I remember when the nurse told us we were having twins. I also remember my husband telling her to go get the doctor because he needed a second opinion. Shock aside, hearing you’re having two children at the same time leads to a myriad of questions. Will they think the same? Act the same? If one of them feels pain, will the other as well? Will they have the same personality?Fast forward seven years. LM (Little Me) is as independent as the sky is blue. She taught herself to tie her shoes because her tap teacher told her she couldn’t be in the combo class unless she could change her shoes herself. She taught herself to snap, whistle, and ride a two wheeler without training wheels. Just because she wanted to, and refused to give up until it was perfect. A social butterfly, she loves school and would be friends with every single person in it.

LH (Little He), on the other hand, is the exact opposite. He’s compassionate, dependent where his
sister is independent, and wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s funny, and loves to be the class clown, but his actions are often misinterpreted and he ends up making enemies instead of friends, because he hurt someone’s feelings in his attempt to be funny. He’s loyal and would love nothing more than to have a very best friend. He hates school.

As their parents, their daddy and I have come to this gargantuan fork in the road… Which child should excel? I hear you say both, but here’s the deal: she would excel in traditional school, he would excel in home school. She’s my straight-A’s-without-trying child who loves the library, friends, homework, and waking up at the crack of dawn to go to school and can master anything whether it’s read, or learned hands-on. He’s my straight-C’s-WHILE-trying child, who loves the library, learns at his own pace, hates worksheets, and is a hands-on learner. Repetition is the key for him, but once he gets it, he gets it.

So what do we do? Homeschool both, so our son can have a chance to excel and not be categorized as less intelligent than his peers or labeled a problem child simply because he learns differently than they do and gets bored in a classroom setting? In turn, remove our daughter from the environment SHE thrives in? Or put them both in traditional school where she can thrive, and hope that he makes it through the year with semi-passing grades and less than 26 trips to the principal’s office?

I’m not saying my son is slow and my daughter is brilliant. I’m saying they each thrive in a different environment, they each learn the same concept differently, and choosing one method to let one child succeed may in fact be detrimental to the other. I’m saying I don’t want to choose which child gets to excel. I’m saying I want to lock myself in a closet, hum loudly, and rock myself in a fetal position until 3rd grade comes along. I’m saying I want them both to live up to the absolute maximum potential God designed in them, and I want them both to have friends and be SMART so they work at a job because they love it, not because they’re limited to it because of the grades they got, or the curriculum they had, or the college they did or didn’t get into. I’m saying I want them BOTH to excel.

…We still have four weeks to decide. Just as soon as I am researching a cover school with one hand, the other hand is quietly googling the registration requirements for the city school, and my eyes are checking the circled date on the calendar that is our final decision date. At that point, if we still haven’t decided, their daddy and I will close our eyes, hold hands, and jump. Because nobody ever really has all the answers in parenting. We try our best today and make the decisions we need to based on the information we have at hand. We research and plan and decide, knowing only what we know thus far, and pray God would honor whatever decision it is. Hoping that no matter which school method we choose for our kids, they learn to do the same thing for their own one day.