Month: February 2019

Last night I was on a panel discussing how to homeschool through high school. It’s been awhile since I have done anything even resembling public speaking, so I was a little nervous. When I get nervous, I talk more. (Such a bad habit! I found myself telling myself to talk less, listen more. Hopefully, I didn’t come across as a stage hog. Blah! Anyway, I digress) As I was leaving, I was struck with the thought once again that, “There are many ways to successfully homeschool.”.

Strangely enough, the other two ladies had both used My Father’s World at some point, and all three of us were, more or less, Charlotte Mason inspired homeschoolers. All three of us had at least 1-2 kids who were engineers or engineers to be and each of us had kids who all had pursued some sort of formal education beyond high school, whether that be a University, Community College or Vocational School. We all also agreed that as much Bible memorization and Worldview Training as possible was best. And there the similarities ended.

One the spectrum of formal academics with hard and fast rules and guidelines to more informal learning, I, of course was the most formal and one of the ladies fell in the middle and the other on the side of less formal. On the scale of grace giving homes, I fell on the least grace given. (No shocker there. I always fall on more justice, less grace. I continue to work on being more balanced but it doesn’t come naturally or easily to me.) Our transcripts looked different, mine being a year to year transcript with weighted and unweighted grades and the others with transcripts ordering theirs by subject, not year.

Even with the major differences in style, these ladies clearly have successful homeschools. Their graduates have gone on to more formal learning after high school and all are successful in their chosen careers and are happy. It sounded like they have maintained strong relationships with their grown children and all are happy to have homeschooled. Their children have taken unique paths but have a strong faith. That, my friend, is the very definition of a successful homeschool. Kids who have maintained their faith, have pursued learning with a career goal in mind, alongside maintaining healthy extended family relationships? That’s winning.

My more formal education style with stringent deadlines isn’t the only way. It’s how I am most comfortable in leading my kids, but it doesn’t define a successful homeschool. Homeschooling, by it’s very nature, is not designed to produce cookie cutter kids. It’s choosing what is best for your family and within that family, what is best for each individual child. Each family and child is designed uniquely by God and we need to respect and encourage that uniqueness. Thinking that there is only one right educational philosophy or one right curriculum creates stress and it’s just not true. A curriculum or style that’s right for your family may be harmful to another family. Let’s allow God to lead us in developing those uniquely wonderful little people regardless of what curriculum the Jones’ use, or how far ahead the Smith’s daughter is. Our job is to follow God’s lead and to do our very best day in and day out and prayerfully, we, too, will have successful homeschools and graduates.

I am a firm believer in consistency. Consistency in parenting, consistency in schedule and consistency with school. I am not a slave to it, but having a consistent schedule allows me to be flexible when I need to. Training consistency in my kids means that as they get older, they understand what they need to do, and can do it on their own. They know that Mom is never going to okay with the TV being on during the school day so they know not to ask. They know that we do our major chores on Friday so they just naturally get up and do them even if I am not here. They know that barring vomiting, high fevers, hospital visits or natural disasters ( we had a huge flood here a couple of years ago), we do school.

After about the age 5, they stopped questioning whether we were going to do school because we always did school. School is my main priority and it generally gets done no matter what else is going on. Consistency just makes everything easier. It also keeps you on track. It’s harder to get behind if you always do school and you treat it as your first priority between the hours of 8 a.m and 12 p.m. With littles, I saw how this consistency gave them confidence in knowing what’s next. My kids liked knowing that after Bible and LA and Math, we had a snack. They could count on that. They knew after lunch and outside play we had a quiet time. No muss, no fuss, that’s what we did.

As they are all almost adults and are planning their own lives, I see them starting to create that same level of consistency. They figure out how to prioritize their lives, schedule it and then get it done. They don’t think it’s special or unique, it’s what they always have done.

Consistency in parenting can be much harder and made me work on keeping an even keel. No meant no, regardless of what was going on. Discipline stayed consistent between one child and the next, and day to day even if one day was easier than another. We made the rules, posted them with the appropriate consequences and then stuck to it. Our expectations were the same whether we were at home, at church, or at the grandparents. Was it hard? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Our kids knew that disobeying was going to get them the same level of consequence no matter where we were. You could ask them what the consequence for disobedience was and they could quote it. Consistency is key in parenting.

There are no magic pills in homeschooling or in parenting. There is no guarantee that our kids are going to turn out the way we want them to, but I do think that being consistent with our kids is a firm step in that direction. Consistency gives stability, it helps us to clearly see the difference between right and wrong, it gives us, as parents, credibility. It allows our yes to mean yes, and our no to mean no every single time.