Back to school

Or in our case, not.

Happy first day of school, in our corner of Ontario, at least.

This year, the first day looks a bit different in our household, because it doesn’t involve school.

I hinted in a previous Substack or two that my fall might look different than I’d planned, with less time for all the writing I want to do. Many of my IRL friends (who, bless them, read this) asked if it was an exciting new job. Alas, no. The “job” that will eat into my creative time is parenting.

After a very rocky first grade experience last year, which was filled with enough stress and strife to nearly break our family (or at least me), we made a big decision this summer. We’re opting out. The kid will be homeschooled for grade two.

It’s hard to overstate how sad school made our kid last year, or how big a toll it took on our family to keep sending him to a place that was eroding his self esteem, interest in learning, resilience, and creativity.

I don’t blame his school or teachers. They tried their very best, with the limited resources available to them in a system that our provincial government has been strip-mining for years. (I do blame Doug Ford and his goons, a bit.)

I don’t want to lose another grade to daily screams of “I hate school” (and much darker things, besides) while we wait patiently for assessments and supports¹ that might help him, though probably not this school year, because these things take time.

While we wait, I want us to be happy². While we wait, I don’t want his tendency to be highly imaginative, inventive and stubbornly independent (that is: his personality) pathologized by a system that prioritizes compliance.

The first sign that our kid was going to chart his own path: his pre-school answer to the question “what do you want to be when you grow up”:

Names have been blurred to protect the innocent & adorable.

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Aside on compliance: this what his teacher last year wanted most. I heard the words “he doesn’t comply” or “he needs to comply” so many times. I kept hearing those words, in a context where my child was deeply miserable, refused to participate in any group activities, and learned absolutely nothing. I was living in constant dread of the daily call that would inevitably come, to inform me that he was sobbing in the office yet again. Given all that, his in-class compliance was low on my own list of priorities.

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I know I can’t change the system (and I understand why the rules that he’s unable to comply with exist, believe me!). I can’t change the kid, either. But, I can remove the kid from the context that causes the problem, and watch the accompanying stress disappear. We’ve barely begun, and I feel like a massive weight has been lifted off my back.

I’m not doing this alone. Colin is not just fully supportive, but a full participant. We’re both lucky to have flexible, freelance careers that allow us to shift our work hours to make space for this plan. We always share household work and parenting equally (honestly, Colin does a bit more of both than I do) and we’ll be sharing the homeschooling equally too. It will be a challenge to manage our time and ensure we still get our work done (and take some breaks) but it’s a huge privilege to be able to make this decision, and I will never take that for granted.

A year ago, I was hopeful about school and eager to watch my child develop a love of learning, just like I did at his age. Instead, I watched him get increasingly discouraged and withdrawn. He kept asking us the same question: why can’t I just stay home with you?

The one school project my kid put effort into last year. It made me cry! The teacher noted that he “really loves his family, and always talks about wanting to be with you.”

Over time, it became harder and harder to give him an honest answer that made any sense. Somewhere deep within me, a tiny personal revolution was bubbling up. Why couldn’t he stay home with me? Why couldn’t I leave my job, too? And write a book? And live joyfully right now instead of … whatever the blur of the last few years has been.

The pandemic has been brutal for us all, and I don’t need to recount yet again the toll my mother’s illness and death took on me. I worked from her dining room table while caring for her, but I didn’t take a leave of absence from my job to actually be with her during her final days. I thought we had more time. In retrospect, this might be the worst mistake of my life, but it’s one of many I made over the past few years, thinking that one situation or another would “be temporary” or “change quickly” or “improve.” I’m not living like that anymore, not ever.

Early parenthood was really hard for me. I was lost in the quicksand of postpartum depression and anxiety for an extremely long time. At least three years, probably longer. I loved my baby, even during those terrible, dark years. But I felt numb, sad and exhausted all the time. I missed out on a great deal of the joy of his early childhood. I look back now at pictures of this incredibly happy, exuberant toddler, and I feel like I wasn’t even there. I was so deep underwater that I barely remembered what sunlight was. I was in the Midnight Zone³.

Right now, I’m enjoying parenting. It’s hard and exhausting, but my kid is so hilarious (surely, the most hilarious child who ever lived?) and sweet and cute and bright and creative and genuinely weird in the way all kids are, until they start becoming self conscious. He’s empathetic and sensitive, too, and I know that self-consciousness would come sooner for him than for some others, especially if he was surrounded by cliquish, bullying peers. I want to hold on to that unencumbered weirdness a while longer. I want to make the one decision I know I won’t regret, which is to hold on to him right now, because I know I’m not guaranteed a tomorrow.

A lot of the hardest things feel easier without the dread of school looming constantly over us. Bedtimes are a struggle (always!) but less so when I don’t feel the pressure of our old, bad mornings. Mornings are fun again, without any of the guilt I carried last year (first, for dragging my kid to a place he hated, and second, for getting stern notes from the school for my efforts, reprimanding me for his lateness).

There are things I’m nervous about. That the only community I’ll find will be people who are doing this because they want to opt out of shared societal values that I hold dear. That friends (well, maybe not actual friends, but the broader circle of acquaintances, neighbours and social media pals) will assume I too am a crackpot for doing this⁴.

There are also things I’m feeling confident about. That my kid will be happier (our whole family, too). That I will be much less stressed, anxious and worried. That he’ll learn more. A lot more.

Besides, I’m high on parenting for the first time. I laugh until I can’t breathe most days because of something he’s said or done. We make up games and songs and dances and write long lists of cool things that we’re going to do together.

There’s a natural time limit to any child’s desire to spend all their time with their parents. At age seven, we’re getting close to that end-point, and I’m in no rush to get there. I’m finally having fun. 

1. Everyone’s first worry about homeschool seems to be about whether he’ll get to spend time with other kids. Don’t worry! He’ll be attending a weekly nature school he adores, and going on most afternoons to a beloved after-school program that most of his best pals attend. We have regular playdates and spontaneous hangouts with neighbourhood kids on our dead end. Besides, homeschooling was his idea.

2. We’re assessing a broad range of possibilities with a paediatrician, but that process is ongoing and slow (and private).

3. One of my most irrational phobias is of the deepest ocean. Why bother being scared of something I will never have to experience? I don’t know, but the existence of the actual Midnight Zone causes me to tremble, tremble.

4. The close friends we’ve told have been very supportive and curious about our plans. When I told my dad, he said “I’m impressed, I didn’t think you were so brave.” Lol, thanks dad.