Building My Village
(Originally posted 2/17/2016)
My son is asleep and all’s quiet in our home except for the sound of rain falling and a fire burning. It seemed the perfect time to write about what a great day we had. This week is our fourth straight week of fully commiting to homeschooling. I will save how we came to homeschooling for another blog.
My son is asleep and all’s quiet in our home except for the sound of rain falling and a fire burning. It seemed the perfect time to write about what a great day we had. This week is our fourth straight week of fully commiting to homeschooling. I will save how we came to homeschooling for another blog.
It’s been a roller coaster ride getting here. Here, being that I feel 100% in, as a homeschooling mom. Here, being that I’m getting comfortable with it and embracing it. When I began, I was terrified and empowered at the same time. I was not really sure how on Earth I was going to manage it all! Tears were shed, sleep was lost and tantrums happened! I’m talking about me, not my kid! It was intense.
I’m so grateful that so far, all feedback from others about my choice to homeschool hae been only positive and supportive. That helps, though it would not have changed my mind if it hadn’t been. Having the support from my awesome husband also helps. I have another good friend who is homeschooling her older daughter and having her offer to take my son anytime I need a break, really helps too. It sure did this morning while I had an online class.
You see, I don’t really have “a villiage” helping me raise our son. I don’t have family who live nearby and many of my long time friends live too far. My newer kid-acquired friends (parents of my son’s pre-school friends) are busy with their own lives. It’s hard to just schedule a play date, so we don’t really have a babysitting swap thing going on yet. I understand. Don’t get me wrong, we have helped each other out from time to time. It’s just not like when I was growing up, where we had family or friends we didn’t even have to call before we came over. We could just drop by or they could do the same and it was okay. It was welcomed! Though, just this past few months, I’m happy to say, I have met a couple of new friends that I’m starting to feel this might become a reality with.
I will admit I do have a part time nanny that has been with us since our son was 10 months old. She has become like family to us and I’m so grateful for her. I truly don’t know what I would have done without her all these years. I know how lucky I am to have her in our lives. Thank God we’re not famous celebrities so I don’t have to worry about writing some “tell-all” book about our lives. Because it’s not always pretty! She has another job and went back to school to get her degree in early childhood development. So I can’t overload her schedule too much and rely on her and only her all the time. It’s not fair to her. She needs her sleep too!
I bow down to all single working moms and to anyone with more then one child! Being a parent is the hardest job in the world and it does help to have people supporting you along the way or one could easily lose their shit! I know there are days, I’m sorry to say, I have! Thank goodness, I know how to repair and have learned about peaceful parenting. (Again, for another blog.)
Basically, I’m still in search of my village, my tribe, my peeps, my posse. I’m kind of hoping to find them in the homeschooling community. Today I was given some hope in that department by meeting some really awesome parents and thier kids at an ongoing weekly homeschoolers park play group. Everyone was so warm and welcoming. Especially the kids! They treated my kid so well and he loved it. This bodes well with me in my expecting what a homeschooled kid may turn out like. Most of the kids today had been homeschooled for over 5 years and they were kind, caring, funny, smart and generous. They went out of their way to find the owners of an adorable stray dog that was roaming around. (Thank goodness they found them, so I didn’t have to bring the sweetie pie home with us!) Most of them were not deterred by the rain. They kept right on with their fun. That bodes well with my boy who loves to be outside! Rain or shine!
I’m a positive person and I believe that we can and do create our reality with our thoughts and actions. My actions have been searching online, researching all about homeschooling and finding groups close to us. I didn’t think any existed, but they do. I found them and am so grateul I did. There are still a few more local homeschool groups we’re going to check out and I’m looking forward to it.
I’m filled with hope. Perhaps with the recent friends I’ve made, our new neighbors, my old friends and those that I’ve still yet to meet in this new world of homeschooling, that I will build the village it takes to raise my son. As an only child, I know he loves seeing his friends and making new ones too. So, that is part of my motivation as well. It will be a win win for all of us. So villiage building is in process.
