Guilt! Guilt! Guilt!

Who the hell decided that women needed guilt? And why did whoever that was decide that moms needed to feel that guilt, oh like ten-fold?!

I'm sick of the guilt. I'm tired of the guilt. I'm just plain sick and tired of the guilt!

The specific guilt I'm feeling tonight surrounds my choice in educating my children. I can honestly say that I have only fond memories and experiences surrounding all the years that I've homeschooled, whether it was 1, 2, or all 3 kids. And just for the record, that's 10 years! Go me! It's a long way from the "I will not ever get married or have children!" girl that I knew as recently as 18 years ago. But that's beside the point.

The point is that for only the second time in all those 10 years, I'm wondering, no I'm feeling guilt, that maybe I'm doing my children a disservice by continuing to homeschool them. By not encouraging them to go to school sooner. I'm not talking "oh I wish I'd thrown them to the public school wolves a long time ago". But there are holes in their education (yes, I did know there would be) and I'm feeling LOADS of guilt about that.

Specifically, it's Jarrod. He's 9th grade, really intelligent and interesting (I feel) but rather lazy. I know a public school environment isn't going to be right for this child, but he needs routines and his impulsive mother can't give him that. Am I messing him up by not giving him what he needs? If I can't give him that, and if I'm not actively trying to find that for him, is he suffering? I've let his own laziness feed into my laid-back-ness and he now does just enough to get by and won't strive for anything more. Yah, okay, he IS a teenager, he's supposed to be this way, right? I don't think I'm wrong for wanting more from and for him.

So, I've been looking into other alt-ed programs: ICE (Individualized Choice Education), WAVA (WAshington Virtual Academy), MarVista... There are too many choices. Wow, did I really just type that? I am so fortunate to have all these options available to me (okay to my kids). If I literally push him into one of these programs and he has so many holes in his education, will he hate me when he figures it out? Will he hate me for pushing him where he doesn't want to be? Yah, he's a teenager, he's supposed to hate me.

The problem is that I love the sweet boy that I know right now. He's a smart ass in training and that's just about the only teenage quality he possesses. He's a downright easy child (thank goodness he was that baby/toddler/preschooler from hell from 0 to 5 and got that out of his system).

Guilty ramblings...gotta toss out this guilt!

FYI Just for the record, I used the word guilt 11 times in the body of this post!