Ten Things I Wish I Had Known

Looking back now with one son in college and the other in the eleventh grade, I am sorry to see the end of home schooling approaching. I think if I had known a few lessons then that I know now I would have eagerly embraced it.

It is all right to be afraid. Apart from our Lord, nothing matters to most of us as much as our family. We want to be a good husband or wife. We want to do the right things for our children, to place great opportunities before them, to give them the best.

For this reason home schooling can be frightening. There are so many uncertainties, and so many people do not understand what home schooling involves. We feel so inadequate.

Yet, when God placed His Son on this earth, He did not look for a fancy home, a high income, or prestigious education. He chose a man and a woman with character who intended to start a home. Mary submitted to God’s decision in spite of the problems it might cause for her. Joseph was a just and merciful man who also obeyed God’s warning in a dream.

God still wants parents to be dedicated and godly. The characteristics He sought for in Jesus’s parents, He seeks for in us, our obedience. He tells us in James 1:5, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. “ As we obey Him, as we seek His wisdom in the Word and in prayer, He will give us that wisdom that we need for His glory and for our children’s eternal welfare.

Do not worry about high school now. Most home schoolers begin early in their child’s education, but a question they keep hearing is, “What will you do about high school? How will you teach algebra and chemistry and...?”

We do not know what will happen in ten years or in even one year. God has hidden this from us. What He requires is our faithfulness today. God may provide a Christian school for us for high school or the money for a correspondence course or the wisdom to teach it ourselves.

Right now He wants us to concentrate on kindergarten, or third grade, or wherever our children are, on doing the best job we can for what our children need now.

You can be a great teacher without going to school for it. Teacher's training is not necessary for home educators. Instead, read books written about home schooling, magazines for home schoolers, and books of basic knowledge. Talk with experienced home schoolers and friendly teachers. Remember how your favorite teachers taught. As you learn, develop, and change to meet your child’s needs, you will become the teacher the Lord wants you to be.

There is no perfect curriculum. I spent the first ten years of home schooling looking for the perfect curriculum while my husband spent the same time reminding me how well the boys were doing with what we were using. Though there are many good curricula, there is no perfect curriculum for every home schooler.

What may work well for your best friend with her outgoing, sociable personality may not work well for your quiet, introspective personality. What your bookworm daughter loves, your take-it-apart- and- see-what-makes-it-tick son may hate. One of the wonderful benefits of home schooling is to be able to experiment with curriculum and methods.

Talk with other home schoolers about their curricula. Look over their materials and ask for their opinions on what they like and dislike about the program they use. Talk to distributors at curriculum shows. Read summaries of new materials, and return materials that you order that are not appropriate.

Be willing to experiment. Sometimes a child benefits from trying a different curriculum or approach.

In some subjects you need to learn a foundation before you can build on it, but in other subjects it won’t hurt to be creative. Study the chapter on insects while they are hopping all around you instead of waiting till February. Maybe with a new baby coming this is the time to study how a child forms in the womb or how to care for one.

As long as your child learns his basic foundational subjects, you can adjust when and how he builds on that foundation.

You do not have to finish the book. At times we have changed books mid-year because one was not working out. We have dropped a subject mid-year and finished it later or not at all.

We realized that most public schools do not always finish a book either. I do not mean to sound lax. We work hard, and I plan thoroughly, but I am no longer enslaved by my home schooling.

Both boys have done well, testing post-college on the Iowa Basics Skills Test while in the ninth grade, but when the inevitable delays occur or problems arise, we adjust our scheduling, our curriculum, or our methods. And sometimes we do not finish the book!

You do not have to know your children’s learning style now. When I began, I really did not know my boys well enough or enough about learning styles to make a reasonable guess about what theirs were.

I still cannot tell you precisely what the boys’ optimal learning styles are, but I have figured out strategies to help them over the rough spots.

Today there are more materials on learning styles than there were when we began. Some of them have great ideas to help you utilize your child’s strengths. I would caution you not to build so much on their learning strengths that you do not strengthen their weaknesses.

Your child is better off without socialization. People seem to have the idea that the only way your child can learn to get along with others is to be thrown in the midst of thirty other five-year-old tyrants to see who rises to the top.

But God has another idea. He says, “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”

We may need to teach our children that kindness includes sharing their toys, playing what the other person wants to play, and having good manners, but the heart of socialization is the Golden Rule. In the past even public schools taught that.

As our children play with others under our supervision, we can praise instances of kindness and point out selfishness or rudeness. We can teach respect for other people and their belongings. Our color, our things, our names, our health, or our strength make none of us more special in His sight. He loves each of us and knows each of us.

Teenagers are WONDERFUL people. I used to worry about when our boys would become teenagers.

“Just wait until they become teenagers,” people would say. “They’ll rebel. They all do. It’s just a rite of passage.”

It is not true! Not all teenagers rebel. Teenage rebellion, though found occasionally throughout history, was the exception rather than the rule. Only since the sixties have we seen the massive teenage rebellion that we often hear is normal.

The good news is that it does not have to occur if you build a close relationship with your children. Spend time together not only in study, but in work and play and worship.

My husband is our boys’ number 1 fan. He encourages their interests, such as computer or rocketry, even when they are not his interests. Also he has modeled for them what manhood means in his treatment of me, in his stands for the Lord, and in his spiritual leadership of the family.

The teen years have been the best so far. I must admit that we do not always see eye to eye, but we discuss those differences of opinion. The boys are idealistic, thoughtful, and fascinating people who arecommitted to the Lord.

Commitment is the key to success in home schooling. Making home schooling a priority makes it successful. Not every child will excel in the same things or do equally well. However, personal attention will help any child do better.

Part of that commitment displays itself in consistency, in hitting the books every day, in learning from the unplanned situations that interrupt the lessons, in not giving up when you wonder if you are doing any good.

Commit yourself to do the best job you can do. If today went poorly, try a fresh approach tomorrow. Call a homeschooling friend for a good cry and some encouragement, but keep coming back, because you are shaping a young man or woman for God.

Copyright 1998, Debbie W. Wilson