Become A Homeschooled Mom

(Prepare Your Mind for a Lifestyle of Learning)

By Marilyn Howshall

Every summer, I like to read books on homeschooling, and I often only need to pull some good ones from my own library shelf.  This book is one of those.  I’m not sure if this is my 2^nd or 3^rd reading of it, but it is full of valuable insights, It has caused me to stop and think many times.  It’s the kind of book you can read over and over.

A comment made by Marilyn has really captured my thought processes this weekend.  She says that the mind is the gate keeper to the heart.  She encourages us to become as a homeschooled mom, one that is always learning, so that we have a lot to impart to our children.

She suggests not using a packaged curriculum.  It’s not that she says never to use one, or that the using of one is wrong.  It can be used as a starting point, but there are much more effective and long lasting ways for one to teach our children.

She advocates teaching our children principles in which they can live by.  This gave me some food for thought of things to ponder and mull on. 

Since the mind is the gateway to the heart, she challenged me to be more qualifying in the books I read, and what I let into my heart through them. 

We can only make judgments on what is good for our children based on our own experiences and what our mind has been exposed to.  That is why she urges us to become homeschooled ourselves, and chiefly through the study, not just the reading, of God’s Word.

As much as I have been attempting to paraphrase what she has said, I like the way she puts it much better.

 “We are governed and ruled by the heart.  The heart acts upon what the mind feeds it.  The mind is the door to the heart through which knowledge and ideas enter.  As our minds accumulate impressions over the years they settle deep within us and actually govern all that we do.  The decisions we make and the way we respond to life’s situations right down to the most insignificant happenings are based on what our minds have been fed.  Every decision we make, however minor, stems from what we have been taught.”  (pg. 14)

 When we start homeschooling, we love all the freedom and the choices that we have.

We are walking counter-culture-traditionally.  But because our minds our limited to our own experience of school, we really don’t know what freedom and choices we really do have.  I know that this is a struggle I’ve always had, and continue to search to expand my understanding of better ways to impart knowledge and learning.  I like Marilyn’s thoughts because they help me to go in the direction that I already feel an instinctive need to do so.