lifeonplanetmum.com

Ok, I know I should have called this blog “The Nomadic Mum” blog because we are always on the move, or thinking about moving!

As I blogged about a few days ago, we have initiated our house hunting process because we have plans to put the boys in a private Christian school, run by our church.

For the longest time, I cannot remember how long, we have wanted our boys to have a consistent Christian upbringing, not only reflected (occasionally!) at home but also at school and those around them.  Imagine this, a child spends about 10,000 hours of his life at school. That is a lot of hours for a person to be influenced and taught by those around them!

We are somewhat happy/unsure with the school that our church runs - it is pretty exclusive, not in the grand sense, but exclusive as in opposite of “inclusive.”  You have to be a member of the church in order for your child to attend the school. That involves a 10 week course and a rigorous interview about yourself and your walk with Christ. In November, we became members of this church, which we think is a fantastic church.  The kids are great there, so polite, so kind. James has started addressing Matt and I, “Sir” and “Ma’am” just like some of the children when they address their parents. It is cute but I don’t really insist that he does that - it is his choice.

However, there is lot of good things going for their current public school.  The kids are learning so much! James is in an accelerated class.  He does Chinese once a week, Cameron learns French. It is a small school, no more than 400 kids from Kindergarten to Grade 5. They serve hot meals at the cafeteria and the bus comes to pick them up. It is all free, except for lunches.  James has a friend - the one who beat him up at the start of the year? He has become James’ best friend. I just got a call from the boy’s mother because they are going to form a baseball team and James has been invited to join the team. For years and years, we wanted James to fit in, to have friends.  He now has them.

Cameron’s teacher is working very hard on improving his behaviour on a daily basis. He has gone off the separate carpet and they are now using tokens to help him monitor his behaviour.

If we move the kids to the Christian school, there would be no more foreign languages. No more accelerated classes. We would never find out if James or Cameron qualified for the magnet school or gifted program run by the school county here. (tests run in Grade 3)  We would be living in a place which is pretty remote. Because of that, we would have to buy a second car so that Matt could drive to the train station. He cycles to the station at the moment, using the bicycle paths that run outside our estate.  The area where the church is does not have a bike path and it would be unsafe for him to cycle, especially when it snows.  Higher fees, added expense of a car, undesirable housing location, less options offered at the school for a Christian education.

The other option is for us to move states - to the other side of DC, to Virginia, where we originally put down deposit for another private Christian school. The area we would be looking at is only minutes away from downtown DC and an established area. The downside is that the school only goes up to Grade 8 and we would not want to buy a house there, only to move again after 6 years when James is ready for high school.

The obvious conclusion is to stay put where we are but we want to take this step of faith. It is a big step of faith for us, that what we are doing is the right thing by our boys.  School is more than just academics to us.

This is a very difficult decision for us to make and we have to come to a conclusion by the end of Feb.  Our heads are swimming! What to do?