If they have a 12-step program for this, I haven’t heard of it. So it must not yet be listed as a problem by the Am. Psych. Assoc. Good. While that is still true, I am going to glom onto the meme created by Imperfect Genius and answered by Atypical Homeschool.

1. What country/region/state do you live in?
Texas.

2. How long have you been homeschooling? Just getting started, old pro or somewhere in between?
For preschool and Bible since 1994. I think I’m really at the old pro stage by now. That doesn’t mean I’m a pro at it (still no one pays me money for this!) but that I’ve been at it long enough that I ought to be great at it.

3. Write a little something about your family. Ages? Stages?
Me: I love school. I want to go back. My husband thinks that PhD should have been a terminal degree though. (Maybe I can talk him into dance classes?)
R: Has two bachelor’s. Was talking about getting an MFA recently.
E: Age 14. If he’d been in public school he would have been finishing up his freshman year. This summer he is starting at the college with dual credit. He’ll be taking math and English there this year.
M: Age 13. If he’d been in public school he would have been finishing up 7th grade. In everything except handwriting he is beyond grade level. He just finished 9th grade science. Has finished both 10th and 11th grade history.

4. Share some good homeschooling advice you’ve run across.
Start with half an hour a day for kindergarten. That was the best relief I was given. And it helped my boys too.

5. Tell us something you’re passionate about (besides your family and homeschooling; those are givens!).
Education in general. Reading. Writing.

6. If you could take the ultimate field trip, where would you go and why?
A walking tour of the British Isles.
Because:
Most of our family immigrated from there at one point or another. (Germany and Cherokee Nation comprise the rest.)
And most of my favorite literary heroes are from there.
And it’s the place where the Magna Carta was signed, which shaped US history.
And I like to hike and it’s cool enough there to do it.

7. What is a resource you can’t do without?
Well, I could do without anything except breath and food and water if I had to. But what resources make my life easier the most? That’s the internet.

8. How do you homeschool? Classical, Charlotte Mason, Waldorf, Unschooling, Eclectic?
I guess I would have to say eclectic since I don’t know what most of those others mean.

9. Share a website or two that you visit often – can be your favorite blogger or a curriculum supplier, just any sites you really like.
Oh sure. A website or two.
That’s a challenge. Okay. Here are two (not three, that other one ISN’T being shared) which are very different. I read many good homeschooling, military, family, and education blogs. These are in a different venue all together.
Mirabilis: “Archaeology, food, language – oh my! Lotsa stuff here.”
Language log, for the linguistics lover in those of us who have one.
I would have put Paternosters, but she hasn’t published anything since April.

10. Tell us about one of your favorite projects/activities/trips you’ve had in the past few months.
I’m not sure it would count as school exactly. But we went to a wedding last weekend. I told the boys I would be watching them to see what social skills needed work. We were at the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, and the wedding reception. I would have liked them to talk more to the other young people at the reception, but since they were helping their sick mother, I guess I’ll have to give them a pass on that. They did well.

11. What is a current/previous homeschooling challenge you’ve faced?
Keeping my sons learning when they have maxed out the traditional curriculum.

12. Share an accomplishment, something about you or your children. Come on, brag about it!
Well, I’m not sure I can do that in a sentence or two. A post or two, though, I can do. Read M’s statement of faith. Read about E and college.

13. What are you looking forward to over the coming year?
Trying and working out the new history ideas.

14. Name three things you like doing in the summer with your family.
Traveling.
Visiting grandparents.
Reading.

15. Have a favorite homeschooling quote? Share it here.
“Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible.”…. …Robert M. Hutchins.

I like this, too.
“Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.”…. …Lillian Smith.