You’ve probably heard this adage:
“When you’re up to your keester in alligators, it’s hard to remember that you set out to drain the swamp.”
Same for homeschooling, eh?
Not that our kiddos are “alligators” (more like minnows or guppies), BUT the demands and expectations of friends, family, government regulations, and–if we’re honest–OURSELVES can really keep us running in circles and checking off boxes until we almost lose our vision of WHY we decided to homeschool in the first place.
In my last post I invited you to share what was it you dreamed of that drew you to homeschooling.
I had several motivations, actually. They seemed a bit random at the time, but with the advantage of 30 years of hindsight (our “children” are over 30 now), I see that there actually ARE a handful of overarching themes, and they’re really not complicated. Since I am Christian, it probably isn’t surprising that they can be summarized in my mind by a handful of key scriptures, but I’m fairly sure that these goals–or something similar–would express the hopes of almost any parent. I’ll list them below, and then revisit them over the next several days.
- We wanted our children to develop an enthusiastic desire to learn that would last them a lifetime.
“The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof!” – Psalm 24:1
The world is such a wonderfully amazing place that it’s actually difficult to become “bored” unless we forget how to be observant. - We wanted our family to be close and for that closeness to last long after our children were grown.
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity.” – Psalm 133:1
We wanted to build lasting relationships within our family so that our children would have a strong base from which to grow and reach out. - Our ultimate goal was to raise “good humans”–godly adults.
“Raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6
We saw education as preparation for “adulting”–for life. That made education our #1 priority as parents.
So that’s it. Simple, really…but I didn’t see until MUCH later how our goals shaped the way we did both school and life.
Charles H. Spurgeon once said, “Begin as you mean to go on, and go on as you began.”
That’s the trick: remembering why you began, and then figuring out how that shapes the way you go about the journey from “here” to “there.” There comes to be a natural zooming out and zooming in between the macro and the micro until everything makes sense and there’s integrity at every level, and when that happens it’s a beautiful thing! That’s not to say that nailing down your “why” is a wonderful mystical elixir that will solve all difficulties and make every day pure joy, but what it DID do was help me conquer the overwhelm and confusion of my beginning years as a homeschool mom, the burn-out and tiredness of the middle years, and the panic and self-doubt of the “launch” years.
Today I’d invite you to share which of those phases you happen to be in.
