Honestly, if you think this is an April fools message I wouldn’t blame you.
2020 is just full of surprises, mama.
Here in my home, we’ve had actual conversations about:
- Buying some land so that we can raise goats and chickens
- Selling eggs from the chickens to buy a horse (Daphne, showing her entrepreneurial skills #sofreakingproud)
- Homeschooling, but for real, because we CHOOSE to
Never in a million years would I have believed these things about myself.
I’m still not sure that I believe these things about myself, but here we are.
Let me back up.
If you’ve ever heard me talk about my why, you’ve heard me talk about walking my daughter to school. We picked THIS HOUSE on THIS STREET so that I could literally walk Daphne to school, and when our world was falling apart and Justin suggested that maybe I should go back to work, I dug in my heels and gave a powerful, stirring speech about why that wasn’t going to happen.
(Okay. It may have been more like a yelling match, but the FEELING was DEFINITELY there.)
I love Daphne’s school. It has a phenomenal bilingual program that I wholeheartedly support and believe in passionately.
It is in an incredible district with teachers who do amazing work every day.
And also, I work from home and actually need uninterrupted time to DO MY WORK, so school is kind of an awesome thing.
Except…
You might not know this about me, mama, but some people think I’m a little bit of a control freak and I like to just do things versus going to ask for help.
I know, I know, it’s hard to believe.
But it’s true — I like to make decisions from a place of strength, and right now, taking control of the situation and deciding to homeschool our kids puts us in a place to make smart decisions for our family.
And yes, I’m extremely aware that we’re wonderfully fortunate to be in a place to make this decision. It’s not something we could have done even just five years ago.
What will homeschooling look like for our family? Well, in an ideal world, we’ll co-teach the kids in the mornings and then have play and rest time in the afternoons while we work. I’m envisioning Daphne making daisy chains while she milks the goats and Henry tilling the land, even though I don’t know what that really means. I realize that the reality may be slightly less idyllic.
I do know that as a family, we’re investing in ourselves — setting ourselves up with the right resources and tools, learning more about how we learn and teach. Justin and I know that we need to ask for help, so we enrolled in a parenting course this summer (it’s amaaaaaaaazing, and you can bet that I’m bringing our coach in to teach our community some of the incredible strategies we’ve learned!).
I do know that there’s a learning curve, and that we’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way.
I do know that what’s right for my family isn’t right for every family.
Most of all, I know that I can ask for help when I need it — and believe me, I’m going to need it.
Stay tuned. It’s going to be a bumpy ride for all of us — but we’re here for each other.
Also — if you feel like you’re on the edge of burnout, I want to help you avoid that and my last episode of FreeMamaTV was all about that. You can check it out here!