I am having the hardest time transitioning back to our usual school-year routine. The kids are, too. One of the beauties of homeschooling is that you don’t have to fit into anyone else’s schedule. However, that is also one of the curses: it can be far too easy to let a morning get away from you, and then to get your 4.5 hours in you find that you’re working until 5:00 in the evening.
Now, I’ll say this: it’s still better than kids sitting in a classroom for six or seven hours, then coming home to do an hour or more of homework at night. My sister was over one day while we were having a particularly testy day of homeschooling, and she said “I don’t know HOW you do it! I’d be sending their butts back to school!” But I explained that there would still be battles over work, because there’s always homework, and the battles over homework were usually worse than anything we’ve ever had over homeschooling. Boys don’t want to do more bookwork after sitting at a desk all day long.
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that no matter what choices a parent makes, there is no easy way to raise children. So we accept the struggles along the path we’ve chosen, fix what we can, and just enjoy the kids while we have them. And next week, I’ll be setting my alarm clock again, to get us back on track so that we’re once again finishing up our day in the early afternoon.
Yes, we had a little bit of difficulty getting back in the game again this week. Oh well, such is life. You are right, though. There is no easy answer. We all just try to do the best we can. Take care my friend!