What Matters?

 "What matters?"

I was recently listening to a podcast, and this question hit me. I honestly don't even remember all that it was in relation to, but for me, I had to ask it of myself about my kids.

It may seem like a relatively easy question, right? I mean, we all "know" what matters. We want our families to be happy and healthy. We have different ideas of what that means, but there are probably a few cultural norms that those of us in Western Civilization have in common.

What I realized is that all these things that I'm struggling with that DON'T matter to my kids but DO matter to me are a lot of my own doing. Choosing the homeschooling path when they were young was definitely against the cultural norm. That pretty much set them up for a whole different set of "what matters," and I had no idea.

You may think this naive of me. And it probably was--just like having no idea that having six kids was actually going to be hard because at the time it sounded SO FUN!!! 

So here we are....23 years into that journey. 23 years of homeschooling at least one. In the fall we will start our 24th year, and we are adding another one back home. Yep, next year I will have both of my kids home again--not in school, and I'm struggling.

I'm not struggling because it's hard. No, at this point in their academic careers, I outsource most of the teaching part. They want to do their work because they don't want to show up to their weekly class empty handed. Of course, there's still work for me, but that's not the part that I'm sad about.

Somewhere over the years I realized, I wanted them to have that school experience. I wanted ME to have that school mom experience. Did I change? I don't know. I know when we first decided to homeschool it was going to be for only a few years, just to give our first a head start. Then we got really sucked in to the "it's the only way" mindset. After we moved to Knoxville, and I was able to look a little more objectively at things, I saw other families homeschooling and then putting their kids in school, and it worked. It seemed rather seamless. Why wouldn't my kids be the same? 

As you know, though, my kids HAVE NOT been the same. My kids are anything but "the same." Haha!! And everyone of them is even completely different from each other. Jon and I often ask each other how families have these cookie cutter kids who look alike and all do relatively the same things. They are just normal. Our kids are anything but normal. They are amazing--but not normal.

And so here I am again, on the brink of a huge change, feeling sad about what is to come. With Cama-Jane coming home for school again, my thoughts are on "What will she be missing?" Hardly anyone thinks this is a good idea. She's got social anxiety. No one thinks she should homeschool again (except other homeschool moms!) But after a year of pushing her to "do hard things" and telling myself she's better off for it, I've decided to ask "What matters?"

What matters to her?

Because the fact is, this is about HER, not me. This is about her looking me square in the eye every morning before school and saying, "I hate this. I just want you to know, I hate this."

This is about the fact that sitting in 4 different classrooms of 25 kids five days a week (and alone in the library during lunch) doesn't make her more social. All it's done is stress her out, fill her emotional bucket to overflowing, and make her show real signs of depression and other mental health issues. She hasn't been to swim practice for much of the long course season so far because she just doesn't have the capacity for it all. 

So once again, I ask myself "What matters?"

Here's what matters to her. She wants to swim, but she wants to be able to enjoy doing it, without the exhaustion that comes from an overloaded day. Can I just tell y'all exactly how much being at school really overloads her? Here's an example. Last year when the freshman had to do their testing to figure out what "pathway" they should take as they headed off to 10th grade, part of the tests were personality tests. In "extroversion" she got 4/100. 🤣 Y'all, when I saw that I about died!! I score around 97/100. How did this person come out of me?? And yet, it explains so much.

Now I know, I know. I know she's going to have to live in the world and talk to people. That's what I kept telling myself. But the thing is that she does talk to people when she has to. She wants to take culinary classes for Dual Enrollment (along with a history class.) She wants to go into Nutrition and Dietetics, and she adores cooking/baking. I think that taking an Intro to Culinary Arts class is going to give her so much more reason to socialize, collaborate and talk to people than sitting in a chemistry class "leading" a group project. 

She'll also be taking three classes at the co-op she attended as a little girl (that thought feels very nostalgic to her and brings her gleeful joy.) These will be smaller classes, and I hope that she'll be able to connect at least a bit. All in all, it's just a smaller place. Of course it is. It feels manageable and familiar.

One other really great thing is that Cedar loves when she's home. The days this year that she's stayed home being sick or for whatever reason, he has absolutely loved hanging out with her. The two of them get each other--my little neurodiverse babies!! All year long I thought how it would be so good for him for her to be home, but I just wouldn't let myself go there. But here we are.

Of course, the greatest thing of all is the field trips. I mean....what can I say. They are my favorite. And now we have a reason to load Cedar in the car for all the fun because if it's just him, I have a hard time MAKING him go when he says he doesn't want to. But if Cama-Jane is going too, well, he just has to join!!

So here we are. Entering our 24th fall of homeschooling. Asking "What matters?" 

"What matters?" Their mental health matters. Their happiness matters. Their love for each other and family and Jesus matters. Their education matters. Their other interests matter. Their future matters. But for their future to really matter, they have to get through the present in a relatively unscathed manner so that's what we are trying to accomplish. 

My goal has been to get Cedar into Bearden for high school. That is in one year. By making this decision now, I wonder if I've committed to 5 more years of homeschooling, not just 2. I have no idea how this will affect him next year when it comes time, but I do know that he's been really great at co-op. He has made friends and enjoys being there. He sometimes goes early and stays late to hang out and talk. He chose to go on a Saturday to field day for 3 hours to hang out with people. He's texted friends to ask them to do things and made huge strides. And so I think we may have found where both of them need to be. I don't know. I'll never say "never" because that would just be too easy for our family....Do I have 29 years of homeschooling in me? We shall see.

One year at a time. One year at a time. They are worth every bit of it.