Homeschooling.

It took years before I was allowed to homeschool (& quite a bit of sleight of hand )~ a topic for another post ~ so I have always treasured being able to do it at all. I am passionate about learning. Mind you I got a fistful of kinesthetic learners & of all the learning syles they are the hardest to teach, especially when you yourself are a visual learner & academically inclined. Liddy would leave her work in little piles all over the house & follow it around, if only because she could never find the particular thing she wanted at any given moment. It was part of her learning style but I was going crazy trying to keep up with it.

Cass is easier. Firstly there is now just her, which helps. Secondly she is at least a partly visual learner which makes it easier in some ways, harder in others. We share the same flaws. I thank God every day we never sent Cass to school. She is what educators term 'Gifted & Talented'. The term makes my blood run cold. Oh, she has brains to burn & then some but academics don't interest Cass in the least. She is last in a long, long line of bright, not interested children I have spawned. I would be forever getting the sort of reports that read: Could do better if she tried. Ugh! All Cass' true gifts lie in other areas, ones not generally given a high value in our society. She is good with languages, talented musically, a very good artist & quite the performer. The last I could definitely do without. She feels she has to practise on me ~ a lot!

We muddle through the academics, Cass with her eye on finishing school just as soon as she legally can & bleating about being let go to the local high school. NOT a hope bucko! I tell her she would not have time for all the things she actually enjoys & is very good at if she had to spend most of every day in a regular classroom. She is not convinced but she is not the one who grips about the 1/2 hour walk up a VERY steep hill for flute & band. She doesn't gripe about standing for hours sometimes doing the same thing over & over because violin is nowhere near as easy as she thought it was going to be. She adores the fact she is now good enough on the piano to play duets. I envy her dexterity with art. I'm biased I know but I think she is very good.

And because life isn't fair Cass, who is overly sensitive, eager to please, highly social, got the difficult & less obviously attractive personality while Liddy, who is steel through & through, seems outwardly sweet & docile. Liddy, who doesn't care if she's liked or not, is univerally loved while poor Cass, who so loves to be adored, is very definitely an acquired taste. Those who have acquired a taste for her liken her to a full bodied red wine; not for amateur palates! Red wine gives me migraines ~ which could explain a lot!