This is the first year that I feel like Sage is really chomping at the bit to get started ‘learning’ officially. We’ve known since Sage was 6 months old that this was the path for our family, and I truly never doubt that homeschooling is the right thing for us both as a whole family unit and as individuals. This year though, I find myself on the cusp of discovery: what will it be like to balance our lives and truly ‘do school’.

We draw from two main educational pedagogies: Waldorf (based on Rudolf Steiner’s writings) and Enki Education (based on the work of Beth Sutton). I have spent the past six years immersing myself and the whole family in Waldorf and Enki methods, ideas, books, conversations, preparing to learn together in a way that will fit our family.

One of the most important concepts I ever learned was about finding our family rhythm. But rhythm is a funny thing- no one can sell you a rhythm, no one can tell you what your family’s rhythm should be, no one can really even tell you about their own rhythm… you have to live it to really feel it. When I first became a mother I was still in a phase of rejecting ‘routine’ and ’scheduling’. After being a witness to the extremes of both rigid scheduling of family life and the opposite style of complete chaos reigned in only by external constraints I had chosen to live much more in the chaos realm and had to learn my lessons the hard way.

So, when I first began reading about this elusive ‘rhythm’ in Waldorf books I immediately put it into the pile of techniques for other people, not my family. I continued on my merry way, even needing to hire a weekly housekeeper when we could afford it just to keep the dishes washed. Then Brian and I attended our first Enki Education workshop and I met twelve wonderful, practical, sweet and REAL parents who believed in the power of rhythm! This was my light bulb moment. All along I was rejecting rhythm as something rigid, when in fact it is a living, breathing thing. I had it inside me, if only I could get in touch with it.

For an entire day we talked about things as mundane as vacuuming and as esoteric as the contraction and expansion of various activities. We shared stories about our own families, about protecting our hearth and finding the sacred in the mundane. We sat with pencil and paper and wrote down the puzzle pieces of our lives and found ways to stretch them, twist them and breathe with them. I found the glimmer of a rhythm hidden inside my chaos and I almost cried.

Today, my children are two years older, I am hopefully wiser and we have all found comfort in our current rhythm. I sit again with pencil and paper and ready myself to pull apart the puzzle pieces of our days, examine them, breathe into them and find their new places in our life. It’s easier this time, I know where our day needs contraction, where my four year old absolutely must have extra expansion, where my husband’s work fits into our rhythm… all with much less actual rumination. I’ll find new places for reading to my almost two year old, and there will be less need for the long drawn out nursing sessions. We’ll add in our main lesson block, while balancing it with active movement for everyone. Peace will be in my home, but also in my heart knowing that we will all have our needs met by living in rhythm.

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