Someone Please Explain Homeschooling

Ok, I'm sure this is going to get me in big trouble with the homeschooling contingent, and make it all the more clear to Dear Reader that I am just not cut out for this job, but here goes...

Homeschooling... I don't get it. Like wiping butts, cooking food, cleaning the sty, and entertaining the inmates doesn't take enough time out of the day, there are actually people who take on the responsibility of educating their children as well.

We live in a community with a sub-standard public school system, so for the most part, people who remain in our neighborhood after their children reach schoolage either homeschool or send their kids to private schools. We moved here knowing we would be part of the second group. One of the best Catholic gradeschools in the city is right across the street from my house.

My husband came up through Catholic schools, and attributes much of his success to that. Mind you, he went to one of the most prestegious college prep high schools in the midwest, St. Charles Preparatory High School. Thank God I have all boys because we would not know where to send a girl to high school since there is no equivalent school for girls in Columbus. But I digress.

I went to public high school, but not without cost. I spent the days of my early childhood in the city schools, but then came the concept of "busing." In the late 1970s, they decided that rather than kids in Columbus going to neighborhood schools, they would bus some of the white kids to the 'hood, and bus some of the black kids to the white neighborhoods. It still amazes me that it took them almost 20 years to realize forced desegregation doesn't change social ideas. Anyway, this "busing" concept forced a good number of middle class whites in Columbus out of the city to the surrounding suburbs. From the Wiki on White Flight: "...A similar 1977 Federal decision, Penick v The Columbus Board of Education, accelerated white flight from Columbus, Ohio to its suburbs." That included my family, as we moved to a town north of the city with its own school system. In that town "middle class" meant something completely different than we were used to. But again I digress.

Now, knowing the educational background of me and my husband, you can see why we are both baffled by homeschooling. To hubby, education is something you pay for, and for me, something provided by paying property taxes. And another thing... people are educated for many years to be qualified to teach my kids how to read. How could I possibly think I could do a better job? Heck, my middle kid knows his letters and can count to 20, not to mention, he knows how to spell O-H-I-O, and I have no idea how he learned this (he's three).

Maybe the moms who homeschool (I'm not being sexist here, I'm sure there are dads who homeschool, too) have a better relationship with their kids than I do. I mean everything, especially with my oldest (age 5) is a battle. I can't even imagine what will happen when we add on the homework factor. I shudder to think how it would go if I was the one who assigned the homework.

Busted!

Please refer to post "I Sassed the Parking Lot Attendant."

Today, pinned to every single kid's schoolbag was a note regarding the parking lot. An excerpt is as follows:
"It has been brought to our attention... that some parents... are not paying proper attention to the direction given by the individuals patrolling the parking lot."

Damn! I sassed the parking lot attendant and they killed a tree.

I Sassed the Parking Lot Attendant

A little background... when my oldest was three, there was a tragic accident in the parking lot of our pre-school. A four-year-old was backed over and killed. The most poignant thing that came out of it was that every single woman in our community was telling herself after that how easily either one of the moms (the one whose child died, and the one who ran him over) could have been ME. Almost three years later, I don't know anything about the driver, but the woman who lost her son (tough as nails chick, I know her) has since given birth to a baby girl (they had two other girls at the time of the accident).

Having said all that, after that accident they completely restructured the parking situation. One of the rules is that you don't pull into a spot where you have to back out. You pull through. You only come in one way, exit one way, they have two parking lot attendants (volunteers from the church, all older men) with whistles and light sticks. If you use your cell phone or sip your beverage in the parking lot you will get whistled at. I am proud to say I personally have never been whistled at.

I am usually early picking up my kids, but yesterday I was there right at 11:15 (pick-up time). There was not a spot to be found. I circled back out of the lot twice before parking in the very last spot, furthest from the school, rather than circle again.

A question that many people ask me is how I navigate a parking lot with three young kids. Well, I carry the baby in my left arm (I can physically manage that for 5-6 minutes, tops, before he starts to slide down my hip) then hold the hands of both older boys in my right hand. On a good day Charlie and Atticus do not kick each other or give each other flats on purpose, and Max does not bite my shoulder.

So, yesterday, after pick-up, we are doing this inelegant parking lot waltz the four miles out to my car, when I notice one of the old parking lot buzzards following me. We get to the car, and as I am yelling at the kids to get in their seats and buckling them in, the guy is pointing out all the scratches and dents on my car, advising me which could be buffed out, etc. Okay, irritation begins.

I move around to the driver's side to get in and the old buzzard follows me. Clearly at this point he is not following me to make idle chit-chat, so once I get in, I roll down the window to find out what he wanted to say, and this is how it went...

Old Guy: Can I give you a few parking tips? (oh, boy, here we go)
Me: Okay...
Old Guy: You know you are supposed to pull in so you don't have to back out?
Me: I don't have to back out. (points to the lack of car in front of me)
Old Guy: Well, that's just the rule.
Me: Okay.
Old Guy: And another tip, a way to get a good parking spot is to get here on time.
Me: (deep breath) I was here on time.
Old Guy: Well, just so long as you know the rule.
Me: Yes, I know the rule, and I purposely disobeyed the rule.

Later at home I mused to my husband that perhaps they'd kick the kids out of school because I sassed the parking lot buzzard. "No chance, " he replied, "tuition is paid up."

The Lunch Nazis

Ok, we've signed up our two pre-schoolers for "Lunch Bunch" which is once a week when they pack a lunch and stay at school and eat. Today in their schoolbags were the "guidelines" for packing a lunch. That in and of itself is ridiculous, I mean who can't pack a lunch for their kid? But it gets worse... there are two whole pages of guidelines. Here are some examples:

• "No peanuts or peanut butter" is mentioned no fewer than four times, either in bold, ALL CAPS, or BOTH.
  
• "Candy will be confiscated by the Lunch Bunch staff." I wonder if they have an evidence room containing all of the confiscated candy. If so, I'd like to know where it is, because after a morning of getting three young boys out of the house I could use some Pez.
• "State Licensing requires that all lunches, regardless of content, have an ice pack." Umm, not gonna happen.
• I have left the best for last. For those of us who are unable, by the time your children are age three, to provide them with a healthy lunch, they have provided a sample menu, including serving sizes. Gee, I hope there is not a quiz. I will let you know, however, in case as a parent you don't have enough to feel guilty about, that hot dogs and deli meat do not count in the "lean meat" category. I wonder if chicken nuggets do, because my kids eat them no less than 3 times a week.

How Did We Get Here?

At the time I weaned my third child six months ago, I had been pregnant or nursing for over five years. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying it lends insight into my mental state. There are a lot of other circumstances that lend insight into my mental state, but I'll save those for another time, hehe.

Stay-at-home-mom (SAHM), housewife, homemaker. None of those terms is very sexy. The job is not sexy. The job I had before I was a mom was sexy. I was in inventory control in the buying office for Victoria's Secret Stores. Yes, I worked in an office where photos of half-naked women were everywhere, and to find a bra on my male bosses desk was commonplace. I was concerned with terms like "trend" and "stock-to-sales." I could spin a sales story with the best of them. I helped develop a fashion allocation system, and invented a process of sales projection utilizing historical sales by store/sku, which was unheardof at the time in the retail industry. I traveled to New York, California, and Miami regularly.

When I was 27, we decided it was good time to have a kid. Everyone else was doing it, we knew we didn't want to grow old kidless, so we decided to "try." Four years later we were still "trying." The turning point came one winter night when my spouse was in New York and I sat in my bedroom, needle grasped tightly in my fist, telling myself I would plunge the intra-muscular injection into my thigh at the count of three. I counted to three for three hours that night before actually stabbing myself. But a month later a little heartbeat was on the ultrasound. Our "little miracle" was on the way.

It was all downhill from there. Fertility was never an issue again, actually quite the opposite. My boys are each spaced 22 months apart. All three were born via c-section. #1 was an emergency because his heartrate dropped. So much for natural childbirth. I was told there was no reason to think there would be an issue the second time around, so we tried a VBAC. Atticus came out wounded and blue. Lowest APGAR scores a live birth can get. All's well that ends well, though. Obviously, Maxie was a scheduled c-section, and I was really hung up on the scheduled birthday. I just had them schedule it two weeks early. I went into labor the night before and the contractions were 3 mins apart two hours before the surgery was scheduled. So he picked his own birthday anyway. Like I said, all's well that ends well.

Me and My Peops

Who am I? I am a thirty-something stay-at-home mom with four penises in my house, five if you count the dog. I am clearly outnumbered, but I actually don't mind. The Good Lord blessed me with three beautiful, healthy, bright, energetic boys, sparing me of all the mom-issues women have with their daughters. I mean, I come from a long line of women who grew up hating their mothers, and the buck stops here.

Who are my people? My spouse and I have been together for 17 years, married for 13. He's a self-made man... grew up in the 'hood, actually several of them. Worked his way through private high school, put himself through college with no loans, and worked his way up in the banking industry. To quote him, he has more now than he ever thought he would have growing up, so what's there not to be happy about?

Kid #1, Charlie, aged 5. Kid #2, Atticus, aged 3. Kid #3, Max, aged 18 months. All I can say is that I don't know how three kids made up of the same basis for DNA could be any more different.

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