Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Support Group Angst

We're homeschoolers and have been from the beginning. The Eldest, our almost 16 year old daughter, (10 days until her birthday) has never been to a traditional school. I am extremely happy with how she's turning out, too; she's a fantastic person and a joy to both DH and I. (And very well socialized, thank you very much.) When she was about four we got involved with a local support group, made some dear friends, and had a lot of fun, some of it even educational. ;) When the little ones came along we maintained our involvement with the support group for a while but, with the fibromyalgia, it got too hard to lug them both along on activities so we dropped out. During the intervening years our old support group fell apart, as these types of groups are wont to do, and they aren't there for us anymore.

Now that the kidlets are older I've felt a need to find a support group again. We are involved with a lot of activities with "regular" schoolers, Girl Scouts, soccer, and so forth, but I miss that connection with homeschoolers. I have doubts sometimes when all we see is kids going to traditional schools. The support groups help with that so I am actively seeking a new group. We found one group a few years ago and went to an event they held, a Halloween party, but it was so chaotic. The kids were absolutely wild and not a single adult said one word to us the whole time we were there. Every family was required to take a craft and contribute to the pot luck, which we did, but we were still ignored. Not the group for us, obviously. Now I've run across another local group that I'm hoping will work out. We've made initial contact with them via e-mail but haven't met any group members in person yet. I'm so worried all of their activities will be in the mornings, though; we're total night owls and we don't do mornings. ~:-P From their messages on the yahoo list they run they look like an active bunch so I'm also alternatively worried that they'll be TOO active and I won't be able to keep up with them due to the fibro, too.

Sigh. All I can do is jump in and see what happens! :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We're just starting out with homeschooling, my kids are kindergarten age, and I haven't found a group yet. There are some online groups that I watch that sometimes organize field trips, but so far they've all been for older children. I'm hoping I can connect with someone this year. At this point they just hang out with kids at the park, but I really want to find them some friends that won't wonder why they aren't in school (and some parents that won't give me that funny look)