In Which I Think About the Lessons of Home School

This year has been a year of growth for all of us. Our first year of homeschool. Our first year of everyone home together, all the time. Our first year of getting to know each other. Our first year of finding our way together. Our first year.

The thing that I know most assuredly of all the lessons I've learned is that my children are amazing creatures. They are bright, funny and entertaining. They are frustrating, irritating and enraging. They are interesting. They bore me to tears. They can take a topic and run with it in directions that I never would have imagined. They can take a topic and sink it so deep in the muck and mire that no one would ever recognize it. They love each other deeply. They fight each other with passion and conviction. They do what I ask without argument or delay. They turn their ears off and only hear me when I yell. They are all these things and so much more depending on the day and the hour. Really, depending on the minute!

There are days that I have to remind myself why we are a homeschool family. There are days that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is truly the right place and the right choice for us. If I'm able to waffle so drastically, I can't expect my children to always be consistent.

I'm thankful for the lessons homeschooling is teaching me. Lessons about resourcefulness and compromise. Lessons about loving and letting go. Lessons about perserverance and surrender. Lessons about smoothing the way and getting out of the way. Lessons about working myself out of a job. In each one of these lessons my children have been the primary instructors.

I only hope that I can make as great an impact on these amazing creatures as they make on me.