Do You Really Need a Homeschool Guru?
Why are we always looking for a guru? Someone to tell us the steps to take to avoid disaster and receive accolades.
Why do we want to believe there is someone out there who has it all figured out?
Is it to push down our anxiety by thinking there is a “right” way and if only we could master it, our troubles would vanish?
Experience
Let me back up. My oldest is 14 1/2, and my youngest is 2 1/2, a 12-year difference. Between them are four others, 13, 11, 9, and almost 7. Homeschooling has been in my consciousness since my oldest was six months old, yet I started this blog only two months ago.
Why?
Experience.
Maybe I’m just old enough at 42 to be of the age that values experience. Anyone can tell someone how to do something, but that doesn’t mean they’re correct.
Add to that my stubbornness and “you’re not the boss of me” personality, and you can see why I’m a homeschooler.
When my oldest was seven, and I was spending most days growing a baby, I didn’t think I had it all figured out. I still don’t! But things have changed.
Marketing
The nature of blogging, especially homeschool blogging, has transformed. Ten years ago blogging was mostly moms sharing their experiences and connecting. Since then it has shifted to big business, niches, and social media mavens.
Now bloggers market themselves as homeschool experts and their oldest is 9.
When I started to notice that all the homeschool blog moms had children younger than mine and they seemed to relish in producing lap books, I zoned out.
Where’s the Tired Mom?
My life was changing daily. I was hurtling through tween, right into teen years while pregnant with number six.
Juggling became my pastime as I shifted from Pre-Algebra to dirty diapers on a dime.
Soon I’ll be handling college admissions while still having one to teach to read.
Where is the homeschool mom blog navigating these years? There are a lot of us out there, but we don’t seem to have much of a voice.
Maybe we put it away because we realized all those declarations we made don’t hold true over time?
Perhaps our experience has taught us how unique each child, family, and circumstance is and we’re hesitant to make definitive statements about homeschooling. We know each hour, day, week, looks different.
Why Blog?
So I’m hoping to be a voice for the moms who don’t want ten reasons they MUST study Latin or 50 easy ways to organize their homeschool day.
I hope to be the mom to help you realize homeschooling your children is a bumpy, beautiful road, not an interstate with perfectly placed mile markers.
The mom that helps you to know you may never have all the answers because the questions keep changing and that’s okay.
I am the committed mom; I never said we’d try homeschooling for a year.
It’s never been a trial run.
I want to help homeschoolers, especially new ones, reach an awareness that their goal shouldn’t be to out school the school.
The wonder of homeschooling is that it isn’t school at all.
What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn’t a school at all.
John Holt
The excitement of a new homeschool mom is fantastic, but this middle age, middle of the journey mom feels the need to tell everyone to chill.
Your child’s education is not dependent on how many craft projects or notebooking pages they complete. Nor does it matter much whether they read at 5 or 8, when they’re 18, no one will care.
Homeschooling is an experience that affects every corner of your life because it is life. It isn’t separate and contained between 8 and 2; it is conversations and questions while changing the laundry and riding in the car.
Inspiration is everywhere, no guru required.
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