Hello, it's nice to be here! I've been reading quietly here since July (can't remember exactly how I found you in the first place--I was looking for reviews of "Life of Fred," and a link brought me here, I think). I have enjoyed watching you all being so supportive of one another, and of each other's children; the thread about parents' isolation struck enough of a chord that I finally registered.
Our family lives in a rural area outside a medium-sized city in western Canada. My husband Frenchie and I have three sons, Harpo (7), Groucho (5), and Chico (3). We are homeschoolers, and have been from the beginning, for various reasons, probably the most important of which was the fact that (among other things) Harpo was reading bits of the newspaper to us when he was 2; along with his charming but decidedly eccentric personality, his skills seemed likely to set him up for great unhappiness in school. We haven't had any of the kids tested (so I may be deluding myself that I have any business being here in the first place), but we seem to be bumping along quite happily with each other right now, and have no plans to enter the school system for at least several years (my husband works shifts, so homeschooling preserves our family life), so I think we'll leave it at that for now.
Harpo loves reading (right now he's reading TH White's "The Sword in the Stone"), gardening, math, bluegrass fiddle, chemistry, and Latin. Groucho is our joker (my favourite moment of his toddlerhood was seeing him rolling around, unable to contain his mirth, pointing at a woodpecker pecking away futilely on a power pole, and saying "no bugs! no bugs!"), and our sporty little guy. Chico loves printing and drawing, board games, and pretending (last week he put on a new yellow shirt, ran upstairs and put a brown vest on over it, came back downstairs and told me he was a "somewhat past it banana"). They all love the Marx Bros., Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Tin Pan Alley tunes (pop culture somehow stops at about 1935 around here), and walks in the woods and on the beach.
We're in our local homeschooling group, but have encountered a few challenges there in terms of finding kindred spirits. The great majority of the families are radical unschoolers (which is perfectly fine, if that works for them), but some are radical to such an extent that the moms don't want their kids playing with kids who use (gasp) textbooks. (I never know what to say when people ask us what kind of homeschoolers we are--I really don't care for labels--there seems always a danger to me of the label becoming more important than the child; we are whatever is working best for us on any given day, I think.) We are gradually finding some people to hang out with, some of whom are genuine treasures, but it has been a little hard. We are older parents, and the children of our own friends are pretty much university age, so we are kind of in different places in our lives. Anyway, not to complain, but I am certainly looking forward to finding some common ground here for those days when I need a listening ear--and I hope that I can offer the same to someone who might need it.
Thanks for reading this ridiculously long thing; brevity has never been my strong suit!
Peace--
minnie
