On Friday, I was at
Embracing Momminess. Unlike some of the other blog tour stops, we talked quite a bit about homeschooling (there's an appendix in
To Love, Honor and Vacuum for homeschoolers, though most who read it are not homeschoolers!) Here's a bit of our conversation:
I have a lot of friends and family members who homeschool their kids. I have thought about the idea myself. If a mom is considering homeschooling, what are the three most important things she needs to know?
Number one, before all doubt, is where the stash of chocolate is hidden. There are times you’re going to need it.
Number two, and this is what I really get at in my appendix for homeschoolers, is that as soon as you homeschool you can’t fake it. You can’t let discipline slide. You can’t let housework slide, at least not too much. You can’t let organization slide or you will totally lose it. I remember once I walked in to a friend’s home and found it absolutely immaculate. I felt like a 2-inch high slug. My home didn’t look that good the day I moved in! But as I was talking to my dear hubby about it, he remarked that both my friend and her husband worked full-time. The kids were with baby-sitters. They didn’t get home until 6:00. There simply wasn’t time to mess up the house! When you’re homeschooling, you have time. Believe me.
And if homeschooling is going to work, you need to achieve at least organized chaos. Chaotic chaos won’t cut it, because you’ll start biting you kids’ heads off. So you need to have a plan to get the house tidied (and that plan should not involve you doing all the work!). And you need to discipline so the kids respect you. Otherwise they will spend their entire day whining and falling out of chairs. Well, the falling out of chairs thing, I think, still happens no matter what. But you have to deal with the whining. The reason most homeschooling families stop schooling is not actually to do with academic problems. It’s to do with basic parenting issues: the kids won’t listen; the house is chaotic; I can’t stand the noise. So to be a good homeschooler, you have to be a good parent. That’s really all there is to it.
Number three, you need to know that it’s best for the kids. Really know it. Read about homeschooling a lot before you do it. Read about the public school system and all its failings. Pray tons about it. If you’re sure this is what you should be doing, you’re far more likely to stick it through and not second guess yourself.
Okay, can I add a fourth? I’ll be quick, I promise. Realize that you don’t have to recreate school. You just have to create an environment for learning. Some years we stop official school in March because they’ve completed their goals for the year. Some years we’ve gone through to July. We have them in different grade levels for different subjects. We’ve skipped whole grade levels if they get the concept. We don’t make them do endless worksheets. The measure of their learning is not the number of worksheets completed. It’s whether they know how to teach themselves at the end of the process. And regular school doesn’t teach that, so why should you copy regular school?
And then today I'll be visiting Rebecca Powell, a fellow Christian author. Go by
her blog later in the day to check it out!
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