lifeinflux

I have unschool homeschool envy. There. I admitted it. I am so jealous of families who take off for a week to go camping with 20 other homeschool families and call that “schoolwork”. I feel a physical yearning to throw my lesson plans out my window and turn today’s math lesson into 2 hours of baking. I would love to be able to watch Drue spend her entire day reading about goblin sharks and not bite my nails wondering how this is going to lead to a fight this weekend when Drue wants to go out on the water but instead has 3 hours of history and an hour of Japanese to finish before the fun can begin. Everything I read about homeschool plays up how you can be as unstructured as you want and how it provides your child the ability to delve deeply into subjects that interest him. I have read success story after success story of young adults now living their dreams of being carpenters on movie sets, doctors in Africa or traveling to China to teach English as a second language, all because of homeschool. I also talk to college admissions officers who tell me for every homeschooler who shows up with the most amazing portfolio, three others show up without the basic a-g credits needed to get into a state university. Part of me wants to get work and schoolwork done early every single day, allowing for hours of time in and on the water each and every day. But my work ethic does not allow me to cut out every day at 2 PM to go swimming in the ocean and Drue’s own biology works against her and the kind of free time she, and I, want for her that would allow her to spend hours each day in and on the ocean.

Part of the problem, if you can call it that, is my need to ensure any and every option is available to Drue. If she wants to go to Stanford, by golly I’ll be right there driving her to every volleyball tournament, mathlete competition, internship, tutoring whatsit in the great state of California and points north and east to ensure she gets her shot. If she wakes up tomorrow and decides she wants to be a surf bum, I guess we’ll move to Santa Cruz and drop her down to a more normal math/science schedule in order to give her valuable surf time during the day. My point is, I have an ambitious child who wants it all. She is crushing math and science and wants to spend every waking hour on or in the water. And I get that. I respect it. And we’ve met some wonderful folks who are helping make her dream a reality a few times a week (thank you MSI!). I’m willing to put in the driving time (and water time) to ensure she gets what she wants and needs. But the other reality of our lives and her goals is making sure she has a well rounded (and well documented) formal education so if she does decide to apply to Stanford (of U Cal-Santa Cruz or any other school of her choosing) she has a decent shot of getting in. And sometimes, most times actually, those two goals collide in a spectacular, horrible way.

As the family planner it is my job to make sure that Drue has a good mix of formal education that allows her to meet her long term goals AND down time to spend in and on the water doing what she loves most. Add in a heaping dash of volleyball and social activities and well, we’re insanely busy folks. And we like it that way… until we don’t. And usually the issue comes about when there are a million things to do and Drue’s ADHD decides to kick into overdrive. Or as she says, “the BFBS (Brain Fog Bullshit) is back!” It’s like something out of a horror film for everyone, especially Drue, and it can turn a perfectly great but busy day into sheer unrelenting hell. Drue can go from zooming through math problems or whipping out a 2 page paper on Literary Sub-genres to staring blankly at her toes for 3 hours and alternately whispering and yelling “I don’t KNOW!” when I ask her why she cannot focus and get back into the groove. Typically we can draw a direct line back to her diet (carbs are the absolute killer) and Drue’s inability to walk away from a soda, piece of bread or tower of pasta to save her own life. And honestly it drives me NUTS because it turns any and every social situation into a tense situation. She wants to eat like a normal kid and I hesitate to call attention to what she’s eating because in so many ways she feels like a square peg in a circular social hole. A lot of time she abstains from eating whatever carby items are around but then is angry with me regardless of what I do or don’t say because that ADHD comes from well.. me. And that whole square peg, brain thing she has going on? Granted there are a LOT of brainiacs from all sides of Drue’s family tree but the social awkwardness? The inability to communicate effectively? Those Aspie moments? Yeah that gets a direct line back to me as well. Or, worse, she eats the food because she wants to fit in and she wants that awesome, amazing sugar YUM moment and then she suffers from brain fog for the next 24-48 hours and is furious with herself for making the same mistake yet again. Win-win, no?

So between that not-so-little issue coupled with Drue’s high reaching goals for her (which I highly approve of… people, even kids!!, need lofty goals to aspire and work towards) and a nice dash of ADHD and all the self-anger issues that can come with it means that we need a schedule and we require a plan that includes easy to snag meals that provide Drue with on-the-go, healthy, non-starchy carb foods she needs. And finding on-the-go and healthy non-processed foods is NOT easy folks unless we have a plan in place to ensure the time, energy and effort to accommodate those eating needs. And it’s not just on Drue – I need the same kinds of foods as well to continue to get healthy and to work towards my own health and fitness goals. When we met with her therapist to acquire behavior modification tools we were given the two rules of managing ADHD:
Rule number 1: Provide structure.
Rule number 2: Create a workable schedule.

Thanks to my amazing (hush, you) organizational abilities, I can provide her all the structure and schedules in the world. Its providing her the time and freedom to spend 2 hours researching random kelp beds floating off some random island in the Indian Ocean due to rising acidification levels due to a hole in the ozone or some such that I struggle with. (Yes I made that factoid up but you get my point.) I know I feel random and useless and irritable and dispirited and even get down right mean and angsty when too much time has passed and I haven’t painted or played the piano or sketched or canned something. So I completely understand when Drue has slogged through two weeks of math, science, writing and history without having time to read her marine biology books or godforbid, be in the ocean, and she is downright ornery. I GET IT! I’d blame her medulla oblongata but I know better (sorry, had to throw in a Waterboy reference there). But I feel like it is my job as her parent AND as her primary educator to stress the importance of learning as HER JOB first. She has to get her three R’s done and to the best of her ability and then the unstructured learning and fun can come. I’m a HUGE advocate of the “work hard, play hard” mentality. Remember that one Generation Xers? We had that down to a fine science before everyone caught all caught up in contributing to overpopulation, worrying about mortgages and continuing our parent’s legacy of conspicuous consumerism. I believe that with rights come responsibilities (I know… I am SO OLD SCHOOL!) and feel like these two lessons (along with treat others as you want to be treated so if I’m not treating you well, I really don’t want you around) are the three golden rules and if Drue adheres to them, she’s going to crush life, mold it into what she wants and know how to handle herself and any situation that comes her way. That said, I really wish we could find a happy medium between the structure and schedule without having her ADHD go haywire and instead of working on her awesome diorama, find out she’s spent half the day contemplating a leaf, desperately trying to focus on anything OTHER than that leaf. And yes, I could put her on medication but 1) too many qualified doctors have talked of the evils of medicating ADHD kids and 2) I don’t think she needs them. More importantly, she doesn’t want to take them because a lot of her acquaintances who take ADD meds act like zombies on them.

So what’s a mom to do? Do I have a schedule and throw it out the window trusting we can catch up come summer time and hope we have enough time in between for a few fun trips during the months of June, July and August? Or do I struggle to keep us on task, sometimes keeping Drue from the things she LOVES doing in order to ensure she gets the things done she HAS TO DO in order to keep moving towards her own goals? The answer would be easy if these were MY goals and not hers. I wouldn’t be so worried if she came to me and said, “Mom I need you to back off”. But she’s not. Instead she’s coming to me in tears about the brain fog, upset that she’s going to lose her weekend time to school work she did not finish over the week but knowing if she doesn’t give up weekend time, next week will be harder. She asks me to support her behavior modification plan which means I have to say no so many times I feel cast in the role of “Perpetual Meaniehead Funsucker”. And I hate it. I know this is part of it – this hard job of parenting. But no one told me homeschooling would add to that. I guess I naively thought we would have control of our own lives… but now I find instead of just worrying about what kind of person Drue will grow up to be, I’m worried about what kind of student she’s becoming as well. And while I wouldn’t trade this time with Drue to anyone or for anything, like so many other parenting duties, no one tells you how gosh darn hard it is. Hopefully, like all the other hard parts of parenting, the rewards will be great for Drue and for me. Hopefully we can get into some kind of rhythm in the next few weeks that allows us to find a way to achieve our school goals AND find time for spontaneous fun. If not, I might have to throw the schedule out the window and just wing it before it drives me and Drue crazy.

Stay tuned…