T is for Time

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T is for time. Homeschooling gives you time with your kids: time you wouldn’t have if they went to school, and time you’ll never get back.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but I can verify that children are only young for a very short time. Now that my four are adults, I cherish the memories we made over our years of homeschooling.

No, it wasn’t all easy, and there were days when I never would have believed that we’d make it all the way through high school. But looking back, I’m so glad our family was a homeschooling family, because it gave us time to enjoy being together before everyone grew up and went off on their own paths as adults.

Try a free lesson from my Bible study written for mothers and daughters: Women of the Old Testament: 14 In-Depth Bible Studies for Teens.

 

Q is for Quiet

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Q is for quiet. When you’re with your kids all the time, the need for quiet slowly builds up in your system until one day it overwhelms you.

Instead of losing it with your kids because you’ve reached your noise and interruption limit, why not plan for specific times of quiet that will allow you to recharge? Make appointments on your calendar for regular walks by yourself, solo visits to the public library, dates with your laptop at the local coffee shop, or alone time spent on your favorite pastime (mine’s quilting).

To truly enjoy these noisy years of learning with your children, you need the balance of quiet times on your own.

 

The teen years can be great ones if you go in with your eyes open. Check out “Ten Tips for Coping with Temperamental Teens.” (PDF)

Why Teen Girls are Suffering

Across the pond, a psychologist is claiming that the busy lives of two-career families is putting too much strain on teenage girls, leaving them vulnerable to mental illness. He suggests that parents put more time in with their daughters and limit their access to social media and technology.

I agree with him, but I do wonder why he left out boys. They need their parents as much as their sisters do, don’t they?

Should You Co-sign Your Teen’s Student Loans?

These days, most people don’t have enough money saved up for a college education for their child because college has become so ridiculously expensive. Instead, they encourage their offspring to apply for financial aid, which includes grants and loans.

Grants are great, but generally hard to obtain in more than a nominal amount; hence the popularity of loans. But since young people just out of high school (or home school) rarely have a financial track record, their parents are often asked to co-sign loans, especially if the total annual cost of the chosen college is more than several thousand dollars a year.

Should you co-sign your teen’s student loans? If you’re a Christian, you need to be aware that the Bible, while not specifically prohibiting co-signing loans, makes it clear that it is foolish to do so.

Check out Proverbs 17:18 (KJV):

A man void of understanding striketh hands, and becometh surety in the presence of his friend.

Surety, in case you’re wondering, is pledging to repay a loan without any sure way to pay it back. Co-signing means you’re taking on that obligation for someone else in case they can’t pay it back. The reason the bank requires them to have a co-signer is because it considers them a bad risk.

It’s possible to borrow money but avoid surety. For instance, if you get a car loan and use the car as collateral, you can sell it and repay the loan if you have to. If you obtain a mortgage and use the house you’re buying as collateral, you can sell it and use the proceeds to pay off the mortgage.

But if you pledge to pay your child’s student loans back if they can’t, what do you have to use as collateral? Nothing. Now you’ve plunged yourself into surety, and according to the verse above, have become “void of understanding,” or lacking in good sense, according to other Biblical translations.

To make matters worse, by co-signing a loan for your own child, you have also obligated him or her to extensive debt for which they have no collateral.

Why would this displease God? Larry Burkett explained this in his book, Using Your Money Wisely:

Obviously, surety is not a biblical law— it is a principle. A principle is a biblical guide to keep you on God’s path and out of the world’s traps. You don’t get punished for violating a principle unknowingly; you suffer the consequences. The consequences of violating the principle of surety is that you presume upon the future. In other words, when you sign surety for a debt, you pledge your future. If you have omniscient insights into the future, then there is really no danger. But, since only God has omniscient insight, when you sign surety, you presume upon God’s will.

So if you’re a Christian, you should not co-sign college loans for your teen. Trust me, refusing to do so will not make you popular with your teen or possibly others in your family or social circle. But as Christians, we know that obedience to God trumps the approval of man.

How can you help prepare your teen for the future without co-signing student loans? Well, you could have saved up over the years so you could just give them the money. If that didn’t happen, you can help them research scholarships and grants.

Another option: seriously consider whether your teen even needs to go to college. In homeschooling circles, sending kids off to college has been a way to prove that homeschooling works, so there’s always been a lot of pressure to do so. But the U.S. already has an overabundance of college grads who can’t find work in their field. Do you want your teen to end up in that boat?

In the updated and expanded third edition of Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, available for purchase at all online and brick-and-mortar book sellers and from Cardamom Publishers on June 1, you can learn how to determine if your teen is college material and whether it’s worth sending him or her to college in the first place. Stay tuned for more information!