Frustrated and depressed

My dh did it again last night – threatened to put the kids in school.  This time at least he was focused on high school, so I have 3 years.

But here’s the thing that I am so frustrated about.  He is the most logical thinker in the world – really, you can’t pull anything emotional on him and hope to change his mind.  Yet every reason he gives me for putting the kids in high school is emotional!  They’ll miss out on sports, dances, band & choir, he had such a good experience in high school so he wants the kids to have that, too, etc.  I have explained to him that there are homeschool sports teams (not to mention in MN you can join the public school teams), there are homeschool dances, there are homeschool bands & choirs – but he doesn’t believe me.  (Oh, and our kids aren’t even interested in playing any instruments other than piano, and none of them can sing, so…. Totally don’t get this one at all.)  So I told him to research it.  He refuses!  He refuses to believe any of my research because it’s “biased” (meaning: it’s coming from you lovely people here and plenty of others who have gone before who have so encouraged me, plus my own research scouring the internet over the past several years).  But he refuses to go do his own research on anything and instead just believes his own biased opinion based on nothing but 4 years of experience when he was a teenager.  He just flat out refuses.  It’s not a matter of time.  He has plenty of time to research his own stuff or do whatever he feels like doing.  But when it comes to things I have researched, he won’t.  I don’t get it.  And it makes me feel very belittled and stupid.  My opinions obviously don’t matter to him.  I am hurt to the point of crying again.

You know, I’d have an easier time following his lead if it was based on something more than emotion and actually made sense.  But he can’t even explain why he wants the kids in high school.  He keeps repeating, “They’ll miss out on this or that, and I want them to have the same experience I did.”  But hello, they aren’t going to have the same experience as him, anyway!  He went away to high school in Seattle, without his parents, who were missionaries in the Dominican Republic.  His class was like 25 kids.  The high school we’d most likely send our kids to has graduating classes of at least 50-75.  It’s a completely different school with completely different kids and completely different teachers.  They’ll live at home with us rather than with families who take in students from out-of-state.  Completely different experiences.  The school they’d go to is one I wanted to go to, but my parents couldn’t afford it.  I know the kids there, and what they were like in the 90s.  He had problems in high school with kids (and even a teacher!) getting pregnant.  I know this school is much the same, plus I know, at least in the 90s, there were a few kids with drug problems, too.  I remember the kids who went there from my church talking about it.  The things that parents say about what goes on in the high schools (and the elementary schools, too) do not make me want to send my kids there.  Cattiness, bullying, drugs, sex – all are just as rampant there as in the public schools.  Granted, homeschooling won’t necessarily protect my kids from that, but it’s got a much higher chance than traditional schools.  And we can expose them to that stuff without throwing them into it.

He tried mentioning last night about logical order of math and classes.  I’m like, but that’s why we have a logical order to our own homeschool……  At that point he refused to listen and literally covered his ears like a baby!  Talk about disrespectful to me!  I was so hurt, angry, and in tears by the time he did that, that was just the icing on the cake.

I have tried explaining to him about the kids and what I see their experiences being there.  Our oldest is very “follow the crowd.”  She’s much like me in that regard when I was young and stupid.  I followed the wrong crowd, and she’d be one to do that, too.  I already see it at church.  The girls she’s drawn to are ones that eventually I know I’m going to have to stop the friendships with unless these girls change drastically in the next couple of years.  Our 2nd oldest LOVES homeschooling.  She is much like her father (go figure).  She does not do well in a traditional boxed system.  She learned absolutely nothing in 4K when she was little.  I had to repeat it with her the following year, and this past year she finally caught up to her age/grade level (4th grade now).  And she’s incredibly smart.  Incredibly smart.  Sitting in a classroom for 8 hours a day would kill her.  She’s already said she wants to homeschool forever.  She has even said she’ll homeschool her own kids.  Our 3rd, if given the chance, would follow the catty girls at school and get out of doing as much work as possible.  Here at home I can train her and push her and encourage her, and also watch her friends.  At school she would be taken in by all the pretty clothes and cute boys, etc.  That scares me.  She’s more daring in those regards.  Our 4th is again like our 2nd.  Very out of the box, extremely smart, would die sitting in a desk all day.  I don’t know why my dh doesn’t see this about our kids, especially since 2 are just like him and he said he hated school!  He says he was finally challenged in high school and liked it – but we can challenge them here at their own level, and they’d have so much more time than he did to pursue their own passions!  He won’t listen to me when I describe the kids and their personalities.  Moms usually have pretty good intuition, but he won’t believe mine because it’s “biased.”

Publicly, he’s very supportive of homeschooling.  Privately, he’s constantly trying to get the kids in school.  I never know if Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde will show up.  Makes me on edge all the time.  I just am so frustrated.  I can’t have this weighing on me like this.  Some couples fight about money – we fight about school. 

Thanks for letting me vent.  Please pray for us.  Please pray he at least does his research, whatever the outcome may be.  Like I said, if he’d do the research and have logical explanations and make logical, sound conclusions, I’d have a much easier time following his lead.  But right now, how can I follow the lead of someone who refuses to listen to anyone whose opinion (based on research) differs from his own?  Not just mine, but even other dads he’s talked to, he thinks they’re biased, too.  Frustrating!  I want to respect him and his decisions, I try very hard to, but when I feel like he’s walking into fire, and he has no clue and refuses to listen to the clanging bells, how do I respect and follow someone like that?  How do I protect my kids from it?