My #VirtualSchool #Homeschool #Confession #FallSlacking

I have a confession to make. I see a lot of homeschooling moms in Facebook homeschool groups planting a landmine like this for no good reason other than to make themselves feel awesome. It goes something like this (and it's a parody, so keep that in mind):

"There are 160 lessons in our virtual school and we are on lesson 80 and it's October first. Where are y'all at so far? How are y'all doing?"

And a lot of people ignore that post. Most people ignore that post, judging from the number of members in the groups. Not me. I dive right in with my confession. And you know what happens then? The others like me come out of their little homeschool closets and they SHARE and we get to know each other in a real way and it rocks.

I'm not trying to trash the over-achiever moms in the homeschool world. I am trying to let the ones who selectively slack know that they are not alone and they are not doing it wrong.

So like to the person above I replied something along the lines of:

"We are supposed to be on lesson 42, which is me going at a comfortable pace for us, but most of my five kids are behind and we definitely don't do every single activity in every single lesson or I would be homeschooling literally 30 hours per day, which is not possible. Also, it's the season of fall, which is gorgeous in the Midwest, so we do a lot of short homeschool days. We do a lot of one-checkpoint days where we just need to phone in our day of attendance. But then in the winter and on other down days we might do like 20 checkpoints easily each kit (a normal pace is like 7 in a day)."

So my confession is that we do a lot of short homeschool days so we can LIVE LIFE and ENJOY IT. I did not get into this homeschooling gig so I could sit at a table with my 5 kids from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. pounding stuff into their brains.

And it doesn't have to be that way if that's not the kind of homeschooler you are!

So just be you! Don't feel like you have to be like the homeschooler down the street or like your sister-in-law or like the mom you heard about who had 7 kids and they all went to Harvard. Who cares? Not me. I want to be me and I want my kids to be themselves and I want us to enjoy the learning lifestyle we  have created and have been blessed enough to be able to live out!