the blogging tightrope

There's a fine line between tooting your own horn and airing your dirty laundry. That's my thought for the day. I'll try to elaborate, but I'll be honest, the ideas that reside comfortably in my brain may not make much sense when written out. The fine line I speak of is balanced every day by mom bloggers everywhere. Some lean a little more toward the "we never have any trouble getting kids to eat their vegetable around here", "my kids always say yes ma'am and no ma'am and are in bed every night by 8 (with a bath and prayers)", these are the Mary Poppins 'practically perfect in every way' types. I'm generally not a fan of those. I'm more the type that if you tell me how perfect you and your kids are, you can be sure I'm going to be watching every minute so I can find the way you aren't perfect (because you're not, none of us are!) I've been a fan of 'keeping it real blogs' for a long time. I have to admit though some "real" is personal and TMI. So where's the balance? Often I tread that line by tossing in some dirty laundry stories when I have the urge to brag about my kids. Like I said I don't want to hear too much bragging and I'm pretty sure you don't either. BUT...I am proud of my kids and if I don't share that here, then where? Quite the conundrum!

I've been a parent for a pretty long time now, almost 16 years. I've been doing it 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week, and for about the first 10 or 11 of those years I did it with almost no break EVER! Now that I'm not with my kids 24 hours a day every single day (but still close), I know that even when you aren't with them, the job doesn't end, I'm just saying all this to say I have some experience. We've also been homeschooling essentially that long, or figuring conservatively, at least for the last 10 years. I often get parenting and homeschooling questions from people. I'm no expert in this field and I don't claim to be, but I do have experience enough to know what's worked for me. Often I get questions about what I did for school when my kids were younger. Depending on the time allotted or my mood I might talk about living life as learning, or going to the park, playing with friends and reading books. Very often if pressed to recommend a curriculum, I recommend Five in a Row. I'm pressed for time right now, so I won't include a link (go ahead you can google it yourself if you want). Almost every time I get a response that implies that isn't enough "work". This seems to indicate that I really let my kids slack off when they were younger. This may be debatable, but the thing is they are doing pretty well right now. So maybe there is something about the "less work" that "works". I really have a lot more to say about this, but I have plans to leave my almost grown kids home while I go do a very grown up thing and meet a friend for coffee (I probably won't drink coffee), but I have a lot more to say on this subject, so I'll be back with more...