You must have so much time on your hands!

Okay homeschooling parents, I am sure you will get a laugh out of this one. Recently a parent told me that I must have so much time on my hands since I homeschool, and that I must be able to get so. Much. Stuff. Done.

Commence laugh track.

I wanted to retort, “You mean like all of the stuff you can get done in the eight hours your kid is at school?” But I didn’t. I smiled and said, “We keep pretty busy.”

Most homeschooling parents I know are very busy people. Lots of us work—part-time, full-time, as much time as we can manage. My husband and I are both full-timers. Lots of us volunteer, too; we teach in co-ops, organize activities for groups like Scouts or 4-H Club, run homeschooling groups plus engage in our own personal volunteering for organizations and causes that we support. We do all of this with our children at our side, just like our ancestors did for thousands of years.

Okay, they didn’t do these exact things, but they “did life” with their kids rather than without them, which is how my family believes that living should be.

My point, though, is not that we are busier or not busier than parents who do not homeschool. My point is that we should not judge one another. Even as that retort danced on my lips, I knew I was being judgmental and that I shouldn’t be that way. The mom I talked to might be taking care of all kinds of things I don’t know about, or suffering from mental or physical trauma, or who knows what! We never know what someone else is going through, and we are all deserving of understanding and compassion no matter what. If we all made it a point to imagine that every person is doing his or her best with what they know, I think we could manage to be a whole lot more compassionate as a species.

Maybe we could promise to think this every time someone pushes our buttons, like this mom did with me this week. I’m sure she didn’t mean to do it, either. Let’s just think, “She’s doing the best she can with what she knows” and find out how that makes us feel and act instead.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia