I wish I'd said it first:

"The world is a stage but the play is badly cast"
Oscar Wilde

"In the end, it's not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away."
shing xiong

"Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid."
John Wayne

"Life is a great, big canvas and you should throw all the paint you can on it."
Danny Kaye

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Never Say "Never"

Ever since my 2 kids came along I swore I would never, ever homeschool them. I am not the kind of person who homeschool's their kids. Don't you have to own a minivan and be willing to eat your children's afterbirth? I didn't have a midwife and I begged for, no, I demanded a spinal block during labour. I am just not up for such a task and besides, I need to get away from them once in a while.

So why do I find myself homeschooling both kids when they are 10 & 11?

Ian, my son, is an Aspergers kid. He can't stand being in a cramped, hot classroom with 34 other kids. He can't sit for more than 5 or 10 minutes and everything is a distraction. He is small for his age and putting him in the local middle school was not an option. He might as well have shown up with a target painted on his forehead and a sign on his back reading "KICK ME".

Jacqui, my beautiful daughter, was diagnosed with diabetes on June 27th of this year. Her blood sugar needs to be monitored constantly and after just 10 days of school she was already sick with the flu due to being jammed into an overcrowded, under ventilated classroom. Diabetics get twice as sick as a normal kid and if past years were any kind of indication, she would be sick with with a cold or flu 5 more times during the school year.

And so, I am the insane homeschooling mom I always said I would never be. I am an Atheist, not a evangelical, Jesus freak. I've never owned a pair of Birkenstocks and I use real chocolate, not carob, when I bake a chocolate cake.

We made it through the first quarter of the year by the skin of our teeth. School is an organizational nightmare when they were going to regular school... now it is almost laughable. But somehow we are doing it. We also seem to be having a good time despite the bumps along the way.

Imagine me... Homeschooling 2 kids. Go figure.

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