Homeschooling the Sixteen-Year-Old Boy

 Today marks the start of Week 11 of school for us, which means (I think) that we're about 1/3-ish of the way through the school year.  But lo, it has been a grind so far, and I'm already plotting ways to make things easier next year.  

Finn (who is in 10th grade--we had to decide what grade he was in last year, and decided to say 9th to give us plenty of leeway/room, and we're not in a mad rush to see him off to college anyhow!) is taking Geometry, Chemistry, a combined history + literature + theology class, French 4, advanced conversational Spanish (a substitute for Spanish 4, basically), while also juggling choir, two evenings of work at the local fancy nursing home, and a community theatre performance (in which he has 4-5 roles this production!). 

I'm not going to lie. It's a lot.  Especially for this perfectionistic, slow-paced, deep-diving, pondering learner.  

I have been constantly ruminating over whether to convince him to drop his (confusing, rigorous, massively time-consuming) chemistry class for something with a gentler pace and more practical application, but so far he wants to keep it.  I'm praying about it.  We'll see. Next semester he's going to drop back to working only one day per week, and maybe even scale back further to not working at all for a few months until summer.  That may help. But time management, distractions, and prioritization are all issues that we are facing now.  His classes are generally set up like college classes: two days a week, with lots of homework in between.  This is great "training" for the independence of college, but challenging for a 16-year-old male.  Finn is a brainiac, but like most teenagers, when he logs onto the computer he suddenly finds himself "distracted" by all of his interests*....letting the actual schoolwork move to the back burner. This is an issue that I'm seeing unfold, and that I'm also praying about trying to solve with wisdom. 

Annie, who is in 7th-ish grade, is taking two online classes (Language Arts and Physical Science/Intro to Physics and Chemistry).  They're pretty good, but I'm going to shake things up next year.  The online classes were a great way to "cover the gap" during my dad's illness and death, and during my recovery from it, but I am feeling a bit more like it's time to turn back to analog learning for a while.  My Charlotte Mason roots are still there, still strong. :) 

Boy! Every stage of parenting involves so many decisions and so many things to navigate and consider.  It's a joy to raise a child into adulthood, but it also take a long view and a lot of patience and discernment. It's the biggest investment of time anyone who is a parent can make, and undoubtedly the most worthwhile, too.  

I'm all about Galatians 6:9 when considering the realities of raising a teenager!

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." 

Yes! I'm banking on this! I remind myself of this every day!

(*Here are the ways Finn gets totally distracted on the internet: watching past Republican primary debates (nope, not kidding), reading everything he can about various world religions, and learning about composers.  Like I said, he's a nerd. I appreciate his passion to learn...but you gotta get that chemistry done, too! He doesn't play video games...but he does like to watch funny Babylon Bee spoof YouTube videos.  And I have to admit, they can be really amusing.)

Revisiting the Blue House

 It had been a solid four years since I had been to my Dad and stepmom's mountain house a little over an hour from here.  We spent the most wonderful, gorgeous, idyllic long weekend there in September of 2019. Then covid hit, and no one really traveled; in October of 2020, my Dad and stepmom did come back to the mountains, but they stayed with us and visited us. In 2021, my Dad didn't come back because he was living in Georgia, caring for his brother-in-law with cancer, who died in December of that year.  My stepmom essentially drove my father from the funeral to the emergency room.  His illness, not yet diagnosed, had begun. He died last September.

{my stepmom's aunt is an artist. This painting is actually huge!}

So my stepmom decided to come stay at the mountain house for the first time in three years. Our family met her there a couple of Sundays ago for a work day.  But driving into the deeper mountains and into the beautiful valley where the house is located was an emotional experience for me.  My Dad first began living there when I was younger than Finn.  I have over thirty years of memories there.  It's where my husband drove when he went to go ask my father for his blessing to marry me.  It's where we celebrated the new millennium (usually we're in Charleston at the new year, but my father had to stay onsite at work to be sure the world didn't end, so we moved our usual family gathering to the mountains instead).  I have great memories there, and painful memories there.  It's where I climbed ancient apple trees and ate the fruit--nothing like an heirloom apple, untouched by human "help!" It's where I ate Concord grapes right off the vine, ran many miles down a dirt road next to a creek, and, maybe most poignantly of all, rode with my Dad all over the farm, even up to the "backside" of the farm, to the highest point around, and sat and looked at God's gorgeous creation: sweeping 360-degree views of the mountains and valley.  

A few days before my father died, he asked me to bring my stepmom into the room.  She came in.  He looked at her and said "let's go up yonder on the hill, look down over the vale."  The quaint language struck me. She and I looked at each other.  We knew exactly what he was seeing.  He wanted to go sit on that mountain again. 

So, tears.  

{I love her marble-topped living room set.}

Once we got to the house I was ok.  There was much work to be done!  Mr. Polly, Finn, and Annie all worked outside all day, and my sister met us for the afternoon and she worked outside, too. I took over cleaning inside--after three years of not being lived in, there was some dirt and dust to mitigate.  I did lots of sweeping, wiping down, dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing.  And then we all sat down together for a meal. 

The house actually belongs to my stepmom; she bought it when my father retired. His housing was provided by his employer and when he retired he was ready to move back home to Charleston, but my stepmom wanted to have a place in the mountains (she's from a nearby town).  So she found this little blue house, two bedrooms, one bathroom, just over a ridge from where they'd been living.  She furnished it with her family heirlooms and artwork.  And so it remains. 

{Victorian settee. Excellent for photo shoots of little girls in dresses!}

I miss my papa.  And God is good. 

On Working

 I have been working from home, very part-time, for about 7 months now. A typical week is between 5-10 hours for me; one week I think I worked 14, and that was Too Much. Not doing that again unless there's some sort of major urgency! My goal has been to work without impacting our family and home life, or my own ability to rest and exercise, and I'm *mostly* achieving that goal. Here's how:

*Annie has an online class from 9:30-11 Monday through Thursday.  I take that window of time and sit down at the laptop and do a solid chunk of work. Many days this is all I do. But this allows me to do the work while Annie is occupied (she's 12, so she can occupy herself easily, but I prefer to work when I know I'm not needed). 

*Otherwise, it's ballet.  Annie has ballet three nights a week (plus Saturday morning).  One night she has 3 hours of ballet, one night 2 hours, and one night she has 4 hours.  Finn has choir one of those nights and he works the other night, so I have a large swath of time where no one needs me, and if there's anything leftover that I didn't get done during Annie's class, I do it during ballet. 

*Every so often I do have to go into the office (maybe once a month?) for a couple of hours.  Annie and Finn have checklists and they carry on without me--that's one benefit to having these older children!  But in general, I am always home, and that's how I want to keep it.  Even teenagers need a mother around. :)

The primary challenge for me has been trying to fit in exercise, since sometimes I exercise first thing in the morning, sometimes later in the morning, and often I walk while Annie is at ballet.  So I'm having to be strategic about this, and I can't say I've gotten into a great routine yet.  I used to bounce out of bed and exercise, but now that I'm in my mid-40s, I benefit from a cup of coffee first and a little bit of waking up and pondering the day.  So I'm still navigating the best way to manage this....last night I was on my exercise bike at 7:45pm. Not ideal!

I like the work I'm doing and am extremely grateful for the extra financial cushion it provides us right now, but I am careful to keep hours limited (fortunately, this is mostly within my control).  There's not an endless supply of time in the day, and there's also not an endless supply of mental and emotional resources for me personally.  I want to stay pleasant with my family and not feel like I'm always rushing them, or giving them divided attention, and so keeping my work within very set boundaries (Annie's class time and ballet) helps me keep work in its proper place.  I think if I didn't have those set times, it would be a lot harder, because work could creep into the times I am trying to spend homeschooling, keeping house, etc.  So the number one tip I would have for anyone who is needing to incorporate some at-home work into domestic life is to give it as strict a boundary as possible. 

I'm the type of person who will suffer emotionally if my home environment gets out of hand, or life feels too chaotic, or the laundry isn't done, or things are not clean (growing up with a full-time single working mother, these things happened more often than she or I would have liked, and those memories are still very real in my mind).  Knowing that helps me stay very strict on how much outside work I'm willing to do. I am well aware that I'm privileged to be able to do this--my mother wasn't. She would have loved to stay home with us! But that's not how it unfolded for her; as a result, I don't take this privilege for granted. At the same time, we have made, and continue to make, financial sacrifices in order to keep me home and to homeschool our children, and to me they have been more than worth it. Our home is peaceful, relatively well-run, and generates a lot of nutritious foods! Most importantly to me, Annie and Finn have had a peaceful childhood that has been worlds away from my own, and I'm so, so thankful for that. 

Whatever my work is, at home or elsewhere, I pray it will always be a blessing to the people for whom I work. 

"Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,

and establish the work of our hands upon us;

yes, establish the work of our hands!"

-Psalm 90:17

End-of-the-Year Plans

We are home now from our 5 days away in Chapel Hill. No oncology appointments this time--that's coming on November 28th!  This was just the annual gathering with our best friends, and it was so pleasant and fun, although they'd literally moved into their new house *four days before we arrived.* We had a nice time catching up together and getting to know their new place, but it was wonderful to get home yesterday.  Does anyone else just love and crave Normal Life?  I do. There are always so many things to do at home that I enjoy: baking things, tidying up, laundry, reading books, checking out the flowerbeds (frosty now!).... I love these things. 

The first night in Chapel Hill I couldn't sleep and was awake until about 4:30 (very unusual for me).  I tossed, I turned, I tossed again....finally I decided to order reading glasses. I realized last year that when my vision is corrected by contact lenses or my glasses, I struggle to read up close.  When I'm wearing glasses, I just take them off to read, but when I'm wearing contacts, I need reading glasses! I bought an inexpensive pair ($1ish) at the dollar store in January in preparation for the trip I took with my sister, because I planned to wear contacts all the time, but I wanted to read lots of books.  I've used those off and on ever since, but decided it was time to up my game with cuter frames.  Peepers are cute!  They were having a buy one/get one sale and I wound up getting 4 pairs for about $11 each. Which seems excessive when I type it, but felt very logical at 3 a.m. I will have one pair at my desk, one in my handbag, one in my car.....I should not need to buy reading glasses again for a deacde.

Now that our trip is done I can turn my attention to The Rest of the Year.  What needs to be done? 

*Finish Christmas shopping. Start wrapping!

*Purge and organize in Finn's room. I started, but got sidelined. I'd like to finish this by Thanksgiving at the latest, because once Advent begins, I know I won't have time. 

*Wrap up a couple of work projects--by Thanksgiving, that's my goal!

*Get the outside spaces cleaned up a bit (raking, trimming, tidying)

*Lay off of flour and sugar to give my body a rest from these substances

*Sit down with the planner and a cup of coffee and make sure I've got some intentional things plugged into December.  Last year I didn't do anything, really; I was so, so sad about my Dad and so depressed that I did the bare minimum just to get through the holidays.  That's not normal for me, but it's what I needed during that hard season.  This year I'm happy to get back to some of our beloved traditions. 

*Maybe hosting a small group at our house next week.

*Finding a few more fall dresses/skirts to wear--Annie and I haven't started the challenge yet, but we may soon! I did buy 5 long tunic-type sweatshirts (mimicking my inimitable Aunt Mary, who wears this exact one from Walmart a lot--it comes down low with good coverage!) with some very cute and comfortable leggings. Good for at-home days of cleaning and cooking, with an apron! But I want a few winter skirts and dresses for streetwear.

...and then there are all the usual things: taking my children to many, many lessons and rehearsals and classes and performances and work, paying bills, making meals, trying to exercise and sleep!