By Terrie Lynn Bittner
One day, I glanced around my house, suddenly aware that I had been writing for several uninterrupted hours. My oldest daughter was newly married. My second daughter was attending community college part time, and my son, who would start college the following year, was quietly teaching himself to read Russian. No one needed me. No one wanted to know how to structure a paper, do a math problem, or construct an argument. A chill went through me as I realized homeschooling was largely finished. Now what? What would I do next? What would I answer when people asked me what I “did?”
I loved homeschooling. I had started in a panic because there was no choice, absolutely certain I’d be a failure. At first I was. In those days, homeschooling was uncommon and I didn’t know any homeschoolers. No one had the Internet that I knew of, so I had no way to find any other homeschoolers. The library had two old and pointless books. I had no idea what I was doing and so I did it badly.
But it got better. Gradually, I became less afraid of my extensive limitations—learning disabilities, ADD, disorganization, and impatience. I was doing it. I was planning lessons and everyone was learning. Something emerged within me that had not been there before—a sense of accomplishment, pride, and courage.
And now it was ending and I had no idea what came next. I wondered what would be lost when the last child walked out of the house with a backpack full of college textbooks. What was my new job title? How would I fill my days? What would give me the sense of accomplishment I had felt during the homeschooling years?
I thought back to when my oldest child was a demanding infant. My pediatrician had warned me to keep up with my own hobbies, learning, and interests, because someday my children would not need me every minute and something had to be left inside of me that would let me move to the next step. It seemed, at the time, a selfish plan, but I tried. Over time, I learned how to blend my life into my children’s lives. After reading a picture book, I read aloud an adult science book in a soothing voice as a baby fell asleep. When there wasn’t time to sit down and write a story, I learned to write it in my head as I rocked babies or did the dishes. When I began homeschooling, I learned with my children. While they read a Jean Fritz picture book on history, I read an adult book on the subject and shared my learning with them as we discussed the topic in the car or during a relaxing evening. For a time, I even began a freelance writing career, but I put it aside when I started homeschooling, recognizing the need to focus on my family during this busy season of my life. I kept up my skills by writing a weekly column on topics that came easily to me and took little time.
But things got harder as the children got older. They began to teach themselves and soon their studies were often in areas beyond my own ability to comprehend. I stopped learning. My life became more one of driving them to the bookstore to get the right study guide or to the home of an expert so they could discuss topics I didn’t know. It seemed like I spent my life in the car. So, in the last years of homeschooling, I did little writing, reading, or studying. I was too busy to manage much of a life of my own.
And now the promised day was at hand and I wasn’t quite ready. I was lucky, really. I still had a column, and a website, and a publisher invited me to write a book about homeschooling for his company. I began to get a picture of what the next stage was going to be. If I hadn’t been preparing by writing all these years, though, and if I hadn’t written the column or maintained a homeschooling website that attracted his interest, the process would have been much slower.
During the busiest years, when every minute is filled with homemaking, parenting, and homeschooling, it’s hard to believe it will all someday come to a crashing halt. I’ve seen parents who have devoted so much time to their children there was absolutely nothing left when it ended. Their marriages fell apart and they were reduced to a life of watching television and talking on the telephone, because they no longer had hobbies or a life that could exist without children.
Certainly our children should be a priority, and take the majority of our time. But if we can’t carve out a small identity beyond the role of parent, we do our children a disservice. Children need to grow up, and to have a life in which their mothers aren’t always present. In my opinion, they need to go to college alone. They must gradually build to the independence that will let them move on and they need to be able to do all this without feeling guilty about abandoning their mothers. We have to allow our children to grow up and become adults.
When we take a few minutes each day to do something we love, something totally apart from our parenting role, we do ourselves and our children a favor. We enlarge our world, which gives us more to share with our children. The new skills and knowledge we gain can be passed along to our children. The relaxation we feel as we pamper ourselves — just for twenty minutes — makes us better able to return to our children recharged and happy. When they are ready to move to the next stage, we will be ready, as well.
When we take time to nurture our relationship with our husbands, we provide a more secure home for our children, and make sure there is a marriage to settle into when the two of us are alone with nothing but a cat to give our attention to—and cats are notoriously bad homeschoolers. Our children deserve parents who love each other and who value time spent alone—not excessive time that deprives a child of attention, but enough time to remember that our spouse is a person beyond his role as a parent, too.
Begin to picture what kind of life you’d like to have when your children leave home. When you find yourself saying, “Someday I’m going to…” write it down in a “Someday” notebook. Every now and then, take it out and look it over. Is there anything you can do now to prepare for one of those someday items? I couldn’t manage a full-fledged writing career, but I could take an hour a week to write a column in the early morning hours while the children slept, and that allowed me to build my skills so they were ready for a book later on. If you want to become a great gardener, help your children start a small garden now, so that someday, you’ll know how when the garden is all yours and there’s time for the full program. If you think you’d like your own business someday, allow yourself an hour a day to build a skill that will help you be ready the moment the magic day arrives.
Many homeschooling parents go on to a life of volunteer service after their children leave home. Can this service be done with your children? If so, begin volunteering now, as a family. Your children will develop a love of serving others, a new understanding of the issue that brought you to this project, and even potential job skills. Later, when the children are gone, you will be an experienced and knowledgeable volunteer, prepared to spend more hours serving in a field you love.
In my early days of homeschooling, we all had one hour of what we called Special Time, right after lunch. We could each do anything we wanted. Use your hour on yourself and don’t get tricked into preparing lessons or cleaning house, no matter how busy you are.
One hour out of twenty-four spent on yourself will not rob your children or your husband of anything at all that matters in the long run. Leave some beds unmade, simplify a lesson plan, or don’t vacuum under the sofa as often, but free up that hour.
I loved every minute of my parenting and homeschooling days. I had a challenging transition, but now I’m also enjoying my brand new, busier than ever adult life.
Your personal graduation from homeschooling will happen sooner than you think. Will you be ready?
Terrie Lynn Bittner lives in Pennsylvania.
