Week 13

Just came back from a visit and a wedding today. Both of us were busy watching the India-England cricket match and generally chilling out today. Jaipur visit was good fun to meet and build friendships with our friends' kids.

Homeschooling has given us the flexibility to enjoy events like these much better. Interacted with a few people and came away with the feeling that people are really scared and unable to take decisions, so seek safety in continuity and tradition.

I am slowly coming to the firm view that all views across all domains are valid and profitable under a certain set of circumstances. The successful people either tend to be able to better contextualize their views and make them suit the circumstances or serendipity takes care by providing the relevant set of circumstances for their view to flourish. Under this view, my decision to homeschool should also work under a certain set. Now, the challenge in front of me can be reframed as whether I can verbalize the specific set of circumstances that make homeschooling ideal for my kids! Will try to come back with my thoughts at some point during this journey.

Week 12

This blog is a couple of days late as we are visiting family and attending a wedding. Good time for him to meet his cousin and other members of the family. A big fat North Indian wedding has given him a lot of opportunity to interact with far-flung members of the family and build relationships around sports and rituals.

It has been some time that I have not been really pushing through any agenda as I came across a wonderful resource - www.self-directed.org .. a lot of the ideas there resonate with my thought process and so I am trying to let him learn more organically.. will review our status at the end of the next month.

Week 11

An emotional rollercoaster is what encounters the parents more than the child. It is difficult to let go and years of being driven by others do not allow us to feel confident about our own decisions that easily. Fear about the unknown combined with knowledge of people who have not done too well as per our definitions, drives us to frustration and maybe unreasonable expectations.

A homeschooling is more than mere learning in a different way for the child. It is the process of unlearning of the parent more it seems today even before the learning begins. And that is a big struggle! It needs a lot more than just faith in one's own abilities surely.

Week 10

This week there is a new distraction - the Cricket World Cup. I am struggling to discipline him as most Indian boys are currently involved in this wave, and so studies are taking a backseat. It is difficult to ascertain if this is the time for me to still focus on his studies, or to let him go with the flow and spend more time to understand the gentleman's games it is his interest.

This experiment is making me questions my own assumptions and I believe is making me a more perceptive person. Don't know if that is a good or bad thing.

Week 9

This week is hopefully the last week of holidays before we go back to serious work again. If there is anything that defines this week, it is motivation. Working backwards, it was difficult for me to be motivated to write this blog. It was equally difficult for my wife to keep the faith in this entire experiment as we were struggling to motivate him to keep doing stuff that we wanted him to.

During my preparation for admission examinations, the last of which was the GMAT in 2011, I have gone through this roller-coaster of emotions - starting out with a lot of enthusiasm, for it to dip precipitously after a few days to the point of almost giving up, then a silver lining appearing from somewhere to keep going, then building on the positive feeling to get some small wins, use those wins to motivate myself for larger wins till the actual exam happened.

I guess this entire exercise is going to be similar in terms of the emotional journey. I will try to keep up and not drop off this exercise of writing this blog every week.