If you have teenagers you know the the reason all homeschool advice is from parents with young kids to other parents with young kids is because that’s the time it’s easiest to delude yourself that you know what you’re doing. That’s why I have so many extra pictures of my kids as teenagers to sprinkle all over my blog posts; I barely wrote about my kids during those years. Read more
When Covid came I knew right away a lot of parents would start homeschooling. What I didn’t realize is that everyone would have homeschool. I wanted to scream on rooftops that everyone was doing homeschooling wrong. But Covid.
Now that a little dust has settled, I realize that I just want to help people do homeschooling better.
You don’t need to go back to school where everyone talks about “missing” two years and “catching up”. You don’t need to catch up. You need to make sure your kids enjoy their childhood. Homeschooling is about taking their childhood enjoyment into your own hands, to model what that looks like, and then passing off the reins to the kids as they get older. The parts of homeschooling I’m most proud of are the decidedly non-academic moments like snow angels, sand castles, and the day my son was a fashion intern.
Here are answers to specific questions new homeschoolers ask a lot. I want to show you that being a homeschooler isn’t about finding the right answers. It’s about asking better and better questions about what makes a good family, a good childhood, and a good life. Those questions become very limited when the school controls the education options for you.
What exactly is homeschooling?
A lot of times it looks like doing nothing.
When should I start homeschooling?
Third grade is the last time it’s an easy decision on your kid.
What does it feel like to homeschool?
The same as all parenting: too hard and too crazy
What made you first consider homeschooling?
After suing two schools and winning my son was still doing nothing productive in school.
How did you decide to homeschool your kids?
I started doing research and I was shocked at how ineffective school is.
What is un-schooling?
Ignoring old-fashioned ideas about curriculum and instead following the child’s interest.
How can I afford to homeschool?
Cutting back to a single income is more cost-effective than two parents working.
A really difficult thing about homeschooling is that a huge swath of my professional network disappeared once I announced I was homeschooling. I thought it was because they assumed I would be useless to them. Read more
I get a lot of mail from people asking me how they can homeschool if they work full-time. Or if they have a new baby. Or if they hate being a teacher. All of these questions really boil down to the same question: how can we know if our kids are learning enough? Read more
Kids put no effort into school because at school the teachers tell kids what to think about, which forces kids to stop being creative and curious and just focus on passing tests. As this opinion becomes more and more mainstream, more and more kids will stop wanting to try hard at school. Read more
Here are a few random things I learned during the holidays:
1.You can cook on a hotel iron. Also, I really like that I got this information from a site that reviews consumer products. The photos on the site are great. Each iron has its pros and cons as a skillet. I had never imagined an egg on an iron, but it turns out it’s not that far-fetched, and people also cook with hair driers. Read more
A friend sent me a link to a really fun set of photos — it’s Barbie and Ken’s wedding day. But the professional photographer, Beatrice de Guigne who did the photoshoot did it exactly how a real wedding would unfold in photos.
What’s great is that de Guigne successfully makes fun of the absurd pretend perfection of weddings and the cliched way we document it.
Where is that ironic commentary for homeschooling? Now that I’ve been homeschooling for a grand total of two months, I think I’ve read enough homeschooling blogs to be a critic of homeschooling blogs. So much of the homeschooling community presents the equivalent of perfect wedding photos without any of the irony.
Here are three kinds of homeschool blog posts that epitomize the lack of critical, public self-examination in the homeschooing community. Read more
Here’s an article about how the lack of recess, art and music in school is making schools mind-numbing for kids.
I love this article. I read it twice. I need positive reinforcement that school is so bad that there’s no way that homeschooling the kids could be worse.
Then I let the kids rip off their clothes in the cold autumn waves of Lake Michigan.
In a moment of great math self-doubt and great faith in my ability to earn money, I called a very expensive math tutor in Washington DC to see if she could tutor my son online.
He is six and doing third-grade math, but I have no genes for math skills and neither does his dad, so I’m convinced that the only reason he’s doing third-grade math is that I inadvertently skipped things I can’t bear to teach. Like measurement. I hate that. I mean, look, I’ve gotten through my whole life not knowing metric conversions, so I don’t think we need to teach them since it’s clear that most people don’t know them and they still live happy, fulfilling lives. Or, really, even if they are not fulfilling, I have never heard anyone lament their inability to measure by the meter.
But I’m the only one who can’t measure metrically. This is what the consultant made me think. Because apparently, math is linear, and you learn step by step, and there are standards that kids need to meet before they go on.
I imagined the math corollary of putting a kid in front of a stack of Newbery Award Winners and telling him to read. But there is not that. I mean, there is no best-of for math problems.
So the tutor says my son needs to learn math according to math standards. And you know what? I’m really hopeful that maybe we do not really need rigid math standards and he could be a free-thinking math kid. But maybe the tutor couldn’t say this because she is certified to national standards.
I’m just not sure what to think, or what to do. Today, when my son asked what his math problems are, I gave him a painting by Miro and asked him to do a graph of triangles, squares and circles.
He thinks the assignment was BS. He likes multiplication drills, so I gave him a peppermint for each circle. Am I an unschooler if I use conventional bribery?
I wonder if among homeschooling parents there is a thriving black market for off-label pharmaceuticals.
Xanax is so nice, but it takes away my drive to get my making-money work done during the day. But if my sole work during the day was to make sure my kids were doing self-directed learning, well, I think I could do that on Xanax. And Xanax might make that a little more interesting.
Also, on Xanax I would not feel the draw of the Internet all day long. What do homeschooling parents do who are addicted to their blog stats? It would be so difficult to focus on long-division when I know someone big just linked to me. I like to watch the page views minute by minute. How do homeschooling parents nurse their own obsessions during the day? I think a Xanax would do the trick for me. For a bit.
I think Adderall might be good on days when we have to do stuff like soccer and violin and swimming. Because I don’t like those days, but maybe with Adderall I would. Would Percocet make swimming as relaxing for me as it is for the kids?
Please, do not tell me I’m selfish and unable to focus on my kids long enough to homeschool them. I am trying. I’m just wondering: How do other people handle these issues?
Contact
penelope@penelopetrunk.com