Blessings and Opportunities

Today we were blessed by spending several hours with a family that we have come to know through our Home Education support group. The couple have two pre-school children and are therefore the youngest children represented within the group.

It was delightful to spend time with them, seeing my boys playing real "childish" games - instead of the stuff that they are pressured to "want" to play from their (schooled) peers and the tv adverts. At such times, I can see their kind, caring sides coming to the fore. They really are very large hearted children and I am so very proud of them.

Around that outing, both boys managed to meet their learning time target again. Unfortunately, ds2 seems to be struggling again with his self esteem. It breaks my heart how my clever lad believes he is "stupid". When he is feeling like that, nothing reaches him and we've had to learn to step back and just love him.

In the evening we met up with a couple that we hope to work with, in a home based business, in order to help smooth out some of the ups and downs of our finances. Homeschooling often has its biggest impact in that area as families have to chose to switch to a single income. Of course, for many, homeschooling is simply a reflection of their already present commitment to the strength of their family and are commonly families that had chosen previously to have a "stay at home mom".

In fact, that has been one of the most unexpected aspects of chosing to home educate our children: amongst our own peers we had often been made to feel unusual/different/odd because of our "traditional" position on working mums, head of the household, division of labour, restriction of television, bed times... and all the other things that we appeared to do that was "different" from the "norm". However, amongst the homeschooling community we ARE normal!

Phew, that's a relief!