New year, Still Here!

So the irony is not lost on me that my last post was intended to ease the worries about how we were managing and then I dropped off the face of the blogging earth for 3+ months. Never fear, we are still here and still doing great! Life got very hectic with obligations and holidays but we have started a new year and a new routine. As much as we loved and needed our de-schooling and un-schooling months, during that time I was doing a lot of searching for some kind of balance between life learning and structure. Sports Nuts especially thrives when he has some sort of routine to follow and anticipate. We were also running around so much that it was often easy to feel exhausted and short-tempered. This was apparent in both myself and the kids. A positive outcome of our unstructured time was that it really helped me to relax and realize that the kids are learning everyday, no matter what I do. The are hard-wired for it. They crave new knowledge and new experiences. If allowed, they enjoy experiencing new things. A wise friend with grown children reminded me as we were beginning to question the conventional school path that life was not a race, and that my kids were not losing. I have been repeating this to myself over and over again while I search for our next schooling adventure. It is so easy to get caught up in worries over whose children are where in school, what other kids know might know in comparison to mine, and where my kids 'should be' according to their age. I remind myself that the constant testing and comparing was part of what turned us off of conventional school. I remind myself that in Sports Nut I have a product of a system that pushed him too hard, too fast, and without regard to whether or not he was ready to learn. I remind myself that by being unhindered by the stipulations put on today's teachers, I am able to cater to my kids' exact needs and wants. There is no race, we are not losing.