3 ms·
It's 10 to 13 kids, depending on how you count. (adult dependent, unborn, miscarriage) It's just my wife and I, her staying home, without staff or personal tim
by souprock 7y ago
It's 10 to 13 kids, depending on how you count. (adult dependent, unborn, miscarriage)
It's just my wife and I, her staying home, without staff or personal time. We homeschool them until they can get a 3 or better for AP Chemistry or AP Biology. My kids get funny looks going in for those tests at age 10 to 12. After that, as early as 6th grade, they can start dual-enrollment at the local college. It's free until high school graduation, which is sometimes enough time to get an AA degree. We don't do organized sports, but they all have unicycles. There are some organized activities to attend: scouting (BSA and AHG), a homeschooling group that does history/gym/art/writing together, a free band day camp in summer, and a big road trip every few years.
I only have 4 bedrooms. I ended up putting the kids all in a much bigger room, leaving the bedrooms for other purposes. More interesting is the "car", with 5 rows of seats. It is 3 tons empty, 5 tons full. We go through 2 gallons of milk per day. I can spend $1000 on 3 or 4 carts of groceries. We can finish a pair of chickens or a mid-size turkey in one sitting.
I haven't had much luck turning kids into programmers. At one point I got several to enjoy Scratch, but then I found that the computers were severely abused to waste time on junk like the "Tanki Online" video game and the "Annoying Orange" videos. I had to take away the computers. Recently kid #2, age 17, decided to choose the career. I've mostly taught him C now. He does that on Ubuntu and for his TI-84 Plus CE. I think this has created a programming aversion in some other kids, because they saw how excited I got to be finally teaching C and didn't want to spend all their time with me. For the oldest 5 the career choices are unknown (hurry up...), programmer, lawyer (physics undergrad), unknown, and midwife. BTW, programming the TI-84 Plus CE in C is pretty wild. You get a 24-bit int.
It helps to be close to work. I'm less than a mile away, 3 minutes by car or maybe 16 if walking. It helps to work only 40 hours per week, with an extremely flexible schedule.
Right now the main source of stress is kids wandering away from homework and chores. I don't want to have to stand over them in one room, waiting and watching as they work. I want to go do other things.