While browsing weblogs for this week’s Closer Look piece, I came across a new and unusually compelling blog called BrokenHomeschool. It’s written by a homeschooling mom identified only as Kathy, who lives in “North Florida, in the middle of nowhere, in ever-mounting debt, with my three kidlets, eight dogs, two cats, one goldfish and a flock of chickens.”

Kathy’s writing is bare-bones honest. In her post titled A Day at my House she wrote, “9:20 We’re all dressed and ready to go. I have one hour to get to the courthouse. Today is “Contempt of Court” hearing day. My ex is some $8,000+ behind in child support and my attorney is trying to get him to pay some of it. I’m not hopeful. I notice that Georgia has written 3+6=9 in the dust on my Ford. Boy, I need to wash it, but at least she was doing math.”

She’s practical: 38 Ways to Simplify Your Life “12. Pick one room every day and throw away ten things. Clutter sucks your life away.”

Informative: How to Build a Two Week Lesson Plan “With about an hour of preparation, you can build a lesson plan that will allow you to put your homeschooling planning on autopilot for at least two weeks.”

Realistic: How to Homeschool on one (modest) Income “We’ve stopped taking violin lessons. We eat peanut butter and Hamburger Helper more. My daugher is wearing her (male) cousin’s hand-me-down shoes with race cars on them. She doesn’t care…why should I? Without the public school pressure to conform and be cool, it’s much cheaper and less stressful to live.”

Inspiring: Now That’s “Old School” Homeschool! “I want my kids to be renaissance adults, like my grandfather, who was a lawyer, surveyor, banker, state legislator, and who could draft house plans, conduct a locomotive, run a post office, dig his own well, and milk a cow. People in our time seem to be so specialized. We do one thing. We have one skill.”

Reflective: Dealing With Despair “When you’re on your own, and in particular when you homeschool, the children are always around. It’s all too easy to talk to them about the late payments, the exhaustion, the frustration. It’s a hard thing to keep them out of the adult world of work and worry.”

And through it all, Hope-filled: Gratitude and the Homeschool Single Parent “I just finished a book called “What Happy People Know,” by Dan Baker, PhD. and he makes a big point of the fact that fear is what drives that negative voice, and that the fear cannot co-exist with appreciation. I can’t pretend that the running grievance list isn’t still there, but when it gets too loud, I try to drown it out with positive thoughts. It’s remarkably effective.”

BrokenHomeschool gives the reader a lot to think about.

This entry was posted on April 25, 2007 at 11:00 am and is filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.