Seeing Past the Faults

Charlotte Mason is a well known name among many in the homeschooling arena.  She wrote in one of her books on education "Remember, no one is made up of one fault, everyone is much greater than all his faults".  I am having a fault kind of day.

We have adopted a new schedule.  We are not very good with routines.  Nor are we very good without routines.  We are not unschoolers and we are not school at homers because of this fault.  Our new schedule includes our boys' out of house lessons, work at our business, library, errands and field trip.  Sounds busy but with the exception of shipment at our store, we are home after only a few hours and have 1-2 days where we don't leave home at all.  Sometimes more if needed or if lessons are cancelled for some reason. 

My kids like to know what is going on for the week and would prefer there be no surprises.  I'm trying to make that easy.  I now send an email to each of my 3 older children with a list of expected lessons for school, any extra chores beyond the lists on the fridge, errands to be run and the planned field trips.  It lets the oldest 2 figure out how to plan their lessons to make sure they finish as well as giving all 5 a plan of attack for the week.

It is very hard to be a stay at home mom because you are considered the easy person to ask.  One of the biggest problems with keeping to our laid back schedule is that I can run that errand or two since I don't have to get to work or meet the bus.  I hate to admit to a few loud blow ups over the years where I was asked to do just one more quick thing.  (Perhaps I don't deal well with or without a schedule either?)  It is not even the fact that I felt put out because of the assumption that I would not have anything else to do.  It is because I have to see the reaction of the kids.  They would get so tired that all they could do while the vehicle was in motion was sleep.  Then they would not feel awake enough to get out and behave inside the stores.  I recall weeks in a row where zero lessons of math or science would be done beyond the life versions.  Not that learning to add up totals in stores or that dark clouds mean heavy downpour isn't useful learning.  I mean no worksheets (I was a teacher once.)  No experiments.  No sit down and discuss the last chapter kind of learning.  I don't know how much a child of any age can learn riding in a car between a seemingly endless list of destinations that was handed to mom late the night before or in the morning while she was barely awake.

That's one of the driving forces behind our new schedule.  The kids will expect to be out at these certain times well in advance of our new work schedule come January.  Right now I guess we are still in transition stage.  The faults are showing.

We have a normally navigable room in disrepair.  Not that he is the neat freak but he does tend to insist on keeping his things in his own particular way.  We have a boy resorting to loud dramatics.  He can shriek with the banshees when he might not be about to get his way.  Plus his absolute ignoring of the customers  first please rule.  We have a girl who chose to lay in the floor of a store and pull a toy on top of her this evening.  A truck.  Looked like the thing had run her down. 

I saw all this starting late Monday.  I could punish the faults.  I could throw my own fit.  I'm trying to get the house neat and tidy for the holidays.  I have at least a dozen projects going at once.  I don't need to spend all my time trying to split up fights.  (Yep, that would be some of my faults getting in the way.)

So we are going to have an at home day instead of a field trip day.  We'll sleep late and maybe take a nap.  We'll straighten up our rooms.  I'll work on some of my projects and the kids will play outside with friends.

I will choose to look past the spot on the blank sheet of paper to the beautiful but tired child holding it aloft.  (Illustration borrowed from a Charlotte Mason explanation)  If I only see the spot, I miss the picture. 

If I miss the picture, I've missed everything.