Every Day I Write the Book

Caron asks:

Why did you decide to write this book?

People who knows things tell writers to write the book they wish they could read. When researching homeschooling, I had libraries full of books about education and homeschooling. I could actually wear a highlighter out, though, before I found a book about homeschooling where the writer -- usually a parent who homeschooled -- was anything but serenely confident that homeschooling was best for her family. Actually, the general sense was that homeschooling was best for everyone's family. I understood the confidence; people who are iffy on something don't tend to write books about that subject, and when everyone in your life keeps telling you what a bad idea homeschooling is, eventually you're going to get your back up and decide that no, homeschooling is the very best choice of all. Even so, that confidence -- across all the subsets of homeschooling -- was unwavering. It gave me the same creeping sense of inadequacy I've felt around certain La Leche League members.

And yet I love people who are certain, if for no other reason than they provide such a nice contrast to me. "Perhaps," I would think as I closed the most recent tome on homeschooling, "I'll start homeschooling and I'll become confident, just like them! And then I'll stop chewing my cuticles into tartare!"  

Um, well.  

I had a panic attack my second day of homeschooling, the day I realized my daughter had no compunction about using the same trick she'd used to great success on all her previous teachers: the "I couldn't possibly do that terribly complicated math I already did last year!" trick. Only then did it occur to me I knew how to deal with parent/child peskiness, but not teacher/child peskiness. I raced through all my books. No one, it seemed, had ever experienced a panic attack. No one was ever afraid of their kid's capacity to outsmart them. The doubts they alluded to all sounded annoying but small and manageable, like jet lag or pillow hair. According to these books, no other homeschooling mother encountered the Ebola of paralyzing self-doubt.

I wrote the book so people outside of homeschooling could see what it looks like in the corners. But mostly I wrote it because I suspect there's a parent somewhere who has thought, "You know, homeschooling might actually make sense for us, might make our lives easier and happier, but you have to be supremely confident and know exactly what you're doing before you set out."  

I'm here to say you don't.

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 LOVING your questions; keep them coming! Remember, they don't have to be about homeschooling exclusively. I also have cats, an elderly dog and insomnia. All are fair topics.