Category Archives: Homeschool

Sharing 20 years of homeschool experience

Trust Your Child, Trust Yourself

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Have you ever noticed how many experts there are in the world?

Even an hour spent on the Internet makes it clear that experts are everywhere: some are experts by virtue of their life experiences or training (I value the first more than the second; how about you?) and others are self-proclaimed experts. After all, it seems like nearly everyone has a blog these days where they share their “expert” advice.

Then there are the women’s magazines, which proliferate around checkout counters across the land, with blaring headlines declaring “Your Body: Advice from the Experts!”, “How the iPad Can Release the Genius Inside Your Child” and “50 Ways to Please Your Man!”

Everywhere we go, it seems we’re surrounded by experts. Their proclamations can make us feel unprepared and diminish our confidence, particularly when it comes to parenting our children. Continue reading →

Homeschooled Kids and Rebellion

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One of the most popular articles on my website is “Homeschooling to Prevent Rebellion.” I think I’ve received more email about that article than any other I’ve written.

Let’s face it: many of us choose to homeschool our children partly (mostly?) because we want them to turn out “right.” The craziness of the public school environment makes it obvious to us that sending our children there is a dangerous decision. But if we teach them at home, we can educate them more efficiently using the materials of our choice (as opposed to the materials chosen by our local school board) while also teaching them how to control their behavior so that they become happy, productive adults, at the very least. Ideally, if we have a faith tradition, we want to share that faith with our children, too.

This is all well and good, but sometimes the responsibility we take on for homeschooling our children, which can seem huge and all-encompassing, leads us to believe that our children’s proper development is completely up to us. That would work if our children were puppets. But they’re individuals given free will by God. This complicates things.

To make matters worse, some speakers and writers in the Christian homeschool community insist that the sole purpose for homeschooling is to raise Christians. They may be well-intentioned, but what they’re doing is loading down parents with a burden they weren’t intended to carry. Because while it’s our job to “raise up our children in the way they should go,” we don’t have the power to make them Christians, or even to make them good.

I really like how Tim Sanford put it in his book, Losing Control & Liking It:

“…embrace the reality that whatever you do as a parent, your teenager still has that gift of free will. You could do everything right and your teenager could still choose stupid. That part is not your fault, even if it breaks your heart.”

He mentions the father of the prodigal son and the pain he went through, and then adds:

“What is your job?

To validate and nurture.

What’s not your job?

To make your teenager turn out right.

Learn to be content with these realities, and your life as a parent will be a lot easier.”

I’m aware of a lot of bewildered homeschooling parents who are just now facing the difficulties of having a rebellious teen. I feel for them because I’ve been there. It’s a lonely place. And the pain doesn’t necessarily go away once the child hits 18. In fact, for some homeschooled kids, the outward rebellion doesn’t reach full strength until then.

There’s no easy way through this. If you crack down hard on your offspring, you’ll likely push them further away. Yet you can’t give up on your principles, because they’re part of raising your children “in the way they should go.” What you can do is pray for yourself and your child. And never forget that God loves your children even more than you do.

Video Games and the Developmentally Disabled

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Recently fellow blogger and homeschool mom Amy tweeted some interesting news: a new study suggests that kids with Down syndrome can benefit from playing the Wii even more than from occupational therapy.

Now this is just one study. Also, our son Josh has been fortunate that he hasn’t needed occupational therapy. But our experience with the Wii has been that Josh is not only very good at playing video games on the Wii and enjoys it tremendously, but that it’s been good for him in other ways, too. For instance, when he doesn’t understand written directions on the screen, he’ll write them down and show them to us so we can explain them. He sometimes keeps those directions and refers back to them. So he’s practicing his printing and reading skills.

Most importantly, the Wii levels the playing field between Josh and his siblings, and between him and other teens. He may not be able to keep up with them when playing basketball or baseball, but they’re all amazed at how often he beats them at Wii games. It’s the one area where no one cuts him any slack and yet he can win. So it does wonders for his self esteem. That alone makes it a pretty valuable tool.

I know many homeschooling parents are opposed to having video game systems in the home. I was, too. In fact, we never allowed one in our home until my sister sent my kids a system when they were teens. They played it a lot for a time but none of them became addicted to it.

Josh, on the other hand, fell in love with it early on. But it’s turned out to be a great tool for him. I think homeschooling parents should consider allowing these systems as long as they keep control of them. (They may even find they like playing them; my husband plays against Josh for a little while most evenings, and while he does it for Josh, he sure looks like he’s having fun, too!)

A “New” Old Tactic for Saving Money on Groceries

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I did all my grocery shopping the other day and was dismayed to find that prices continue to go up. To make matters worse, in some cases the price increase is disguised by smaller packaging, which just makes me mad that food companies think we’re so stupid that we don’t realize what they’ve done.

For instance, a can of tuna is now 5 oz. I have recipes from when I was a newlywed (back in 1979) that refer to a 7 oz. can of tuna. So now, when I double a recipe using tuna, I have to buy three cans of tuna, not two. Do they think I don’t notice this?

As I’ve written elsewhere, I do the usual things to combat inflation. I bought 10 pounds of ground beef when it was on sale, cooked up 3 pounds and froze it, and froze the rest raw for meatloaf, etc. I watch all prices and only buy items when they’re on sale for a good price (as opposed to “sale prices” that are actually regular-price items placed on the sale aisle with a big sign, which is why we need to know our prices).

But as each grocery shopping trip reveals higher prices, I’m thinking I need to add a new tactic, one that makes sense but that I hadn’t really thought about in recent years: we need to eat less.

So instead of freezing one-pound packages of meat, I’m freezing ¾-pound packages, figuring a little smaller hamburger patty won’t hurt any of us. I’m putting fewer chicken pieces in each bag before I freeze it. I’m making cookies and rolls a wee bit smaller than usual.

This will make the food I buy last longer, and will hopefully help me shed a little weight, too. It’s healthier, and it also goes back to the way we lived when I was a child.

For instance, my grandmother used to split a can of pop between four of us kids. Each one’s share barely filled a juice glass (and we knew better than to ask for seconds!) Her logic was that pop wasn’t good for us so we shouldn’t have too much.

In an age of 32-oz. soda cups in fast-food restaurants, I think our society has lost that sense of limiting ourselves. But the era of unrestrained appetites may be coming to an end, thanks to inflation. I guess every cloud really does have a silver lining.

Previous posts on saving money that you may have missed:

Exercises in Frugality

Exercises in Frugality, Part 2

Exercises in Frugality, Part 3

Exercises in Frugality, Part 4

Exercises in Frugality, Part 5