Living Room School

I've signed Wyatt up for home school.
I have really been struggling with this decision and what everyone will think of me for doing this, mainly because I have always been my own biggest critic of home school, making jokes like "If we home schooled we would major in Spongebob and organized field trips would be going to Dairy Queen hahahahahaha!"
See?
How do you come back from that?
I have quite a few reasons that have led me to my final we'll try it for a while decision.
The first is this, and don't give me the business about it or think I'm some sort of nancy because I know what the odds are, but you know what, there were quite a few "someones" on that missing Malaysia flight and everyday "someone" is in a car accident, hit by lightning or slips on the soap in the shower, so that just goes to show that anyone could be a someone.
The last reported school shooting of the year was in Troutdale Oregon which just happens to be one county over from me. That made things very real. We are also the state of Kip Kinkle so there are two very real and very devastating examples of young minds running amuck.

As some of you may already know, Wyatt has a very sensitive, creative, whimsical, wandering brain. Always has had, always will. While other little boys were playing kung foo ninja panda, Wyatt was arranging and delivering flowers to the elderly ladies in the trailer park. He would visit me in the salon while I was working and compliment all the ladies on their "lovely" jewelry and "hairdos". As he's grown older and all the other boys have gone on to motocross and things that blow up, Wyatt has taken to designing and creating jewelry. He is a very cool, maybe even verging a little bit on hipster, inteligent young man, but he has yet to really find his social niche at school and has been bullied a great deal over the years. He is also not really the type of kid where a situation like that will "toughen him up". I had him in Karate when he was younger and he took another kid to the mat and inadvertently bloodied the kids nose. I ended up having to take him home because he wouldn't quit crying because he felt so bad.
So there's that.
And then there's the bullying.
I'm not even going to start about the bullying because I will just come across as some crazed mother standing on her soap box preaching about the horrible effects of bullying. I know how bad it is, you know how bad it is, unless you have been bullied you will never know how damaging it is and how it makes you feel for the rest of your life. If you know a bully, say something. If you are a bully, knock it the f#ck off. If you know someone who is being bullied, reach out to them and help.

Now, because of Wyatt's wandering brain he has a very difficult time focusing on the task at hand. Rather it be tying his shoe, brushing his teeth or doing a math equation. God help us all if the kid ever gets a drivers license. Wyatt can understand a concept at school, but it will be long gone by the time he gets home. He is also known by too many teachers for his amazing ability of taking creative license to assignments. Last year he had a project due on the erosion of the coral reef and spent an entire weekend creating a two foot high diorama complete with crocheted jellyfish and glitter starfish. He forgot about the actual research until 5:00 am Monday morning. And so, for that reason home school could either go very very well, or very very bad.
It's a carp shoot.

The last reason is the one that makes my eyes wet, so I'm not going to really get into it and I don't know if it's him or me, or me projecting it on to him, or him playing me to get to stay up late and not go to school, but "it" of course is the Chrysler Building in the living room, the bad "h" word, the whole dropping dead thing. In case you missed out on my month long vacation last winter, you can read about it here. I just had an ultrasound of my heart this month and it looks like my arteries are healing, but I still have the aneurysm in my left ventricle and my heart is functioning at about 55-65%.
So that sucks.
The doctors say we all have a touch of PTSD, and I get that. I don't like to go to town by myself and my nitro is never more than a step away and I don't want to be a syndrome creating a bigger syndrome, but this year, I think we'll just curl up and embrace our little bits of PTSD, FMD, OCD, AD, CHF, CAD, EDS, PostMS and get some GE in K12 Online.

Wish me luck.

Peas.