Wanna feel like you have really got your crap together? Wanna feel like there isn’t a task that you could take on that you would not only succeed at but even possibly excel at also? Wanna get ahead on all your housework and chores and still have time for you? Then allow me to suggest that you do what I did. Bring ALL four of your children home from a public school education experience and cyber school them in your home for two years during which time you must have a fifth child…a baby mind you…and then decide that the frustration that you directed at the cyber schools “Tech Issues” for the last two years just isn’t worth the hassle anymore and then just do a real laid back version of your own idea of homeschool for three months, while the baby is teething in the back ground and THEN, only THEN enroll those same four kids back in the original public school that they started in. THEN young grasshopper, you shall feel like the world is your oyster and you will be preparing gourmet meals with jazz music playing in the background and piles of neatly folded laundry all over your tidy living space.
OUR HUMBLE BEGINNINGS…
Our twin babies began their dual education in our churches preschool. A fantastic program run by two school teachers who just wanted to serve families with their gifts. It was practically charity at 20 dollars a month. All my kids loved it and it really introduced learning as a deeply satisfying experience. Then it was time for our kids to go to kindergarten. We open enrolled to the local school that the twins most favorite cousin was enrolled in…and then the mothers (Of 7 children between the 2 of them) could help each other…especially when one household was perhaps being ravaged by the flu but you’ve still got one healthy kid to send off into the world! It’s nice to have a supportive pal to raise your kids beside. Fast forward thru two fabulous years of positive learning experiences…it’s the week before school starts for our 2 second graders and a fresh kindergartener. We get a letter in the mail that mostly says “you have not been selected to open enroll here” or something like that and it gave the time of the open house for the school we would be attending. Wah Wah! I know. Big deal. No one is hurt or starving or bleeding. We go to the open house. Nice school. Lots of different doors and sidewalk access points and specific aged children only going thru specific doors. We gave it a go.
The first day at kid pick up, Iris walked down the big cement stairs with a smile on her face until she hit my legs with a sob. I was in shock. “What’s UP Iris?” I asked in an almost panicked state. “Mom! A girl at school told me I was UGLY!’ Mildly relieved and a smidge thankful (just that we weren’t bleeding or injured) I still had to wonder at an utterly-adored-by-her-parents little girl, hearing it for the first time. “YOURE UGLY!” I got on her level, down on my knees and I told her that what that girl said was not true. I told her that wasn’t nice and that sadly, maybe that little girl has someone in her life who has told her that about herself or made her feel that way. Then I mentioned something about her smile being like the sun and told her to imagine that when she smiles the sun beams fill the room and blind the girl that said that mean thing. It was certainly a rough transition. Flynn watched one second grader punch another one in the stomach that day. Micah did well the first day but sensed the negative juju lingering among the group.
As the days progressed, the one girl turned into two that were whispering in Iris’ ear everyday that she was ugly and Flynn mentioned that the kids in his class were being so bad that his teacher yelled that he was going to jump out the window (its a two story school 🙁 ) and don’t act like you wouldn’t yell the same thing! (When funding is cut for our public schools, the first thing that goes is the teacher’s aides…leaving one adult to oversee the education of 25-30 children. Throw 3 or 2 or even 1 kid in there with a serious discipline problem and you’ve got teachers wanting to jump out windows. I learned thru my own schooling experience that teaching kids, lots of kids, may be among the most difficult jobs in our modern society.) Then Micah started becoming really somber in the morning while he put his shoes on…and then the other kids did too. The 15 minutes before leaving for school began to feel like a funeral procession. Then I started yelling at them at the stairs to the school that they “had to go in the doors”…”because this was their school”. I would call Chris on my phone and hand the phone to whichever kid was most obstinant and I would let him talk to the child. Everyday was a fight. I wrote a note to the teacher and the bullying became more discreet and we found every dinner time was spent navigating the kids thru how to deal with all these emotionally damaging situations they were going thru. I don’t know about you, but I like to decide when and how that damage takes place…at least for a little while! One evening it came out that some kids forced Iris under a lunch table and made her stay down there. Chris and I were full of pep talks and helpful phrases, but sadly it began to feel like we were coaching the losing team. Seriously, it was stuff beyond their age bracket.
The weekend after I finally pulled them out of school, I was at a birthday party with a mother of one of Flynn’s classmates. She said that past Friday at school her son (second grade, mind you) had to pull a little boy off of a little girl on the playground. He was jealous because she kissed another boy and so he punched her in the stomach and was then on the ground strangling her. WRONG! No thanks. I had received complete confirmation about the choice to bring them home.
FLY US TO THE MOON! ONCE YOU EXPLAIN AT LEAST THREE TIMES THE BUTTONS WE NEED TO PUSH TO GET THERE…
I had no idea what I was going to do with the kids when I brought them home that day. I knew about cyber school, but I’m not very tech savvy. The small corner in our home that houses a junky little desk and a 10 year old refurbished MAC computer is surrounded by plants and vines and overgrown philodendrons. I realized the other day that I’m pretty sure if it were up to me, I would JUMANJI that corner of the house right out of our lives. It’s a nice way to pay the bills and stay connected to people that you cant make physical time for…but technology has a way of making me feel inferior and who wants more of that in their life. Needless to say, I lied when the cyber school people asked me how tech competent I was. I believe I answered “VERY”. Hind sight being 20/20, I think they need to change the wording of that question to “Have you ever been known to gorilla pound a laptop while you were 8 months pregnant?” Now there’s a question I can answer with a firm “YES”.
A week after enrolling the kids in PA Cyber Charter School, 28 packages came to our front door. It was UGLY…in the most brown box sense of the word. I had 4 kids wanting to tear open every one of those boxes and with each box we opened I had a to tell a 3 year old that these things weren’t for him. We shared, but a 3 year old wants to know what is HIS, not what is being shared with him for the moment. Thankfully Chris was more than helpful in getting everyone set up with their laptops and I magically found places to store 28 boxes of school materials. We had good days and bad days. I cried on the phone to the instructional supervisor who was so nice and repeatedly told me that everything I was experiencing was normal and that I should absolutely be overwhelmed with 3 new enrollees. Most parents are overwhelmed with one student in cyber school, much less 3. The teachers were great. The tech support people were great. Knowing what I know now, I would absolutely do it again…and I would be much less frustrated when one computer completely disconnects from the internet and I’m told by a robot voice that my call is 103rd in the line-up and will be answered promptly. Aside from the tech issues, the cyber school didn’t afford us the freedom that I imagined would come with schooling at home. We never had free time to go to a park or take a hike or meet up with other homeschoolers and go on a field trip. So what I’m saying is that it wasn’t what I expected. DUH Autumn.
SAY WHAT NOW!?
In the midst of our cyber schooling adventure, my husband decided to go back to school to be a nurse. He has his very own drywall business (CK Drywall LLC) that does well for itself, he however, wants more from life. He doesn’t want to use his body to make his living for the rest of his life. If someone told me that I had to be pregnant and have babies the rest of my life to make money I would be like “I don’t need money that bad.” Thankfully a woman is only expected to use her body to build a beautiful family, the size of she and her spouses liking and then she doesn’t have to do that anymore. I couldn’t imagine having to worry about the day I finally hurt myself bad enough that my career would be over. And plus, one of my favorite Avett Brothers song says “if you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected…Decide what to be and go be it…” When Chris told me he wanted to go back to school I heard this song in my head immediately and knew it would be my joy and my honor to support him in every way possible while he did it. What I didn’t know at that time was that I was pregnant with a SURPRISE fifth child!!! Chris was attending his first night classes by the time morning sickness and fatigue and “Useless Autumn” set in. All this really meant was that Chris was a little less available to help with the kids homework and computer issues. Once I sat on the phone with Tech support for an hour before the guy said “Does this computer always run this slow?” I said “Yes, all three of them do.” He responded, “Wow. This would drive me up a wall.” Turns out we had 3 computers with “Bad Hard Drives”. I don’t know what that means or how a good hard drive turns bad or what happens to bad hard drives, but I knew about the “driving up a wall” thing.
During the course of the kids second year of cyber school I began to notice how bored they seemed. Iris was known to read 1-2 chapter books a day…during school. As much as I tried to put a stop to it, I’d catch her being sneaky and reading when she was supposed to be staring at a computer screen and listening to the teacher instruct 17 other kids thru lessons Iris didn’t care about. Flynn and Iris both became excessive doodlers and Micah fought with me about every assignment I asked him to do and I became increasingly more confident that I could provide a more engaging learning experience for my kids. This was what I thought…while baby #5 was in utero.
AND THEN CHRIS HOPPED IN THE POOL AND DELIVERED MAXWELL GUNTHER KROUSE…
I could write a whole post about my home birth experience. I wont, (maybe later…I think there’s a draft sitting around that I never finished) but what I will tell you is that it has changed me forever and I have never felt stronger and more capable and more in love with my husband than when we delivered our son in the wee hours of the morning of March 22nd. Surrounded by 3 of the most competent and experienced midwives I’ve had the pleasure to know, I felt for the first time that I wasn’t someone’s problem or an organism to monitor and keep hydrated and I wasn’t taking up a bed that needed to be cleared out in 36-48 hours to make room for the next human lady. It was an intimate and breathtaking and peaceful encounter… all our own. When our kids woke up in the morning we had the privilege of introducing them to their baby brother before anyone else met him. Our home was filled with new baby magic. The kids stayed with Uncle Ben and Aunt Mare for a night or two while I rested and then we got on with the show.
I knew that these would be our final months with the cyber school so we tried to make them count. I will say that it was really hard to focus at all with a fresh sweety like Max in the house. Looking back, I wish we would have just thrown our computers out the window and taken turns staring into the eyes of the newest little person we’d know for a long time. Anatomy at its finest. Where did he come from? As curious as we all are about death…what about the mystery of a person who had never existed before just showing up!? We are fearfully and wonderfully made and I think families should be allowed to put all of life on hold to honor that! For at least a year!! Our summer was simple and beautiful and we camped and rode bikes and explored and went swimming every other day at least and I wrote down everything that I thought could remotely count as “HOMESCHOOL”. Our family thrived and Max became the apple of everyone’s eye and may have convinced Chris and I that we never want to stop having children.
Come August, Chris went back to taking classes and I continued to jot down our daily experiences, not fully committing to “buying curriculum”, mostly because I didn’t know where to start and we couldn’t afford it. It can cost a small fortune to actually purchase the items you want for 4 children to do school at home. I have some friends who have people in their lives who are so supportive of the homeschooling of their children that they offer to buy their kids the books and supplies they need to have a “valid” homeschool experience. Not only do we not have that, we mostly have people saying the opposite…or saying nothing at all. That’s always nice. Strong silence, left for interpretation. People were concerned that our children would “fall behind” and become “socially awkward” and that I would be “overwhelmed”. I began to feel pressure from Chris that the kids weren’t “learning anything”. He often came home during the day to giant pieces of paper and crayons and scissors and glue everywhere and a crying baby and couldn’t imagine that any of it was amounting to anything. On days when I really tried to push a traditional educational experience, it usually ending with me having to go change a diaper and returning to no one doing what I asked them to do. Flynn would often times say to me (while I was cleaning some meal mess in the kitchen) “Mom, I’m gonna go read a social studies lesson if that’s OK?” Iris read and drew constantly, she hatched a few butterflies from parsley worms and kept a praying mantis for a pet. Micah taught Owen how to write the word POOP and it started popping up everywhere…walls, counters, vehicle interiors. Micah also developed a love of cooking during his time being schooled at home. His siblings know he is the guy to ask to make you some eggs if you’re hungry. One day I found Micah reading to Owen and I had to stop and pinch myself and pat my own back and say “You taught him to read Autumn. You really did. Good job.”
The kids also engaged in a lot of make believe play. They came up with an entire civilization that consisted of 4 characters- Bobbys, Bobby-Doos, Shramenshrines and Doctor Bob. Supposedly Shramenshrine is an evil doctor who performs experiments on the Bobbys. There are only 5 Bobby-Doos, they rule over all the Bobbys…who are apparently just clones of the Bobby-Doos. And from what I gather, Doctor Bob wears a diaper and attacks people. At times I had the kids jot down details from this world. Aside from going to the library a lot and using some old school books from different friends, I didn’t have a lot of structure to the whole scene and that seemed to fuel my underlying feelings of inadequacy.
A few months in, I started to feel less and less supported in my homeschool endeavor. My best friend since I was 14 who also schooled at home moved 45 minutes away. I couldn’t remember the last time I went to the grocery store without 5 small companions and my Co-Op seemed full of women with less children and more experience…most of them having been raised in a homeschool environment themselves. While this should have aided in building my confidence…it only created a withering effect. Finally one morning in November, after a rough night of sleep with a teething 8 month old in my bed, I woke to Chris yelling at the cat who had crapped on the sofa. I don’t think there is anything I dread more than having to deal with cat feces. I HATE CAT POOP!!! I suddenly felt as if cinderblocks were tied to my limbs, holding me in the bed. I got up anyway, knowing that while Chris is a fabulous husband and father and business owner and student and generally a really great human, he doesn’t clean up cat poop very well. The day glided along in a sludgy, “is-this-over-yet-and-how-did-the-house-get-so-messy-i-feel-like-I-just-cleaned” kinda way. By 9 am a child came downstairs complaining that the only toilet in the house was clogged. That was it. It was in that moment that I knew this was not my life. Not one that I was enjoying at least. I wish I had the ability to turn every moment into a teaching moment, but frankly, there are trained professionals who can’t even do that. I wish I didn’t care what other people thought about our family or how we are choosing to raise our kids. I wish I had such a confident, courageous spirit that I believed I could DO IT ALL! But instead I felt outnumbered at every turn. Somewhere along the way I had become not only the teacher but also the janitor and the cafeteria lady and the school nurse and the bus driver and the baby sitter and the supply distributor and the MOM, right…there still needs to be a mom…to cuddle and have fun with…a lady with a smile on her face who is proud of you and tells you what a good job you’re doing. It was all too much. I was spread dangerously thin. On top of it, there were people in my life who I felt were expecting my kids to be receiving some kind of five star education. I wanted to crawl into a hole. I did crawl into a hole, but I took my phone with me and from in that hole I called the school that the twins and Micah had gone to originally and asked if there was any chance that they had room for 2 fourth graders, a second grader and a kindergartener? They did. Miraculously.
I remember crying a lot that day. I mourned the loss of an idea. The idea that I was capable of having all my children at home and it being a wonderful, fruitful, creative and positive experience. I felt like a complete failure. That’s what you call it…Right? When you attempt to do something and it doesn’t go how you planned and then ends in a way that you didn’t expect? I’m very familiar with the feeling. I cried for two days, on and off, softly at times…more like sobbing at other times. Then I woke up and I felt kind of better. The more I listened to Chris tell me that I wasn’t a failure and that a lot of people wouldn’t even attempt to do school at home with 5 kids, the more I decided to stop believing that I was a failure. I recognized how excited my kids were to go back to the school that they had really loved to begin with . I thought that maybe “fail” could be less of a word to describe my shortcomings and more of an acronym that stands for F. -Falling A. -Absolutely I. -In L. -Love with my kids. When I thought about my intentions when I brought my kids home, they were good and pure and honorable. I learned so much about my kids by having unbroken contact with them for 2 1/2 years. I came to realize that the word FAIL has less to do with my inadequacy and more to do with plain old attendance. By taking part in the magic of feeling like a failure to my children and husband I’m saying “Hey. Here I am. I’m open for anything. I’ll go for it. No promises, but damn it or not…I’ll give it a try. Sometimes I might not make it out of the parking lot, but I’ll be present.” By failing, I’m at least trying and that is an honor…to have people in your life to try to support and be there for. The magnificent acting out of the dramatic failure! By failing, we learn in heaps! Succeeding only teaches in bits. I know myself and my children better now than I ever could have imagined. I was able to truly see them and I learned how much I can and cannot handle.
A NEW CHAPTER
So now what? The kids have been in school for 2 1/2 months. Noticeable changes include but are not limited to…
-My house is clean between the hours of 10-4 each day.
-I shower more.
-There is usually really lovely music playing in the background…and I can actually hear it.
-Supper is much easier to come up with when I don’t have to take 5 kids along on every grocery store trip.
-I’ve started exercising again…there’s something really special about raising that heart rate…they’re saying it could even help you live longer…if that’s what you’re into.
-My mental state has improved exponentially.
-Once the word got out, I got the same feeling I had after I cut my college dreadlocks off and people were like “Oh, thank God!..Those were so ugly!” Opinions are like…well, you know what they’re like…and everyone has got one.
-I’ve taken to finishing sentences without being interrupted.
-I’m writing…right now.
-I miss my kids. I had actually forgotten what it felt like to miss my kids…because I was with them 24/7.
-Where the kids used to ask me questions like “How many people do you think have died from scissors?” and “Is an avocado a fruit?” now I’m answering questions like, “Mom, what does ‘SUCK IT! SUCK IT!’ mean?” and “Why were these two kids throwing markers at each others balls?” and “Why is cock a bad word?”
-I’m watching my children’s innocence vanish before my eyes, but hey, it’s gotta go at some point…right?
-All these things aside, the kids seem to be thriving.
Flynn is my oldest, most responsible, super intelligent, tender hearted offspring. He’s the guy who makes friends with the handicapped kid because he can’t stand how other kids treat him. I never have to ask him to do his homework, he just knows what he needs to do and does it. He has straight A’s.
Iris is our free spirit. Apparently she’s been told by some uptight popular girls that she wears “boys clothes” but thats only because she has this rad vintage ringer tee with an antique car on the front that she likes to pair with a peasant skirt and more over she doesn’t own a single piece of “MONSTER HIGH” themed clothing and doesn’t seem to mind. At conferences her teacher informed me in the most admiring way that “traditional schooling probably isn’t going to work out great for Iris…” This is not news to us, and she has a passion for art and music so we’re gonna shoot for a C average till we can get her where she’s going.
Micah and I are fighting less than EVER! He is finally getting to see that it is perfectly normal for children his age to do school work. He is our strongest willed child and was definitely my most difficult at-home pupil. Allow me to say though, that the make believe civilization of Bobbys and Shramenshrines was single handedly Micah’s creation. The other kids were always happy to participate. He has a beautiful and vibrant imagination and that has been the saddest part of this transition for me. I have noted an 80% reduction in make believe play since enrolling in school. With the busyness of our everyday life and mountains of homework in the evening, it leaves little time for the imagination to flourish. Bobbys and Shramenshrines only pop up occasionally now, on the weekends. I’m sure it will become less and less until they are at last gone but I’m so glad that they had it for even a short time.
Lastly, Owen is a perfect student and is finally receiving the attention that I always wanted to give toward his education but was instead preoccupied with nursing a baby and helping the twins multiply and divide several digit numbers. Some days I would flat out tell Owen that I knew I was doing a bad job being his teacher. Poor kid. He comes home so proud to share his accomplishments with me. We spend our afternoons sprawled out on the living room floor doing homework and eating popcorn.
The kids face situations everyday that they aren’t sure how to deal with, but overall they are enjoying the ride. We all learned so much from the last 3 years, but it feels safe to say that we are enjoying this season. Who knows what we’ll do next year or where we will be or what we’ll value most…my sanity or their fragile innocence. I know that things can and will change again, but I’m looking forward to it and I am ready and willing to F.A.I.L. my kids as the need arises.
