SO YOU WANT TO HOME-SCHOOL

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Although of school age, they are still eating breakfast. Vita, who is five, is smearing peanut butter on her bagel, and Ishmael, who is nine, is making rivers in his yogurt with his spoon. They can usually linger over their breakfasts, because they don't go to school. They learn at home and in the wide world around them. They spend their days reading about things that matter to them, making scenery for their plays and operettas, playing the piano, going to various classes in the community, and, of course, doing what we still call "school work"—math, science, and other academic subjects.

Bob and I were as helpless as anyone when we first sent Ishmael to school, and much of this book, while on the surface about our homeschooling experiences, is really about how. we have increasingly learned to trust our own instincts and "know how" in order to raise Vita and Ishmael in ways that make sense to us, even in the face of disapproval, interference, and distrust. I hope that our successes will encourage other par ents to develop the self-confidence they need to find ways to share more of their lives with their children, despite the obvious obstacles—whether it is by taking their kids out of school, by bringing their little ones with them to work, by cutting expenses and finding ways to earn money at home so as not to have both parents working elsewhere full-time, and, in general, by not underestimating the importance of the time that they actually spend with their kids.

I mailed the curriculum to the superintendent's office at the beginning of September, and we opened our "school" a few days later. With art and drama classes on Mondays, piano and French on Wednesdays, and nature lessons on Thursdays, we soon settled into a fast-paced schedule. When people I met for the first time asked how I ever managed to teach Vita and Ishmael, I laughed and said, "Oh, I'm not the teacher, just the chauffeur."

In reality, of course, 1 was doing far more than driving . . . . But despite the fact that I was now much more than a full-time mother to Ishmael and Vita, I discovered that I had more time to myself than I had ever had before. I hadn't realized how much time I had spent dragging around worrying about Ishmael when he had been in school. My whole life had been consumed with his problems, and I had been drained-emotionally and physically—by watching him suffer . . . . By comparison, my life now was a breeze . . . . By afternoon, I found that I was able to sit down for an hour or so and read, or even do some writing.

So the months passed. In the mornings we worked on math for fif teen or twenty minutes, did some handwriting (which included more reading of poetry than writing it), wrote letters and journal entries, drew, and played piano. In the afternoons the kids went to their various classes in town, played with each other and with friends, read, and often did science experiments or read French with Bob. After supper, we played chess or scrabble—and Bob always read to the kids before they went to bed.

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