Is there school in our future?

I am seriously considering sending kids back to school. Maybe I will send all three, maybe I will send just the boys, or maybe I will send one of them out. The question is: which one? Which kid is the odd one out? Is it the one who drains all my energy with constant fits and meltdowns and behavioral issues? Is it going to be the one who should be doing more worthwhile things with his time rather than watch TV/ play Minecraft/obsess about Pokemon and generally disregard what I am saying? Is it going to be the one who makes "projects" all over the house and yells really loudly (I wonder whether she picked it up from me, or from her brother, because the words that come out of her mouth are her brother's: "I'm bad". "I can't do it". "Leave me alone!"). Or is it going to be my spirited troublemaker baby, who is in need of constant supervision and constant hugs and reassurance? I am kidding about the baby, but sometimes I do feel that if he were camped out, I could probably handle the other three.

I had an assistant for months, in hope of alleviating some of the stress and helping with the schoolwork. The only one who truly benefited was my daughter. The boys avoid having anything to do with the assistant, they always seek me out. 8 yo refuses to work with her, except for rare occasions. 10 yo has really been down to very bare-bones learning, and I do not have energy or desire to figure out what is the next big thing that I would like him to do. He has not been taking an initiative in his learning as I had hoped.

I am exhausted. I do not end up with time for myself, as inevitably something or other comes up. Moreover, my husband is not planning on assisting in teaching the kids anything on a consistent basis, and he is unable to provide relief at night, as he is always on call, something always comes up, and I am stuck with my dashed hopes of a "night off". Add to all of this the fact the that baby got into a habit of waking up at 5 am, and I am ready to pull my hair out.

A few months ago, I was struck how people glibly were encouraging others to homeschool. Single parent? You can do it! Working full-time? You can do it! Kids with special needs? You can do it! Can't stand spending time with your kids?..

Maybe there are circumstances when homeschooling is not the answer. Maybe, even if homeschooling is in the best interest of a child, it is not in the best interest of the family. I have shared some of my doubts with the others and one of the first questions was: how firmly am I committed to the ideals of homeschooling? Well, I am committed, and I do think that for each one of my children individually, it is the best thing. What I am having hard time with is, how to synthesize everyone's needs, and then not to overlook my needs completely. 

Case in point: taekwondo. It has been singularly the best activity for both boys. It teaches them commitment, discipline, self-control, physical mastery. It forces 8 yo to focus and to control himself. It is also horribly inconvenient for me. The boys are in different age groups now, so their classes meet from 4:45 till 5:30, and from 5:45 till 6:30. That means I am out of the house from 4 till 7. If I am lucky (and I have been very lucky lately), my MIL comes over and watches the two younger ones during this time. But coming home at 7 and only then serving dinner is very late, not to mention that is it hard to prepare dinner when I am not in the house. Last summer, when we tried combining taekwondo with camp, it was too much and the boys were too tired. I am sure that if I do send them to school, the attendance would have to decrease, if not cease altogether. Yet, who wins? And who loses? If we stop going, I gain the time back, but I also get extra-fidgety 8 yo. And if we continue going, I am running myself ragged.

10 yo is adamant that he does not want to go to school. He keeps telling me how he would do anything to stay at home. Conversely, 4 yo is excited at the prospect of school. 8 yo flatly told me that he thinks he would not like it (translation: I will not cooperate if I don't want to). I oscillate between making this one year of school for the kids so that I can get my bearings, the baby can grow up a bit and calm down (hopefully), and between sticking it out, getting more help (maybe an au pair) and generally cutting more corners. I need to arrive at the decision, and just stick with it, but in my current kotzer ruach (shortness of breath) state, I am not thinking clearly. I do not want to make an emotional decision based on one bad or one good moment, but the time to decide is now!

I know that many homeschoolers have similar dilemmas and also harbor secret fantasies of sending kids to school. My ideal would be to send them for a month, so that we all decide whether we like it. Unfortunately, school is a one-year-at-a-time proposition. So chime in, jeer at my weakness, add your helpful advice, and tell me what you would be doing if you were in my place.

futility of futilities

I had a cleaning lady come in yesterday morning. I got the kids into the car and we left, for Costco, to be out of her way. By the time we were done, she still wasn't, so I got the kids to help me unload the car while walking on tippy toes and, as soon as we were done, we went to the park.

When we came home in the early afternoon, 1 yo was exhausted. He fell asleep in the car and even transferred to his crib. The kids were quite pooped themselves, so I let them plop in front of Netflix till taekwondo.

My MIL came to watch the younger kids for taekwondo. When she came in, the baby was still sleeping and the kids were still watching. She looked around: "Somebody came to clean today!" Well, yes, and you could tell, it was actually clean and neat.

Then the baby woke up, and I took the boys to taekwondo.

By 8, after serving dinner and tucking everyone into bed, I finally finished with the kids. My husband came home, took a look around: "Wasn't that cleaning lady supposed to come in today?"

Well, yes dear, she did come in, but that was many hours ago. That was before four active kids were active in this house. This was before 1 yo rearranged play bins in the living room. That was before dinner and accompanying spills and crumbs. That was before a whole chunk of life happened.

I hate the fact that my house will not look neat for any extended period of time for the next (fill in the blank) amount of years. But I am grateful that I have all these neat kids making this terrific mess. They do clean up after themselves, and I do clean up after them, but the cumulative effect is just staggering.

mothering the mother

We have lived in our current city for four years and I did not have a primary care physician. I definitely got sick during this time, and I even had a baby (and a fractured toe!) My kids are already on our second pediatrician, but I did not have primary care physician.

A friend moved back and asked whom I would recommend. I had no answer for her.

How can it be? How can it be that my family, my kids, my husband come first and I do not have anyone to take care of me? How can it be that when I get sick, I do not even have a doctor to call?

I got a few bad sunburns as a kid. I burn easily every spring. I have some birthmarks that should be checked and observed. I had never been to a dermatologist. My 1 yo is getting regular physical therapy, I'm in talks of getting an OT evaluation for 8 yo, my kids have been seeing their pediatrician regularly, but I have never made that one appointment for myself.

It is hard to arrange, these appointments. I need to get a babysitter (or drag my whole entourage with me). I have to find a doctor who takes my health insurance. I have to find someone whom I "click" with. But still, there is no excuse why it had been four years and I have not been taking care of myself.

I got on ZocDocs and within a few minutes I had appointments both with the primary care and with the dermatologist within my insurance plan. I even made both appointments without having to make a phonecall. And I filled out forms which, hopefully, will allow the appointments to proceed faster.

How come as mothers we always give and give and give, but we forget that we need to give to ourselves, too? We are human beings, and we are in need of care and mothering. It is so easy to put everyone else first, and think that you will get to your needs later. It is easy to say that we do not care whether the kids are sleeping in our bed the whole night long, or barge on us in the bathroom, or disrupt every adult conversation, or sip from every drink we make for ourselves. But one day, we wake up, look at our crumpled clothes, at these little people to whom we give and give, and realize that we have nothing left to give because we gave it all away. Then we feel drained. Then we get resentful. Then we need to start taking just as good care of oursevles as we reserve for the others.

So here it goes: make your annual physical, put those kids in their own bed, reclaim bathroom as a private space, and make mommy's drink sacred. Your kids will thank you one day.

overparenting and kiddush Hashem

We went on a nature hike today with a bunch of other homeschoolers. I drove there with a friend and her son. In the car, we were talking about parenting nowadays and how it is so hard: you feel guilty for not hovering over your kid the entire time, you feel guilty for not signing up your kid for every single wonderful and fulfilling activity under the sun, you feel guilty about feeding them random food, you feel guilty about them watching too much TV and not producing Pinterest-worthy projects together. Somehow, parenting becomes a hard chore instead of a pleasure. Somehow the kids are always supervised. Somehow, the definition of a good mother is synonymous with helicopter.

A few days ago we were in a casual restaurant. There were two moms eating out, with their kids. The moms were obviously very excited to catch up with each other. The kids, dressed to the nines in matching white outfits, were getting quite restless since the moms have been catching up for a while. One of the girls took a styrofoam cup and sat with it on the floor, ripping it to pieces. She shredded it. Another one dropped her half-finished food. The moms kept on talking. Eventually they got up and left, with styrofoam pieces strewn all over the floor, and the food splatters under the table. As they were leaving, a Mexican worker surveyed the damage, got out the broom, and started mopping up. I said to my husband: what a chillul Hashem!

I do not hover over my kids. I do not get them dressed in matching outfits. I do not watch every move and fret about every choice. But if my kid makes a mess in a public space, he will have to clean it up. It is not a very fancy definition of kiddush Hashem, but not leaving a giant mess for the restaurant workers means a whole lot more than having your kids appear all well-groomed. If a kid of mine gets into a scuffle, I am assuming that he is to blame, and he will have to apologize or work it out.

It is time to take a giant step back and figure out what are the important values to convey to our kids. Is it the outwardly appearance, or is it internal values? If the kids' middot are emphasized, eventually (I hope) there will be no need to hover and fix and smooth everything for them; they will be able to take care of these matters satisfactorily on their own.

biting girls

Sugar and spice and everything nice...

No, this is not my daughter.
This is how we like to portray girls as a society.

But even aidel meidels (sweet girls) are not always sweet. Moreover, maybe they should not be expected to be always sweet.

Yesterday, 4 yo decided to put lotion onto boys' stuffed animals. When they found out, they came out of their room, fuming.
I asked: "Why did she do this?"
10 yo: "She wanted to turn them into girls."
"How putting lotion onto animals turns them into girls?"
"Have you ever seen a boy willingly put on lotion?"
Good point.
After a good wash cycle, the animals were all clean and fluffy.
Meanwhile, 4 yo cracked a robin's eggshell that 8 yo found and was planning to trade in at the nature center. She would not put away her laundry. They boys were quite mad at her, and I was losing all my patience. At some point, she stomped out: "The reason I am causing all this drama is because I want to take a nap!"
Well then, I will not stand in your way.

She sulked in her bed. The boys called an emergency meeting in another room. They drew a pretty mean cartoon of 4 yo and her animals. Now she was upset at them. She said that she feels like crumpling their paper and putting it into garbage.

I asked her why she put the lotion on the animals and she said that she just could not control herself. That's a line from 8 yo, but that is a valid point: she is usually very good at going with the flow, toeing the line, being all nice. But once in a while, something sets her off, and she does not want to do as expected.

I sensed that the mood has changed just enough for everyone to come to mutual understanding. I asked each kid how they felt about what happened. Everyone said how mad they felt and how they felt like doing these horrible things to each other. Then they came up with the idea how now they feel better and are ready to make up. I suggested they all go to separate rooms and draw a new picture of how they feel now. 10 yo added: "Draw two pictures: one of how you felt before and one of how you feel now." They all scrambled to different rooms, even 8 yo.

4 yo asked me how to spell "for". I helped her. I am not sure if she understood what 10 yo meant; she drew some squiggles and wrote "for me". 8 yo drew two stick figures going at each other with light sabers. One was labeled "me" and the other one "not". "Me" had some advanced light saber with the middle shooting part. It was clear that "not" will be slaughtered, and that was his sister. On the other side, he drew two stick figures standing close, with a heart between them, clearly communicating loving feelings.

10 yo drew some complicated diagram of a person being thrown off a cliff and into some machine with gears and moving parts. He showed the path which would surely dismember the figure. His "happy" drawing was also stick figures with a heart.

Bottom line, all the kids made up, with just a bit of intervention.

Then, at bedtime, 4 yo bit me. It was so unexpected that I even asked her: "Did you just bite me?!" She nodded. I immediately told her that I will not continue tucking her in, but I said it very calmly and matter-of-fact. I said that I do not like being bitten and it hurts. I also thought how by now I can expect that even my calmest and sweetest kid might not always be calm and sweet, so I can handle it appropriately instead of blowing my top. She looked like she immediately regretted her action.

Tonight, at bedtime, before I even started tucking her in, she told me that she is very sorry about biting yesterday and she will not bite me today. (She was very agreeable today). Lesson learned, I hope.

feeling burnout

Typical homeschooling day:

Baby up at night, then sleeps in till 8 am, messing up all naps (as in he will not fall asleep during his regular nap time). Husband left for work before the kids got up, so breakfast, getting dressed, davening, cleaning up is on me. Kids happily playing with a set of K'nex that a friend passed on. It is great, really, that they have no problem improvising and figuring out which motors do what and how to build anything. They do not need instructions. However, I have to call them time and again for breakfast. Then I have to tell them to clean up. Then they finally show up upstairs, in pajamas, each with a set of K'nex arrows tucked into waistbands made of rainbow loom bracelets.

It is all fine, really, except that 10yo has a mishna teacher coming at 10:30, and I would like to do chumash and the rest of the schoolwork with him before. Then the question of going to swim arises. I do not feel confident in their swimming ability, or in my ability to supervise four kids at a pool without a lifeguard. More, I have to call a friend to arrange this swimming session. They whine, and I lose it and tell them that for sure no swimming today, and not with me as the only adult present, ever.

8 yo goes down to the basement to daven with 4 yo, but they are not davening, they are playing with K'nex. I tell them to come upstairs and daven within my earshot. 1 yo is happily destroying the living room, after wrecking two kitchen drawers. I am trying to make challah for Shabbos, so the bread machine is in the laundry room, away from the baby.

8 yo throws a fit about davening. 4 yo wants to do projects, but not before she davens. She is waiting for me to daven with her, but I had to go wipe her tush in the middle of putting up dough, and then at out-of-town friend called to make shabbos plans and then I had to vacuum cut-up feathers from her yesterday's project. Bottom line, I am standing next to a bowl of dough trying to figure out how many cups of flour I already added while she is asking and asking to daven with her.

I try to nap 1yo and go outside to do Chumash with 10 yo. The baby will not nap, and 10 yo keeps insisting that Yehudah wants to get married to Tamar. He does not like the word "prostitute"; he insists that she is a hippie. He mentioned before that Tamar was the daughter of Shem, so I showed him that Rashi. He remembered from Sanhedrin that the penalty for a daughter of Kohen who has an affair while being married is burning, while for a regular person it is strangulation. Then he asks, but she is not married (I related this story later on to his mishna teacher and he said that Ramban asks the same question). I just answered that she is married to the family. He was wondering whether Yehudah was also going to get burned.

Meanwhile, 8 yo supposedly davened on his own. While I was outside with 10 yo, he even came up with ideas for his daily writing. In the morning, he mentioned that he's interested in learning script, something I was planning on skipping with him. His printing is still atrocious, and he hates writing. Now he wants to do chumash, but that was at the same time as I was learning with 10 yo. Now that I am available, he comes up with all interesting things: the chair has bird poop, it is too hot outside, he does not know what to write about for his writing, and he does not know the first word in the pasuk (that he read and translated yesterday). He changes the chair, I offer to go inside with him, I tell him to focus on Chumash now and not on writing, and I will help him with the word. Never mind, he just throws a fit and stomps off. I am not calm, I am as far away from calm as possible.

Did I mention that the baby is not sleeping?

I am up to my elbows in dough. I am trying to do Shabbos cooking. 10 yo offered to start on 5th grade math instead of Lashon HaTorah (we have not done either in weeks/months), but he is stumped by mental math calculations. I should be helping him, but I need to finish with this dough. I am much more worried about 8 yo's outburst over nothing, than about a math lesson a grade ahead.

I speak to the mishna teacher about his chicken keeping and whether 8 yo can help out in some way. When we went to the nature center, he was all over the chickens, picking them up, petting, and even finding an egg. I need to find an outlet for this child, something that he is naturally inclined to do. The rabbi's chickens do not like to be held, but he agrees to let my son come and feed them and collect the eggs.

For the first time ever, I just send out my assistant with the three older kids to the park. 1 yo finally fell asleep and I am cracking on that shabbos cooking.

Is this what burnout looks like? When you do not want to take out that baby who woke up from a nap way too early? When you do not want to pick up kitchen utensils for the fiftieth time today? When you do not want 4 yo making any more projects because there is always a mess accompanying them, and no end in sight? When you do not want to accommodate and strategize on how to teach a difficult anxious child? I do not want to hear about another cute/creative/breakthrough strategy. When you do not want to check math because it involves uninterrupted period of time to be effective, and you need to stay positive about careless mistakes?

baby rescue fox

When I look at my homeschooling friends, I see a lot of outsourcing, preferably with kids being dropped off somewhere and parent having time to themselves. It tends to get more intensive the larger the amount of kids involved, and the wider the age gap between them. When I look at my homeschooling, when I think about which days work, there is a pattern: very little schoolwork, kids got out of bed on the right foot, an outing without hidden educational agenda, lots of time out of the house. This past Tuesday I ran a whole bunch of errands with all the kids and then we drove to an animal sanctuary almost an hour away from home. It was a great day. No, I am not kidding; on those terms it was great to spend so much time with them. We did Chumash very quickly in the morning, but that was it for formal schoolwork. Then we stopped by OfficeMax to print 5th grade Math Mammoth, picked up mail, stopped by the bank (8 yo helped me figure out how much I need to withdraw and 10 yo studied the safe and the bulletproof glass), stopped by the grocery store to get a few things for dinner, then picked up copied math pages and got paninis-to-go for lunch. Yes, all these errands with all the kids: no problem! The rest of the day in the animal sanctuary was also quite fine. We saw a ton of free-range peacocks, talked to a keeper about a baby rescue fox, looked at all the animals. We came to a secluded spot at the edge of the forest. I sat on the bench and nursed while the kids played some advanced game of hide-and-seek. It was so idyllic, so calm, so perfect. No walls, no workbooks, no expectations.

peacocks

Maybe these early years, when the baby is not sleeping, when the house is a total mess no matter what I do, when I cannot have a completed thought to myself are not the time for rigorous academics and high expectations. Maybe these years are meant to be spent as far away from the confines of the house as possible. I have no problem coming up with what to do with the kids all summer long.

But I do not want to check another page. I do not want to call another therapist. I do not want to answer another question. I do not want to commit to another field trip, no matter how amazing and educational. I want to have a break. Maybe I can start with having a cup of coffee all by myself, still hot, without anyone yelling at me or tugging at my skirt.

So, fellow homeschoolers, are you feeling burnout? What do you do about it?

teaching the story of Yehudah and Tamar

We are up to the story of Yehudah and Tamar with 10 yo. I might have chosen to approach this whole issue with trepidation. But I didn't. I already told him the story a few years ago on a walk to shul, so he knew the basic outline. Now, I did not remember which details I told him and which I left out, but I also know that he spent enough time reading Chumash to have stumbled onto this little bit on his own.

We were up to the pesukim where Tamar removes her widow's garb, wraps up in a scarf and covers her face and Yehudah thinks her a prostitute. I made sure that he knew that Yehudah was not married at this point, that Torah is not given (10 yo brought up an issue of kosher food for Tamar to find at the crossroads), and that Tamar feels that she is still married to this family. 10 yo thought that Tamar must have looked like a hippie, wrapped in scarves. I smiled at the image.

My next stumble was that word "zona" (prostitute). He has no concept of what it means, so just telling him the word and expecting him to parrot it back did not make sense. I said that a man could pay a woman to have sex with her one time, without any expectation of marriage, and that is what happened here. 10 yo: either Yehudah was very rich, or Tamar was very poor. I said that she was still bound to the family, and she was expecting to get married to Shelah, which she saw was not happening. I made it clear that Tamar did not do this for money. 10 yo said, like Ruth, she also went and found the man she was supposed to get married to. I got excited and asked him to remind me about Ruth at the end of the perek; I don't think he realizes that this little story with Tamar is connected to Boaz. 10 yo got all off track, talking about how Ruth was from Midian. I said, semi-annoyed, she was not from Midian. He corrected that she was from Moav and Moav is related to Yehudah. I was eager to get back on track, and I was not sure whether this whole sidetracking was to avoid this uncomfortable topic. Then I realized that he forgot where Moav came from, so I found those pesukim. He said, oh yeah, Lot and his daughters. And suddenly, a new pattern emerged.

The Jewish monarchy seems to emerge from daring, even blatantly propositioning and decidedly immodest acts of three women: older daughter of Lot seducing her father, Tamar seducing her father-in-law, and Ruth, how do we put it delicately, "uncovering the feet" of Boaz. Lot's daughter gives birth to Moav ( Me Av, from my father). Tamar gives birth to Perez, the ancestor of Boaz. Ruth, a descendant of Moav, unites with Boaz, a descendant of Tamar, to give birth to Davidic dynasty, and, ultimately, Moshiach. From such daring and "coarse" women the light of the world is destined to shine.

Why not from Sorah, the modest tent-dweller? Why not from Tziporah, Moshe's wife? Why does David come from these brazen women? Dovid himself is not exactly a picture of piety and modesty, wrestling lions, waging battles, getting Batsheva. Yet he is "the sweet singer of Israel", and the most famous Jewish king.

Perhaps, for these women it was a matter of seeing an opportunity and taking matters into their own hands. Perhaps these were the women of action, forever altering the course of history. Perhaps we should model our daughters after them instead of passive-aggressive Rachel and Leah.

And perhaps there is nothing unseemly in explaining the actions going on in Tanach instead of hoping that we can skirt the issue and our kids will learn the story "somewhere else, sometime later, from a morah/rebbe".