More preschool woes

This morning we discovered an anonymous note left for us by a parent from my son’s preschool class telling us that we should “do the right thing” and pull our kid out of the school because he “likes hurting children” and we are “ruining the school”. The note also said some nasty things about the teacher. I’ve been pretty shaken up all day.

I called the teacher right after reading the note, and she was so upset she went home for the day. She had a couple support people around her from the school and district (it’s a PPP so there’s a provincial level as well) and they discussed what must now happen in lieu of this. The teacher and I had several good conversations today and I received lots of sympathy and support from her and the others. I was invited to stay with them while they worked through this but I had the kids and had arranged a playdate with a good friend who provided me with comfort.

The writer of that note can’t be all that balanced: they left enough identifying information to narrow it down as to who they are, and while I don’t know the parents well enough to figure it out, the teacher almost certainly does. I’m guessing this will result in that family being asked to leave the school, which isn’t exactly what the author of the note was hoping for. But how would they think this wouldn’t elicit a very strong reaction on the part of the school? I do understand how they feel, I just think they handled it very badly and in a way that has caused a lot of grief and extra work for a lot of people.

This episode is just one more reason why I’m so glad that we will be leaving the school system at the end of this year. If my son’s issues can result in this much trouble when he’s in preschool, I can only imagine what it would be like were he to continue on with ever larger classes (more parents) and teachers who may not be as sensitive and capable as the one we have now. Most of all, school thrusts together parents from different backgrounds, value systems, and personality types and AFAIC that is one “life experience” I can do without. There’s no escaping the type of parent who left that letter on our doorstep. 

Husband and I are trying to decide whether to leave the school or not. It would certainly be the easiest solution for everybody, but mostly us since the school would have to handle the fallout from this incident regardless. Part of me also thinks that it would send the wrong message to whoever wrote this letter and I stubbornly refuse to be driven out that way. I will say that there are parents who have gone out of their way to make me feel welcome, but all it takes is one bad apple like this to taint the experience. We didn’t take Son to school today but when we do, the dropoff experience will be an anxious one for me, as I won’t be able to help looking around trying to figure out who dunnit. I’m not the sort who deals well with these kinds of situations – I get anxious and emotional even though my head may be relatively clear. 

For now we will wait until the school has had a chance to make some decisions about where to go from here. And we can’t just suddenly stop taking Son to preschool; it would not be fair to him if he weren’t given time to prepare for the transition. Still, I’m uncertain as to how much more of this I want to take. As it is we are meeting with a “child development consultant” on Monday, the one who assessed Son and approved the funding for an extra teacher to help with the classroom. I’ve been a bit anxious about that because I’m worried she is going to suggest all kinds of interventions that we will not be comfortable with.

I suppose my biggest worry is for my son. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on things and we’ll be okay from here on, something like this happens and I begin to doubt and question myself. Maybe his issues are too big for us to handle, what if there really is “something wrong” with him? I’m so resistant to the idea that he needs interventions and labeling, yet when something like this happens I worry that my instincts are wrong and that I’m hiding my head in the sand. How much of this is the system trying to make my child fit in an environment that, at least for our family, is completely optional and not even optimal? How much of my resistance to intervention is due to the fact that we have the option to remove ourselves from the system and keep son out of difficult environments until he is mature enough to handle them? Are we hiding or are we liberating ourselves?

I think the best piece of advice I’ve given myself is this: I can only do what seems best in a given situation. I cannot know the future, and it would be folly to try and predict what may or may not happen. I need to make decisions based on what I know now, and what my gut tells me now. If, later on down the road, things have not improved then we make the best decisions at that time without regretting what we did or didn’t do earlier on. In the meantime, I can say with certainty that I will be glad when this school year is over and I can leave it all behind for good.

Public School from an Unschooled Teenager’s perspective

I found this blog post via the Life is Good Conference website. I thought it was really interesting. The author makes a good point that having experienced school makes him a much more credible voice for unschooling. Most of us unschooling parents spent at least 12 years in school, so we already know what our kids are missing. But for the kids themselves that have never been to school, it might be easy to disregard their opinions on schooling (‘course, in our society it’s easy to disregard teenagers entirely, apparently). Anyways, it’s a good read…

As for the conference, I’m thinking about attending. While my children are not overtly social, and I do feel I have a good unschooling community around me already, I feel drawn to the idea of connecting with so many more unschooling families from around Canada and the US. Husband has already suggested we take the trailer down to a tech conference he’s interested in, which just happens to take place not too far south of the Life is Good conference, and just 3 days after it ends. Could be a fun roadtrip!

Well, at least it’s not the same old thing all the time…

A while back I wrote that Husband’s flirtation with working-from-home had not worked out so well on the domestic front. We had decided he should try to get another office job, but given the downturn in the economy, good jobs weren’t all that forthcoming. He decided to expand his resume from “hardware guru” to a more software-focussed skill set, and in the process came up with the idea to launch a small business tuned into the mobile phone applications market. He has since produced three iPhone apps and, with his connections in the tech world, it didn’t take long before external clients were talking with him about getting their App projects done. Today he completed his first contract and while it isn’t huge money it’s definitely a step in the right direction. 

Being that this new plan involved him staying at home, we knew we had to work on getting things to run a bit more smoothly ’round here. We sat down and divided up the week into blocks of time for each of us – when one is “at work” (holed up in the home office), the other is with the kids giving them (and the house) their complete attention. I cannot tell you what a difference this had made! Now I can be present with the kids and not wondering when and how I’m going to sneak off for a while to do one of the many work-related tasks piling up. And he’s actually playing with the kids and engaging with them much more often than he used to, now that he isn’t being pulled to his computer at every chance. The house has stayed MUCH more tidy than it has been in months, and I wake up to a clean kitchen every morning.

For my part, I’ve ended up with 25 hrs per week for work and related duties and I’m having no trouble making those hours productive. Which means that I have jumped ahead to being a fully part-time worker, rather than a “every once in a while” part time worker as I’d previously envisioned myself. Truth is, the work load was already there, I just didn’t realize it. No wonder I was feeling stressed and like I could never keep up! But what it means is that I have consequently undergone a rather large mental shift regarding my daily life and what it looks like.

For the past year I have considered myself largely a homemaker, focussing my energies on running a household frugally, sustainably, making food and other items from scratch etc. My inner identity was as such and when I imagined my days on our future small acreage it was with this image of myself in my mind. Now I’m realizing that a good portion of my week is as a business woman. There isn’t a swath of empty days to devote to homemaking, as I used to feel there was. And I’m coming to accept that things will likely only get busier from here on in. I am having to accept that “full time homemaker” is no longer an accurate description of my role in the family. 

I’m not particularly upset about it. I’m enjoying my work and especially the pride I feel in having my own business that is successful enough to provide for our family while Husband has been finding his way to new work opportunities. Giving up any of my work right now is simply not an option: the return for the investment of my time is substantial, we’re saving for a house and a truck to pull our new (to us) trailer. And quite honestly, I truly enjoy it. If given the choice between running my business successfully and giving it up to be a full time homemaker I must admit I’d choose to keep my business (unless, of course, we were independently wealthy!). 

The bottom line is that my priority is my children. Most of my time is still spent caring for them, interacting with them, and being involved in their learning. And when they are not directly under my care (though I’m accessible if needed) they are with their father. It’s an ideal arrangement and what we’d hoped for from the beginning – apparently we just needed a schedule to make it all work better (who’d have thought?)! But it does mean that I don’t have much time left to devote to homemaking (hmm, clean the oven or play with my Daughter?). I still make dinner five nights a week and the food is still wholesome and made from scratch. But I also think that my dreams of making my own natural soaps, learning to sew linens for my home, raising some laying hens, intensive canning and food storage, etc. may have to take a back seat to instead patronizing local artisans for their wares. And it may even mean hiring someone to do some cleaning and basic housekeeping duties. 

So once again we’ve entered into a completely new and exciting phase of our lives. It’s a bit scary at times, but then even secure, steady-paycheck jobs aren’t always that dependable. And of course it opens up all sorts of possibilities regarding travel and living arrangements, being that – once Son is finished preschool – none of us will be beholden to an office or a classroom. Here’s to future success for both of us!