I Love being a home-educating Mom, I really do.  But here is the thing it is all-consuming, it has a tendency to take over my WHOLE life.  I am always reading up about new topics, find new resources, pinning ideas, sorting out activities for the kids, helping them with their activities, preparing for the next and it goes on and on.  I am no longer known as Shelly, I am now that Lady from dance class who home-educates her kids, that lady down the road who home-educates her kids or that person that someone used to know who home-educates her kids.  It just always seems to get tagged on.  It becomes an all defining definition of who I am.

And here is the crazy part I never thought I would home-educate.  I thought I would go back to work at some stage and the kids would just slot into the local school.  But very early on I recognised that my daughter was not going to fit into my idea of what she should be like but that I needed to change and become the mother that she needed.  So all my plans out the window and somehow we ended up a home-educating family.  It suits our kids and dare I say it – It actually suits our family unit.

But as much as I know it is the right path for us and as much as I do enjoy it there are times when I really just need a break, when I need to stop being that home-educating mom and just be me.

This past weekend I had that opportunity.  I attended Britmums#17.  And yes the blog is the reason that I attended and yes the blog is about home-educating but for a WHOLE DAY I got to be the blogger who writes about home-education instead of the home-educating mom who has a blog.  Maybe you think there is no difference.  But there is.  I got to go into a blogging world where no-ones knows me as the kids mom, no-one wants to chat about unschooling verses semi-structured home-ed, or which resources to use or how did I explain a certain Maths concepts.  Nope the conservation was about blogging, how to write better content, take better pictures (yes I paid attention).  It was about me learning just for the sake of ME learning, not me learning so that I could explain something to the kids.  And it felt GREAT.

Home-educating me kids is a privilege and I LOVE it.  I am incredibly grateful that I get to go on these learning journeys with my kids.  But every once in a while it is nice to escape that home-educating mom label and just be ME.

And after having my “day off”  I came back to lots of questions about what I had learnt. I explained a bit about backgrounds in photographs and how you can position your items and my daughter just went with it.  She converted part of their play area into a mini studio, she found a few goodies, drapped some material for a background and started creating a catalogue of book photographs (apparently she will let me use her photographs in return for hot chocolate from her favourite coffee shop).

Sometimes just one day away is exactly what you need. Thank you Twinkl Resources for sponsoring me and giving me my day’s break, for giving me a chance to just be me again and for allowing me to inspire my daughter.  I loved my day of just being ME and now I am quite happy to go back to my crazy home-educating mom label again.

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