Chaos (Mar 2017)

I was thinking about the idea of the terrible home ed day when everyone and everything seems to go wrong, and generally as a parent one feels ill or out of sorts.  Largely this came up, because yesterday was a mini-disaster, that fortunately I was able to laugh at by the end of.  And just that I think we need to know that to be human and to be feeling creatures means that sometimes it all goes up end, but that is by no means a reflection on who we are.  We are a work in progress just as are our children, and if we feel like a failure, it is likely because we ourselves are still caught up in the schooling external evaluation system and indoctrination that we received.

So on that theme I thought I'd run through one day last week.  First of all I awoke feeling grumpy and out of sorts, and couldn't shake the feeling easily.  I came into the living room, to find that Willow and Gabriel had just left for the opening of H&M (they were hoping for free breakfast LOL!) and that they hadn't finished their jobs from the night before.  Instantly felt grumpier, but straightened kitchen anyway, and asked Arden to help finish off putting the vacuum away.  Decided I better have a shower and a quiet meditation of the feeling to see if I could shake the uneasy feeling that I had.  Irving wanted a shower, so I did this with him.  Felt surprisingly better (currently I'm using a technique from a book that I love called "Compassionate Touch") decided that we should go out for coffee. 

Everyone gets ready, we do times tables on walk/skateboard to the cafe.  We order a croissant, brownie and biscuit to share and a hot chocolate for Arden and Irving each, and a matcha latte for myself.  The Perth mint has a fire alarm, and we watch the evacuation from the cafe, later we see the police leave.  Both the boys try the matcha latte.  We contemplate the flavour of the biscuit (choc and almond) and try to guess the ingredients.  Arden photographs his drink to put online.  We walk/skateboard home.  (This involves Arden skateboarding properly and Irving sitting on his kicking along.)

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2025

Oh that seems tame to how I ended up in a few years time....I discovered around 2020 that I had sleep apnea, after I had a tooth break, I had it extracted, my teeth shifted, my bite would no longer meet, and I ended up with heart palpitations and my balance completely off!  (I was really glad to have read a lot about dental health, so that I knew that's what caused it)  I found a new dentist who helped to fix my bite, and within the day, my balance was completely resolved....however I wondered about the apnea, and after some research I found a dentist that said it  could be cause by an iodine deficiency.  Well in my case he was right, and very quickly the apnea cleared up.

So my disturbed sleep for quite a number of years, made our home ed experience quite a bit more chaotic, as I just struggled to stay awake during the day.  I was also regularly experiencing neck pain, and this was causing problems with my sleep too.  And combined with taking on too many things to do during the coming years, approx 2018- 2023, much of that time is a bit of a blur, similar to when I had two toddlers, too much to do, and irregular sleeping patterns.

That said, we've always had a great, learning experience, with lots of interesting things to do and learn, so it didn't change that.  It just meant I was taking naps pretty regularly during the day, weirdly I seemed to sleep better then, and if I'd had a dreadful nights sleep we'd take the day off, or one of the older kids would help the younger kids with their learning.