Two kids, two completely different exits

The question I got asked most was never about curriculum.

It was some version of: but how do they go back?

People picture a door slamming. You take a child out of school, and now there is a wall, and at some point they have to climb it.

That is not what happened here. What happened is that I had two children who needed two entirely different ways out, and I did not see either one coming.

My son went out through a side door, slowly

He was home with me from fourth grade. From sixth, he went to class twice a week through our charter. Two mornings, other kids, a teacher who was not his mother, work he had to hand in on someone else's schedule.

I would love to tell you I planned that as a careful re-entry ramp.

I did not. It was on offer, it suited him, so we took it. But that is what it turned out to be.

By the time he walked into public high school he had already learned the things that actually make school hard, and none of them are academic. Sitting still in a room. Having a deadline that is not negotiable because the person setting it loves you. Being one of thirty.

He went straight in and he was fine. Not fine in a brave, white-knuckled way. Fine in a boring way, which is the good kind.

My daughter went out the front, and kept going

She was home from first grade through sixth. For seventh we put her in a small parochial school. That was the plan. A gentler building, smaller classes, an ordinary year.

Partway through it she came to me and said she wanted to skip eighth grade.

I want to be careful here, because this is the part that gets misread. I did not suggest it. I would not have suggested it. It was her idea and she made the case herself.

My job was not to decide whether she had it right. My job was to hear her out, and then get out of the way and let her find her own path.

So she went into public high school a year early, and once she was there she started taking college classes alongside. She graduated at sixteen and finished her degree two years after that.

I am proud of her, obviously. But I want to say the true thing rather than the impressive one.

That was her path, not the goal. If she had wanted to do eighth grade like everybody else, that would have been the right answer too, and I would be writing a different post with a less dramatic ending. There was never a plan to get her out early. There was no plan at all. There was a kid who asked for something specific, and parents who let her go and find out.

What I actually learned

Both of them graduated as valedictorians, and both of them will tell you it started at our kitchen table. I am not going to pretend that is not lovely to type.

But the part worth taking away is not about grades.

I was working full-time shifts in health care the whole way through. School happened around my shifts. I did not have the time or the temperament to run a long-range re-entry strategy for either child, and it would not have helped if I had, because the two exits looked nothing alike.

What worked for the boy who needed to practice being one of thirty would have been pointless for the girl who was already three chapters ahead and bored.

The only thing I did consistently right was watch which kid was in front of me and respond to that one.

You do not need to know how it ends. The exit is not a wall you have to plan a ladder for from first grade.

If you are the one asking

You genuinely do not need to know now.

The way out is a door that opens when you get there, and the shape of it depends entirely on the child walking through, which is information you do not have yet and cannot get early.

Teach the kid in front of you. Watch how they work. The way out will suggest itself.

It probably will not be the one you would have picked in advance. Mine were not.