Get me off this pedestal, people!

Here's a secret that homeschoolers don't like to tell, for a number of reasons:

Sometimes, homeschooling is really, really, really, really hard!

We don't want to let on because a lot of people are just waiting for us to fail. Some people really enjoy saying, "I told you so!" And so we plaster on our smiling faces and tell you that, yes, yes, it's all going so very well! Thanks for asking.

I am not saying that homeschooling isn't awesome, because it is. It works very well for my family. Like anything else in life, some days aren't that stellar.

In reality, I yell at my kids at least once every 15 minutes. Sometimes I pray a band of gypsies will appear on my front lawn. And, yes, sometimes I want to throw in the towel and send them to school so I can get a job where I don't have to clean up macaroni & cheese and tell a child again that an S should not look like a 2, and 21 is not the same as 12!

For those of you that stayed home with your little ones before school, or that spend any time whatsoever with your little blessings (I suspect that's all of my 3 readers), you know that it's mothering that really makes a woman crazy! It isn't the homeschooling. Anytime I want to give it up, it's really only because I am tired of repeating myself, or picking up dirty socks and underwear, or I just want to be left alone to pee!

Homeschoolers do not have extra patience. Anytime you have said to a homeschooler anything that resembles, "gee, I don't have the patience for that," or "wow, you must really be patient," said homeschooler is laughing on the inside. There's no patience fairy! If only. It's merely a decision that we've made to spend our days delirious and walking the fine line between sanity and the nut house.

The fact is, we're all mothers no matter how we educate our kids. We probably could all use more patience, which is why God has sent us such trying little darlings.

Maybe my point is, that instead of putting us on some kind of Pedestal of Patience, and instead of homeschoolers putting public/private schoolers down, we should all be fist-bumping for motherhood. Because it's hard, but awesome.

And now I must go admire some chalk art.