It's pouring rain outside, but the girls and I are cosily ensconced at Panera. So many places have free wi-fi now; it's so nice! We're at Panera because we have no internet access at home at the moment - it disappeared early on Thursday morning - and Brighthouse is being cagey about when we can expect it back up again. Can't complain about that too much though, as there are still people without power. Ugh, I can only imagine how bitter and morose (not to mention hot and sweaty) those folks must be.

Emily and Stephen go back to school on Monday. They've had six days off in total, and enjoyed every second of them.

But the time at home has made Emily even more eager to quit school and be homeschooled.

I am so torn about the idea. On the one hand, I think homeschooling her could be wonderful. There are so many interesting things we could do, and, in many ways, I know she'd learn far, far, more than she would at school. At her suggestion, we treated Thursday and Friday as if she were being homeschooled, and she was amazingly productive. Researched hurricanes, wrote a mini-paper about them, wrote a book review of the last book she'd completed (Pollyanna, ugh, but she actually quite enjoyed it), and read the whole of Bridge to Terabithia. If she were learning at home, there'd be so much more scope for reading wonderful books, for learning about current affairs, for drawing and painting, for being outdoors and experiencing the world instead of the classroom. The middle school day is just so long that it doesn't leave much free time at all. School ends at 4.10, so she only gets home at about 4.45, and is still expected to put in a couple of hours homework. It just seems ridiculous to me, that her whole life, practically, should be given over to school, with almost no time left for - well, for living.

But I have some major worries about taking her out of school. The biggest one, probably, is that if she withdraws from the pre-IB magnet, I very much doubt that she could re-enroll later, if the homeschooling didn't work out. And I really feel that an IB diploma is something worth having. It'd be such a huge help when it comes to college applications, especially if she wants to go to one of the more selective colleges, or study outside the USA. The other huge one is math. I am horrible at math, I don't enjoy it, and I'm not good at explaining mathematical concepts, even the ones I actually do understand. I'm certainly competent up to the end of elementary school level, but beyond that ... not really. In fact, not at all. I had thought that maybe Bobby could do some math with her each day, but he's not keen - says he doesn't feel amazingly competent about it himself, and (and this, I think, is the real reason) that he's so tired and stressed from work that he doesn't feel like he could take anything else on. I suppose I could try to find someone to be a math tutor for her but those kind of costs mount up quite quickly ... I would also want to get someone to teach them French for an hour or so a week. I have a friend who I think would be quite keen to do that for us ...

Anyway, I've told Emily that she has to give school her best shot till Labor Day, and then we'll reassess. Aside from the worries I mentioned above, I also worry that she'd be quitting too soon; that if she just had a couple of good friends, she'd love middle school the way she loved elementary school. She was so happy at elementary school - had so many friends, and did so well in all spheres. She loved school - it was a struggle to get her to stay home even if she was, for instance, running a major temperature.

Oh, and that reminds me of another concern I have about homeschooling her. Em is a very competitive person. She lives for grades - think Lisa Simpson crying "grade me! grade me!" - and the thing she loves best is winning. At all costs. She does her best work when she's competing against other people. It's the same with her climbing : she climbs best at the competitions - she seems to get a real boost from all the excitement and the adrenaline. So how would she cope with gradeless, competition-less homeschooling? When I ask her these questions, she just brushes them off, and is adamant that homeschooling is what she needs to do. So, I don't know. Maybe she is right. Goodness knows, almost everyone I speak to says that middle school was hell for them and that if they could have been homeschooled it would have been a Godsend. Bobby is no help when it comes to making this decision, he has the exact same worries and concerns that I do. On the one hand, I love that we both share the same concerns; on the other hand, it would be so easy if he felt 100% sure than one course or the other was the right one for us.

Oh! And I almost forgot another of my concerns. If I homeschool both girls, I worry that Stephen would be a little marginalised in the family. I chatted to him about this, and he said he didn't think it would worry him, and reiterated that he had no desire to be homeschooled himself ... but even so. It seems like it might be a problem.