Great (Homeschool) Expectations

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Barbara Frank

Over Christmas I heard from several longtime friends who, like me, are homeschool moms. In fact, I’m the only one who’s “retired” from homeschooling. The rest are still at it with one or more younger children, but they also have adult children that they homeschooled all the way through high school.

I love talking with these women. We share a common history that most people can’t understand, and of course, that’s the main topic of conversation (besides our children, of course).

However, I have to admit that, despite being homeschooled, some of our now-adult children have disappointed us in different ways. (I can’t share too many details here, because I want to respect the privacy of these young adults.) In most cases, they’re doing great making their way in the world, but some have made sinful choices in their personal lives that have upset their parents. In one extreme case, someone chose a lifestyle that nearly killed them; sadly, they’re not out of the woods yet, after more than a year. (It really grieved me to hear about that person).

We moms openly share our disappointments with each other knowing that we can relate to each other so very well. We all had such great expectations, and some of them have been dashed.

I know this is common for parents. But I think it’s especially painful for homeschooling parents because we devoted our daily lives to raising our children, not because we had nothing better to do, but in part because we expected that our efforts would reap benefits for our children. And while the adult children I know have clearly reaped educational benefits from homeschooling, some of their lifestyle choices make it clear that not everything we taught them stuck.

I should point out that some of our expectations were created by the books we read and the speakers we listened to back when we were new homeschoolers. Even now, you’ll find some saying that homeschooling creates strong Christians, good citizens, yada yada. In fact, some people have made lucrative careers out of saying those things. It’s what everyone wants to hear. After all, why should we go through all this work if it’s not going to pay off?

But the fact is that there are no guarantees. And to those who point fingers and say, “Well, if you just do it right, your kids will turn out right,” I say “Beans!” I realize there’s no question that my husband and I made mistakes. All parents do. But when I think of how the Israelites treated God (see Exodus), why did I expect that none of my children would rebel or go in a different direction from the way we pointed them? Clearly each person must make their own way in life (and hopefully toward God). Not even the love of a homeschooling parent can overcome the effects of sin in the world.

But of course we had to try, and those of us specifically called to homeschool our children can’t regret it. (My mom friends and I talked about that a lot over Christmas!) We tried our best, but we’re learning that ultimately, our adult children’s lives are between them and God.

As for the verse in Proverbs that homeschoolers quote so often, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it,” I’ve written before that it’s a principle, not a promise, and also that we can’t ignore that phrase “when he is old.” Homeschooling doesn’t turn out perfectly formed adults at age 18. Each person is a lifelong project of God’s. We homeschooling parents were deeply involved in the first stage, but God will use all sorts of people and events to shape our children over the course of their lives. Hopefully there’s still time for each one of them to come to the personal realization that living God’s way is the only way to live. (We talked a lot about that, too.)

If newer homeschoolers could have heard our conversations over Christmas, it might have frightened them. That vision of homeschool success is what kept us going during the most difficult times, and I hate to pop that bubble for anyone.

That said, I suspect that even if every homeschooling parent could be convinced that homeschooling is good but doesn’t create perfect adults, they’ll still be disappointed someday if their adult child makes poor choices. It’s what happens when you love someone so much. And since it’s this painful for us, imagine how God, the only perfect parent, feels when He sees us making similar poor choices.

Recognizing Your Hidden Curriculum

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Barb

At times we homeschoolers start to get a bit weary of the curriculum we’re using, so we boost our spirits by thinking about what we want to use next year. We also look forward to the next homeschool convention, where we can go on the hunt for new materials.

We put a lot of time and thought into finding just the right books and resources to use with our children, and that’s important. But we should also put at least as much effort into recognizing the hidden curriculum, the one that teaches our children every day, whether we realize it or not.

Being with our children all the time, not just after school and on weekends, means they are exposed to our behavior all the time. All kids watch their parents and learn from watching their good (and bad) behavior, but our kids see far more of us than other kids see their parents. Kids whose parents both work full-time outside of the home may only see them for a few hours a day or less, and with the hectic weekends full of sports and other activities that are often a staple in the modern family’s routine, they don’t spend all that much time with them on the weekends, either.

But our kids are with us a lot. They’re watching how we live, and they’re subconsciously taking notes on everything they see. Those notes will be the basis for how they live their adult lives….a result of the hidden curriculum that they were taught by watching us every day.

This puts an awful lot of pressure on us as parents. Since we’re with our kids so much, we need to be especially aware of how we behave, because every aspect of our personal lives is a part of the hidden curriculum.

There are many features of the hidden curriculum. Consider:

The balance curriculum How do we spend our time? Do we run frantically from activity to appointment, never pausing to take time off for rest or fun or to just enjoy our lives and each other? Are we workaholics? The popular 1970s song “Cat’s in the Cradle” illustrates the balance curriculum: a father recalls how he always put off his son because he had so much work to do, and then tells how his son now has no time for him because he learned from his father’s example and is just too busy.

The marriage curriculum No marriage is without challenges, but how do we handle them? When the kids are always around, it’s impossible to hide those challenges from them for long. Do we handle disagreements respectfully, or do we lash out at each other? Do we make time alone with our spouse a priority, or do we have a “child-centered” marriage? The way we treat each other is the marriage curriculum for our children.

The love-thy-neighbor curriculum Are we demonstrating love in action for our children? When we hear of a friend and neighbor in need, do we help them out or decide to mind our own business? Getting the kids involved in baking cookies for a new neighbor or delivering dinner to a family with a new baby teaches them that loving others is a priority.

The faith curriculum How we feed (or starve) our faith is being watched closely by our children, and sets the stage for their own faith walk. Do we make time for personal and family devotions? Which choice usually wins…attending church services or sleeping in? Are we strangers at church or do we get involved in the work being done there? We can sermonize at length to our children about God, but if we aren’t walking our talk, the lesson of the hidden curriculum is “do as I say, not as I do.”

The financial curriculum How we handle money speaks volumes about us; our children are watching and learning from what we do. Do we pay our bills on time or lie to creditors over the phone? Do we put a little money away regularly or are we caught up in impressing others by buying big-ticket items we can’t afford? Since our children are home each day, they’ll probably be there when the tow truck comes to repossess the late-model car we impulsively bought. That will be a memorable lesson in the hidden curriculum!

The grieving curriculum Loss is an inevitable part of life, but in our society, we hide our grief from others, including our children. One mom who’d recently lost her own mother found that by holding in her feelings until the children were asleep, her grief overwhelmed her, and she needed professional help getting through it. It’s hard letting our kids see us cry, and when they’re around all day, it’s almost impossible to hold our feelings in. By sharing those emotions with them, we teach them it’s ok to mourn.

The child-rearing curriculum The way you treat your children is their training for the way they’ll treat your grandchildren. A mom who was regularly beaten by her parents was able, by the grace of God, to break the chain of abuse and not abuse her own children. They know her story, and now also know that the chain of abused children can and must be broken. How you discipline your children sets the stage for what they will consider normal in discipline….yet another facet of the hidden curriculum.

These are not the only parts of the hidden curriculum. I’m sure you can think of others. My point is that while it’s good to put a lot of energy into researching and finding the very best math books and reading series and science curriculum, it’s even more important to think about what kind of hidden curriculum we are using with our children. They are with us every day, absorbing that hidden curriculum even on the days when they don’t have to “do school.” That’s why we must never forget that as their parents, we are the authors of the hidden curriculum.

(Excerpted from Stages of Homeschooling: Enjoying the Journey, available from Cardamom Publishers.)

Preschool Pressure or Preschool Peace?

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Barb

I always say my kids were homeschooled from birth, because they never went to school and they were learning from the day they were born. Yet I didn’t “school” them during the years from birth to age 5; we certainly did a lot—played inside and outside, made crafts, painted, colored, I read to them—but I never considered that homeschooling.

That’s why I was bewildered when I first noticed the trend of moms joining homeschool support groups even though their children were under five years old. I wondered, what’s their hurry?

Talking with some of these moms has given me some insight into why they consider themselves homeschoolers even though their kids are so young. I’ve learned that today’s young parents are under so much pressure to not only send their kids to preschool at age 3, but to start preparing them (“readiness”) even earlier than 3 that they feel they must call themselves homeschoolers so people won’t think their little ones aren’t being educated. In this competitive society of ours, heaven forbid we should let a young child of 2 or 3 (or even 4 or 5!) just simply learn through play and experiences.

Learning about Preschool Pressure really makes me feel old. When my first child was 3 (how can that be over 25 years ago?), children of working moms were often put in daycare, but children of stay-at-home moms were home with Mom, and maybe in a park district class for an hour twice a week. Most moms didn’t think about preschool until the year before kindergarten, and even then, many chose not to send their children to it. Since I had already planned to homeschool my daughter, we never looked into preschool. Once I started homeschooling her at age 5, we liked it so much that we never considered putting any of our next three children in preschool or any school.

But while my children were growing up in an atmosphere of homeschooling families where preschool wasn’t even discussed, the outside world was changing. As more moms rejoined the workforce, the cry went out that children needed preschool in order to succeed in school. “Educational experts” repeatedly cited the success of the government-run preschool program Head Start, rarely mentioning that the kids in that program were so disadvantaged from the get go that special attention would have helped them. An average child home with an attentive parent wasn’t disadvantaged and didn’t need preschool to become prepared. In fact, even 20 years ago, studies showed that any scholastic advantage gained by preschool wore off by third grade and was even suspected of causing early school burnout. But that aspect of preschool wasn’t advertised much.

What concerns me now is that there is an entire generation of young moms out there (you may be one of them) who has been conditioned to believe that their under-age-5 children must have some kind of formal preschool program, even one at home, in order to be properly educated. Since I know from experience that this is patently untrue, I feel bad for any mom living under Preschool Pressure. I worry that finding and implementing a home preschool program for each of her little ones will result in burnout of both the child and the mom. It would be such a shame to burn out and give up on homeschooling; the thought that an exhausted mom will give up and put her burned-out child into formal schooling at an early age is heart-breaking, because it didn’t have to happen.

I wish there was an easy way to remove Preschool Pressure from each mom’s existence, and instead replace it with Preschool Peace, which is what I had, as did the many generations of mothers before me. The best I can do, however, is offer the following recipe, in hopes that you’ll read it if you need it, and share it with anyone else who needs it. Only by finding Preschool Peace can a homeschooling mom conserve her energy for the larger task of homeschooling her children for as many years as she needs to do later on, maybe even through high school. I don’t think I could have survived homeschooling two all the way through (and homeschooling two more now) if I’d had to homeschool them in the preschool years. Just the thought makes me want to go take a nap!

Recipe for Preschool Peace

Starting as early in your parenting life as possible, mix:

One large dollop of the works of John Holt, especially How Children Learn, Learning All the Time, and Teach Your Own.
Two heaping cups of Better Late Than Early by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore.
A splash of “Preschool Homeschooling” by Beverly Krueger.

Allow this mixture to rest in your brain for a while, then add (as your child becomes old enough to do these things):

Lazy afternoons at the park
Regular visits to the public library
Trips to the zoo and children’s museum
Work in the garden (especially making mud pies)
Large empty appliance boxes and markers
Finger paints
Long sessions of you reading aloud to them

Relax and enjoy!

Special note: don’t rush through this recipe—take your time, because soon enough your little one will be a “big kid,” and both of you will be ready to take on a more complicated “recipe.”

(Excerpted from Stages of Homeschooling: Beginnings, available from Cardamom Publishers.)

No Teaching Certificate? No Problem.

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Barb

One of the most common fears I hear from new homeschooling moms is that they’re afraid they won’t do well at homeschooling because they weren’t trained as teachers. This comment is usually made apologetically, as though homeschooling without a teaching certificate means you’re doomed as a homeschooling parent.

Nothing could be further from the truth! I’ve met many homeschooling moms who were trained as teachers, and as far as I could tell, that certificate was something of an albatross. One former teacher I know pulled her child away from writing and illustrating his own book in order to do a unit on writing, then realized how ridiculous that was. Such parents were trained to teach a certain way, to use certain techniques (many of which are actually crowd control for the classroom) and to think that deviating from a lesson plan is a sure route to failure. But when it comes to homeschooling, none of those things are necessary; in fact, they can actually be stumbling blocks.

Homeschooling is what’s left after you strip away the time-eating techniques needed in the formal classroom. We have no need for taking attendance, for washroom passes and for report cards. We don’t have to worry about how to control 37 (the average class size in my local school district) young minds and bodies. What we have is far superior to what goes on in the classroom, because we have time for one-on-one with our students.

Making a good thing better is that we know our students intimately. We’ve known them since the day we gave birth to them or brought them home. We’ve learned by experience, not from a textbook, how to tell when they understand and when they don’t, and we have the time to work with them until we see understanding in their eyes. We don’t look at a child who isn’t catching on and feel grateful that they’ll be someone else’s problem next semester. Instead, we see each child as a work in progress, and look at their future as something with plenty of potential, even if things are a bit rocky at the moment.

Despite this knowledge, even moms with several years of homeschooling under their belts may eventually come up against something that brings back the “I’m not really qualified to do that” argument, and that’s homeschooling the teen. For some reason, moms who have done a wonderful job teaching children under age 12 suddenly lose their confidence when they start thinking about subjects like algebra and biology. They believe that while teaching younger children is something for which they didn’t need teacher training, teaching older students will be too hard without that preparation.

Yet teens benefit from homeschooling at least as much as younger children, and the subjects they need to learn about, especially if they want to go to college, are not as intimidating as you might think. For example, I found that teaching upper level math was fun, because this time around it made more sense to me than it did when I learned it in my youth. Add to that the fact that I’d been teaching my children math since they learned to count, and so had relearned it all while teaching them. But even if you don’t want to deal with math or certain other subjects, there are now so many books, DVD’s and computer software products to help teach your teen that you don’t have to worry.

Another option is community college. When my son reached his mid-teens, I had to find a way for him to learn chemistry because he wanted to go to college and it was required. Science doesn’t interest me a lot, and it’s not my strong suit. In fact, the only reason I made an A in high school chemistry is that the teacher fell ill the first month, and the succession of substitute teachers that replaced him left us so confused that the school gave us all pity-A’s. But I tried to be a good sport, and obtained a set of A Beka Chemistry books. They might as well have been written in Chinese, for as much sense as they made to me. I returned the books and registered my son for a local college chemistry class. It turned out to be a good experience for him, and I didn’t have to set up a lab in my house.

Whether moms are teaching small children or teens, their worries about not having a teaching certificate or education degree are unfounded, according to research. The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) found that the home-educated children of parents with a teaching certificate did no better than those whose teaching parents did not have one. According to a study posted at the NHERI Web site (www.nheri.org),

“Dr. Brian Ray, in the most in-depth nationwide study on home education across the United States, collected data on 5,402 students from 1,657 families. Homeschool students’ academic achievement, on average, was significantly above that of public-school students. In addition, the home educated did well even if their parents were not certified teachers and if the state did not highly regulate homeschooling.”

Another well-documented fact is that those who have or are pursuing education degrees are not always “the cream of the crop” of their peers. Economics professor and syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams quotes a Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer as reporting that “half of the (Philadelphia) district’s 690 middle school teachers who took exams in math, English, social studies and science in September and November (2003) failed.” He also notes that The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has compiled average SAT scores for college students in all majors, and has found that education majors have the lowest SAT scores of any major. Similar findings resulted after examining the admission test scores of degreed students taking the GRE for graduate school and the LSAT for law school.

If you still feel inferior compared to a trained teacher, you might find the link Dr. Williams shares in one of his columns very enlightening. Go to http://www.cbest.nesinc.com to find a sample version of the California Basic Educational Skills test for teachers. This test is given to teachers of grades K-12 as well as teachers in adult education. Try taking the test and checking your answers with the key provided. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

(Excerpted from Stages of Homeschooling: Beginnings, available from Cardamom Publishers.)

The Downsizing Chronicles: Almost There

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Barbara Frank

It’s been three months since we moved to our little house, and I’m thrilled to say that we can now get one car in the two-car garage with room to spare. This was no mean trick, as the garage was literally filled to the brim with stuff (rows of stuff stacked as tall as I am) not very long ago. We’ve gone through everything, only letting into the house what we really need or want. That’s been hard, because we liked all of our stuff!

We took some ribbing from family and friends about how much stuff we had, but the fact is that I never had time to completely go through things over the years because I was too busy homeschooling my kids, and I certainly can’t regret that. Also, we kept things that would be needed for our long-held dream of living on acreage, a dream that was apparently not in God’s will, and it wasn’t until we bought this tiny house in town that we knew we could give those things up.

We took countless boxes to Goodwill. We’ve given a lot of toys and homeschooling items to friends with young children. We’ve sold a lot of things on Craig’s List. And there are a few more things that need to go, but we’re working on that.

The hardest items to give up were the books. We love books. And though we do have a Kindle with plenty of books on it, the fact is that there’s nothing like holding a much-loved book in your hands. But there just wasn’t room for all the books we loved.

I’ve sold and given away many books in the past, but there were some I could never let go of, including those I used for my kids when I first designed Life Prep for them. I’m going to be giving those away on this blog soon, because I can’t use them with my youngest.

There is an upside to all of this. As much as I miss the things we gave up, it’s very freeing to live small. The housework doesn’t take nearly as long as it did when we had five bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. The utility bills for this house are lower than the last house (90 years old with 38 windows!) and the small closets here forced us to get rid of a lot of our clothes (which weren’t getting much use anyways because we don’t have jobs and nobody dresses up at church these days.)

So I’m not complaining. And the fact that they’re predicting snow tonight and we won’t have to clean off the car tomorrow because it now fits in the garage makes me extra glad we worked so hard to get rid of all our stuff after the move 🙂