The Overachieving Homeschooler's Quiz

As a fun educational activity, you often have your child:

Write the grocery list.

Write the grocery list in calligraphy.

Write the grocery list in Braille, and then go shopping by himself — blindfolded.

When did you first seriously consider homeschooling?

When you tallied up all the hours you'd spent helping your second-grader with her homework and realized that homeschooling would save all of you a lot of time.

When your child turned five and you thought that pretty soon her "real" education would begin — and then you realized that you'd been teaching her for years, and you didn't feel like stopping.

You brought the complete works of Charlotte Mason and John Holt with you on your honeymoon.

What do you think of as your earliest "homeschooling" activity?

Going to the library with your little one every week for a refill on picture books.

Going on nature walks with your toddler and telling her the names of various flora and fauna.

Drilling your child on the first twenty digits of pi before you knew her gender.

Your usual homeschooling day:

Is an eclectic struggle to meet everyone's needs, including your own.

Is an evolving blend of Charlotte Mason, classical education, and just plain fun.

Can be read about in your best-selling book.

Your greatest hope as a homeschooling parent is:

That you'll never drink enough to admit to anyone that you count watching "Cops" with your kids as "social studies."

That your children will grow up to be happy, healthy, well-rounded adults with lots of options.

That your child won't feel that his Nobel Prize in literature isn't that big a deal compared to the one his sister got in Physics.

We're not trying to be fresh, but what are you wearing on any ordinary homeschooling day?

Wait — we're supposed to get dressed?

T-shirt and shorts in the summer; sweater and jeans in the winter; little smudgy handprints and chocolate stains all year 'round.

Earth-friendly, cruelty-free natural-fiber fabrics (for which a family-based farm collective was paid a fair but competitive price), modestly but stylishly cut.

Remember, your answers are private — what time are you and the kids out of your pajamas and ready for the day?

Wait — we're supposed to get dressed?

Well, we aim for sevenish, but sometimes we're out late at a movie, play, or concert — or we just stay up late watching TV and playing games — and then we crash the next morning until whenever they feel like getting up. (Sometimes I get up early and let them sleep in so I can have a little time to myself in the morning.)

Consistency is a key component when it comes to a child's health and well-being. We're up at six, and then we get dressed, exercise, eat a whole-grain environmentally-sound breakfast, and are "at school" by seven. (Sometimes I give them Sundays off.)

Which of the following best approximates your family's version of "car schooling"?

"Yes, honey, you're right — Mommy shouldn't have said that, even if the other driver did cut her off. Umm...can anyone think of another word that begins with the letter A?"

"Hey, kids! When you spot an out-of-state license plate, shout it out and let's see who can remember what that state's capitol is first!"

"Okay, who can come up with a design for a cost-effective, solar-powered vehicle before we get to our off-ramp? No, Cecilia — you can't use the one you thought of last time."

What kind of social, athletic, and other "extra-curricular" activities do your children participate in?

Waving at the neighborhood kids every morning as they go to school and singing our special song about not having to get up until we feel like it.

Well, we go to the local park group and book club, and they're in Campfire Kids. Money's tight and it's hard to keep up with a lot of outside activities and still have time to do our regular homeschooling; so each of them gets some kind of sport and one "extra" — art or music or whatever they'd like to try.

Other than attending the weekly park days I started, going on the field trips to museums, plays, operas, and concerts that I schedule for our county-wide group, volunteering at the library and the local homeless shelter, and taking part in Roots and Shoots, Little League, 4-H, soccer team, dance class, drawing lessons, debate team, junior orchestra, swimming lessons, rock-climbing lessons, science lab, calligraphy lessons, and karate class — not much.

How do you handle homeschooling when you're sick?

TV for them; hot toddies and ear plugs for me. What? You got a problem with that?

If I have a cold and just need to lie low for a day, I have them read a little by themselves, maybe do some writing or worksheets that they can handle without much help from me, and after that they can just play. If I'm really not feeling well, sometimes my mother will come and take them to a museum, so I can get some quiet time to rest and not feel too guilty — after all, it's educational, right?

I used to worry about missing a day of "school," but now I realize that our family will be just fine on the occasional days that I'm out of commission. My eight-year-old just reads stories to the younger ones until I'm feeling better. Whether it's Grimm's Fairy Tales in the original German, The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, or La Fontaine's sweet little stories (in French, of course), they all have a wonderful time and I get a lesson in learning to relax and let go!

How does your spouse feel about homeschooling?

I haven't told him yet. He just thinks the kids are home sick a lot. Look, he's always been kind of iffy on the idea, and think about it this way — if I wait long enough to break the news to him, I won't have to!

Well, at first he wasn't too thrilled by the idea; but we talked about it a lot, and did a lot of reading and online research, and now he's really behind it. In fact, the other day, he said he couldn't imagine sending our kids to school!

Homeschooling was mentioned prominently in my prenuptial agreement, as well as the contract my husband had to sign before I'd agree to go on a second date with him.

What about the rest of your family — your parents, siblings, cousins, and so on? Are they supportive of your decision to homeschool?

Well, my mother has stopped calling the police every week and reporting us as truants. That's sort of supportive, don't you think?

Some of my in-laws are still kind of anti-, but they're more confused than hostile. And my sister thinks we're nuts. But the grandparents have really come around. My father-in-law even coaches our homeschooling baseball team!

My mother is the chairperson of our statewide homeschooling support and legal defense group, and my father is on a ten-city tour promoting the book he wrote about us called Homeschooling: The Platonic Ideal.

One thing that's really tough about homeschooling is keeping up with household chores. How do you cope?

I wear sunglasses inside, and go to the thrift store when we run out of clean clothes.

I keep reminding myself that this house is supposed to work for us, rather than the other way around. I do keep on top of the basic urgent things — cooking, laundry — but for the rest, I'm trying not to worry about it so much. I'm also learning to ask for help from the whole family — it's their house, too — and not stress out if somebody doesn't do the kind of job vacuuming or dusting that I would have done. And you know what really helps? Going out a lot. If I can't see the mess, it can't bother me!

Well, my husband does all the shopping, runs errands, and pays the bills; my oldest son does the cooking; and the rest of the children split sweeping, mopping, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the bathrooms, scrubbing the baseboards, laundry, washing the windows, taking out the trash, separating out the recyclables, cutting coupons, organizing, and filing between them. (They have a great system they worked out all by themselves!) I do my part by keeping our spice rack alphabetized.

What is your most embarrassing homeschooling moment to date?

When somebody asked my seven-year-old if she knew who was America's first president, and she turned to me and asked, "What's a president?"

When my smart-ass eleven-year-old said loud and clear at our three-generation family reunion, "Mommy? Will you teach me how to read someday?"

When my sixteen-year-old daughter won the local Miss Homeschooling Talent Pageant, and someone mistook me for her twin sister.

What do you worry about on those nights when you can't sleep?

That your five-year-old isn't merely grappling with perfectly normal, ordinary, age-appropriate reading difficulties, but is facing a life of functional illiteracy thanks to you.

That your decision to follow a child-led learning model will leave your child with serious gaps in her education that will jeopardize her chance of pursuing a university experience.

That your child won't take first place in the National Spelling and Geography bees three years running, the way his five older siblings did.