Yesterday was our last ever soft play session at a local church. They are moving to a new building, only the whole move means that soft play won't open in the new location for another whole year. The new building is totally inaccessible to us anyway where we live (it will go from one bus at a cost of £3 return to two busses at a cost of nearly £6 return!) but even worse emotionally speaking is that when it reopens Jenna will be five.
One year, and she won't be a pre-schooler any more. One whole year left of not fully fitting in with all of the home-educator activities (aimed at school-age children). The thing is, I've been protected a little bit from having Jenna lose all her friends to school - several of them are younger than her - but this year they all go to school too, and the only people left to do anything with us during the day will be the tiny tots Morgan's age.
It suddenly feels very lonely, very much like taking a turning somewhere on the path and finding ourselves totally isolated. Which makes me panic - I knew we wouldn't always be surrounded by people, so if this upsets me so much maybe I'm not cut out for home-ed?
I know myself, I know how I work best - I need to be able to get out of the house a couple of times a week to do OTHER things and be a bit more planned. I need people to bounce ideas off, to whinge at when I've had a tough day, to encourage me to see the best in my wonderful busy funny serious little children. I don't want to be lonely! :(
We're going to have to give the home-ed activities a go again, even though I feel really worried about only having tinies.
PS - I think I might be pregnant. It's too early to test, but I just have a feeling - and so far my feelings on things like this have been pretty reliable. I'm terrified in case I'm right and lose the baby - or can't cope. And I'm terrified in case I'm wrong because I am not ready to give up on having more children yet.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My eldest is about a year older than your eldest, I think, and we've got to that crossroads that you're now facing, and I must confess it has been a scary time. It really starts to hit home exactly how weird most people think HE is, and how differently your life is going to be than most people with similarly aged children.
ReplyDeleteHowever, unlike you, I really had to make myself get out there and search for other home ed families because I would be quite happy hiding at home. However, I knew this wouldn't be fo the best for any of us in the long-run so I made myself contact people in the HE organisations contact lists, joined the email lists and now, not quite a year later, we see loads of people - 6 or 7 families on a regular basis and still meeting new ones.
Try not to worry about this. It seems that there are not that many families who HE from the beginning - most try school and then start dropping out a term, 2 terms or a year later, so once your eldest's birth cohort have had a bit of time in school, there will suddenly start to be more families with kids her age HEing.
Congrats on the pregnancy, by the way. Having had a recurrent miscarriage problem myself I have some insight into the mix of emotions you must be feeling but sadly no magic words to make it all better, though I wish I had.