Jimmie’s Collage just posted about Balancing the Good and the Bad on your Homeschool Blog ending with the question
If you are a homeschool blogger, how do you ride this line between being too rosy and being too negative?
I probably go too negative, possibly whiny! But when I know I’m being whiny, I wait a while before clicking publish to edit.
Perhaps I take the legality of homeschooling and relative respectability of it, for granted. A lot of funny, bloggable stories come out of the clash of what I thought would work and what worked. I didn’t write about the long wait for fluent reading to kick in for B until it did kick in and I have written about the bumps our co-op has gone through on the road to communicating clearly and knowing what our purpose was. I figure we are in a safe enough spot to write candidly about the realities of homeschooling, nothing is as disheartening as unrealistic expectations.
My biggest blogging concern is not how homeschooling looks as a movement; our problems are not the ones most people think of right off the bat, but of course (being human) we have problems. My concern is that I not embarrass my kids. If I write anything about them, or put up a photo, I ask them first, because I don’t really have a great sense of where their embarrass points are.
What are your rules for your homeschool blog?
And if you think I’m too whiny, I’m not sure I want to know!
In my experience, the whiny people never recognize it. After all, they are justified in their whining or else they wouldn’t do it. :-) The people who worry about it aren’t whiny at all. (Like you.)
Looks like you’ve got a good system of checks and balances set up.
Did you read the comment by the woman in WV? The Dept. of Edu was reading her blog! Spooky!
Yikes.
I use my family as my editors and watch their reactions as they read. I’ve been known to take a second look at something my husband didn’t think was funny. I’ve held off posting incidents until time helps my children (and me) find the humor of it. I’ve also found it helps me to remember that everything I write is there for the world to see, whether they do or not. It keeps me honest and upbeat! :-)
Peace and Laughter!