Starting over is one of the most exhilarating and exhausting things to do. A blank page can feel so freeing one moment and then paralyzing the next. When we moved last year, there were a lot of starting over elements to our life that brought a steady flow of exhilaration and paralysis - New decisions to make, fresh canvas to paint on, entirely different directions for our family.
When my kids were little and I was only dreaming of robust homeschooling, it was common to hear about keeping a slow pace and not overbooking your schedule. As a person with ADHD who struggles to keep up with life, that slow kind of life felt appealing and right. And for a long time - the majority of my children’s lives - I’ve been unwilling to give up all that margin we had built into our days. Like a hawk protecting her nest, I ensured we never felt too crowded for too long. Like most things though, I slid so far in one direction that a stiff overcorrection was in order. Down time and margin is absolutely vital to balance, but we had had it in spades for a long time. After 2020, we even had the luxury of Mr. Butler home full time for the next 4 years and 3 days a week the following year. We had a lot of margin, but margin alone doesn’t fix everything.
In the last 5 years, adolescence had made its claim in one child, looming for the next and the baby was no more in our youngest. The struggles were complex and the fights could be many some weeks, enough to make you let things go out of weariness. In walks all those changes I mentioned, a key one being an unexpected change in our schedule. The homeschool co-op we are a part of unexpectedly had no place to meet and after 2 months of searching, the only good choice was to move our meeting day from Fridays to Thursdays. That one change, that was entirely out of our control, opened up a new direction for our family.
That one change created an avalanche of shifts that we’re still feeling the effects of today. If Fridays were free, then that volleyball league my son had always wanted to try out just might work. Then my daughter thought she wanted to try volleyball too. So, on top of learning new routines in a new house, our weekly schedule got turned on its head, making actual time for school work and direct instruction isolated to specific days and times. That margin I had worked so hard to protect was now so very thin. And that all felt very scary to me. It seemed to be going in a direction I had always been against, on principle at least. Yet, everyone else was on board and excited! So, we dove in.
That was 9 months ago. Now that we are ending volleyball season and spring semester of school, I can tell you how it went. The oldest two loved volleyball and thrived in the sport. Our schedule was busier, but having to be on the other side of town for practices sometimes twice a week allowed for Costco runs, library trips and homework at Panera sessions. The scary down side was that we didn’t get as much school done. When May hit, all 3 were behind in some or all things. I knew that was going to be the case by Christmas, but there was no going back by then. And that might sound like a failure or bad priorities to some. 5 years ago, I might have agreed with that because that version of me hadn’t had to deal with apathy and adolescence yet. Self motivation was not something we could even talk about, much less start mastering in our house. I love when everything fits into its own box ever so neatly, but life is rarely that way. The skill to sacrifice time for something we love and then work extra hard at a separate time to make up for it is a life skill. Going to college, fixing an appliance, being a mom, the list continues of the things that require you to sacrifice time for a desired outcome. Since our out of the house obligations slowed or stopped in May, we’ve been spending full days attempting to get caught up on school. If things going right, we’ll finish up by the second week of June.
The youngest’s reading skills have taken off, the middle’s emotional regulation has come a long way, and the oldest has found some passion while also wrestling with time management and trade offs in a healthy way. I don’t know what I thought these changes would look like, but it certainly wasn’t this. I’m not trying to say a tight schedule is the only way to achieve these results. I just think it was a providential moment that forced my hand where I never would have on my own. As we head into high school with my oldest, I am incredibly thankful for the sweet spot we started learning to live in this past year.
