Playing School

I was catching up on my Carnival of Homeschooling reading today, and ran across a post about a homeschool family where the kids love playing school.

My son loves to do the same thing.

If you ask him about school or if he wants to go to school, he screams and bursts into tears and attempts to imbed himself into my internal organs. The last time this happened was at park day. I was talking with a new member about how we homeschool -- here in CA there are several ways to do it, and I said that we would be using the private school option, and my poor son looked at me in horror, like I'd stabbed him in the back. I had to quickly explain that it was our little tiny homeschool private school of two, and he still looked at me accusingly for a little while.

But he loves to play school.

Sometimes he's at a magic boarding school (yes he loves Harry Potter). Sometimes it's sword class, or magic class. Sometimes he pretends that he has to sneak out at night and go to school (I have no idea where that comes from). Sometimes he just sets two chairs side-by-side, inviting his sister to take the other, and sweetly demands that I hold "class". The last class was about snakes, the current household obsession.

It's weird. I would probably be concerned if it weren't for the fact that he flips out at the tiniest mention of school.