The practically impractical

The word "homeschool" makes me itch. It's right up there with "hashtag" in the irritation department for me. I don't know why entirely, and the reasons I do know I will keep to myself. But the universe, in its unwavering ways of justice, will almost always kick your ass when you say "never", or apparently even dislike certain words.

I don't blame my kid's school. In fact, I'm a very vocal public school proponent. I still have a kid at that same school, and she loves it and would wither like a picked wildflower if you took her from it and made her stay at home. I have a commitment to be involved in whatever school my children attend, and have served on more PTO boards than I can honestly remember. But his transitional year to middle school was more than tough. It took its toll on him, on us, and the whole household by the end of the year, and we knew that something had to give.

We don't have means to send him to a private school that would (possibly) meet his needs. Hell, we don't really have the means to homeschool him. But homeschooling means are less than private school means when it comes to nuts and bolts, and so here we are. I have put aside every personal project that I have going, which is almost always a considerable amount, and I am devoting myself to this one very personal project. It kept calling to me over the last year to come and tend to it, but I am not an educator of children. In fact, I don't even like most children who are not mine. I'm not logical or linear. I'm one of those liberal right-brain big picture thinkers who would like really just to sit in a cafe all day smoking cloves and drinking coffee while I made up stories. But like I said, the universe is an ass kicker.

My friend, who is a career educator and a former Montessori teacher told me that in the Montessori world, they call what Truman and I are doing a "practical life year." That really resonates with me. I just want to help him find his place - whatever that is. The stress of the last year of school really threw off his executive function and also his desire to learn. His confidence was low and falling by the end of the school year. His stress level was growing. He would melt down at the slightest perceived slight, and our household was on eggshells. Over the summer we saw a dramatic improvement, and it was hard to think that we could send him to school again and endure another year of watching him crumble.

What I have come to find with him is that where you can teach "normal" kids life skills on the fly as you go about your day-to-day and run in and out of the door to school and activities, that's not how it works with our particular model. And he certainly doesn't learn with the throw-and-see-if-it-sticks way that public education almost has to be given the number of children and diverse population of needs it serves. It takes an almost constant one-on-one to engage my particular kid in learning and in just getting him to do small life skills. He seems quite average and normal, and so the expectations of him, no matter how many points you put into his IEP, end up being higher than what he can actually carry out. We don't qualify for an aide, so we have to rely on what is written in the IEP. And what school can really carry out an intricate IEP for every kid that has one? It seems an impossibility. And in our experience over the years, it was an impossibility with him, for he changes all the time. What worked one day or week might not work the next. And with the handed-down-to-Moses on a stone tablet nature of IEPs, it makes it tough to be flexible and accommodate a guy who doesn't fit in framework of paperwork very well.

Our family has never been, and never will be, practical, which makes it tough to call this a Practical Life Year in the true sense. But I do solemnly promise to do my best with my kid, through good and bad, teach him the ways of the world as I know them, and give him an education as best I can until he is at the point he can do it himself or I lose my mind, whichever comes first.

And so begins our Year of Impractical Life. Wish us luck.