March, April, May always brings me into a time of self-reflection. Looking at who I am and who I want to be. Looking back and looking forward. How am I doing? Can I do better? How can I do better?
This year, along with my personal goals and achievements, my marital goals and achievements, and parenting goals and achievements, I am also looking at how I am doing in facilitating Isabelle's learning as we are home schooling. Overall, it is going well, but it isn't without its challenges with the largest one being not even a home schooling issue, but one of my own personal issues and how it is playing out in the realm of home schooling. And that is sequencing.
Sequencing, simply is planning. Putting a series of events into a proper sequence to achieve a desired outcome. During my stay in a mental hospital for treatment of clinical depression a year after a drunk driver collided, head-on, with the car I was driving, an IQ test was administered to me which included two sequencing questions. The administrator laid out four cartoon panels and my job was to put them in order within a set period of time, 30 seconds or a minute. I don't remember with certainty. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it because I couldn't identify the first panel. I remember looking and looking at those panels, arranging and rearranging them, but I could not identify where the action began.
Identifying where to start is my biggest challenge as a homemaker, mom, and now home schooling facilitator. How do I start my day? What should I do first? If I do this first, when will I get to that? and that? and that? But it all begins with where to start. Finding the end of the string.
The accident I was in and its long-term effects are with me on a daily basis. It doesn't just sit in my past, 30 years ago, never to be considered again. That accident altered the course of my life 30 years ago and left me with long-term side effects which I live with the best that I can, but that will never heal.
Broken bones heal, torn tendons heal, knocked out teeth can be replaced with implants, dislocations can be relocated, lower lip tears can be stitched up, but the effects of a double concussion (front and back) as it was called then, closed head injury, or traumatic brain injury as it would be called now, those are long-term.
So this weekend, I spent some time with pencil and paper mapping out, again, my days. I included housework, meals, personal time, play time, and home schooling time. Somehow, some way, I have to make this work. I have to find that combination of tasks that slips into a comfortable routine that sticks.
In the end, life is about choices. I could choose to give up on home schooling and homemaking, re-enroll Isabelle in public schools and get a job outside the home myself, but I won't. I do believe the work I am doing at home has value and is important.
Thirty years ago, a drunk man chose to drive home from a party and changed the course of my life as well as his own. Life is about choices.
Sequencing, simply is planning. Putting a series of events into a proper sequence to achieve a desired outcome. During my stay in a mental hospital for treatment of clinical depression a year after a drunk driver collided, head-on, with the car I was driving, an IQ test was administered to me which included two sequencing questions. The administrator laid out four cartoon panels and my job was to put them in order within a set period of time, 30 seconds or a minute. I don't remember with certainty. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it because I couldn't identify the first panel. I remember looking and looking at those panels, arranging and rearranging them, but I could not identify where the action began.
Identifying where to start is my biggest challenge as a homemaker, mom, and now home schooling facilitator. How do I start my day? What should I do first? If I do this first, when will I get to that? and that? and that? But it all begins with where to start. Finding the end of the string.
The accident I was in and its long-term effects are with me on a daily basis. It doesn't just sit in my past, 30 years ago, never to be considered again. That accident altered the course of my life 30 years ago and left me with long-term side effects which I live with the best that I can, but that will never heal.
Broken bones heal, torn tendons heal, knocked out teeth can be replaced with implants, dislocations can be relocated, lower lip tears can be stitched up, but the effects of a double concussion (front and back) as it was called then, closed head injury, or traumatic brain injury as it would be called now, those are long-term.
So this weekend, I spent some time with pencil and paper mapping out, again, my days. I included housework, meals, personal time, play time, and home schooling time. Somehow, some way, I have to make this work. I have to find that combination of tasks that slips into a comfortable routine that sticks.
In the end, life is about choices. I could choose to give up on home schooling and homemaking, re-enroll Isabelle in public schools and get a job outside the home myself, but I won't. I do believe the work I am doing at home has value and is important.
Thirty years ago, a drunk man chose to drive home from a party and changed the course of my life as well as his own. Life is about choices.
Comments
Post a Comment