Teaching Homeschool Put Me in the Hospital

March 2020 was a weird month. It was weird for most of the world, but I’m not most of the world. I’m just me, and I can only speak for how strange the third month of 2020 was for me and my family. For us, the weirdness of 2020 actually began in late January.

My wife’s father had moved in with us 13 months earlier after my mother-in-law passed away. He had polycystic kidney disease, and had been on dialysis for over 12 years. We were his primary caregivers, and our lives seemed to revolve around that during the time he lived with us. After fighting hard for almost a month in the hospital, he died on February 21, 2020. My wife took the next week off work to deal with the funeral and just rest from the toll it had taken on us. The week after that, I got the flu.

This moved us right into the middle of March, 2020. Once I recovered from the flu, we thought we might get a break from crazy, stressful things for a little while. I don’t know how well you remember March of 2020, but crazy, stressful things were about to be redefined.

Our daughter Gabby was in first grade at the time. Her school sent students home the day before my wife’s work sent all of their employees home. I already worked from home, so now all three of us were here tripping over each other (like so many other families during that time.) We were fortunate in that Gabby’s school sent work home the following week, and they were very pro-active in setting up distance learning for their students. She was in a private school, and we learned very quickly that the Knox County Public School system was not as prepared. Most of her friends just waited to go back to school, but Gabby and I started distance learning right away.

The first week was fun. We set up a makeshift classroom on our dining room table, and we had a great time learning with each other. The next week, the school sent home a month’s worth of work (“Just in case.”) We continued to enjoy ourselves. Sure, we were stuck at home like most everyone else at the time, but we tried to make the most of it. We eventually embraced the fact that we would probably finish the school year like this, so we decided that it would go much smoother if we found fun ways to get through it.

Those two and a half months of distance learning were awesome. We played games, worked puzzles, and made new friends with some neighbors during our downtime, and Gabby excelled with the curriculum. We liked it so much, we started talking about the possibility of doing homeschool full-time the following year.

Over the summer, we bounced the homeschool idea around a lot. We did well with the short-term distance learning, so how hard could it be? We didn’t take anything for granted, but we still felt confident that we could do it. I was comfortable as a second grade teacher, and Gabby was a great student. We’d butted heads a few times during those couple of months, but no more than I expect anyone else would have.

After a lot of deliberation, planning, and prayer, we decided to go for it. We turned an extra bedroom into a classroom, and we jumped in head first. We made the commitment that we would try one full school year before giving up. That kept us focused, knowing that we would not use going back to school as a safety net. We started where we’d left off in the Spring, and after the first month I was certain that we were going to set records for being the greatest homeschool student and teacher that had ever done it.

The second month hit us like a locomotive. We were cruising, and probably guilty of feeling a little to cocky about how smoothly it was going. Then we had one bad day. Then another. Then a bad week. Then I had my very first panic attack.

My dad used to have panic attacks. He would describe them to me, and I would ask him why he couldn’t just take some deep breaths and power through? I have no doubt that he has had some nice chuckles while looking down at me over the past two and a half years. The first panic attack I had hit me like a ton of bricks.

We were having a normal day, then things went a little sideways. Gabby argued with me about something unimportant, I overreacted, she got upset at my overreaction, then I let myself get even more irritated with her bad response to my bad response. We fed off each other’s irritability, and the next thing I know I was experiencing this weird combination of high blood pressure, a racing pulse, and overall dread. It was the strangest feeling I’d ever felt. I was sure something must be wrong with my heart, so I checked my blood pressure. 176/96. Yikes.

Being the rational person that I am, and knowing that this felt totally different from any other time my BP had spiked, I sat down and took a few breaths. But I couldn’t get that 176/96 number out of my head. Surely the blood pressure cuff was malfunctioning. Or maybe it was just at the wrong spot on my arm. I should check it again. Yes, that’s definitely the best idea. While I’m feeling a sense of absolute panic, fear, and paranoia, I should absolutely check my blood pressure. 206/102.

Now the race was on. I was completely overwhelmed by my first full-blown panic attack. But I didn’t know that’s what it was. I was worried about a dozen different things, which only made the panic attack worse. I told my wife what was going on, then I got in the car and headed to the local ER. In hindsight, I probably should have waited for her to log out of work and drive me herself, but I was desperate.

When I got to the ER, somehow I had settled down a little bit. But the woman at the front desk couldn’t tell, since I sounded like a frantic person telling her my symptoms. She checked me in quickly, and almost immediately a pair of EMTs came out to take me back to a room. As they were hooking me up for an EKG, one of the EMTs told me to take deep breaths and try to calm down. I suddenly realized I was shaking like a leaf, so I tried to play it cool and relax.

My vitals were, surprisingly, OK. That settled me a bit, but they told me they wanted to run some tests to rule out any heart issues. This was in October 2020, so COVID was still a really scary thing hovering over that emergency room. I was trying to take deep breaths while wearing a KN95 face mask. I started to feel a little better, and within a couple of hours they had run enough tests to mostly rule out a heart attack. That helped, and by then I was feeling like an idiot for over-reacting to something that I felt that I should have been able to control.

What I learned that afternoon was that my dad had been right about panic attacks, and that I had severely underestimated them. I also learned that homeschooling is not for the weak. After this incident, I spoke with our homeschool director about how to handle stressful days and challenging scenarios. She gave me the best advice, and helped shape how we have managed homeschool ever since.

She told me that there will be a lot of challenging days, but we don’t have to try to fight through all of them. Homeschool provides us with the flexibility to do the work whenever we want. If we’re having a challenging day, we can break early for lunch. Or we can break and play a game, then do school later that evening. Or we can just break for the rest of the day and catch up tomorrow.

Since that incident, Gabby and I have had a few bad days. But by taking the director’s advice and working around those obstacles, we have found a way to make homeschool rewarding and fun for both of us. When Gabby is extra focused, we usually do a few extra assignments. This gives us a cushion if we need to take off a couple of hours early on a bad day (or skip that day altogether.) Then, when we have really challenging days (like the day I’m writing this,) we can blow off school and take a walk, play some games, and enjoy each other’s company. The schoolwork and lessons will be there tomorrow.

If you’re a homeschool parent, much of this may sound normal to you. If you’re a new homeschool parent and it sounds foreign and terrifying, relax. Maybe you will be better equipped to handle things that I have been, and if not, maybe this will help you navigate the really rough days. The bottom line is that homeschooling your children is awesome and rewarding, but it can potentially have some scary effects on your health (but only if you let it.) So enjoy your kids, and find a support system who will encourage you to take the breaks you need when you need them.

I am hoping this space can become a place where I can share whatever we have learned about homeschooling with other families. A couple of those things are serious and thought-provoking, like this one. Most of them are fun and surreal and hysterical, and would make a great reality show (though some of our homeschool experiences would seem too outrageous to be unscripted.)

Have fun with it. And breathe.