Failure?

My almost seven year old is still not reading. Is this me? Have I failed him? Am I doing him a disservice by keeping him home? Should I just force him to go to school? Would he adjust?

These feelings are coming from a lot of guilt. I drifted from unschooling about half a year in. I just don't have enough belief in any kind of organic anything to think it works like that. I mean what does organic learning mean? Do we really think that there is some kind of natural something inside of us that just makes us embrace learning styles? I don't think unschooling works for people who believe in social constructionism! I f0und myself just watching Umberto play Star Wars over and over and wondering if becoming a Jedi really was a possible future.

And here we are: $200 worth of curriculum just not being used because I'm lucky if I pull out school work twice a week. I'm so not good at teaching elementary school. I try to come up with creative ideas, and fail miserably. So we end up just not doing much while Umberto plays, and I waste huge amounts of time on the computer because I"m too lazy to install any kind of routine.

Umberto seems totally unbothered by all this. All he really wants to do is play anyway. He's happy if we read to him each day, haul out the art supplies once in awhile, bring him out to play with his friends. But can he really learn anything just playing all the time? And isn't this really all about my lazy ass just not getting it together?

So now I'm wondering if I just need to establish a routine. Argh. Can I even do that? Stay tuned.