And so we begin our last week of homeschooling. This year has been very difficult which has come through in various posts. It started to come through in things I wrote last school year. I can’t even fully articulate everything that has been going through my mind this year about education, partially for reasons addressed in the short video below. 

The video popped up this morning on a Telegram channel I follow and it was a gift from God. If you read one of my most recent posts (Homeschooling a Fifth Year of High School) and watch this, you’ll get the general idea. There is so much more I want to say about homeschooling a creative child, but I don’t have the time to do it this morning. I did want to at least share the video. 

But it fits with a series of conversations Caroline and I had last week about her creativity levels. It fits with what I’ve personally experienced. It just fits. 

A friend told me a few weeks ago she thinks when this is all over, I’ll have a book to write based on my experience of homeschooling and parenting a creative child. It’s quite possible because thinking about this experience from a Christian perspective isn’t something that gets covered much. It’s so ironic because art was my least favorite subject in school. Obviously creativity isn’t only what we think of as art class. I’m an artist. I write and I’m musical. But being married to an artist and being the mother of an artist in the more conventional sense has made me realize what a real dilemma these children face. By extension their homeschooling parents face that as well. Most Christians and churches won’t understand these dilemmas. The churches that support the arts don’t tend to be theologically sound. 

What has surprised me is how angry I have felt about it all. Not angry at my creative child. But angry at the way the system and bureaucracy still infiltrates and controls our homeschooling, even in a super free homeschooling state like Michigan. 

Well, I guess I took the time to say a few things. But now I need to stop. 

Anyway, here’s the video.