Amy Writes

I do not have a teaching degree. But to my knowledge, neither did the mothers of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, George Washington Carver, Albert Einstein, Claude Monet...the list goes on. Note to self: I should read a list like this every Monday, Thursday and Friday when I'm ready to give up. Another note to self: Shockingly few women on that list...that must be another story. In addition to the "my kids just really need to be around other kids" comments, we homeschool moms also hear "I could never homeschool because I'm not smart enough." That's a valid fear. Except, not really. As a functioning adult, you are most likely equipped to guide a child through everything he or she needs to know, at a developmentally appropriate level, through at least fifth grade. For everything else - there's a curriculum for that . (This is also something I need to consistently remind myself when I am fee...

There's a conversation that homeschool parents have ALL the time. It frequently happens in a grocery store, at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday. It goes: Store person: "No school today?" Me (or kids): "We homeschool." Store person: "Oh, good for you. (It almost always starts with 'good for you.') I would have loved to have done that, but I just really wanted my kids to be/my kids needed to be socialized." Oh, if I had a dollar... By the time we decided to homeschool, the idea of my kids being lonely and weird because of our choice was already a non-issue. I knew so many homeschool kids, and they all knew each other, and they were together ALL the time. These were not kids who were starved for a social life. Our poor little unsocialized homeschooled kids are in dance with dozens of kids, P.E. with about 100, on soccer and basketball teams, in art classes, and history clubs. You should see the list of things we turn down. And let me tell y...

: 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...

Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead today, and I am heartbroken. He was found, they say, in his underwear, with a needle in his arm, on the bathroom floor. It's that part that gets me the most. I believed him to be a creative genius, capable of depth and believable on-camera-grit than most, and his talent will be missed. He leaves behind a successful career, an admiring public and a family who loved him. But the hardest part to process isn't the how or the why. It's the where . The bathroom floor. The dirtiest place in the home. It is not made to comfort a resting body. The bathroom floor is cold, hard and lonely. And yet at one point today for Philip, there were no offers more appealing than stretching out on the bathroom floor and calling it a day. Philip's death made headlines. But there are so many that don't. I am privileged to know a family who has been standing between their loved one and the bathroom floor for years. They are waging an insp...

I don't know what possessed us, back at the turn of 2013. Holiday hangover, I guess. Tryptophan haze. Tight-pants syndrome. Whatever unicorn magic power it was held a wicked powerful grip - powerful enough to cause us to put pen to paper and credit card to internet and commit ourselves to completing a half-marathon by the end of the year. It seemed like we had forever. I mean, I could already run like a mile or so - before kids I used to even run 3 miles at a time sometimes - so "training" to run another 10-12 miles should be cake. You just add like a mile a week, right? And we had MONTHS! This was going to be no sweat. Except that it was sweat. It was lots, and lots, and lots of sweat. It was sweat and blood and pain and tears. It was torture and boredom and drudgery and second-guessing. It was commiserating and new shoes and babysitters and clean eating. It was earlier mornings and new playlists and slow paces and compression sleeves. It was feeling every day of my ...

I went to a concert last night.  Those words. They're my "once upon a time." So many of my what-a-great-night stories begin with that little sentence. There was this one , and this most recent one , and this one that was actually life changing. But last night's show had me stewing a bit this morning, wondering:  When am I going to grow up?  It's something I wonder on a daily basis, really. I've even written about it before. I look around at my life - the responsibilities of caring for a husband, three kids and a home - and I ask myself Who put me in charge? I have to ask myself that, because most of the time there's no other grown up around to ask . All the grown ups have handed me the car keys and flown the coop. I don't feel grown up. I feel like I missed the class where they taught how to be a grown up, and the learning curve on this real-life-experience track is STEEP. So this morning as I'm scrolling through pictures and I see shot ...