Don’t think that the irony of this is lost on me…

Before I had children, I didn’t have a lot of ideas about what I’d “never” allow my children to do.  I didn’t have a lot of moments in public saying, “When I have children, you can be sure that I’ll never let them…” or, “I won’t ever tolerate…” and to be honest, for the most part, I still don’t.  I figure, you never really know what led up to a situation, so you can’t just judge a bad parent (unless it’s abuse) or a bad kid.  As a matter of fact, the only real “I’ll never” I currently have involves Heelys, or other shoes that have wheels built into the heel.  What a disaster those are…

I did have a few things I *was* sure I would “never” do, however.  The first was homeschooling.  Even one year ago, I was certain that I would “never” homeschool my children, for a variety of reasons.  And now here we are, almost 3/4 of the way through our first year of homeschooling, and planning next year.  Yes, my variety of reasons to *not* homeschool went away, and now I have a whole new variety of reasons why we *are* homeschooling.  Sometimes, it’s still a surprise to me…

The second was sending a three-year-old to school.  And in my defense, I still think that a normal three-year-old belongs at home with mommy, not in a school setting.  There’s plenty of time for that later.  But Moose’s experience is not normal, and so I broke my second rule, and sent a three-year-old to the public school, the same school that my two older children *should* have attended this year, had I not done a 180 on homeschooling last summer.

So, they’re equal and opposite situations…older children at home, where I swore they’d never be, because it’s the best place for *them* to learn, and younger son in school at what I used to think was a too young age, because it’s the best place for *him* to learn.

Yes, the irony abounds here, on several levels…