB (which automatically means what I said is truth) that I make impossible choices with confidence. Then, I was asked to explain myself. That got me to thinking. Maybe I do not seem confident. 

But, good grief. The choices I have had to make with ALL of my kids are the equivalent of about 50 Lifetime movies. I have to say - most of the time, I feel like I make the right choice. Everything sort of spins around in my head, then it clicks into place and I am okay with what I need to do. 

Here's the deal, pickles. Being okay with institutionalizing your child for a few weeks is really effing hard. The fact that I do it knowing it is the right thing even though I feel like my heart and soul are being shattered and I am the shittiest mom on Earth - that is what I call confident choice making.

An example of not making the right choice even though I knew it was the wrong choice and it blowing up in my face 1 hour after I made it: I let Boy#1 go camping. He cried and said he had been looking forward to it for a week and he always gets left behind. I had already decided he was not going. I was confident that it was the right choice, albeit the impossible choice. He leaves with his "soft kitty" (a new toy that is licensed by the makers of The Big Bang Theory) that sings the song when you press its paw. 

It broke. I get the call about 2 hours after they have left. He is hysterical and he is having an "episode". What to do, what to do... We'll just leave it at this: he checked out the rest of the day and had to sit in the car and basically made everything a kabillion times harder. Gah. I knew I was right.