Some days, you just don’t feel like you’re getting anything done. This problem is particularly pronounced around this season, I find, since it is possible to run around like crazy and still have a lot of to-dos on your plate. You’re getting things done, but there are more things to do than there is time to accomplish them all.
There are also the days like today, when the weather is snaining (that’s snow mixed with rain) and you just don’t feel like accomplishing anything. It’s dark and cold, and did I mention that snain? Yuck. Cabin fever sets in and all you want to do is sit in your bed looking out of the window. As a parent, this is generally not possible.
So what if you’re having one of those days? If you collapse into the feeling of getting nothing done and just let it happen, you may find that you are accomplishing a lot more than you’d anticipate.
On a day like today, my daughter and I had a wonderful conversation about children and death. We know of a child who is going to die and we know a family whose child died. We also know people in various stages of chronic illness, including myself. We had an excellent conversation about how children can die and how this is not expected and particularly sad to people in our culture. We talked about how sometimes peoples’ bodies are born not working quite right and how sometimes we can fix that a little bit with medicine and sometimes we can’t.
One of the beautiful things about homeschooling is that you have the time to have these conversations. These are wonderful discussions and important ones, and they are discussions that might not take place in an unforced way in a classroom. They’re life lessons, and they are important.