It was ambitious. On a lot of levels. 10 days, three states, 1,000 miles up and 1,000 miles back. Oh, and we brought an RV travel trailer…which we bought right before the trip. All these things we had never attempted or experienced before. Like I said, it was ambitious.
Today we sat down for the first family meeting we’ve had in a long time. Sarah and I thought it would be good to start them up, probably regularly, to keep us all in sync with what we want our family life to be like and what everyone’s responsibilities and expectations are. It seems like it will be especially important and helpful to continue these as the kids get older, more independent, schedules become fuller, and autonomy increases.
We had a “co-captain pre-meeting” to figure out how the meeting might go and what topics we wanted to try to focus on. We wanted to keep it sort of brief, leave it open for the kids to have a chance to suggest other topics, and have room for everyone to ask and answer questions. I think the biggest challenge of the pre-meeting was figuring out how to strike a balance between structuring it so it was productive and useful, and not having so much structure that it seemed like we, the parents, were just laying down the law or dominating the process.
I wrote my first post about unschooling and how we were thinking about ways to homeschool a little less than three weeks ago, and pretty much right after I wrote that, it became clear we would be jumping in head first, sooner than later. As the testing began and the pressure rose for our first grader, her days became more miserable and her nights filled with stress and anxiety. We found ourselves thinking (again), surely there must be a better way. So we took the plunge and pulled her out of school.
Cross-posted at my personal blog, hokament.
Our oldest has just entered her fifth year of public school with our middle child entering her second, and it's becoming more and more clear, every day, that much of what I read about school from around the country is true for us: public education is broken. I am not an education expert, nor do I play one on TV, but it seems to be that even at some of the "best" schools, education and learning is still about getting good grades to get a good job to make money to buy stuff. And how to get good grades still looks very similar to my primary school education 20+ years ago. In fact, the rubric for success in school is basically the same, too (i.e. turn in your homework, do well on tests, don't rock the boat, etc.).
Last week we were camping in the mountains at an annual event with friends and family, trying to keep the focus on the moment, our surroundings, and simplifying. This coming week, school starts. We’ll try to keep the focus on the moment, but somehow school raises the level of anxiety and stress about 100 notches—which has us questioning (again) if the path we’re on is the right one.
Isn’t that the constant in parenting? Assessing and finding balance. What’s working, what’s not? What do you change and what do you accept? How can we get close to everyone being happy and content? What can we do now to help our kids be the most well-balanced adults they can be?
