Rollercoasters

Life is feeling like a rollercoaster lately. I neither link nor despise them, and as the saying goes- they have their ups and downs.

I think the part that unnerves me is that 'dropping' feeling as you go over the edge and plummet down the coaster- pushing you onward to the next twist, turn or climb only to do it all over again. Oh, and did I mention they go around in circles? The same thing over and over and over again. I think eventually it looses it's appeal the closer you get to loosing lunch.

But life seems to be like that right now. I'm trying to work through a book entitled 'Large Family Logistics'- hoping to finally find the method that will tame the madness of my life. Only I don't think my life got the memo that said to lay off on the chaos for a while.

The book has been very helpful for me in terms of giving me direction to each days' chores. I just wish that I could get them done. My kids are not independent students yet, not to mention the littles that can't be left alone in order for me to get things done. So I need to figure out how to motivate them onto the same page so that we can be working toward a common goal- a household that runs like a well oiled machine. Hm, machines- see rolllercoaster thoughts, see loop see recursive....

Then there's the whole rabbit trail that is questioning why I'm home schooling and how much longer I'll be doing it for. My parents have never supported this whole home schooling endeavour and think the kids would be better off in the routine of school. Unfortunately an incident came up with my oldest at youth a few weeks back that has really messed with me and question another aspect of why I home school and why I'm worried about sending them back to public school.

It mainly centres around behaviours- specifically poor choices that made other kids tease my oldest and made his life miserable. Bringing him home and keeping him away from that has given him back his life, so to speak. The light in his life is shining bright, and for that I'm grateful. However, I still see those same issues in him- and it caused a negative reaction in another person and my son got hurt. I'm still angry about it but it raised again those feelings of seeing my son as a problem child and how could I possibly ever send him out into the real world if he is still acting like that? Then I wondered if I was maybe keeping him home to protect me instead of help him? That I wouldn't have to deal with other people complaining about him if I didn't let him out of the house.

I found it a very scary road to travel and I'm not sure that I've really worked it out in my head. And honestly, lately I've been wondering if they'd be better off in the daily grind of school. At least there they seem to get their work done every day and I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not they were falling behind in things.

Then there are the good days- where one or more of them does their work without complaining and they get along and play really well together and we connect, and it seems like all the hard work is getting us somewhere and if feels good. I just wish that I could figure out what happened to make those days happen so that we could duplicate them a bit more often than they seem to occur naturally.

Only I don't think that we'd learn nearly as much if that was the case. I guess it goes back to rollercoasters- without the downs you can't have the ups, it would all be flat!