Is it Christmas yet?
Are we done for the year?  Can we be?  Huh?  Huh?  Huh?

Yes, there are days when those words run through my head, and that’s only in February!
Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re being selfish or self-centred for choosing to home educate your kids!  I could have a life that involves talking to a range of other adults on a daily basis if I weren’t at home with my kids.  I could go to the gym and have the body of an athlete if I didn’t do this.

Yeah, right!  (At least to that last one.)

Some days are bloody marvellous with your kids, and other days are like Chinese water torture.  As the year goes on and as everyone starts to become tired of the constant company, there are slightly fewer of the first and slightly more of the latter.
I’m sure there are super-mums out there who have the juggling of personal time, fitness, kids’ activities, date nights with hubby, and the serious business of having the kids learning stuff, down to a fine art.

I have to confess to not being one of them.  And I think it’s time for more blog posts about that side of our serious commitment to our kids’ education.

I wonder if most blogs about this only want to highlight the good stuff because of that dreaded social media disease of one-upping / living a false life in front of others, or whether there is still a good sized fear that to actually talk about the hard stuff might add ammunition to the anti-home ed brigade out there.
Personally I’m not sure which it is, but it’d be nice if we could gain a bit of balance in this.

I’m pretty sure that no one’s real life looks like their Facebook feed, or their Instagram account.  As a seasoned home ed veteran said in a group I belong to, and I paraphrase, “It’s like a highlights reel.”
And that’s the truth of the matter.  The fun bits are there to see, not the arguments, the frustrations, the let downs.

As for the folk who think home ed people are a bunch of hippy/fundamentalist/tinfoil-hat-wearing weirdos doing irreparable damage to their kids, I’m pretty sure there are school parents whose home life isn’t the stuff of fairytales either. (And they aren’t shoulder to shoulder with their kids on a daily basis!!)

So yep, by this time of year it’s beginning to wear thin.

And what does a conscientious mother do to get over that hump each day?

Yep.  That helps.

Oh, and taking an unschooling or project based approach goes some way to chilling out too.  Or take some good advice on clawing back some time for yourself, and remember that to create self-motivated, life-long learners it’s a marathon not a sprint.

Good luck.   I know we all need a bit of it some times!

Yesterday’s post title came from John Lee Hooker’s “Wednesday Evening Blues”