At the start of each new school year, I always find myself meditating quite a bit on our homeschooling goals. When we started homeschooling five years ago (this will be our sixth year), God was so gracious to reveal to us right out of the gate how to make our long-term goals spiritual ones, not academic! He showed us how we needed to make sure our children were raised to love God first and be spiritually ready and spiritually and academically equipped to follow His plan for their lives. Since then, we have striven to keep our home and homeschool Christ-centered, and we always evaluate our children's hearts towards God as the "report card" of how we're doing (a daily evaluation!), in addition to assessing their regular academic progress.
Every year, God helps guide each child more specifically, and reveals more to us about how He wants to lead our family through all the homeschooling years. This past week, I was VERY encouraged by reading these few paragraphs from an article by Michael Pearl in the latest No Greater Joy newsletter. The article is addressing the mistake some parents make by over-protecting and over-controlling their children while raising them, hoping to rein in their fleshly desires and keep them "spiritually safe," but failing to equip them to function on their own as responsible adults who can make their own decisions and exercise their own self-control. These paragraphs really inspired me!
What is pitiful is the whole process is done in hopes of getting the perfect will of God, but one vital ingredient is missing—encouraging your children to become responsible, autonomous, well educated, and experienced adults as soon as possible. You should have trained your sons to be men by the time they are fifteen, independent by the time they are eighteen. Your daughters should be capable of living apart from the family by the time they are eighteen and should be allowed to make their own life’s decisions somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Unmarried, grown (18 years old) children may remain at home; it is good if they do; but the parent-child relationship should evolve into an adult-adult relationship by the time they are sixteen to eighteen years old. Parents should have earned the right to give advice, and kids should have grown in wisdom enough to ask for it. But a parent should never invoke his parental authority on a grown kid. It is demeaning to both and akin to not being potty trained.
To teach a student to drive or fly a plane and then always make him be in the company of his parents is degrading. You teach them so they can become independent of you. Whose need is being met when a Father treats a 22-year-old girl like a child, dictating the parameters of her choices?
The glory of a parent is to work himself out of a job, to stand back and see his kids fly solo. I expected to have supplanted myself by the time my kids were eighteen. And so it was. Long before that, I began to confer with them adult to adult. I have stepped back and allowed them to make decisions that I knew were not the best choices, and sometimes I was wrong; they were wiser than I.
To read the rest of this article, titled Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome, click here.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article titled "Preparing Sons and Daughters for Adulthood" and listed all the things I was teaching my sons and daughters. Here is an update of that.
Preparing Sons and Daughters for Adulthood
Here some areas we are or will be training to prepare my son for manhood: Woodworking, construction, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, household repairs, and auto mechanics (cars, mowers, tractors, four-wheelers). Every time Dad works on household repairs, cuts firewood, or works one of our cars or four-wheelers, our two oldest sons are excused from school to go work with Dad. The oldest is now able to do some simple mechanical repairs on his own. And, you wouldn't believe how important and grown-up our three-year-old felt when he removed the loosened lug-nuts from the tires by himself when helping with a brake job! He grunted and acted tough for about two days after that! Right now, they are working on building walk-in closets in the bedrooms, rerouting our dryer vent, collecting the firewood for the winter, and... I forget what else. After one day of instruction, my oldest son finished the task of weather-proofing the play set (cedar). Also, my oldest just got asked to help a friend remodel a new home--mostly installing new kitchen cabinets and appliances, and laying new flooring (laminate wood, linoleum, and carpet).
Here in the country where we live, hunting is a very popular thing both for sport and for necessity. My husband, being raised more in the city, is not much of a hunter yet, but is warming up to it. However, he just mention it to my oldest son and he can hardly sit still. A friend hunted on our property last season and shared all the venison with us, and I spent the winter learning all different ways to cook with it. We LOVED it and can't wait for more (I made homemade summer sausage, too! It was wonderful!) Both my husband and son will be deer hunting this season! Also, when my son heard that muskrat and raccoon skins sell for $12 a piece, and we have two large muskrat homes on our property and coons galore--- Well, let's just say I told him he's on his own on that one. I don't even want to hear about it, see it, or know about it in any way. Ewww…. But I wish him all success!
We are also planning to teach our son and daughter all the basic computer skills: word processing, spreadsheets, database, basic web design, basic programming, and set-up/networking. They have learned some so far, but still have a ways to go. My son is getting old enough to go ahead and start taking some of these as college courses. And now that the "end is in sight" for our eldest, praise God for answering our continued prayers to help us get our son done with all his schooling by helping us find College Plus!
I also encourage my son (and daughter) in caring for his younger brothers and sister. I'm teaching them to teach them and shepherd them--the way they will one day for their own children. We're also starting to have our children write family devotions and share them. I also help them learn how to write down and share their testimonies in a way to encourage others (part of writing class).
My daughter has been my apprentice chef for several years now (she is now 9). Whenever it is dinner time, she is by my side working, helping, learning. We continue to build on her kitchen and cooking skills. I teach her evaluating and reading recipes, adapting recipes, doubling, measuring, mixing, stirring, appliance use, stove use, pans, pots, setting the table-you name it, I want to make sure she knows all I know and even more. She is getting adept at measuring accurately, mixing thoroughly, and seasoning to taste. She is currently--especially now that it's canning season--practicing more on her peeling, dicing, slicing and chopping skills (starting last summer when she helped dice the tomatoes for 50 quarts of homemade salsa). She LOVES being proficient in all these skills. I know it is fulfilling for her, and I explain that it is fulfilling for her because its godly! I love that, on those ocassions when asked, my 9-year-old can fix an entire meal for the family without any help from me at all. Just this morning, she made homemade whole wheat waffles without a smidge of help, and they were delicious. We ate every crumb! She is a fantastic baker, too! This year, as part of her "home ec" class, she will be starting a scrap-book type cookbook using all our favorite and best recipes collected from my custom book, our favorite cook books, and all the ones we have ever clipped from magazines.
Speaking of negative comments, I got called a candy-eating couch-potato (or something like that) the last time I shared information like this. I'm assuming the commenter imagined I treat my children as slaves while I lay around and do nothing. Not only does my daughter just glow with fulfilled purpose and a sense of accomplishment by learning all these things that God designed her to be, but don't people realize how much effort goes into this type of whole-hearted godly training? I feel I would be a couch potato if I failed in training my children in this way! And I would feel that way if I sat around on the couch and bossed them around, rather than providing constant training and direction.
My daughter also helps me manage our family's chore charts, and works with me on my chores, too. I let her help write the checklists and type them into the computer!
Other areas where I am training my daughter: Honor and reverence for daddy and brothers (always seeking to serve and be a blessing), how to plan to be a helpmeet someday, how to plan and organize the homeschool (she helped me get it set up for all the children this year, including the curriculum and supplies), sewing, gardening, canning and preserving, home decorating, embroidery, card-making, letter-writing, writing, shopping, budgeting, household chores and management (vacuuming, dusting, cleaning of all kinds, organizing, sorting, getting rid, how to have a yard sale), infant care, child care, teaching, piano, voice lessons, and other musical instruments, typing, and how to design simple documents in a word processor by choosing fonts, font sizes, etc., data entry (how to make a spreadsheet-she has already done some of these, too), hair cutting (what little girl doesn't love cutting hair), hair styling, choosing clothes for all family members, training and correcting her younger siblings, time management, first aid, crocheting, quilting, … that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
My daughter LOVES crocheting right now. Family members will be receiving scarves, afghans, and other various crocheted items this year as gifts! What a blessing!
Also, another fun thing I have done with my daughter: This year, (and this is the second or third time we have done this), while Daddy and older brother were out of town for 10 days on a fishing trip, I went on a mommy diet (still had 30 pounds of baby weight to lose-HAD! PTL!) and put her in sole charge of menu-planning, shopping, and cooking for herself and her little brother (3yo). For 10 days, she managed the kitchen single-handedly and did a GREAT job. She and her little brother grew so close as she cooked especially for him lots of special things that they normally do not eat that were just for the two of them (really special was getting frozen dinners with mac-n-cheese, fish sticks, and broccoli--he loved that!). What a great practice for her!
Well, as always, I cannot thank God or praise Him enough for His continued hand in our lives, His continued guidance, and His continued answered prayers. Lord, keep us in Your will! |
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Sep. 8, 2008 - Untitled Comment