Homeschooler woes

Sometimes its just hard to be a homeschooling parent. There are parts that are not pretty, I know this is the same for those of you with kids in school. I was educated in a variety of ways, I was homeschooled in that I didnt attend school, this was pretty often really from grades K-8. I went to K in public, 1st few wks of 1st in private, part of 3rd in public, part of 5th private, part of 7th and all of 8th private. In between, was a lot of my mom homeschooling to the best of her ability while working full time, and having no money to spend on books and school stuff. I loved being homeschooled despite these advantages, and the knowledge and abilities that I have are all from my homeschool.

Now I homeschool. Having had a tri-fold experience growing up, I knew it was the right way to go for us. My children's personalities helped to cement this. Tad had a difficult time standing still, the doctors wanted to diagnose him with ADD and ADHD and one suggested high functioning autism (he wasnt and isnt autistic...) My daughter on the other hand sat still beautifully, but napped until well into her 6th year of life. That would have given her trouble from 1 month after her 5th birthday had we put her in Kindergarten.

There are hard parts to this gig though! I must say, I think it is hard to deal with the changes that children go through when you are with them full time. All of their hard moments belong to you as a parent, as well as all of their accomplishments. I do not miss their triumphs, I am a part of them. This part pleases me immensely.

They are coming into an age where they both question a lot more than they used to. They have always asked big questions and shown wisdom, they "get things" that other kids just dont seem to notice. Things like innuendos in movies-this has not been easy. Answering those questions are not usually hard. Now they are starting to wonder why do we deserve to make the rules, why do they not get a more active vote. I think they understand that they cannot set their own bedtime, what they question is "When will I get to set my own bedtime then, because parents do, I dont. What age is that?" So we are starting to experience the sighing, slumping of shoulders that I associate with my own teen years. I see the same thing when I say, no it is not break time yet, during school.

These things feel frustrating. It feels like I am losing something, no matter how I hold on. I do want them to grow, I want them to experience life and change and learn how to manage it. I still miss the happy, bouncy, easy age where they didnt seem to feel such disappointment. There was always something happy and distracting. This has been coming on for a long time, a couple of years perhaps. Maybe it is harder because it is both of them, and more often than it used to be. I love to homeschool, but sometimes I think it would be easier if they were in school for some of the parts that they dont like!