The Ole Switchero : Dude Transitioning To Domestic Duties and Daddy Afterschool School

Following our plan, 24 months before we were to begin homeschooling my wife returned to full time work.  This meant that we were both earning an income, but adjusted to live off what she earned.  At 18 months out, I left the working world behind and assumed the domestic duties life full time.  My wife was earning more than enough for us to maintain the quality of life we wanted.

It was very strange at first, being home all day in this new world of no meetings, phone calls, client ass kissing, no co-workers, and such.  I'd wake up with no pressure.  I'd go to bed at night with no pressure.  There were no deadlines to drive me any more.  After more than two decades of marching to the corporate world beat, I felt like I was in outer space, free floating.

With the kids still in their public charter school, I had plenty of time during the day to reflect, settle into my new role, think things through, and get ready for the homeschool phase.  There was a lot to learn, such as the regulations governing homeschooling in my area, what support groups were available, what program options I have, and what kind of learners are my girls.  

Every week, in addition to the laundry, dishes, clean up, etc., I'd accomplish one exterior house thing, like pressure washing, or mowing the yard, or trimming the hedges, etc.  I've also been able to indulge in various interests of mine, ones that I never seemed to have time to do before such as concrete sculpting.  My love of Martial Arts has also seen a major boost as I can commit more regular hours to it.  I also get to read more, as well as listen to more podcasts of interest (space science, eastern philosophy, and so on).  The cherry on the cake is hitting places off peak hours, like the gun range.  LOVE IT!

The transition has been phenomenally smooth.  One area that I've still not internally found settled involves asking for money.  Now that I'm not the money maker, I personally find it tough asking for anything.  It is an internal hang up for sure, but one that I do face.  We have an auto deposit into a private account for me, from the wifie's paycheck, that we call the "Mad Money."  That is an amount of money that I can go crazy with and spend on anything I want, no questions asked.  It is my pocket money as it were.  It is more than enough to sustain my hobbies and interests.  However, there are times when I want to do more than my Mad Money will cover, and I have to ask, and I don't like to.

In preparation for the Full Monty homeschooling, one of the things I have practiced is to ensure that when the girls come home from school that they have an hour of academic work from me.  This is in addition to whatever they have from their public charter school.  Of course, what I'm giving them fits well with what they will be doing at their regular day school, mostly covering materials that I suspect they will need later in the school year.  This has paid huge dividends for all of us.  I've continued to learn how they each individually learn, how I can best serve as their learning guide, and they've gained mastery on subjects ahead of their classmates.

The Middle School Way

Happy New Year!

Val and I always knew we would probably home school our kids.  The question always was, when.  When and what grade would we start.  For us, that really depended upon what we were seeing in their school environments.  That is, we would have them in public schools for as long as we thought it was to their benefit and that no major damage to them was being done.

With very cautious eyes, we enrolled our eldest into school; we found that were very happy with what was going on.  The teacher was a delight, and kindergarten for KJ was great.  Then we moved to Florida and put the kids in a new school.  It wasn't just any school, but one of the "best schools in the state" and "number one in the county" according to the standardized testing.  Wham! Not so good, at least in our opinion.

This particular schools great testing achievements were at a huge cost: our girls were not only being homogenized but their zest for learning was fading fast.  The cruel, slow pace Baton Death March of intellectual development carrying every child forward together was grinding out their natural joy of learning.  Our youngest, in particular, was having a very hard time going so slow.  We met with their teachers, and we were told point blank that this was the pace and that the class would be going together.  Yep, sure, eventually everyone will make it together, but at what cost .... and where, ultimately, were they going?

Within 2 months, we pulled our youngest out and put her into a very small public charter school where they adjusted to the child's level.  As soon as the school year ended, our oldest was also pulled from the "great" A rated school and joined her sister in the small charter school.  We've been there ever sense (finishing 4th year there now).

With the move, we began discussing the right transition time into homeschool. We were in a much better place in the small charter school, but it was clear that short of a middle school charter of the same type, our girls would be screwed.  The Education System is engineered for the masses.  Period. So, it was decided that we would begin homeschooling in 6th grade, the start of middle school, for each of our daughters.  Sooner, of course, should the environment at the small charter school change in a bad way.

Our working modeling for the past 4 years has been that once a daughter hit 6th grade, she would be in Daddy School.  Amazingly enough, that starts in 6 months! Time sure does fly.

With all the discussion of homeschooling at our dinner table, the youngest has made it clear she wants to homeschool too.  She really wants to explore things at a much faster pace, and in areas of deep interest to her.  So, we've decided that both our girls will begin homeschooling at the same time.   This is an adjustment to the plan, but plans change so we will simply flow with it!

They have made friends, enemies, did school talent shows, faced bullies, worked with home room moms, participated in fund raisers, experienced incorrect gradings, enjoyed group work, did big group field trips, and more.  Lots of wonderful, good experiential things.  Now it is time to switch gears, and allow each of our daughters to unfold at their pace, in their way, and in their own direction.

Not Sure You Can Do It? Do a Summer Homeschool first

Nope, I didn't breastfeed my kids. I'm not built to and, I don't want to.  In fact, until I watched a particular Family Guy episode, the thought never crossed my mind.  However, I do want to home school my kids and the question is, can I?  Can I serve as a perpetual intellectual lactation machine?

I'm not worried about if I can teach them.  What I'm worried about is being with my kids all day long, every day, providing providing providing.  I love my girls, but operating in this role, ensuring the nectar of education is flowing is definitely a sustenance providing role that has to come from some place very deep within.  Even with self-driven kids, which I have, every single day helping them along all day long may prove too much.  If you believe the commonly male/female role accepted history, it is the woman who stays with the kids while the man goes out to hunt down the food.... so maybe like breast feeding, I'm simply not wired for this stuff.

So, how did I test the waters? Glad you asked, because that's what this post is about: how to try out homeschooling before jumping in

I had learned from a different major family lifestyle shift that it is best you sample the new scenario for a prolonged period before you go for it (another story for another post, but it involves living on a sailboat!).  For homeschooling, what I decided to do was do school for an entire summer with them.  That is, put them in Daddy Home Summer school.  I wanted to see if I could handle their education for the entire period, 11 weeks.

I looked at it this way, worst case scenario is that it totally sucks and we were miserable.  If that happened, we could just stop and they would go into regular summer mode, knowing that they would be back to their traditional school with no interruptions.... no harm no foul.  Any case better than that, then at least the girls would have a good start on the next years school material. All this, and I got time with my kids.

In June of 2016, as soon as the school year ended for my kids at their public charter school, they entered Daddy Home Summer school.  This would be a trial run for all of us.  We knew that they would be going back to their regular public charter school in September (see The Middle Way post), but for the summer it would be daddy school all the way.

I had work packets ready, ideas for field trips, proposed daily schedules, cool projects, evaluation criteria, and more.  We would be attacking material from every area of study that they would face when they returned to their public charter school the next school year, 3rd and 5th grade stuff.

Over did a dune buggy engine once,
making long distance driving not feasible.

This test summer run provided a tremendous amount of actual feedback and, like the time I designed an engine for my dune buggy, I found that not everything worked as my mind had planned.  Some things better, some things worse, but that it was all about balance.

Doing the Daddy Home Summer school before going Full Monty tested the waters in a number of areas, allowing me to refine my operating model.  However, the most important learning and the main reason I even did this trial run was to ensure that I could, in fact, do this week after week after week.

So, nope ... I can't breastfeed, and I really don't want to.  I can, however, homeschool for weeks on end, and totally enjoy it and myself.  Wahoo!!

About XYHomeschool Blog

This blog exists to share the views and experiences of a homeschool lead by a dad.


About This Blog:
A vast majority of homeschool blog sites are by moms leading the homeschool show; not so here, as I'm all dude.  The language, perspective, and examples offered up will most certainly be from a guys point of view and will probably offend someone at some point.  It is updated as frequently as I feel moved to do so, which currently feels like once every couple of weeks.  I intend for this blog to 1. cheer on other guys homeschooling their kids with posts that will resonate (no hair color advice here, I'm bald!) 2. inspire other guys to take on this amazing experience and 3. share potentially unique homechool approach ideas and perspectives.  You can read the inaugural blog post outlining the manliness impetus here: Homeschooling Needs Testosterone

About Our Family:

Yep, I'm the luckiest dude on the planet.  These are my ladies!

We are a family of 4: mom, dad, daughter (b. 2005), and daughter (b. 2008).  Our daughters are remarkable, with each having distinct personalities and a variety of interests.  Both are voracious readers, easily consuming a book a week.  My eldest loves science fiction, like Harry Potter, Eragon, and all of Peter Jackson's books.  My youngest loves biographies and factual books, with President Lincoln being her favorite person in history and Giraffes being her favorite animal. Both are avid martial artists, having been training rigorously since 2013 and have both earned Grand Champion titles at different tournaments.    My wife is employed full time as an accountant (controller) and I'm home with the students.  Both my wife and I have multiple degrees (wife BBA Economics/Finance and an MBA, husband BS (Cum Laude) Physics and an MS Computer Science) all from University System of Georgia state schools).  We've both been road warrior consultants in our fields, have both had tremendously successful professional careers in the corporate world, and we have run 3 of our own companies along the way too. Before all this awesomeness, when we first got married back in 1991, I was an enlisted soldier in the US Army.  In 2005, when we decided to have children, we agreed that one of us would be home full time.  My wife took the first watch at home, birthing them and raising them until they were both in school (about 10 years).  Once our kids were both in the common/public school system and my wife employed, I started the shift into their primary care person, leaving my career.

About Our Homeschool:
Our plan was to let our daughters enjoy the common/public elementary school system as long as we could, carefully monitoring their growth, values, and environment.  We knew that we would have to pull them out at some point, with the absolute evacuation grade being 6th (the start of middle school). Until then, we would build homeschool prototypes doing afternoon supplimental home school, summer home school, and the like to build out our homeschool model and approach. This tuning and adjusting has resulted in a fluid learning environment wherein our girls can learn at their pace, be self-driven, follow their interests, not see knowledge as containerized, and enjoy learning as a life activity.  They use a variety of learning vectors to include online tools like Khan Academy and Florida Virtual School, groups like 4-H and ToastMasters, camps like Space Camp, travels like going to Egypt, community offerings like museums and zoos, nature experiences like extended camping, pencil and paper exercises through worksheets, and more.   All of these mechanisms fit nicely within our codified approach to homeschooling, as captured in our Homeschool Charter.

Homeschooling Needs Testosterone

Welcome to XYHomeschool's inaugural blog post.

"Holy Cow, I really don't care about your latest hairdo. Pump out some more of your great homeschooling ideas, I love them! "

Estrogen Estrogen Estrogren.

Over the past 8 months I've been prepping to home school my eldest daughter, KJ.  This research included reading over 500 blog posts from others who homeschool. Damn I've learned a lot, and I'm sure going to steal with pride lots of awesome ideas. However, it did get tiring combing through posts and reading about woman/mom stuff.

The indulgence and interludes into these female areas make sense, as these blog posting women use their blogs as an outlet and are speaking to the vast majority of home-school situations where it is the mom doing the driving.  However, I'm not a mom... nor would I ever try to be.  That is a beautiful role, perfectly fulfilled by my wife Val.  I'm a Dad.  I've got Dad parts.  I've got Dad interests.  So if we interlude, let's interlude with cars, guns, beer, man-beards, and stuff like that.

Speaking of roles, that of moms and dads, moms infuse lots of wonderful commonly mom done things into their homeschooling worlds.  For example, baking as way to teach mathematics and chemistry is great... and for dads into baking, this is a great approach.  I, however, will leverage balancing our swimming pool's chemicals for these kinds of things.  This other perspective, the stereotypical male view,  will no doubt give rise to unique projects and perspectives that can be of use and value to homeschooling parents of XX and XY choromosome combos.

The XYHomeschool site exists to explore the numerous aspects of homeschooling, but from a male point of view.  If it inspires more dudes to consider doing it, awesome... but even better, if it helps motivate a homeschooling dad in a slump pull through, then we have a big win because it is the children who win.

Ultimately, it is about our kids and giving them the very best start to life that we can.  Therefore, if my tone or tenor doesn't sit will with you, focus on the content or simply move on; don't waste your time criticizing my voice because you are robbing your children of your most precious gift, time, and your words will fall on deaf ears on this end (like women, men have very selective hearing ;) ).

So, let this blog be an injection of Manliness into the uterus of homeschooling!

It has begun!