Wow, wow, wow. New post on LWOS

Ok, my fellow authors over at Life Without School keep blowing me away. Missy has an incredible post on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It is all about how we don't read much about the not so good days of homeschooling…the days that nothing gets done and everyone is getting on everyone's nerves.

"Very recently, a mom posted her late night fears on a local homeschool list. You know those fears, the doubts that creep up on you when you can't sleep, when your thoughts start crashing together and create new, even more awful thoughts…when you get on the computer and start reading and even more doubts creep in because everyone else seems to have all the answers and is so committed to homeschooling and so confident and so creative and so damn perfect. And, suddenly, you feel about an inch tall and woefully inadequate and your brain explodes with the knowledge that, no matter what you do, you're going to irreversibly damage your children forever."

I don't know about you, but I, of course, have never felt like this. Ha! I really think that we can all relate. And yes, I do think that it is important to remember that no one really knows exactly what they are doing and we are all just kind of winging it as we go. We are all after all human and by no means saints. We have our good days and bad days. We probably just talk about our good days more because they are what gets us through and keeps us going.

I remember reading on an email list sometime that one of the traps that we can fall into (and I think this goes for blogs too) is that we read about this mom doing some really great activities and this other mom who is reading really neat books and yet another mom who has come up with a neat way of presenting math that her kids love and we sort of combine them in our minds into this one "incredible super homeschool mom" who can do everything well and never has a problem. Then we compare ourselves to her and quickly fall short. We have to remember that this "incredible super homeschool mom" does not exist and is a figment of our own imaginations.

So the next time that the homeschool panic sets in (oh, yes, you know what I am talking about, don't you?) we need to remember to cut ourselves some slack. No one can do everything and be everything to everyone all of the time. Got that?

Luckily the good days totally make up for the not-so-good days and keep us going. And of course, it is all worth it. And I would not trade it for the world. Warts and all.