How to Homeschool Through {Just About} Anything

Hospital bedrest selfie with a sticky two year old!

I’ve been asked many times in the past several years how on earth I am still homeschooling.  Actually, I’ve also been asked how I am still standing, smiling, or any number of other versions of the same thing.  Between a house fire, more moves than I can count, Siena’s death, and most recently Tomas’ NICU stay sometimes I’m not even sure I have an answer for that question!  There are many days even now that I am {homeschooling, standing, smiling, etc} because I simply don’t see another choice.  

Homeschooling through all of these things has been honestly difficult, but genuinely worth it.   There have been days that I didn’t know what I would do to make it through to the next day and education took a back burner.  Particularly when Siena was first diagnosed, I was under a great amount of pressure to first enroll the crew in school and later to homeschool them in a different way.  While I didn’t cave to school, the idea was tempting and I eventually faced the reality that what we had been doing was no longer going to work for this season.

Family dinner....sort of.

In the coming weeks, I am going to be talking more about homeschooling though difficult life circumstances.  I want to avoid the cliche school-of-life season because I think it is actually much more complicated than that.  Yes, there are times when everything gets put aside, but that also means there is a time when it has to be picked up again.   Letting your children run free as the birds in the meantime is also not the best plan.  Just ask me about the three year old who never heard the word no for her entire two year old year.  Relationships remain at the heart of homeschooling and family life, even when life is crazy and all of those crazy life events affect children in very different ways than they affect the grown ups.

I’m writing this now because after a very long “season” we are working hard on reclaiming peace in our home and in our homeschool.  We are taking inventory of things and making plans for the next step.  While I work this all out, I’m going to work it out with you.  Look for new posts about homeschooling through it all every Tuesday.

 

Homeschool, cute babies, and life permitting.

{Click Here for Part 2}