Do you ever hear something, that divides your life into a before and after?

Many of us have had harrowing (or joyful!) experiences that do this. Maybe something we experienced, maybe something we heard.

I have had many. This one, in particular, strongly impacted my homeschooling philosophy. It is my “Roman Empire” of sorts–meaning, I think about it all the time.

My Homeschool “Roman Empire”

My homeschool “Roman Empire” is a phrase I saw typed in a Facebook group. I don’t use Facebook for much these days–mostly for marketplace, and reading parenting or homeschooling posts in various groups. I love crowdsourcing and reading through forums, especially when it comes to homeschooling!

This comment that I saw on a forum wasn’t from anyone famous. It was a regular homeschool mom, who I believe had been homeschooling awhile. I saw her comment, and it is burned in my brain:

“Do whatever you want! Remember: everything is made up.”

I remember staring at my computer screen. Everything is made up? The comment, at first, seemed a bit trite, like she was making too light of the situation.

The context was this: another mom was asking about how to teach the sciences, and she was stressed about the “order,” timing, and methods used. This mom shared that as a student, she had done life science, then earth science, then biology, then chemistry. For various reasons, this particular order was not doable for her own kids, in their homeschool. And the wise mom chimed in: Remember: everything is made up.

Everything is made up? I thought about this. It was simultaneously scary (nothing means anything! Ahh!) and enlightening (if everything is made up, I suppose I can “make things up,” too!)

Flexibility is Freedom

For my whole life, I have been a pretty black-and-white person. I like rules, rubrics, planners, and parameters. I like knowing what’s coming next. I like concrete ideas. I have a creative side, but only in certain areas. I like certainty.

However, with each new year that I homeschool, I can see clearly that parenting is not black and white, homeschooling is not black and white, teaching any given subject is not black and white, and children are not black and white. Life is filled with gray! I think this is intuitive for many people, but for some of us Type-A’s, it takes a bit of struggling to accept it.

As I reflect on our family life, parenting, and homeschooling, it has given me a lot of freedom to relax into this “everything is made up” idea.

At this point in my journey, here are some of my key takeaways from this quote:

• The beauty and appeal of homeschooling is that you choose what is best for your family and child. Standards exist, and are important. But you can choose how you get there. Chemistry can be taught before biology! A three year old can try painting acrylic on canvas. You can read an advanced chapter book to your preschooler.
• Many of the “academic rules” in your head are not really rules at all, just what you remember from your own experience in a school system. That doesn’t make them bad–it just means, as a homeschooling parent now, you can bend them, or change them!
• Not to undermine or downplay any one teacher or person’s contribution to traditional education: but, what the Facebook poster said was true: everything IS made up! Someone, at some point, decided that the order would be Life Science, Earth Science, Biology, Chemistry. (That was true for me–maybe that wasn’t even true for you!) It was just a person. They were just people. Often times, people do have good reasons for these decisions! But as homeschoolers, we have freedom to break from those molds and try different routes. Teachers in a mainstream classroom do not always have that privilege.
• Often, we make our own mental structures and “rules” in an attempt at peace and fluidity, but if we’re too stubborn, they’ll snap in half. We have to relax into the freedom that homeschooling provides, and remember, that “everything is made up”–even our own expectations and standards at times!
• If everything is made up, everything can be tweaked. We can change an objective. We can change a strategy. We can change an incentive. We can change a consequence. We can change what order, or what method we use. We can change anything!

Learning Flexibility in Homeschooling

I will be honest–learning to pivot has been hard for me. I usually have big, ambitious plans, and a lot of enthusiasm and expectation to accompany those plans. Guess what–sometimes they flop, right in my face. Sometimes I spend an hour planning what I believe is an exciting, eye-opening lesson, and my kids don’t like it. Sometimes I buy a new math manipulative, or find a cool art project, or think of a fun field trip idea–and something (or, someone!) fails to cooperate. Life is full of the unexpected. Those of us that are home with our kids all day, feel this acutely! I think one of the best skills a parent can strive for is learning to pivot with grace, humility and humor. We won’t always do it perfectly, but we can try!

It may sound dramatic, but reading the phrase, “everything is made up!” on that random day, changed me. I think about it often. I give myself a break, take a deep breath, and make a new plan. I pivot!

How about you: what do you feel, when you read that phrase? Do you relax into that flexibility, or do you bristle first?

I’d love to hear a phrase that changed your homeschool!

With love,

Cait