One of *Those* Days

I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I’m talking about, right?

  • Not only are there a mountain of dishes to be put away, but  there are dishes in the sink filled with cold nasty water with floating bits of who-knows-what. (Grrr.. why didn’t we just do them last night?)
  • There’s laundry still in the dryer, waiting to be hauled out and folded.
  • LD lost his math book. We spend 15 minutes looking for it all through the house and finally give up.
  • DD wakes up in a B*A*D mood.  She yells at ED and then is rude to me.  She gets in trouble. She cries. A lot. And crawls back into bed.
  • When she finally re-emerges, she sits down to read while she’s eating. LD realizes that DD has picked up and started reading his novel, gets irate and demands it back. Right now. More mayhem.
  • We finally sit down to do a bit of school and the phone rings once… twice… three times!
  • My to-do list unfurls before me like runaway toilet paper rolling down a hallway… For example, there’s a picture that has been sitting on the back of the couch still wrapped in plastic for five WEEKS… waiting to be hung on the wall (along with the laundry *still* waiting to be put away–who knows how long that’s been sitting there?).

 

The conventional homeschool advice is to take the day off, go to the park, take a trip to the museum, take a bath, read all day, arrange a play-date, let the kids play in nature… and on and on. Sometimes we do that, but sometimes to be honest… we just slog through the day. Why? I really thought about that a lot today.

We push through those days because sometimes things start to feel better and we get into a groove.  Sometimes we feel a great sense of accomplishment when we start off rocky and finish off solid (if not brilliantly, just with a solid day behind us).

We slog through because life isn’t always easy. I want the kids to know that we’re accountable for ensuring that they get a good education… even on *those* days.

We push through those days so the kids know that sometimes you have to do what you don’t want to do.  I did NOT want to tackle the dishes/laundry, but we did. And it actually feels good (now looking back at this day at 11pm!).

We push through and continue on because I want the kids to know that temper-tantrums are not acceptable and do not result in a free-pass through the day.

We continue on because we have other things coming up that will take time away from homeschooling.

Looking back on the day it was not our best day. But it was a satisfying day.  I’m probably not alone having one of *those* days.  Am I? [Hopefully not!!]

May you have a *wonderful* day!

~Liesl

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