The Many Moods of a Homeschool Mom

The following post is from Kris of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers:

We homeschool moms experience a wide spectrum of moods – often all of them in a space of a single day or even a single hour. Do you recognize any of these and their causes?

Happy

Possible causes:

• The boy read his first words.
• The girl got all her spelling words correct.
• Every box on the lesson plans got checked off.
• The dog ate the lesson plans!
• Chocolate

Sad

Possible causes:

• Rude comments from family and friends
• Rude comments from a homeschool mom with a different homeschooling style
• Thinking that graduation day is never going to get here
• Realizing that graduation day is already here
• There is no chocolate.

Excited

Possible causes:

• Sighting the UPS truck
• A field trip planned by someone else
• The first day of school
• The last day of school
• Chocolate

Worried

Possible causes:

• Thinking, “What if I’m not doing enough?”
• Thinking, “What if I’m ruining my kids for life?”
• Thinking, “What if I didn’t choose the perfect curriculum?”
• Thinking, “What if I’m not teaching my kids every. single. thing. they’ll ever need to know?”
• Thinking, “The kids may have discovered the stash of chocolate.”

Frustrated

Possible causes:

• The reading lesson went something like this: {sounding out} “C-A-T…ball!”
• All the math facts that the kid knew by heart yesterday have been completely forgotten today.
• The question, “What about socialization?”
• The entire case of pencils purchased at the beginning of the school year has disappeared – and it’s only the second day of school.
• Somebody ate the chocolate.

Exhausted

Possible causes:

• She worked on lesson plans all weekend long
• She was up much later than everyone else just enjoying the silence.
• She was on her way to bed, but stopped to start a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher, tidy the kitchen, take food for tomorrow night’s supper out of the freezer, grade a few papers, and tuck the toddler back in bed.
• She was awake half the night worrying about this thing called homeschooling.
• She needs more chocolate.

How many of these moods have you experienced today – or, you know, in the last five minutes?