I wrote this series, Homeschool Made Easy, for this entire month to celebrate something. My firstborn son, the one I never wanted to homeschool, is graduating in just a few short months. And I can’t believe it, but I taught him nearly everything he knows.
He has me to blame.
It is surreal to be at this place in my homeschool journey. I am a homeschool graduate. I am a homeschooling mom of four. And I’m about to be the mother of a homeschool graduate. It is hard to put into words what it feels like at this place in my journey.
I have learned oh, so much from the past 14 years of teaching my son (I see you counting mentally. I started with really serious preschool, but I learned from my mistakes by the time I had more children). Obviously, my homeschool style has changed a lot over the years.
So has the smell in my children’s bedrooms.
One of the most dramatic changes in my homeschooling, though, has been me. I have changed. I have changed the way I look at my children. I have changed the way I look at education. I have changed how I interact with them, how I talk to them, how I talk about them, how I pray for them.
I homeschooled my children, but God was teaching me.
And in the end, everything I thought was important wasn’t. Everything I thought was scary wasn’t. Everything I thought was hard wasn’t. Because in the end, those things didn’t matter.
What matters, when you are all said and done, isn’t the projects or the tests or the curriculum or the grades. It’s not even the transcripts or the college acceptance or the job offers.
What matters is who my young person is.
And even more … who I am.
So, in a sense, homeschooling is easy. It’s really, really easy, because even people like me and you can and do homeschool every day.
What’s hard is letting God change us, mold us, speak to us, control us each moment. That is the point, no matter what we do, no matter how we educate our students, no matter what our students grow up to do.
When homeschooling seems hard to me, that’s usually what I’m missing — the lesson God is teaching me. But that’s what I need to learn first.
This post is an excerpt from my new book Homeschool Made Easy, now available on Kindle. Get your copy today!
This is so refreshing and beautiful. As a second year homeschooling parent, I’ve struggled letting go of everything I was trained with as a public educator. Not that it was bad, but I’m homeschooling because I don’t want my kids education to look that way (among other reasons) and I want to focus on who they are becoming. I found you through the 31 day writing challenge and look forward to reading the rest of your series, now that it’s over!
I’m so glad this is a help and encouragement. It is a struggle for all of us to change our expectations. (Hugs)
So, which college is your son going to attend? Friend to old friend…
Liberty University.