Homeschooling Isn't Supposed to Be Like This
Ace had been homeschooled for four years and had thrived in the environment of a 1:1 and sometimes 1:2 teacher-to-student ratio with me as the instructor and he and his sister as the students. Miraculously, homeschooling was an incredible experience despite the chaos and trauma of domestic violence in our home. The children were fortunate to never see (that I know of) me being physically abused; however, they saw the evidence of it through a swollen eye or lip, and bruises on my body that I tried my best to hide. They heard their father yelling at me while I cried. Although I wish Ace’s experience with homeschooling, and home life in general, had been much different, I am very grateful that his formative years were spent in a slower-paced classroom and with someone who understood his personality, even the parts of his personality which were at times difficult to fully grasp.
Homeschooling in any environment can have its challenges – homeschooling in an abusive home is another ballpark. There were countless days I would be schooling the children and my husband would come home from work with demands like, “Go fetch me some food,” as I was clearly occupied with a lesson. He would interrupt my lessons to address whatever was urgent to him at the moment. In the beginning, I would protest, just to be told, “You don’t do shit anyway. You ain’t teaching them anything.” I would explain this would throw off my lessons and that I’d have to find time to make up the hours, considering I already worked part-time and had a very tight schedule. This explanation was laughed off and the demand was clear: I must prioritize his “needs” above the children’s lessons.
By the time I began homeschooling the two oldest, my marriage had been abusive for around four years. It was often hard to stay motivated, but knowing that the children deserved a good foundation and already had the difficulty of seeing me bossed around and belittled, I poured everything I had into making sure their schooling was the best it could be. The curriculum, as with most things, was decided by their father, my husband. There was a local Christian homeschoolers conference he had looked up and every April he would send me there with a list of books and materials to pick up.
In the first of four years of homeschooling the children, I remember my husband asking my thoughts on the curriculum, although he made the “final decision.” In fact, we attended the conference together with the children in tow, but we didn’t attend any of the sessions; we just shopped the floor for the curriculum he wanted us to use. In the following years, our marriage was in such a terrible state, there were no questions asked or opinions shared. I was sent to “fetch” what he had determined was the best for the children.
While I was at the conference, he would constantly check on me through texts to ensure I was attending the sessions he picked out for me and that I had purchased everything on his list. When I arrived home, he never asked me what I learned, never offered to attend with me, and never asked how I felt about homeschooling the children. He would verbalize to me that he sent me to these conferences so I didn’t “Fuck it up.” What was it? Their education, their learning, them? “Don’t fuck it up,” was a common phrase in our home, applicable to anything: dinner, the children, the car, cleaning the house, washing and ironing his clothes, even our intimate time. The criticism was neverending and the topics were all-encompassing. There was no end to the demands and homeschooling was no exception.
Show-n-Tell
When I homeschooled the children, I was just as anxious as with any other task I performed at home. As a certified teacher and youth coordinator with years of experience, I felt more than capable of teaching my own young children and had been doing so while bringing them to work with me at the nursery. However, being under the intensely critical and angry eye of my abuser stole the joy of teaching from me and I was constantly worried about what he had to say concerning my role as their teacher.
My husband would often disengage at home with the children and did not participate in any of their activities, homeschooling, or recreation, yet he was the first one to “show off their skills” to his friends and family. Leilah, for example, knew her alphabet letters, both their names and sounds, by one and a half years old. I had been working with her and was proud of her achievement. When I originally informed her father, he did not believe me. He dismissed me and called it a fluke. A few weeks later, his mother was at our home and I shared with her what Leilah could do, then Leilah showed her grandma that she knew her letters. My husband's mother called my husband into the kitchen and had my daughter point out letters, out of order alternating with, “Where is the letter___” and “What’s this letter called?” on our alphabet chart in the living room. My husband looked at me, flatly stated “Oh, you were right,” and said nothing more. Then whenever his friends or family visited, he’d have Leilah demonstrate her knowledge of letters, almost like Show-n-Tell, never acknowledging who taught her, never saying, “Yeah, Lissha’s been working hard with her.” Nope; he was just happy with how it made him look.
This Show-n-Tell interaction was a common occurrence in our home. When our oldest son Ace learned all the lyrics to Adele’s Someone Like You, especially considering Ace had struggled with verbalizing ahead of any diagnoses, my husband would record it and send the video to his friends and family. However, he did not spend one-on-one time with our son beyond his first year of life and certainly did not work with our daughter to learn her letters. He loved the attention he could garner for these impressive things our children could do, yet he invested little to no time with them. He even acknowledged this many times and blamed me for it. He would tell me if I had been a better wife and mother, that if I were what he wanted, he’d be around more and we could be a family. He would play board games with us, watch movies, and go to the park, but he couldn’t stand to be around me, therefore I was keeping him from his kids. All while we lived in a 900-square-foot home.
Advocacy Was Only a Dream
I share these stories because to understand why advocacy was a skill set I had to build up to help ensure the best education for Ace is to understand that my advocacy needed to start with my husband; however, the relationship was abusive and advocacy was only a dream in my home.
I struggled for a long time to understand why my husband desired to select the curriculum yet readily interrupted my lessons, mocked my teaching, and never participated in teaching the children. I couldn’t make sense of how hard he was on me, constantly criticizing my ideas and downplaying my success with the children, yet considered himself involved and even the reason we were homeschooling. Yes, he was the reason we were homeschooling, but not from a conversation with me that involved two people who felt respected and heard. Not from mutual respect and support for the best outcome for the children. It almost became bragging rights, as though he saw himself as being involved in some elevated or exclusive form of education that he was doing but no one else was. His pride was unreal, especially considering homeschooling is nothing new, many people have done it, and more importantly, he wasn’t the one doing any of it.
He often talked about the future and how he wanted to have the children learn Latin and study through the Classics Method; however, he told me he knew I couldn’t handle it because I dumbed myself down with television and I didn’t read enough, so when they were in high school he would take over so they could have a better education. All of this while my oldest son, whom we later found out was on the autism spectrum, was testing at grade level and my daughter was testing two grade levels ahead.
Fast forward to today, my oldest, Ace, is a 9th grader on grade level even with his learning difficulties, which include a processing disorder diagnosed at age five as well as ADHD. My daughter, now a 7th grader, is in the gifted program and in all advanced classes at her school. Our youngest son who only informally homeschooled with us (he wasn’t of compulsory age, therefore he had workbooks but wasn’t being officially schooled) is also on grade level, even after his diagnosis of ADHD at the age of nine and having many setbacks academically during the pandemic in 2020.
I now know the foundation I gave them allowed them to launch into these wonderful achievements all these years later, but at the time I felt very hopeless. I often was in survival mode, yet some of my warmest memories during those tough years were schooling the children. Seeing their growth, knowing I was blessed to bring them to work with me and to be their first official teacher – all of these blessings gave me hope to keep going and to provide the best of what I had to give, even though some days I felt like I had very little to give.
Narcissism in Action
I couldn’t understand his motivation or thinking until I understood a little more about narcissism. Narcissistic personality disorder, according to the American Psychological Association, involves several traits which I began to recognize in my husband: a long-standing pattern of grandiose self-importance (interrupting my lessons to have me get him food, selecting the curriculum without any input from me), taking advantage of others, and inability to empathize with the feelings of others. There are additional traits I will unpack in a different blog post about surviving life with a narcissist; however, for this post, it is important for me to call out how challenging homeschooling was for all of us, even if the challenge was only known and consciously felt by me. I believe at the very least, all three children felt the energy and certainly the tension in the home, and that is not the type of environment to nurture young minds and hearts.
One of the decisions my husband made about homeschooling had to do with Ace and his development. As mentioned in my previous post, Advocacy: A Skill Set That Takes Time to Develop, Part 1, Ace was not evaluated for autism until almost a year after leaving my abusive husband. This wasn’t by mistake, it was intentional. And all because of my husband’s desire to keep the government out of his homeschool. HIS homeschool. At that time, my husband was identifying more with right-winged, ultraconservative values. While I understand that we all have various values and opinions, my frustration is that his political viewpoints should not have hindered us from seeking a diagnosis for my son, which would have helped him to thrive as soon as possible.
The First Baby Step
Around the age of four, after bringing up my concerns with his new pediatrician, we were referred to the local children's hospital to see a specialist for our son’s communication skills. The specialist requested we complete some paperwork to help identify the underlying issues and bring him in for an evaluation, and with that Ace was diagnosed with a processing disorder. Since those evaluating him were not psychologists or psychiatrists, Ace was only diagnosed with a processing disorder. Beyond that, we needed to take him for further testing to determine if he indeed was on the autism spectrum. The therapist believed he likely was on the spectrum but referred us to a psychologist or psychiatrist. My husband verbally agreed with the therapist to take Ace (as well as verbally agreed to take Ace to a local school for group speech therapy); however, the moment we stepped outside to return home, he informed me he would not sign up for our son to be evaluated.
We knew he had a processing disorder and they believed our son to be on the spectrum, therefore that was enough for him. When I inquired why he didn’t want the evaluation, he said, “I don’t need the government’s fingers in my homeschool. First, they diagnose him, then they have control. If we take him to a local school, what’s to say they can’t force us to enroll him in school?” I couldn’t believe my ears, Ace’s needs were again taking a backseat to the beliefs of his father. I was devastated and felt so defeated. I began looking up some tools and resources to help me know how to teach Ace; however, I felt completely unprepared to provide him with what he needed most: intervention. I recalled later that day how commercials through Autism Speaks talked about early intervention, and there I was with only half of the picture of what Ace was facing, without the tools to ensure his lifelong success.
In 2017, after fleeing my marital home, I found myself on the other side of the table fighting with a public school for the rights of my oldest son, Ace. It took leaving my husband to be able to freely seek the intervention and resources our son, and family, desperately needed to do what was right by Ace. However, the school in which Ace was enrolled was not providing his needs as required in the education act better known as the "No Child Left Behind," and as a former educator and as Ace's first teacher, I was unprepared for the range of emotions I felt while doing everything I could to ensure he was provided with a fair and quality education. First I had to find a voice to advocate for my son in my abusive marriage, and now I had to find my voice to advocate for my son in his first public school setting. And I was ready for the fight.
On the Other Side of the Table
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