Homeschooling Through the Hurricanes of Life
Today is a better day. One of a few that I've experienced this year. It's nice to just sit here and know that my world isn't quite literally falling apart at the moment. I guess I should give it time, it is only Noon.
Homeschooling has been so incredibly difficult this year. SO DIFFICULT! My family has suffered tremendous loss in almost every area of our lives, costing us valuable learning time and an immense amount of retention of what I worked so hard to accomplish in Tavin's life.
Last Thanksgiving--on the day--we received the news that our landlord was not going to renew our lease, but instead sell the home we not only had fallen in love with, but also had verbally agreed with the owner to purchase in the upcoming 2 years. So to say we were shocked was an understatement.
At the time of realizing we only had a month to pack, find a new home, and get settle somewhere else outside of a house we called home, my brother-in-law, who was a recovering alcoholic and living with us, decided he felt he was ready to move on. He had only been sober for a couple of month, and the last month with us was rocky at best. He was moody, aggressive, frazzled, and distant. We had really loved having him as part of our family, but once he got it in his head that he needed to drink again he began making excuses as to why he needed to move out and be "on his own." He began starting little arguments over nothing with me, which eventually always ended up into full blown fights that became personal and painful.
Upon learning about our rental, he decided to move. But he didn't just say, "I'm moving on this day..." He began moving out secretly in the middle of the night, never once saying goodbye to any of us, including Tavin, with whom he was so attached to. This was absolutely devastating. But life had to keep moving on and we had to find a new place to live quickly.
My time was consumed with packing and searching for new homes. If you've ever had to move, you know how time consuming this process is. Homeschool had to be put on the back burner, and I believed it would only be for a short "winter break."
Then we found out that my brother-in-law began telling my husband's family that I literally kicked him out of the house. So my husband's family began emailing, texting, and calling him and telling him that they felt sorry for him that he was married to me, and he even received an inadvertent text from his father, that was meant for his brother, that stated: "I wish he would just leave her..." This happened while I was in Arizona visiting my dad who had just had his third major stroke.
We finally found a house we loved. We were able to get in quickly, but soon realized the house was raised from the pits of hell with Mr. and Mrs. Devil as the landlords.
As I unpacked and tried to make this new place feel like home as our last place did, homeschooling took another back seat.
And that's when the real fun began...
In February, just one month after living in our new place, I had sent the owners a list of things that needed attention and/or repair in the unit. Not shortly after sending it the wife sent me back an nasty email telling me that "maybe this wasn't the home for us" and that we should consider moving since I had such high standards. Gees, I wasn't aware that having a bathroom vent, bathroom lights, and outlets that worked were considered "high standards." And the nightmare began.
In March our landlords hired a lawyer to begin intimidation tactics against us. Every single morning I would wake up to a new threat from their lawyer in my Inbox. I spent hours upon hours, and endless days responding to their threats, accusations, and bullying tactics.
The landlords refused to speak to us or repair things in the unit. At one point they had their lawyer draft a legal document asking us to break our lease because the landlords no longer wanted us living there. Yes...
So I began packing again. But they only gave us 2 weeks to pack, find a place, and move. There was no way we could do that. Homeschool was on the back burner again as I packed our whole house 3 short months after moving there. But it was impossible, and I told them there was no way we were leaving and they had no grounds to evict us.
I unpacked. I put things back in order. Hung up our pictures again. We eventually got back into a homeschool groove again.
The next month we were literally 2 days late on the full amount of the rent. We had informed our landlord in advance and paid them everything but $200 and told them we'd pay it on the 3rd of the month. On the 2nd day of the month, on a Sunday, we were served a 5 Day Quit Notice, which meant we had 5 days to evacuate the premises, make payment arrangements, or pay the full amount.
We had already made payment arrangements prior to paying the rent. We also said we would get a pay day loan and pay the full amount the day we received the notice but our landlord ignored us...he ignored us for a whole week, a whole month, several months! He never responded to our offer to give him the full amount. But in that time, I had to find a lawyer who could help us, and homeschool was yet again thrown at Tavin. I just gave him book work to do, gave him worksheets, and he worked on his own day after day as I cried, fought for our rights as tenants, and became an nervous wreck.
Fortunately Legal Action indicated that their 5 Day Quit Notice was illegal for numerous reasons and we were advised by them to get out of that terrible situation since the landlords had once again offered us to break our lease.
At the beginning of May we found a place we fell in love with and began the moving process all over again. We told our landlord we found a place and were moving by the end of the month. The were happy to get rid of us, especially after we had received an inadvertent email from their lawyer meant for our landlord that said:
The place we found fell through. The owner decided he wanted to take a 2 month European vacation and would get back to us when he got back. So the unpacking began again, and now we had to somehow make peace with our landlords and stay in a place that was causing major problems in our marriage and our family.
And then the day before my birthday, May 18th, the brother-in-law who had previously lived with us (and never did get a place of his own to "move on" and was living in his car) ended up in Critical Care as his liver was shutting down due to excessive alcohol abuse.
On May 25th, Tavin's 8th birthday, his party was cancelled as my husband's father decided to take my brother-in-law off life support that VERY day! Tavin wasn't even allowed to go to the hospital, so we had to spend the entire day away from him as we sat diligently by my brother-in-law's bedside. And on May 27th, the anniversary of my mother's death from cancer, he, too, died.
Then my in-laws began to harass us even more. Suddenly my brother-in-law's death was my fault for "kicking him out." No matter how many facts I presented to them that this story was not true, they all turned against me and my husband. They would tell others in the family that if I were to leave my husband they would welcome him back into the family with open arms.
By this time summer was approaching and I just needed some time to enjoy the weather. But this place we occupied never felt like home, so I stayed inside wallowing in self pity and anger.
We bought Six Flag season passes and went every Friday, on my husband's day off, to the water part to just let off some steam. Those were some of the best days we had as a family. The weekdays were always full of tension, resentment, arguments, and pure discomfort. We had become strangers. Tavin was on his own for schooling since I had no time whatsoever to sit with him and teach him or help him. My husband became irritable and disconnected from us. He was miserable for oh-so many reasons: losing his best friend/brother, having his family disown him after losing his brother, watching me constantly battle our landlord, and seeing how unhappy I was in that home. He shut down and shut off all ties with us as a family...and turned to pornography as an escape. I didn't know it at the time, but I would soon find out.
Then one of the hardest things I could ever imagine happened. I had been anticipating this moment for 31 years! My oldest son who lived in Tennessee was getting married. But I would soon find out that he did not want me there and my family was literally "uninvited" to witness this major life event. As if that weren't enough, he cut me out of his life for good. I did nothing wrong, and did nothing to make him treat me that way. This stems from the whole story of my brother-in-law accusing me of kicking him out. See, my brother-in-law and my son were best friends and he was supposed to be my son's best man in his wedding. But my son refused to defend me or even talk to me about it when this was all taking place, and when my brother-in-law died, my son blamed me, too. I haven't heard from him since...
In August we found a house we loved and broke our lease again with our current landlord. This time they weren't so eager to let us go. They fought us every step of the way (and are still fighting us to this day in a lawsuit that I filed against them). They illegally evicted us on August 26th. They accused us of never paying the utility bills, which we found out they had been receiving and withholding from us the entire time we lived there, they changed the locks on us while we were still living there, they removed our personal items from our home and put it out in the rain, they then moved their own items in the home while we were still legal tenants of the unit.
And then when we finally felt at peace in our new home, our landlord began stalking us at our house, driving by and staring me down claiming he was looking for "stolen plants." They refused to give us our security deposit back, which they had promised they would give us back if we borrowed money to move. Not only did they not give us our money back, but they then tried to tell us we owed THEM an extra $1300 more! Despite how many times they broke the law, they refused to budge. They felt they had done nothing wrong and told us, "SUE US!" So that's where we are with that.
Then at the beginning of this month I went out to Arizona to take care of my dad for a couple of weeks. We had such amazing plans to "life school." We had studied Arizona for weeks to prepare for our trip and all the fun, educational stuff we were going to see and do: Sedona, the Grand Canyon, the Musical Instrument Museum, the Ocean Aquarium, Fountain Hills, a couple cool art museums, and of course some amazing bar-b-que after driving through the mountains and dessert.
However, our trip was cut VERY short on the second day there.
My father has always been very verbally abusive to me, but my trip there last year after his stroke I thought we had worked through all that.
My dad snapped at me mid-day, and began yelling at me so hard that he was literally spitting the words at me. Instead of reacting I walked out to cool off, taking Tavin with me. Tavin had never seen anyone treat me like that, so he as a bit shaken. I felt the tears burning down my cheek as I stared deep into Tavin's eyes and saw the fear in them. It brought back memories of how scared I used to be as a child when my dad would pull my bottom lip so hard it would make me cry, and when I began to cry he would threaten to cut my lip off if I didn't stop crying.
This led me to try to cool off even more with a dip in the pool. So Tavin and I went back inside to get our swimsuits and my dad began badgering me even more, only this time he began calling me swear words, something Tavin has NEVER heard anyone do to anyone! Tavin was now frantic and ran out of the house and across the street. When I came out Tavin begged me to not go back in there again.
At the pool, my dad began harassing us both, and then accused me of being the one who scared Tavin. That's when I lost it and knew I had to leave. I booked my flight right then, and had someone take me to the airport to wait for the fight the next morning.
When I got home, a few days later I found out that my husband was not only addicted to pornography, but was on the verge of acting on a sexual "fantasy." My life had utterly spun out of control, but the worst part was I had forgotten all my anxiety medication at my dad's and had nothing to help me through what I was dealing with.
Homeschooling was suddenly the last thing on my mind, but the one thing that would deeply haunt me at night. I couldn't seem to get it together. So I sat Tavin in front of Time4Learning as I moped and wrestled my demons, all the while contemplating my possible new life without my husband.
I noticed that Tavin's reading was suffering. This was the same kid who 2 years ago could read every single word in a newspaper without pause! His math had digressed so far I felt we would need to review kindergarten principles. He wasn't retaining anything. I thought he was doing better learning independently on the computer without my teaching and the struggles we always had when I tried, but his reports were showing 30% progress in his lessons. I was horrified.
I was always so very proud of Tavin for his ability to learn so quickly and retain so much information, but this year has been a struggle for him to remember anything he's learned over the past several years! I literally feel like every good work I had done has been wasted and gone forever.
Since we started homeschooling this year we have rethought the process three times!
THREE!
That's restructuring our homeschooling life each month since we started.
But that's life. That's homeschooling. This is the reality of being a stay at home, homeschooling parent. Life interruptous. Life will crash down at you, as we don't have the luxury to send off our children to the school system to babysit our children in our most desperate moments. We don't get to drink it away while the kids are off being taught things we don't believe in.
Oh how easy that would be during those insane days of just wanting to stay in bed and keep the covers over our head, weeping, wailing, and wrestling the pain.
But we keep pushing on. We keep fighting for our children! We don't give up. Things may be a struggle for a while. It may not seem right or perfect, or even slightly good at all for some time. You may wonder what you're doing and why, questioning your mental well being and ability to teach and reach your child.
What we tend to forget is that kids are very resilient. They bounce back better than we do. We need to trust THEM when we don't trust ourselves.
We need to look high and bend low. We need to seek the One who gave us this gift and this desire in our heart to be with our children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He will sustain us and uphold us. Even better, our friends can lift us up when we are weak and tired, just as Aaron and Hur did for Moses (Exodus 17:12).
We were not meant to go about this life alone and without fellowship. During life's hurricanes, we need our support group: other homeschooling moms. We need to be there for them, giving them what they need, emotionally, during their storms.
God din't make homeschooling to be a burden, nor did he give us this precious gift to keep to ourselves. However, I am alone...so very alone.
Through this terrible trial my husband and I are facing, we realized how far apart we had grown. This was something we could no longer allow in our marriage. In our effort to keep homeschooling AND keep our marriage in tact, we agreed on several things:
Despite what time he gets home from his 2nd shift job, he will wake up with me and pray for our day. He goes back to sleep while I face the morning with Tavin's homeschooling. We offer up our marriage to the Lord, as well as Tavin's day of homeschooling.
I wake him up at Noon everyday regardless of what time he got home that morning. I give him a half hour to have his coffee and wake up to be ready for his day.
He is then be a part of our homeschooling day, taking on some of the responsibilities, such as math, science, and coding. This allows our family to be together, learn together, and takes the full pressure off of me.
So far this routine has been working fabulously, and our marriage is striving, while Tavin is enjoying this new "style" of homeschooling: working as a family.
When life whips up a whirlwind of storms, threatening to tear down everything we know and hold true, it's easy to lose track of the important things in life. And sometimes homeschooling falls to the wayside...but only for a time. But during those gaps, our children are learning about life, character building, and the importance of needing a Savior.
Don't be afraid of those times when homeschooling has to take a back seat to life. Your child is still learning something wonderful!
