I was over at one of the chat forums I go to, reading and responding as usual instead of working on my college assignments. Anyway, one of the discussions was about how our husbands support us as homeschooling parents, asking us to tell how they are involved. Many of the responses were typical ones such as him earning the money and being that support person when it gets tough. I posted my own reply to it, and felt that it was good enough that I wanted to share it here as well. Scott, this one is for you!
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My husband helps and supports in many ways. First, he works all the ungodly overtime he does so that we can afford for me to stay home with the kids. He isn't too fond of where he works, but he's still there after 15 years because it pays well enough that we are able to be a single-income family.
Secondly, he comepletely takes over bedtime at nights for me. He does baths, brushing teeth, tuck-ins, and their bedtime story time (which is when our lang. arts books are read to the kids, he reads anywhere from 2-4 books and 3-6 poems each night to the kids). Now this is more of a need so that I can do my college class work at night (thank goodness for online college programs) but it is a HUGE help for me.
Thirdly, after the kids are in bed at night he'll go around and do whatever chores I didn't get to during the day without my asking him normally. This takes the pressure off me to do more than just teach and cook meals during the day, so I can focus on the tasks at hand. I don't have to worry about getting all that laundry folded while I'm schooling because he'll fold it. The toys scattered about he picks up if I don't get to them during the day. He does the dishes and runs the dishwasher so Missa can unload it in the mornings.
Fourth, on weekends he helps out with catch-up lessons we do and takes over so that I can spend a day really buckling down on my college work and I can prep for the upcoming week of homeschool. In fact, he's making breakfast now for them and I'm supposed to be finishing a paper for my class (taking a break) as I type this.
He also is my support person and knows that I need him to not make the local public school an option. That was something that I requested from him when we started this at the start of last school year, if I start talking about wanting to put the kids in school mid-year he is to push me back on that and demand that I'm not allowed to do it until summer break (we don't want to do a mid-year transition into public school, we'd rather do it at the start of the year). He also makes sure that I don't try to flake out on the schooling, we love the program we teach the kids with but its intense for me to teach at times. I have tendency to talk about telling the program that we're done and wanting to not stick with it, but we know that this is the first thing that has worked and if it ain't broke then we shouldn't try to fix it. I'm in that spot right now, adjusting to a new school year, and so he's working overtime to keep me on track and help me come up with ways to juggle it all.
And he handles the snide remarks from family and friends too. He feels that I'm busy enough with it all that he can take on the idiots in life, and besides nobody wants to say something snide to the man that can lift the front end of his car barehanded without struggling............... lol He only allows the positive to filter to me whenever possible because he knows that I can get discouraged when things are tough (like now) and just give up on it all when really I just need a little more time to work out things and get a groove that works for our family.
While we may have a lot of issues in our personal relationship, we do fully agree on teaching the girls at home and we will do whatever it takes to work together so that it can continue to happen for as long as possible. This is literally the only thing holding us together right now, the fact that we are working together to make this happen. I truly appreciate all that he does, and he appreciates the sacrifices that I make to teach them myself (including having to take higher doses of a few of my meds so that I can focus and not flake out on them, and to handle the stress better). its a very delicate balance and I hope it continues to work out for a very long time.
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And that my friends is exactly HOW I manage to pull off all that we do here on a daily basis. Isn't it amazing what a supportive husband will do for you when you need help? I wouldn't be able to do it all without him, that's for sure.
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