For the Hard Days

One of the prayer requests around the dinner table the other night was “that school this year would be better than last year.”

Ouch.

My (ever optimistic) husband, didn’t take our daughter’s request quite as negatively (or as personally) but, she wasn’t totally wrong in her implication that this past year of school hadn’t been a great one.

I knew our year had been filled with more frustration and adjustment than we all would have liked (and I’m sure throwing a pandemic in the middle and canceling everything didn’t help) but I wasn’t expecting quite so negative a performance review.

We’ve made changes this year and, pandemic aside, are hoping for the best. Even so, I know there are going to be hard days.

I’ve been reading The Call of the Wild + Free and couldn’t have said it better:

“Homeschooling is hard...And many times, we mistake that difficulty as an indicator that we’re doing it wrong. Floundering feels a lot like failing, but they’re actually very different. No matter how much you know about educating your children beforehand, educating your children at home is something you have to learn by doing. And only by doing it over and over again will you learn what works for your family.” 

Here are three things I’m counting on remembering this year to get us through those days.

Everyone has hard days. Unfortunately, it’s easy to feel like we’re the only ones sometimes. I’m sure it doesn’t help that everyone is on their best behaviour at co-op and that social media tends to feature cooperative children, good days, tidy living rooms, rainbows and unicorns. I have learned that one of the most damaging assumptions someone can make of me is that I “have it easy” and it’s not helpful for my attitude for me to assume that someone else only has rainbow and unicorn days in a tidy living room.

Never quit on a hard day. I recall hearing this from a lactation consultant in the early days of breastfeeding and I think it’s good advice, and not just about breastfeeding. Just as our best day isn’t a reflection of reality or ability, neither is our worst. Bad days don’t mean we need to assume we’re not cut out for this.

Less is more. While this is much more complicated for distance learners than for homeschoolers, sometimes less really is more. There are no rules (aside from self imposed ones) in our province for what we do and do not have to accomplish. Sometimes (or a lot of the time), pj mornings, toast and fruit for lunch and skipping spelling is not only perfectly ok but might just be better for our family than alarm clocks, hot lunches and spelling tests. After all, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Expect hard days. There’s a lot of pressure to “think positive” and it’s often touted as the miracle cure for hard times. But, I’m setting myself up for disappointment if I assume every day should fit some arbitrary definition of good. Hard days are a given. I will not be blindsided by them. 

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P.S. Hard days are normal and so are hard weeks, but if you are finding every day is so hard that it’s interfering with your ability to enjoy life, please reach out to someone for support!

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