Hard Work

Mothering is work, no doubt about it.  Being a good Mother, is damn hard work!  I don't mean the physical kind.  It's the mental and emotional stuff.  I mean, you never know...You're always wondering if you are doing the right thing, saying the right thing, showing or hiding the correct emotions.  Are you giving too much information or too little?  Too lenient or too strict?  We homeschool so that adds a whole other dimension to the mix.

When you make the decision to homeschool, you are doing so because you believe you can do a better job than the public school system.  But how do you know?  How do you know you are doing a better job.  I don't follow a strict curriculum, so I worry.  My son's Godfather is a teacher at one of SF's best private high schools (probably the best, if not the most expensive).  He tries to reassure me that the most important things are math, reading, and the ability to participate and communicate with teachers and other students. 

Luis doesn't seem to have a problem with that.  He is questioning, always.  Participating, always.  He reads the newspapers and online news.  He spends his days in the yoga studio and talks to all of the volunteers and knows more about most of the students than almost anyone else working here.  Students and teachers stop and ask him questions about his life and he answers, in detail.  He comments on their clothing, bags, shoes, what they are did or are doing over the weekend.  We attend art openings and he talks to the artists and attendees.  He makes intelligent observations on his Facebook friends' postings.  He draws everyone into conversation.  Sometimes when I listen to him talk, I think "who is this?"  He sounds more like a 30 year old than most 30 year olds. 

And he reads.  Voraciously!  Granted most of the time it is fiction.  Sometimes we are lucky that he is interested in historical fiction or a biography.  But fiction sparks his imagination.  And it peaks his interest in learning about different things, like greek myths, or slavery.

He also writes.  He has a blog which I opened this morning and was pleasantly surprised to find that he has seven postings.  I was apalled by his spelling, grammar and punctuation.  I guess we need to work on that.  He has started to write a book.  I don't know what it's about, I'm not allowed to read it.  He has also written articles for the 826 Valencia Bayfarer News.  

This morning he commented that he is beginning to notice alot of things about math, specifically, he recognized the relationship between ounces and cups as noted on the side of a quart Ball jar.  He is good at math, but has a difficult time accepting that fact.  His last public school teacher kept telling him that he wasn't capable of doing math, or reading for that matter.  She badly beat him up mentally and he came to believe her. 

That has been a big part of my uphill battle during the past year and a half, undoing those beliefs.  But I think we are almost to the crest of this hill.  Now the question is, do we return to the public school system?  We have two more years before high school.  I think another year of homeschooling would be good for him on the one hand, building his confidence once again.  But how much will be lacking academically?  Can I balance that with the confidence?

I feel like I need a nap after thinking about these things, and I'm a long way from an answer.  It's a hard thing, this Mother thing.