Homeschooling invites anxiety. The parent feels they are taking on an enormous responsibility. They are taking a different road and see themselves as only successful if in the eyes of the world if their children not only succeed but live up to very high expectations. The parent must prove to everyone and herself that she has done the right thing, the best thing for her child. There are standards to meet; there is the intimidating goal of getting that child into college. And everyone is watching!
This can be an extremely overwhelming endeavor. Many moms go through burn out. Many give up. They are always measuring themselves against some imaginary perfect standard and of course they always come up short. The imaginary standard is of the world and not of God. It is often one's own pride lurking under the veil of anxiety. It is not a prideful pride but a fearful pride. What if I don't measure up?
I am responded to a particular mom's cry for help. In her post she does what we've all done. She compares herself to others and she comes up short. She sees the system as stacked against her; an obstacle always looming in the distance. She sees unschooling as what you call it when you can't get to formal academics. She sells herself short by diminishing the huge fact that she works from home and has four children but she had trouble staying on top of things.
I am going to address each of these issues one by one. However, first it is good to talk about assumptions. A lot of times anxiety makes us work off assumptions that are faulty. We become our own worst enemies because we jump to conclusions that cloud the clarity of our thought processes. So for instance, the mom compared herself to her friends who are approaching homeschooling differently from her. Remember the adage: Comparison is the thief of joy! I had trouble with this bad habit of comparing and always coming out feeling dissatisfied and defeated. First of all, I bet the other family isn't doing as glowingly as you might think! I mean they are a human family so the odds are they also have conflict and bad habits! But even if they are going strong in their own groove (and that's wonderful) instead of comparing, wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to glean inspiration and perhaps ideas that fit into your homeschooling landscape? If you can't get inspiration or ideas, realizing in your heart that you admire the way they can do things that way but it isn't your way, is a fine response. Just resist that tendency to compare; it doesn't come from a good place!
One fear was the fact that the Department of Education is leaning towards everyone being enrolled. First off all, the thing to do is to look up actual regulations that are in existence right now. What exactly is required right now? If the DoE is 'leaning' what does that mean? It is easy to make this a looming fear that somehow the government is going to come and get you! Don't think about 'leaning' which is vague, think about actual requirements. Those actual requirements become part of your home learning landscape. You operate within that landscape. The second thing is that there are schools you can enroll in that unschool! So maybe you can do both! I don't know if the school has to be from the same country or not, but in the U.S.A. there is a long time school that children can enroll in and then are encouraged to learn from life and their passions. This is called Clonlara. There are others out there too. You could explore this option. I know way back in the day California outlawed homeschooling! So people got around this and simple made their own particular home school a private school. That might be another way around the issue. There are ways around this, but again it is hard to fight something that is vague and imaginary. You need the actual facts and then you can look for solutions.
Don't diminish how busy you are. If you are working from home and have four children that is an extremely tall order to fill! You have to be realistic in your assessment of what you can do. Working at home can lend itself to a delusional idea that since you are home you ought to be able to keep it clean and tidy and pay lots of attention to the kids. But in reality you are working and thus require dedicated time to do your work. You really can't juggle all those balls in the air at the same time. I have no idea how things work out for you, but maybe you get up early and while the kids eat breakfast and watch educational TV you crank out some work. Then maybe you could stop that and focus on the kids: cooking together, doing some chores, reading aloud, maybe working on project or going to the park or having a playdate. Whatever. Maybe in the afternoon the kids do quiet time and listen to audio books while you crank out some more work for a couple hours. Then maybe in the evening when your husband comes home, you get to work for a solid chunk of time while he having his time with the kids. That's just me imagining how someone might work that
Another comment was managing to squeeze in read aloud time. What does that mean? It sounds like maybe you are diminishing how much read aloud time there is? Is there more time than you give yourself credit for? Or are you truly struggling to get read alouds in? If you are struggling, I would recommend: 1) keep the read aloud time but realize you can only do it for a short period and adjust for that 2) rely heavily on audio books 3) Have your husband do the read alouds 4) make sure your kids have plenty of time for independent reading.
Finally, unschooling is not what you do when you can't get to formal academics. Often the conflict and problems associated with formal academics makes people consider unschooling, but unschooling isn't being passive or neglectful. It isn't giving up. Unschooling is placing priority on your child's projects, passions and talents by realizing they learn best this way. Unschooling is about creating an encouraging atmosphere that allows the child to thrive. Unschooling is rejecting (as much as is practically possible) the scope and sequence enforced from outside and letting him blossom in the way that is natural to him.
Oh wait! I have one more thought. Sometimes when the house is just too much of a wreck and you can't concentrate on anything because of that, it is good to give yourself permission to stop thinking about academics for a while and just work on tidying up. Tackle the things that bother you the most first. That huge stack of papers that keeps threatening to avalanche? That stubborn mountain of laundry that won't go away? That kitchen floor that is so sticky you can't walk across it without making enormous sucking noises with your shoes? LOL. Deal with the stuff that is super-bugging you. You'll feel release!!!!
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