As a homeschooling mom, I rely on my online friendships and communities more than my flesh-and-bone relationships. I’m not sure that’s the best thing for me, but it is what it is.
Can you hear the sadness as I type?
When I first began homeschooling officially, when my firstborn turned six, I already had a community of online support I visited frequently. You know how I love books. Using the Five in a Row guides for our early learning kept our days full of fun. We read, did the activities, tinkered with math and lived life. When I needed a mental break, sort of a “Mommy needs to check in with her girl friends”, I logged onto the FIAR message boards.
Don’t you just love message boards? Conversation not reduced to just 140 characters. You can lurk. You can comment. Laugh and cry together. Lift each other up in prayer. Just the thing for a newbie homeschool mom who loves to talk and write.
After a few years, when I grew more confident in what I needed to concentrate on or ignore with our little “non-school at home”, I left behind FIAR. Reluctantly, I left the message boards too.
Housekeeping immediately improved.
Then I discovered blogging.
Housework again tossed aside to write, meet other homeschool, blogging moms. The blogosphere : joy!
By this time, I plugged into two local groups. One a co-op with lots of kids, with moms actively engaged in getting the best learning opportunities for their children. The other is a support group for the Christian homeschooling family.
We didn’t last long at the co-op. The story of why is too long to tell in this post; perhaps sometime I will. As I sit here typing all of this I can see the faces of the lovely moms I felt a true kindred-spirit connection. I miss them. We talked when we met together. We had fellowship.
Now I think of this other group – the Christians-only group in which I currently serve on it’s leadership team – and it’s all frustration and disappointment. And I don’t like laying out criticism on the Internet to whine and complain about an all-volunteer organization, so I will keep this rant brief.
Oh, how I wish my homeschooling, Christian friends would be more flexible and took time for more mom-fellowship, pursued opportunities to get together just to talk and encourage each other. I’m so tired of asking these moms to gather together at a park on a beautiful day so our kids could be together, yet all I receive in return is silence.
Yes, I value my online community – all of you reading this blog, Twitter – far more than the offline world that is nothing like I thought it would be when I began homeschooling six years ago.
It’s online where I know of other Christians learning the unschooling way.
It’s online where I can go with a tweet when I’m having a bad day to get an encouraging word to keep going.
It’s online where I can read the words of a mom just like me and not feel weird, alone or crazy for rejecting government schooling.
I continue to homeschool with the hope that I would find a local, sold-out-to-the-Lord family who doesn’t think textbooks are the only way to learn.
Maybe I need to join another message board.
This week The Homeschool Village is comparing notes on online communities. Write your own thoughts on your experiences with online communities and your homeschooling, then link up. Don’t forget to visit the other blogs participating.