Tag Archives: teens

Jaycee Dugard: Homeschool Mom?

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If the name “Jaycee Dugard” sounds familiar to you, it’s because it was all over the news a while back when Jaycee was found and rescued 18 years after being kidnapped when she was 11 years old.

Her kidnapper, a convicted sex offender, held her hostage all those years and also fathered two children by her. They are now 11 and 15 years old; they grew up believing Jaycee was their sister, not knowing she was actually their mother.

But according to the British press, she was also their teacher:

Jaycee’s strength and determination to care for her daughters as best she could has filled the family with admiration.

Both Angel and Starlit appear to have been educated solely by their mother – who herself never made it past the fifth grade.

Yet recent tests show Angel, 15, functioning close to the level of a high school senior – that is, a higher level than Jaycee was at when she was abducted.

Both girls are now receiving tutoring at the northern California home.

Now that’s what I call successfully homeschooling in adverse conditions, and it’s just more proof that homeschooling works.

One Dirty Little Secret about College

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Animal House


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It’s become an expectation in our society that most everyone, homeschooled or not, literate or not, will attend college. Whether a young person’s bent leans toward book-learning or engine-rebuilding doesn’t seem to matter. The important thing, we’re told, is that they go to college.

There’s an entire empire based on helping parents and teachers help students get into college. There are books and classes available, professional help can be hired to lead you through the application process….it’s a huge industry in itself.

But there are a few dirty little secrets about college. One in particular is purposely suppressed by colleges and universities. For all the fuss about getting into a good college, for all the money that’s saved up from the time the student is a toddler, for all the home equity lines parents must tap into, the fact is that only half of all college students actually graduate! And this is nothing new; it’s been true for 30 years.

(I worked in my college dorm office in the late 1970s. I vividly recall that officials overbooked all of the dorms at the large university I attended because they knew students would begin dropping out the first week. They didn’t want to end up with empty rooms.)

There are many reasons for such a high college dropout rate, the primary ones being that students can’t hack it or can’t afford it. But the bottom line is, half of all students don’t make it through college.

Of course, when a student drops out of college, he still has to pay for the time he was there. If he borrowed money to pay tuition and room-and-board (increasingly likely), that money has to be repaid with interest. So while he doesn’t leave with a diploma, he may well leave with a parting gift (as the old tv game show hosts used to call the loser’s consolation prize) of years of debt burden.

College brochures and websites are slick and packed with information, but they sure don’t mention that high dropout rate, do they?

Teaching Delayed Gratification is a Must

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We visited our hometown over the weekend and noticed that a couple of businesses we always shopped at have closed down. I looked them up online when I got home and found that they went out of business because of the bad economy.

One store owner, who ran a wonderful Christian book/gift store, blamed her business closing on people no longer using their credit cards. She said that in the past, people bought more items and paid with credit, but then they began paying cash and only buying little things. She and her husband decided to close down while they could still pay their bills.

As a business owner myself, I understand her feelings. But part of the reason our economy is in the bad shape it’s in is because people abused credit. They bought things they couldn’t afford and borrowed the money to do so, but couldn’t pay it back.

One of the projects in Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers is designed to teach teens about handling credit cards responsibly. When I speak to homeschool groups, I’m often asked at what age people should begin teaching their children about credit. The book is intended for teens, but I tell parents if they really want to teach their children to handle credit responsibly, they must begin when their children are babies.

I’m not suggesting they get their baby a Visa card. But the root of credit problems is usually (I’m excepting medical emergencies here) an inability to delay gratification. Somebody wants a big plasma TV to watch the Super Bowl and they buy it on credit, never thinking about how they’ll pay for it. They don’t have the self-discipline to set aside money each week until they have enough to pay cash for the plasma tv.

How do you raise your children to become adults with the ability to delay gratification, to wait for what they want? You gently make them wait for what they want.

Don’t pick up the baby as soon as she makes a peep. Let her lay in her crib for a bit babbling and cooing before you pick her up.

Don’t buy your preschooler a toy he demands at the store. Let him wait for it until his birthday; he’ll appreciate it more, and he’ll have learned a little bit about waiting for what he wants.

Don’t buy your preteen the latest electronic device the day it comes on the market. Teach her to save up her allowance and birthday money until she can buy it for herself.

The child who learns he doesn’t have to have everything this instant is unlikely to become the guy who puts a $3000 television on his credit card a few days after losing his job. The adults who couldn’t wait until they were actually able to pay for what they wanted helped get us where we are today: in big financial trouble.

The goal is to NOT raise a child like this:

Losing Control & Liking It

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When we choose to take control of our children’s education by homeschooling them, our choice says a lot about us. Many people complain about things but never act; we homeschooling parents actually do something when it comes to making sure our children are educated the way we want them to be.

Of course, I think that’s a good thing. But I have to be honest and admit that (speaking only for myself, of course) being the kind of person who takes the bull by the horns means that I tend to think that I’m in control.

Psychologically, I know I’m not in control of everything, but sometimes my behavior suggests otherwise. Growing up as the oldest of four girls who was often held responsible for the behavior of her sisters probably didn’t help.

To make matters worse, after many years of being a homeschooling parent, I got used to being in charge of so many things: what my family ate, what they wore, what books and curriculum my kids used…..every single day. Then, as my kids left home, I had to learn to let them go, and it wasn’t (and still isn’t) always easy.

Perhaps that’s why the title of this book by Tim Sanford got my attention: Losing Control and Liking It: How to Set Your Teen (and Yourself) Free
The subtitle caught my eye more for the reference to setting myself free than setting my teens free, and that’s what made me buy the book.

It was worth the money. Not only did it encourage me in the process of letting my kids go, but it helped me see that wanting to be in control of anything beyond myself can be a great burden, one I was not created to bear.

This is true not only in my relationships with my teens and adult children, but also with relatives, friends and others. This book speaks to the need for taking responsibility for your own behavior without taking responsibility (or letting someone force it on you) for someone else’s.

The method Sanford, a Christian counselor, recommends to make such distinctions helps with problems such as coworkers who expect you to bail them out on their deadlines as well as teens who blame you because you didn’t wake them up in time to get to an appointment.

Sanford also devotes a section to worry and anxiety, the root causes of many parents’ desire to control their teens and even their adult children. Christian homeschooling parents are especially susceptible to this. We’ve often been told by others in the Christian homeschooling community that if we do our job just the right way, we’ll raise fantastic Christian children. Sanford explains why that’s a) not possible, and b) not our job as parents.

He also touches on the concept of God’s rules: Biblical commands, specific Biblical principles and general Biblical principles. I think a misunderstanding of the distinctions between those three groups is probably at the root of most disagreements between homeschooling families, and has caused some of the discord I’ve seen in homeschool support groups.

It’s interesting that this book was published by Focus on the Family. My husband and I are big fans of Dr. James Dobson’s books on raising children; he’s an advocate for purposeful discipline of young children. But I don’t think he spent a lot of time explaining how to transition from diligent discipline of young children to letting go of teens. Maybe I just missed the book where he did so. But this book is really helpful for that, and I wish I could have read it 15 years ago, before my older kids entered their teens. Sanford’s explanation of parental control vs. parental influence would have been particularly helpful to me back then.

I liked this book so much I read it twice. I didn’t agree with everything in it, but I found a lot of food for thought, and some reassurance, too. It’s an especially helpful book for homeschooling parents.

You can read the first chapter of this book here. But don’t do it just because I suggested it. After all, I’m not responsible for what you choose to do  😉