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.
