In Which Sometimes It's Not as Hard as You'd Think...and Sometimes It's Exactly LIke That

"I just don't know how you do it!"

I hear this kind of comment not frequently, sometimes as a way of communicating "You're nuts!", and sometimes as a way of posing the question for informational purposes - "How do you do it? "It's enough work to handle the three [or whatever] kids I have, and you have five! And you homeschool them?" And my typical answer is, "We just do it. We've got them, so we just do what we have to do. It works out." When people ask how we homeschool such a crew, my line is that it's not as hard as people think.

And that's mostly true. Someone once asked me where I did school with the kids, and when I appeared a bit confused, she went on, "You know...are they all sitting around a table?" I realized that many people have this idea of a "typical" eight hour-school day, with mom as a typical teacher, instructing several grades all at once, which in truth does sound ghastly, not to mention impossible. No, I could never do that. Homeschooling - or at least our version of it, is quite a bit different, and I've posted about that often enough here. Anyway, that's pretty much true of having this number of children as well. When a pregnant mom of several young children asks me, with something akin to terror in her eyes, how I manage, and seem to do it so well, I know she's thinking that having five of the children she's got sounds impossible. I encourage her with the fact that there's good news. Nay, great news! They get older. They don't always need every single thing done for them. (Sometimes I have to remind them of this, but never mind that at the moment...) They go spend hours in their rooms because they want to. They go to sleep at night in their own beds and stay there. All night. And when it comes to homeschooling them, they can do many things on their own. For that matter, even when they are little and need more attention, that's some of the best - and easiest kind of homeschooling. It just involves lots of reading, looking at caterpillars, and playing. Lots and lots and LOTS of reading and playing.

So it's probably not as hard a prospect as they envision. Also, when they look at me and think, "Wow - she's doing it so well," their vision is perhaps not quite clear. It's a nice compliment, truly, and I do appreciate it when out in public it appears that we're doing some things right. Yay! (And I know that even in actuality, we are doing some things right.) But sometimes the appearance of success and "she-has-it-togetherness" can be misleading, and unfortunately so. What I don't talk about enough are days like today. Tonight I talked to a mom interested in having a number of kids and in homeschooling, and it would probably not have been the most encouraging thing to say to her, "You know, it's all not so hard as you might think... except on days like today, when, frankly, I wanted to lock the kids of my bedroom, crawl under the covers and, stay there until their father got home. We're all wearing smiles now, but an hour ago, tempers were flaring, no one liked each other, and my house looked like a bomb hit it. Hardly any "school" got done because no one would pay attention to me, and I was failing at getting them to obey me...hey, I was pretty much failing at being a good mom, period. My crowning achievement this afternoon was that I presided over everyone surviving it."

It might have scared her off, but if she does have a large family and does decide to homeschool them, it might have actually been good to have been able to retrieve the memory of someone essentially saying, "Sister, we're all just doing the best we can. Sometimes it looks nice, and sometimes it looks pretty ugly. That's normal. You're normal. You're not failing."

I keep a friend's baby a couple days a week, and when she comes to pick him up, she gets to see us at the time of day that is often the most messy and chaotic. Periodically I thank her for seeing us at our most "real," and still choosing to be our friend anyway! I think it would be beneficial if we all got a peek at each other's "real-ness" now and then. Certainly those who saw mine would know that often I am hanging on by a slender thread of sanity some days! And in seeing that, either they would realize that I'm not quite so amazing and feel encouraged...or they would be confirmed in their belief that having and homeschooling five children is in fact an impossibly nutty thing to do.