An elementary student transferred from the after school care where I work to the daycare where a much younger sibling is. In many ways, that saddened me, but it is also a happy thing for siblings to stay together. It reminded me of something in our own past.
Moon started her educational career in Head Start, because her sister, Agent, had been born prematurely two months before school started. The new baby needed extra attention. I was not able to spend much time attending to the four-year-old. Head Start was a good fit, because a bus came to the door for her, kept her half a day, fed her, then delivered her home for me. She loved it.
By first grade, she started to complain about school. This particular story, however, concerns the bond between siblings. Not all siblings love each other with the same affection, but they are joined none the less.
By second grade, we had a routine. Three year old Agent rode in the stroller as we walked seven year old Moon the two blocks to school. The trip to school was generally jovial. Then, we would drop Moon at the door to her class. She would grab my hand and want me to enter with her. She would plead and pull or simply look sad. Then Agent would start to cry and try to get out of her stroller. They did not want to be separated. After much fuss, Agent and I would leave, with Agent crying all the way home. This happened almost every day!
After a couple of months of this, I asked Moon to walk herself to school to avoid the public scene. Many days, she came home crying, and one day in March she asked, “Mommy, can I be homeschooled?”
I had met my first homeschooler and her teen daughter on a bus in 1986. We almost became roommates. Between 1991 and 1998, I became close friends with another family that homeschooled their five children, so I was not unfamiliar with the concept. We talked with our minister. We talked with her teacher, a wonderful woman who told us positive things about homeschooling. She told us how to withdraw Moon from school with a minimum of fuss. She warned us to avoid talking to the Administration about our plans, and to contact the Texas Homeschool Coalition instead. We kept Moon in classes until the end of the year, but simply did not register her for third grade. We never had a speck of trouble about shifting to homeschool.
The siblings were delighted to be near each other.
When Moon started college this year, the chief complaint thirteen year old Agent has given has been: “She’s never around anymore!” Siblings. :)
Aww that is a good story. I think homeschooling your two girls, was the best thing you could have done.
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