"Oh, Lord! Please just give me a sign."

That's how I had been feeling for quite some time. It was a long series of those moments where your stomach never quite settles, where you never feel just right about the situation. Something is just every so slightly, yet noticeably off. It happens especially in dating, or relationships, where you just know this isn't the right fit no matter how great the intentions are? So you think over your options rationally, discuss it with people whose opinions you value, and try your best to make an informed decision, and that's that. Right?

Well, that's how normal people deal with things. Then there's me. You know, people like me who obsess about every detail, analyze and talk a subject matter to death with whoever will listen, and become nearly emotionally unhinged at the slightest worry over mundane items, like where the homework was misplaced. It's people like me, who can't make decisions easily, and worry like it is a full time job with awesome benefits, and even better over-time pay. You know them, you've met them, and sometimes you love them. I mean every family has at least one, right? Well it's no surprise who it is in our family.

What it really boils down to, for me anyway, is that I never want to hurt anyone's feelings. That's the root for me. Couple that with the irrational feeling that you responsible for everyone's feelings and voila you've got a full-blown neurosis.

I had been going on about my life inflicting my ridiculousness on unsuspecting people, but there's kind of a rule of thumb that you ought to knock that nonsense off when you have kids. So I did my best. You can curb the behavior, but it is never completely gone.

Such is the case when my oldest daughter started first grade. I had been watching TED talks, specifically Ken Robinson on "How Schools Kill Creativity" (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html) , and his follow up "Changing Education Paradigms" (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html) while my daughter was going into kindergarten. I knew I wanted something different, but I've never gone so against the societal grain, so we did what most parents did. We got all uppity about where our prized belly-fruit should go to school. We looked at private school, and began to weep at the prices. It would seem that only affluent children could afford art, music, technology, and recess.

So we did the next best thing. We concentrated on the school districts? Which schools? What do the test scores look like? Where is the school? I could go on, but I won't because this had a very quick ending. I knew I wasn't thrilled with the idea of the marginalization of our kid in the system, but we have no money, so we had no options. Thus, our child shall attend public school. After all, it was good enough for the likes of her parents, so it's good enough for her. You would think that would be it. Not so! There is still a hierarchy among public schools. So we booked it to the magnet school in our area, and filled out papers, turned in everything on time. We waited, and I called the school's office like an annoying helicopter parent till I heard back. I found out she got in!! Yay. Then I saw why, she was like one in a handful of the minority in our area, so all my planning, and nagging, had really boiled down to the school's need for diversity. Oh well, no biggie.

She started kindergarten, and I loved her teacher, and was ever so happy with the school. Everything was great, life was good, and I was telling everyone I could about this school, and how much I loved it. That is until first grade came.

Goodbye arts, music, and all other things fun, and hello academia! The transition was night and day. The day was significantly longer. They were assigned the latest lunch schedule out of the whole school, because of some silly political thing with trying to raise the fourth grade test scores. They had a fifteen minute recess in which they are supposed to have a snack, use the restroom, and play, then it's back to work. Needless to say, my kiddo hard a rough time adjusting, as did I.

Suddenly I was scared that my new found favorite school had turned into a factory of test scores. Unfortunately that is not too far off from the truth. I began to get the letters about her school as well as the district being in PI (program improvement). Their test scores were falling, and it comes as no surprise since the area we live in filters in a majority of kids who speak predominantly spanish, as well as parents who do not speak english. This will kill test scores for any school, but schools in PI have to allow parents to transfer their kids to get the best education possible, so the scores were never even stable. It didn't matter. Our school was still ahead. Sure it was loads better than the other public schools because they only had twenty-five kids to each teacher, and had a science lab, as well as computer lab, but in reality was it that these things were simply not available to other schools because of the budget cuts? It seemed to me that it was not so much that they had comprehensive science and technology programs, but that they had them at all. So we counted our blessings, and on we went.

Her teacher was wonderful, and despite my growing relationship with her, and my general love of most of the teachers there, I still felt off. That nagging feeling started up, and persisted daily. It was simply the in way the public school system micromanages every aspect of the environment and curriculum. The time and subject matter is micromanaged down to a "t". There's never any time to go back if a student doesn't understand something. I soon began to discover that the schools teach to the test, regardless of comprehension or mastery of the skill. Despite the fact that I had a good relationship with a teacher who cared, and I was volunteering two to three days a week in her class, I was just plain unhappy. My daughter was content to be a wallflower drawing no attention to herself, even if she needed the help, but I sure wasn't okay with that. That's how kids slip through the cracks.

As time went on, I found myself getting angry and annoyed over simple silly things that seemed asinine to me, like a threatening letter home after missed days, even though you had a doctors note, the subsequent fact that it is more likely related to funding. Then there’s the fact that is seemed like the teachers were out five days out of every month for testing, and that they were a science and technology based school, yet their website was archaic and completely unused by the staff and students alike. I wasn't the only one unhappy with a lot of this, but even so everyone kept telling me to give it time. All this did was make me feel like there was something wrong, but what else could I do?

I remember daily running the gambit of walking to school telling myself "it's really not so bad, and every other kid goes here. I mean really, what exactly is my problem? This is the best of the public schools available to me. If I leave and it doesn't work out, then what would I do? Could I get back in? Best to stay where I am." Only to pick my daughter up after school, and want to cry, because it just didn't feel like a good fit.

So ultimately after a whole lot of emotional mess, we decided to check out a charter school that did two days in school, three days home-school. We liked the whole premise, but we're still afraid of the undertaking. We talked it over, and over, and over. Not sure of what to do, we asked around. The reactions were decidedly mixed, but the majority was a face that would best describe "oh, wow, that sounds truly terrifying". We heard a lot of "give it more time" and "home-school will always be there, why not at least stick it out the year?" These were all valid thoughts. So we did give it some time, and I still felt the same way. I was at an impasse.

I couldn't stop worrying about what I should do, so I did what lots of people do when they don't know what to do. I prayed. Well, first I stuck my head in the sand for a few days, then I prayed for guidance, reassurance, anything, but mostly I prayed for a sign.

It had paid off. This morning while we were getting ready for school, my daughter, who we had not really talked to about this whole thing yet, decidedly announced to me "I really want to try home-school." This totally threw me off, as I just happened to have a meeting set up at the new school that morning. As we walked to school we talked at length about it. She seemed really interested. At the meeting my husband and I walked out feeling more confident than ever, We were already certain of our decision, however, I suppose for good measure, God gave me yet another sign. A woman, who I really look up to and love dearly, was in the office when I went in to sign the enrollment sheet. She was excited, because her son had been going there for a while already. She was excited for me. Immediately whatever weight was left had rolled off, I stopped caring what other people thought. I stopped worrying about hurting my daughter's teacher's feelings, and what everyone would say, and started looking forward to the new adventure. That was it. Ask and ye shall receive!