Slacker Homeschooler Dreams

Each year around this time, I have dreams that they find out about me.
They find out I'm just a slacker mom, and that my kitchen floor is sticky, and my toilet bowls are not springtime-fresh, and that my kids are not getting the recommended 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

They find out that my kids watch more Simpsons than Savage Earth... more Futurama than Frontline... more Malcolm in the Middle than Modern Marvels.

I dream that they come into my house, take lots of notes, and sequester the children in an undisclosed location to be tested, evaluated, and interrogated, to prove once and for all that I am irreparably damaging them with my slacker ways and I need to be fired.
In these dreams, I always try to point out that they are good kids, healthy, clean and well-fed. That they are compassionate and basically well-behaved. That their self esteem is intact. That they are self-confident. That they volunteer in the community. That they would never taunt or throw objects at zoo animals.
They always answer with "MmmmHmmm... We're going to need to see your lesson plans."

"Gah! Not that!... Just put me down as 'failed'."

I wake up in a cold sweat, heart racing. And in the hours before dawn, I always promise to start a unit study in the morning.

Of course, in the morning, they are too busy to start a unit study, because they have spent the early morning hours creating a Rube Goldberg machine that stretches across an entire bedroom. This machine, when it actually works, will turn the light on. Much to Ron's perpetual dismay, they have yet to create anything that will turn a light off.

Paper towel tubes, duct tape, embroidery floss, the funnel from my long-forgotten breast pump, two empty cereal boxes, the sofa cushions, the spinner from the Twister game, a few lincoln logs, half a pound of pony beads, and 20,000 rubber bands are arranged in a fashion that will, half the time, turn the light on.

Was this in the lesson plan? Did I assign this? Will I grade this?

No.

Will I even photograph this?

Probably not.
Now that all the kids have their own cameras, there are already countless photos of every stage of its construction, as well as many exciting minutes of video, already uploaded onto the computer, and posted to their Facebook pages.

What I will do is leave them to their light-switching machine and get myself a cup of coffee. Later, when I want to sit on the sofa, I'll demand that my sofa cushions be brought back in and reinstalled under my lazy butt.

My eldest daughter decided to go to school part-time last year and was at first intimidated by the idea that all the other kids she would be in classes with had been going to school for ten (or eleven, if you count kindergarten) years, where she had never sat in a classroom in her life. She could have taken honors classes, but remained cautious and insisted on being placed in the regular classes.
The next year, she requested honors classes for most of her subjects, and has all A's.
Is she a genius?
Not by my standards. What she does bring to the table is an enthusiasm for learning, and a willingness to complete a project. (Also, the fear that if she doesn't do well in school, I may decide to homeschool her again!)
She is also the type who will do an extra credit assignment, such as bring in an old cool whip bowl with a few pill bugs in it.
Several times last year, one of her teachers requested these, and each time, my daughter was the only one who did it. How hard would it be to flip over a rock and gather a few of these up, on the way to the bus? A couple times, I'm sure she even delegated this job to a younger sibling, and probably paid them a nickel a bug.

So even though I can see that my unorthodox methods are working for my kids, I still get these dreams, every year around this time. In last night's episode, it was my mother-in-law (a retired public school teacher) who had called the big, scary They. I know that my mother-in-law does not understand or approve my methods, but one thing she does do is remain silent to me about it. Now that my eldest is doing so well, even if my relatives cannot agree that my methods have merit, they must at least admit that they have done no harm.
At this point, it will have to be enough.