Amy Writes

: Full disclosure: I was afraid. When we decided to homeschool our kids, I was about to enroll my youngest in kindergarten. She'd been in a mom's morning out program a couple mornings a week, so I was used to having about 8 hours a week to myself. I remember surrendering four of those to volunteer at the school where our oldest was enrolled. I don't remember what I did with the other four. So now I was staring down 30 hours a week of me-time, and I could not imagine such a thing. Homeschooling was always part of our plan. We assumed we'd pull our girls out around middle school, so that they'd have as little time around middle schoolers as possible. We'd take one for the team by pulling two middle school girls out of rotation and maybe rent an RV and travel the country for a couple of years, trying to convince the girls that Laura Ingalls Wilder really IS the standard of cool. But we hadn't even made it to second grade, and here we were, re

Four years ago, I stared into the sweet blue eyes of my blonde pigtailed first grader and thought: I give up. I give up trying to get your piano practicing done before breakfast. I give up arguing with you over what is for breakfast. I give up arguing with you over what's in your backpack. I give up volunteering in your classroom, meeting you for lunch, going to PTA meetings. I give up car lines. I give up after school clubs and piano lessons. I give up squeezing in homework. I give up reporting in on sick days, or I'd-rather-stay-home days. I give up arranging my travel schedule around union days off. I give up school nights. I give up fundraisers. I give up the disbelieving stares the teachers give me when I tell them you're a tough kid. I give up hearing about how compliant and helpful you are in class and wondering where that kid is when you come home. I give up being the third party in your conversations. I give up giving you up. We had tried really hard not t