I haven’t blogged in forever. There is so much content out there; I’ve decided my blogs aren’t adding much value to the world, but I am writing today because I need to.

So, like the rest of the world, we are schooling from home. I’m an old hand at homeschooling, aren’t I, then? I homeschooled pretty much non-stop from January 27, 1993 until around 2012, 2014? Something like that. I tried and used many different curricula, schools of thought, and original creative ideas on educating my kiddos.

With Kepler, I believed (rightly so) that the public school system would be the best set-up for him. So, the day after he turned 3, he started pre-school. That was 11 years ago. He has been lovingly guided by capable teachers now for many years. These are people who love what they do, love the kids, and do an amazing job with them.

My issue with the schools is that I have not been able to be hands-on with what he was learning and doing, which makes it quite difficult for me to reinforce what they are doing, let alone supplement it in a one-on-one context. Of course, there have been plenty of other issues which have impacted my ability to do more than the bare bones of living, chief of which has been long bouts with depression.

Well, now it’s time for me to step up and guide his learning at home, whether or not I want to.

And OMG this is complicated. The main complication is that all the assignments are online, but one aspect of the login information I was given has not yet worked. That’s the first issue. Secondly, the information is listed in Place A and Place B, and you can also access it through Place C, but make sure you click the icon in the address bar (I didn’t find that out for several days).

Kepler is actually quite adept at using his Chromebook. He can really navigate to email and google classroom and knows how to join google hangouts, etc. But he doesn’t have the executive functioning to be able to put everything together — plan what to do today, what to do next, etc.

All I can say is this is stretching my ability to cope. Do you know what it’s like to try to login to something and be told you have the wrong password? Of course you do. It’s a part of life for every single one of us who must navigate a thousand passwords. But add onto that the responsibility of overseeing a child’s education and this situation is asking for way more patience than I seem to have.

Finally, today, after many attempts, I was able to contact the correct person who was able to unlock something so I could do the fix. When did we start this schooling from home thing? I guess it’s technically only the second week, but I spent time the first two weeks seeing if I could acquaint myself with the system, so I’ve been at this for nearly four weeks.

Add into this the unique learning style, and pace of learning with Kepler, both of which are relatively foreign to me, as my experience with my older four was quite different, and didn’t include forty thousand different logins and passwords and terms and apps I was unfamiliar with. I need things simple and I’m not getting to have that.

So, I’m feeling sad. And angry. And frustrated. I’m attempting to give myself compassion but boy oh boy this is hard. I listened to a Brene Brown podcast yesterday and she said this isn’t a time for comparing how hard things are with how hard they are for anyone else. And I have been doing that. Yeah, maybe I have some difficulties, but what about the people who …. [fill in the blank]. And I appreciate what Brene said, because whatever anyone else is going through, this situation for me is difficult.

I can also see that it is an opportunity, but I have to first feel all the emotions that come with the challenge. I just can’t do anything perfectly, or even close to really well these days. So, I guess I’ll just do the best I can with the information I have and remember that there is such a thing as good enough even when something isn’t perfect.

Sigh. Love, Siouxsie