Great Expectations

Today is Thursday (just) and I have been trying to write this blog since Saturday. That was a-g-e-s ago, but this thing called LIFE keeps getting in the way, and before I know it, a week has passed since I last posted. Honestly, it is so frustrating trying to keep up to date with a home ed blog; your children want you to do 'stuff' with them, clients decide to have babies, and paperwork and emails keep claiming my time (along with a little bit of knitting and coffee drinking too).

My problem, is that I have massively high expectations - or Great Expectations - of what I can realistically achieve. And there is nothing quite like raising a family to bring you back down to earth about those.

This week there have been other expectations not quite met; Sophie (nearly 15) and I have been visiting some of the college open evenings, so that she can start to think about where she might like to go. Sophie had high hopes to attend the college I went to (and loved), and talked about how cool it would be for a 3rd generation to go there (my mother also attended this college); our visit made us think that not a lot had changed since my mother actually went there and Sophie was really disappointed: it got a big fat 'X' against it on her list.  Thankfully, yesterday evening we visited a college that is potentially 'the one' and so she is feeling positive again.


Society has many expectations: of ourselves, our children, our 'earning potential' and so forth, and it can be hard to keep in focus what the important things really are.  Sometimes I read other home educating blogs and feel I am inadequate and not 'doing' enough; one of the great thing about home ed however, is that it is a constantly fluid and adapting way of 'being' and there are times when our expectations are not only upheld, but bettered.  To have high expectations is not a bad thing, and one of the other strong advantages of home education is that when the children do encounter disappointment, they have the space, time and chance to work it out in their own way and for themselves that it is OK to have Great Expectations - just as it is OK to take your time to in getting there.

So, whilst it may have taken me a week, I have knocked out a blog, and we have got a few other things achieved too.

 

    

Expect great things (just maybe not from me!)

angela xx

“I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations