After stacking cows, eating breakfast, and washing up,

The kids explored the keyboard that arrived in the mail. 

Then we all went to the local homeschool weekly park day gathering. Where I sat several hours with other mothers chatting for our typical Thursday event. We've been meeting weeklyish with this group for almost six years. Some families there are just beginning. Some have been homeschooling long enough to have adult kids.

One mother said she recently gathered a scrap book for one of her oldest kids. The book is about 5 inches thick and she couldn't believe, reviewing all those homeschooling years, how much her boys had done, how rich their childhood was, how lucky they were to do it that way. She said, "I just couldn't believe it, how much these kids did. And at the same time, I was so worried I had forgotten something, left something out." She wasn't worried she'd left something out of the scrapbook. She was worried she's left something out of their homeschooling. She was worrying about a kid who is 25 and already graduated from college.

Another mother in the park is worried about her son's transcript. She said, "I'm worried the first time an admissions officer sees my son's transcript they are going to think we lied. There is too much great stuff here, to believe it all." She implied it might be smarter to sort of dumb the whole thing down a bit--to make it more believable. Yet she said, "I'm so tired of constantly feeling worried about being wrong."

Nothing in the formal education of homeschooling mothers prepares us to confidently throw off everything society says is correct and good about school to educate our children at home. We are simultaneously wowed, grateful, and pleased with the life our children get to have and worried about it. Worried about it, apparently, even after its over. So huge is the audacity to walk away from institutionalization. In the beginning, I had actual nightmares about a Principal knocking on my door and demanding my children. The bad dreams stopped after the first year, when I finally realized no one was coming for my kids. But I suppose I will never put down the weight of responsibility for our choice, the fear of being wrong, misguided, or mistaken---even as I can't fully express how grateful and pleased I am for our homeschooling life, and how lucky we are.

This morning as I milked the goats I wondered how best to teach the children to think independently, to trust themselves, to create their own options, and to feel free to act on their own opportunities. Sitting on the brink of obvious and completely unpredictable climate change, I can't think of anything more important to teach them. But the truth is, this is how they are being raised. No higher authority has been placed over their own intellect and sense of agency. They are comfortable seeking outside resources and teachers. But no institution sits above their own capacity. Wow, how would it feel to grow up like that?