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First, I'm sorry that you're going through this. I've never been divorced, but I sure remember my parents' divorce. So, I'll give you my perspective as a child of divorce. 1.) Remember that you may end up sharing custody. Where I'm from, 50-50 is the default. Will you be able to keep homeschooling in a 50-50 custody arrangement? 2.) You and your wife need to sit down, lay all your cards on the table and figure out what the future will look like. You two don't have to love or even like each other, but you have three little people who deserve some stability. Hypothetically, let's say that you and your wife share custody 50-50 and you keep homeschooling your kids. For the love of everything fucking holy, you two have to be on your absolute best behaviour when you do handoffs, especially before school. I simply cannot stress this enough. Your kids will go through something nasty if the divorce is amicable. If you two start fighting during handoffs or pulling the "look at my new boyfriend/girlfriend" shit especially before school, it will only be a thousand times worse. If there is the slightest chance you will share custody, you both need to be 100% on program here or homeschooling simply won't work. 3.) Assuming that you and your wife can be adults about handoffs, you still need to ask yourselves whether homeschooling is still the best. I was older when my parents split, but I didn't start to heal until I talked to other people with divorced parents. Then, I finally realized that every single feeling I had, no matter how fucked I thought it was, was actually pretty normal. I don't have any studies to back this up, but anecdotally, I can't even count how many people I know who have had that same experience. The glorious aspect of school is that your kids will be in classes with other kids who have gone through it all. If you think this over, talk it over with your wife, and still decide to homeschool, you two really need to figure out some therapy for your little ones. Being a child of divorce sucks and they really deserve someone neutral who they can talk to. 4.) Assuming all of this still leads to homeschooling, if I were you, I'd likely start off with a few short term, low value gigs off of a service like Upwork. From experience, transitioning to remote work is tough. Making that transition while you're also the educator may prove too much to safely handle. A service like Upwork would give you a chance to try this out on short term contracts. Good luck and be safe. And please, I'm begging you to focus on self care too. I know things suck and feel overwhelming, but you've got to take care of yourself if you have any hope of properly caring for your family. Please be safe and know that at least one internet stranger is quite concerned about you. |