Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Lazy Days


A little while ago I saw a blog post linked in an online home ed group I'm in, about how the author learned to treat homeschooling like it was her job and made her life better, and I clicked right through, because I find homeschool work/life balance to be a bit elusive. I thought she was going to espouse things like stopping at a certain time and having time out from chasing after the Best Education Possible, but in fact she wrote about working harder at it because she treated it like it was a job, and obviously everyone wants to work as hard as possible at their job.

Honestly? I am not interested in working harder at it than I already am. (Working smarter and better, sure, but harder? Nope.) I'm interested in some boundaries so I can stop feeling guilty about all the things that I am choosing not to do for and with my children, in service of everyone getting adequate rest and having emotional balance. So that blog post was clearly not for me. Maybe no one has written the post that I need to read. That post would say that it is 100% possible to be a workaholic when your job is to homeschool your kids. Because it is. And it's just as undesirable in home ed as it is in other professions.

In every job I've ever had, there have been times that there was a lull in what I was required to do. I never felt guilty about not doing enough work at those times. Pass the magazines! Is it 5pm yet? But here in my house, where the lines between the job of educating my children and the work of making other things run smoothly is blurred, it is harder to embrace that lull. There are always more things to do around here. I feel a little guilty that for the last week I've not felt like doing many of them, or that I've only wanted to do one per day, even though I've got time for more. But we need a break, and I know it.

Our mornings have always been slow, but now they are even slower. As of today, we are minimizing what we do in our school lessons. E has a reading lesson, I read from a couple of novels for Z (with E listening in and making both excellent observations and funny ones), and they do some work on education apps that they like. That's it. Christmas is coming. The family business of homeschooling is in a lull. Pass the magazines! We are going to embrace this.

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