Things I Didn't Know About Homeschooling

It's not always easy for us to talk about it.

You would think that we would be great public speakers, with all of the explaining we have to do. We should just be used to it by now, right? People ask our kids, "what grade are you in?" and our kids respond, "what?" Now we feel like we need to say something. I say, "they're homeschooled" and I spiral into explaining the whole situation, because people are curious. There are lots of questions. 

These are not bad questions. There are no bad questions when it comes to topics you're not familiar with (there's the homeschooler coming out). The problem is simply that I don't know how to answer you. I get nervous and feel like I'm making stuff up. Of course, I'm not making it up. I just don't have a prepared speech and new people have always made me a little nervous until I get to know them. I'm really not very good at this sort of thing. I'm afraid I'm going to say something stupid on accident and this stranger is going to start worrying about the future of my children, being educated by this idiot.

Not to mention, every homeschooling parent is like a spokesperson for homeschooling. I don't want to make a bad impression. I want to improve the public image of homeschooling. But I didn't sign up to be a billboard advertisement for my life choices. It's a tough spot.

It's not always "school at home".

This has got to be the biggest misunderstanding I've encountered. No one I know has had a single negative thing to say about my choice to homeschool (if you don't count my ex-husband... I don't. Besides, he has changed his mind now that he's seen what we've accomplished.) So, that aside, the most awkward situation I run into is people asking things like, "when are your vacations?" or "do you do lessons through the summer?" or "where do you get your materials?"

Six-year-old helping install Linux

We're not just like a standard public school, but at home. And not all homeschools are the same. What works for some definitely does not work for all. And since these are exactly the questions I always feel blind-sided by and nervous about, let me just answer them while I have the time to think about my response.

First - Our vacations are... whenever. Our field trips are, too. Sometimes we might take a day off entirely because the baby is sick, or there's something really neat going on out of town. I have actually worked a lesson about dinosaurs in because I wanted to go to the museum. We scheduled next year really loosely and with built in wiggle room, so we can take a few days off whenever we choose. And when we are doing lessons, it only needs to be a few hours of the day, and we can do it anywhere. So you don't need to schedule anything around us. 

Summer is just another part of the year. We don't have to submit a schedule to the district for anything more than 172 days, averaging 4 instructional hours per day. So I don't. The rest of the year, we are unstructured learners. The kids might take a community center class. I'm always here to feed their curiosity and provide them with information, and they have access to the internet. We still do crafts together, go to the zoo, read, write, draw, and do other random things they're interested in. But we have no standards to meet for the summer.

I get our materials at the same places you shop when your kids go back to school. So far, I get most of our stuff at target. Their worksheets and projects are things I make up or find online. I have no desire to spend ridiculous amounts of money teaching my kids things I can teach them for little if any money.

Our structure is deliberately not strict, and we don't have special materials you can only find at a homeschool store.

It's not always about religion.

When we were putting together our plan for this year, I found myself wondering if religious homeschooling families include their theological teaching intentions in the plan they submit to the district. We're not religious. We didn't choose to opt out of public schooling because of qualms with lack of prayer or creationist teachings. We're doing this because we believe we can do a better job, because we know our kids, personally, as individuals. And, we may have four kids, but we don't have fourteen, or twenty. 

We don't think we're better than you. 

That last point probably made it sound like we do. I don't see anything wrong with sending your kids to public school. I think the problems come when you either can't, or don't try to, choose a good school for your kids, and don't contribute to their education. Pick a private school, public school, weird independent school, homeschool, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you're invested in their education. Even if you have no choice but to send your children to the school nearest your home, and it's awful, I believe you are an excellent parent if you are attempting to fill the holes in their education when they're home with you. 

Homeschool kids are not different. 

I used to think they were all smarter than me. They must have been smarter than me to start with, so their parents decided public school wasn't good enough, or if not... they were certainly smarter than me, now. Obviously, they must have learned much faster than me, since they were able to learn at their own pace. 

Do homeschooled kids start out ahead of others? Sometimes. Not usually. Homeschooled kids come from every different category. Some parents homeschool because their kid has special needs, or social or emotional trouble. In 2003, a survey was conducted that found eighty-three percent of homeschooled students were being homeschooled, at least in part, because their parents were concerned about the negative environment in other schools. (cite)

I homeschool my kids because I feel we can do a better job. In public schools, twins are often pressured to perform equally well, get confused for each other, and get treated as the same person. My twins are just not the same. And I do still strongly believe that working at their own pace has got to be good.

Potty problems

I debated, internally, whether I should write publicly about this. After all, this is the sort of topic that might embarrass a kid. And, as her mom, it has embarrassed me over the years. One of my six-year-olds was still wetting herself multiple times a day, until I sought help.

That shouldn't be embarrassing. My other six-year-old is potty trained, having very rare wet incidents, and so is my three-year-old. I have not failed. If you're reading this and your older kid is regularly changing clothes, you are not a failure.

Potty training is complicated.

After years of struggle and nothing to show for it, not a single week of dry days, I worried. Two of her siblings were trained, and she had reached the age of concern. I'm homeschooling her, but can you imagine what public school would do to her if she was still dealing with this at her age? First, the school itself probably wouldn't accept her. But even if they did, would the other kids? Would she be bullied?

And, although I homeschool, I still expect my kids to be involved in activities with peers, outside of the house. She is taking guitar lessons and a gymnastics class this season. I don't want her to be "the kid who smells". As much as I hate to admit it, there was a, "kid who smells" in my elementary school, and I saw her bullied on a regular basis. She was one of my friends... but I did find it uncomfortable to be too near her.

I took the advice of other parents and put the potty power in her hands. We grown-ups made suggestions about how we thought she should go about it, but left it up to her to decide what was best for her. We tried a timer to remind her to go, and giving the clean up responsibilities to her. But when she was wet ten minutes after her scheduled potty break, almost every time, we assumed it wasn't working and started worrying.

By that point, I had been trying to potty train her for well over four years. When she was about a year and a half old, I got her a potty and put it across from the toilet so she could try it if she was curious. When she was two, I started incentives and regular potty breaks, then a potty chart so daddy could see her achievements when he got home.

I was very positive about the whole situation, and so was one of my six-year-olds, but not the other. She was terrified of the potty.

The first time she did poop in the potty, I discovered that she was definitely constipated. No wonder she didn't want to use the potty. It was hurting her to try. Her sister was getting rewards for pooping, so she was pressured to poop... And it hurt.

At the clinic, her doctor prescribed Miralax. You can get it over the counter. WebMD says Miralax, "is used to treat occasional constipation. It works by holding water in the stool to soften the stool and increases the number of bowel movements. It is known as an osmotic-type laxative." It is intended for adults, but can be taken by children. Ask your doctor first, because giving it to children is "off-label" use, and there is no dosing for children on the label.

That did clear out the problem poop, but didn't convince her that the potty wasn't scary.

I thought it would just take time. It never got better.

After the six-year mark, I finally threw my hands up and decided I had to get help. I was worried something might be physically wrong with her, and I needed to know. We had her on a high fiber diet with fiber supplements, to combat constipation, and kept Miralax around incase of emergency.

I read a book called It's No Accident by Steve J. Hodges, MD, a board-certified pediatric urologist. He also points the finger at poop problems. Even if your child never has a poop accident, there's a good chance that backed-up poop could be causing pee accidents. But my daughter didn't seem to be backed-up. She was pooping every day, and most of them were soft. We tried the Miralax cleanse he suggested, anyway. What could it hurt?

When that didn't improve the situation, I turned to her pediatrician, who referred us to a urology specialist at the Children's Hospital.

There were some preliminary tests my daughter was subjected to, so the urologist could see what she was working with. She had an ultrasound. That came back normal. She had an x-ray. That came back normal. Then, we finally found ourselves in the urologist's office, receiving the good news that my daughter was totally normal, as far as anyone could see.

But, what did that leave us with?

I talked to the urologist about my daughter's potty history. I said what I'm saying, now. She was constipated and scared, early on. Then, something worse happened.

I found myself in an unhealthy relationship with her father, unable to stand up for myself or my convictions, I let him treat her pretty poorly. He over-reacted to her short-comings and terrified her with screaming fits. At one point, when she was about three-years-old, he moved our dining room table into our bedroom to make space for a tiny, plastic-gate play yard, barely big enough for our daughter's mattress, and a potty. He said he was going to leave her there until she stopped having accidents. Her sisters got to roam free and play in the living room, where she could see, but not participate.

That was the last straw. I didn't let that continue long. I finally built up the courage to tell him, "I don't think this is working. I don't think it's going to work" and to take the play yard down. What I was really thinking was much worse. I was crying when he was away, about how horrible this situation had become.

So, the urologist's assistant took us to a special bathroom with a child-sized toilet that had a machine built into it to measure how much my daughter peed and at what rate. Directly after my daughter used that toilet, the assistant used a tool that seemed similar to an ultrasound wand and measured how much urine was left in her bladder. Reviewing the results with the urologist reveled that my daughter was only half-emptying her bladder at any given bathroom break.

Put simply, this is what was happening:

When you void, your bladder contracts to push its contents out. When you're not trying to pee, your urethra has muscles that tighten around it to hold urine in, even when you don't feel like you have to go. Your urethra is basically holding a cap on your bladder while it fills up, slowly, over the course of hours.

When you sit down on the toilet (if you're a man, replace with your own bathroom scenario), the muscles closing your urethra need to relax while your bladder is emptying.

Potty terror, and then accident terror, had trained my daughter's muscles to fight each other. On the toilet, her bladder would be trying to empty, but the muscles around her urethra would never relax enough. Her bladder was saying, "let's go" and her urethra was saying, "no." So, she was always carrying at least some urine.

What's the solution? Retraining her body. It's actually not that difficult, but the specialist said it will take time (at least 3 months).

We have a schedule. She goes potty every two hours, throughout the day. She needs to go regularly and often to keep her bladder from ever being over-full. That way, the muscles around her urethra can start to relax, without so much pressure pushing down on them.

Every time she goes, she tries twice. She completes one whole bathroom trip, all the way up to putting her pants back on, then she goes back and tries again. This is called double voiding, and it helps by repeatedly triggering the response her body should automatically have when she prepares to void... relaxation. Of course, it also helps give her an opportunity to get more than half of the urine out.

I've also created a chart for her on which I can record her bathroom activity and accidents. It is important for me to keep track of her stools because constipation has been an issue in the past, and can be again. The charts have been a great reminder of her progress, as well.

We check back in with the specialist, for another round with the special toilet, after three months of this routine. I'm optimistic. We're maybe six weeks in and she's only having a few wet accidents per week, and we've basically eliminated bed-wetting.

An Hour In The Life

I wanted to share with you a typical experience around my house. I think you can get to know a lot about me based on the way I react to normal situations in my life. I chose an hour instead of today because the whole day would take a lot of writing.

"Lunch time." I said, as I placed the plates on the table. My seven-month-old son was laying on the foam floor tiles I have replaced our living room with. In the same, huge, open space, my three daughters came racing to the dining table. I doled out vitamins shaped like gummy bears before eating my own lunch.

When I was done, of course, my daughters were still working on their food. My youngest promised that she was not going to eat hers at all. I explained, to her disappointment, that she could stay at the dining table as long as she wanted. Her options were to finish her lunch, or remain at the dining table until naptime.

"That's what I want!" She exclaimed, defiantly.

"That's fine." I asserted. Then I reminded her, "I thought you wanted to ride your bike, and you won't get to if you sit here until nap, not eating."

She began to eat, clearly begrudgingly.

Realizing I hadn't taken a shower or bath yet today, I decided, "I'm going to take a bath." They know that the bathroom is just down the hallway and, being a mom, I always leave the door open. The baby was safe in his furniture-free, foam-tiled space. However, should he start crying, I would throw on a towel and come to his rescue. If the girls needed me for anything they could just ask. I could hear them clearly from down the hall.

I headed to the bathroom where I discovered that the bathtub definitely needed a cleaning since the last time it was used by the kids. So, back to the kitchen to whip up a batch of baking soda tub scrub. While I was scrubbing the tub, I was also explaining to my six-year-olds, who were now done with lunch, that I can't take a bath in my bathroom because I only have a shower. Only one of our bathrooms has a bathtub, and it happens to be the one the kids use.

By the time I finished scrubbing the tub, the baby was getting pretty fussy. I guessed it must've been time to feed him. So, instead of filling the bathtub, now that it was clean, I returned to the common area of the house to change a diaper, feed a baby, and return him to his crib for a nap.

Most of a container of baby food peas and four ounces of formula later, my three-year-old still hadn't finished her lunch and I still hadn't taken a bath. And I'm sure you know, or can guess, how long it takes to feed a seven-month-old baby most of a container of baby food peas.

Once the baby was down for his nap I returned to the tub and began to draw a bath. But wehile the water was running, I left the bathroom to clean up the mess from feeding the baby.

When I finally did step into the bath, I was bombarded by six-year-olds wanting to talk and keep me company and/or use the toilet. We talked about things like the year being 12 months long, and how far away the next Father's Day and Mother's Day are. I described to them how we plan to remodel their bathroom to make it more usable since three kids are currently using it and eventually it will be four.

I washed myself, scrubbed my nails, pumiced my feet, and got out. I can't remember the last time I spent an entire day without having a single plan get interrupted. I can't remember the last time I found a bath to be truly relaxing.

I am definitely a different person now from who I used to be, and that's just fine.