Off to school

I still haven't heard from the teacher who is supposed to call me about Erin joining her class next week. I talked to the principal on Tuesday and he was going to ask her to call me to set things up.

As I've been explaining to people around here, this year 80% of Erin's art class was made up of kids from the same Grade 3/4 class at the local school. They'd pile off the bus chattering away about the day at school. They're nice kids and Erin is pretty good friends with most of them. I think she has been left feeling like she's at a party with a bunch of people she's friends with and they're all talking about the cliffhanger episode of some TV series she's never seen. She wants to watch the show just once so that she knows what they're talking about. That's my guess as to the nature of her interest in school.

She finds large-group interaction tiring, values her down-time alone, is years ahead in academics, has little patience for crappy cliquey social stuff and hates working "to task". I'm pretty sure she'll find school stifling.

However.... (and it's a big 'however')... Erin has a tendency to read control battles into everything, and I confess that in the past I have, in the midst of conflicts with her, said things like "Maybe you should go to school because I certainly can't get you to do anything, and I think you need to learn that sometimes there are things you just have to do!" Or "Most kids have six hours a day when they have to do what they're told; you have no idea how lucky you are!" These are the sorts of things that Erin will take and twist in her own mind. Never mind that it's been weeks or months since I've said anything like that. She sometimes does things she hates, things that make her miserable, in order to "win", or in order to avoid what she perceives as "losing face".

So I'm just a little worried that all of this funhouse-mirror passive-aggressive mind-game stuff might contaminate her spin on school.

The good news is that the end of this week has ended up packed full of fun homeschool group activities.