The Start of Something New.

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It isn’t spectacular yet, but I keep peeking in there whenever I pass. It’s turning out to be a really neat, little space of blue and white with pops of green. The school room.

I’ve worked hard to pull this room together. It took three days to clear it out of all the forgotten junk, caked on rust and collected cobwebs before I could even get started; another week of really scrubbing, sanding, and spraying before I could dig into the daunting process of making it look new.

I painted the old, awful, dark wood paneling (think Trailer Chic, sans the Chic) that used to be in there a very bright white, so that the blue above it looked newer. We laid a big area rug down over the ugly, asbestos tiling and hung some long curtain panels over the small, rectangle, basement widow to make it look bigger. Spencer put some kind of special light fixture in there that will blind a person for starting directly at it, in order to make up for the fact that it won’t get any natural sun. The only thing we kept in the room at all was the desk and filing cabinet, which I plan to paint in order to cover where it’s metal is rusting at the bottom. Then we framed a giant map with flags of every country, taped up a few squares of cork board on either side of the nook above the desk, plugged in her laptop, set a little basket above the filing cabinet, and hung a slick, green clock from target on one wall and an oversized dry erase board from Staples on another. Matthew has a little, white rocking chair in the corner with his name on the back where he can sit and hang out with us if and when he wants. It isn’t done. But it is awesome so far.

Between the laptop that was among the presents she got for her birthday and the curriculum, plus a few books, we spent about a thousand dollars this week. I feel like we just caught some air, making this little dream of ours a reality. And soon, we’ll be able to lay it all out into a perfectly packaged schedule. I am going out of my mind with enough enthusiasm to make up for the fact that Mary is still… well, lukewarm on the idea of things getting serious.

I want her getting used to the room (and making sure that the laptop stays safe) so - even though she’s allowed to use it whenever she wants for whatever she wants - the computer has to stay on the schoolroom desk. I like that we have the option of bringing it upstairs if we need more space to work and want to have it handy, but I don’t want it having to be lugged from under her bed every morning. I want this room to be fun and inviting, but primarily functional. I want it being used everyday. This is where the magic will happen.

I’m so pumped about the room being nearly finished and almost having the actual books in our hands that I’m forgetting about the fact that I’m still so nervous.

It feels like so many people who go into this and have wonderful things to say about their journey are working with kids who just never fight them on anything, kids who always share in their parent’s enthusiasm. It’s like home schooling is the vaccine for MSPD (Middle School Personality Disorder, look it up). These incredible kids with incredible, mastermind parents are somehow all about doing chores “without grumbling” just because mom put a Philippeans 2:14 quote at the top of their magnetic work-chart. I swoon at the thought.

I love Mary, I love her dearly. But, bless her heart, I don’t know if she will ever fit that mold. I don’t know if it’s that she’s just been conditioned to react to everything so critically because it’s the way that her peers do or if it’s the nature of who she is… But the child complains incessantly about even the things she helps to decide on. Even about the nice things that people try to do for her. She once complained about the possibility of going to Disney World - seriously. She can enjoy things, just not without finding fourteen reasons to complain about it first. And since home schooling pretty much centers around the premise of me telling her what to do, I wonder how all of this is going to pan out. 


It wasn’t always this way. In fact, a big reason for my wanting to home school her in the first place was that she’s always had a much better attitude at home than she has had at school. She’d come home from school bubbly as a butterfly and pleasant as could be, only for us to find out that she did something outrageously insubordinate that day.

But as this whole thing takes shape around her this summer, it’s affected the way she behaves at home. I don’t want to accuse her of pulling those old, familiar tricks on me now instead of her teachers, just because she has no one else to pull them on. But… well…

I wonder what a difference the change in atmosphere really has the power to make. I wonder if this will be enough. I wonder if this will even have a chance to work when it depends so much on her cooperation.

On the one hand I think: this is exactly why doing this will be good for her. She needs to be beat over the head with positivity consistently worked with on this. This needs to be woven into her daily education: ethics, manners, etiquette, graciousness. The give and take of a teacher/student relationship will be healthy for us. This is the change we need.

Then I think: I don’t know. What if she fights me on it? What if she doesn’t take it seriously? What are my options for handling it? What then, if this whole thing turns out to be one big power struggle at the cost of her education?

We’ve been making little strides already, which is why I don’t mind bringing it up. But sometimes it feels like everything I say to her is met with an adversarial attitude. The beginning of summer was when it was at it’s worst.


I hate writing about the things she does that are hard for me to figure out because I don’t want her reading this someday and thinking that I resent her or anything crazy. She’s a kid, going through stages that all kids go through eventually by some degree or another. She’s staking her independence by separating her opinion from everyone else’s, trying to exercise her right to have a voice and all that jargon. I stood in her shoes once when I was young. And I’m just at the other end of the spectrum now, taking a stab at the parenting part with a kid from the next generation who’s more than willing to come at me full force with the reluctance to listen. Such is life.

(I’m exaggerating a little. She listens; She just also groans. And gripes. And rolls her eyes. And huffs and puffs. And stomps. And slams things. And laughs at me in exasperation as if it’s the village fucking idiot she’s dealing with. And more recently has started trying to get away with snapping things like: “Oh, JESUS!” when I say something she really disagrees with.)

I wasn’t at that stage of life when I was 12, but I remember when I was. I can still see, looking back, how frustrating it was for my mom. Of course, her attitude isn’t always sour. In fact, most of the time she’s a sweetheart. And you have to keep in mind that 12 seconds after she throws a MASSIVE fit over having to put her cereal bowl in the sink, she might give you a hug or tell you that you look nice that day. I worry because the immediate drive to fight us on every little thing is already something we butt heads over on a daily loop. It’s going to be a much bigger issue though, if it interferes with home schooling this often.

One great thing about spending so much time with her is that I’ve picked up on a few tricks of the trade. I can’t just stop asking her to do things. But I’m careful not to lay blame if I’m confronting her with something. Or show that I feel one way or another about anything I’d like her opinion about, because she’ll automatically take the opposite stance. I think it’s a subconscious fight for independence or something. Maybe some kind of settling of scores for all the times I’ve made her clean her room. I don’t know. I’m not an expert on the inner workings of the frightening Tweenage Mind, I just know that she’s more pleasant to deal with when I’m not putting an opinion out there for her to immediately puke on. Because she will.


Eventually, as June unfolded into July, it started to kind of turn around.

One day I said something about a boy her age being kind of cute and she actually agreed with me. It felt so completely unnatural I was like, WAIT. WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Another day, she offered to help with something and didn’t complain even when I had to show her a cleaner way of getting it done. Just yesterday I found that she’s been stuffing her freshly washed clothes right back into her dirty hamper to get out of having to fold them and put them away; clothes from winter have been just constantly recycled through the wash over and over again - and when I calmly confronted her about it, she admitted to doing it with what actually looked like a little bit of remorse. Everyday, there are signs of improvement on my end and hers. I’ve started to correct her grammar lately and volunteer information about things she wonders out loud - and to my great surprise, she’s always responded positively.

She still brings up home schooling like the word itself is poison in her mouth. But I know when she really doesn’t like something and when she’s just taking advantage of on open opportunity to complain. This opportunity is golden because so many people are eager to hear where she stands on the upcoming change.

I can tell that she’s majorly coming around because she’s been asking a lot of questions without the nasty tone in her voice lately, answering questions I have for her about it without any sign of resentment and even telling me that the room looks nice and certain group activities sound like they could be fun. (She’s interested in cheerleading and learning to ice skate.) (Horseback riding lessons, which I offered, made her pretend to throw up on her shoes. Continuing clarinet in the home school choir? That put her on suicide watch. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.)

They are just baby steps, but maybe they’re a sign that things are headed in a good direction. Maybe I’m learning more about my daughter. Maybe we’re both growing a little. Or maybe we’ve just had a few good days. Either way, I will take it with a smile. A big, nerdy smile; enthusiastic enough for the both of us.