Totally unbalanced

I have to say posted today about amount of balance between structured lessons & just hanging out together and learning.
I was just going to comment in her blog until I realized how long this was.

I swing like an out of control pendulum.
First, I make grandiose, completely unreasonable plans (well, I just copy them out of WTM & add outside activities. And add 2 foreign languages. And other things I think are important. Like fibre art. And cooking. And politics. And Charlotte Mason-like nature walks. And anything else that strikes me as important). During the perfectionistic and overoptimistic phase, I make my children's lives miserable by expecting WAAAAAY too much of all of us & freaking out when we don't achieve it.

Then I weep in the shower, pound my fist on a couple doors and give up. I get whacks of books, audio books, and educational videos from the library, scatter them around the house, and then I ignore the children until they carefully approach me to ask whether perhaps, if I had time, could I possibly, just maybe, show them how to do something? Or maybe teach them about this? Or perhaps, could I look up this bit of information for them? And then we slowly start swinging back and things are good. We're together, we're enjoying each other's company and we're learning.

And then I look around and say "Shit, we're just PLAYING at this. This is serious. Life isn't about having fun learning, you know!" And then, it's off to print out color coded, nightmare charts.

I've been at this for 6 years. You would think I would have a handle on it. To be fair, the swings are a lot less frequent. But there's an element to this which I think is normal. I think life is cyclical. I like to think of it as sailing in a storm. Sometimes you're climbing a wave and it's a struggle, and other times you're riding a wave and it's glorious. Of course other times you get swamped & knocked-down. And of course I get miserably seasick but I still itch to be on boats. Because it's not about having FUN!!!

Of course there are those lovely times when it's smooth sailing: the sea has just enough swell to keep things interesting, and the wind is blowing right, and life is just plain good.