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First things, first. I'm alone at home, with a cold, laying on the couch, with my laptop. Translation: I'm on a soapbox (with foggy brain) and this will be long!!!! So, for those of you who are brave and want to continue, be my guest and please excuse the typos. If the rest of you are crunched for time, I'll understand if you go visit someone else. Now that you've been warned.... For those of you who are new to reading my blog, you have figured out that this actually has nothing to do with real flowers but is a reference back to my title which is explained in my very first blog . It's been a while since I wrote that article (almost 3 years), so I thought I would revisit the subject a bit since my "flowers" are almost done blooming and starting to grace the world with their beauty. It's been 13 years now since I started homeschooling, and if there's only one thing I've learned and would impress on anyone coming up through the ranks of homeschooling --- Please! Please! Please! Train them up in the way THEY should go -- not the way that anyone else (including us) thinks they should go. It breaks my heart everytime I see a homeschool mom with wilting flowers and doesn't realize that she's the one that's killing them. It's a terrible thing to plant a chrysanthemum in your crocus bed, water and care for it like your crocuses, trample it in the garden when it doesn't bloom "on time", and then have the audacity to punish the flower and blame it on a "lack of motivation" or a "spiritual" problem. They use the same curriculum on all their flowers, put them in all the same activities, and do what all the other homeschool moms do. Of course some flowers will thrive and others will wilt. But these moms hope or expect that if their Chrysanthemum spends enough time in the example and presence of the Crocus, then he/she will become one. The only thing worse they can do is to show their disappointment because he/she didn't turn out to be a crocus. It happens far too often. Rather than seeing the student as a thriving, beautiful example of a Chrysanthemum, all they see is a failure of a Crocus. What a tragedy. My 21yo Crocus recently wrote an article about the stereotype of homeschoolers by the outside world as seen in the movie "Horton Hears a Who". But his very first paper in college was about the stereotype and pressure put on homeschoolers, not from outside their community, but from within it. How many of you have see the youtube clip about "A Homeschool Family"? There's some truth to this. Often, you're only considered a true success if your kids a going to college at the age of 16 on a full scholarship. Anything less is considered just "average". And heaven help those who don't go to college! My 21yo Crocus is a success by "homeschoolers" standards and suffers from the prejudice from the outside world. My 17yo Chysanthemum is the exact opposite and suffers from the prejudice from within our world. She didn't read until she was 11, is academically a grade or two (or three) behind her peers, can't spell to save her soul, and will probably "flunk" any written test you give her. By standard "homeschooler" expectations, she is "behind" or "failing". I think she's AWESOME. But, at 17, people are always asking her what she plans to study after highschool. I think if one more person chastises and crucifies her for not wanting to go to college after highscool, she's going to punch someone! She never has (and probably never will be) the university type. She is an artist, a free-spirit, a designer, a photographer, and an entreprenuer. She is a right-brained person trapped in a left-brained world. She expresses herself in unspoken and unwritten form, but not in an uneducated one. To force her into the world of textbooks & research papers is just a formula for failure. So, why would I ever want to train her up to be College Student? I'm training her up to be what G-d wants her to be and I will encourage HER talents, HER gifts, HER ideas, and not count any of them as useless, wrong, or meaningless. She will (and does) get and "F" on just about every history test she takes, and that's okay. I don't even say a word about it. She gets an "A" on her history projects and enjoys learning and writing it intor her stroies. But I know that she will get's an "A" on every photograph or sewing project she submits. She's wonderful at working with children and is great at what she does. So I don't bother her about her "academics" grades, because I know that's not where she's going. I ecourage, praise and push her in her business skills and the design elements of her stories and photographs. This is what has and will make my Chrysanthemum bloom into a lovely Chrysanthemum. There is a scipture that says "Delight yourself in the ways of the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." I think far too many people interpret that incorrectly to mean that if we include G-d in everything we do, He will give us whatever we want. I think it means that if we focus on G-d, delighting in his ways and teachings versus mans, then He will gives us desires in our heart that will lead us down the path He has planned for us. I remember when Crocus was just entering HighSchool and, like many homeschool moms, was panicing about everything he had to do to get into college. At that time, I was studying the Torah (pentatuch to many of you) and looking for direction from G-d for what to teach him and how! To my amazement, I discovered that the only thing as a parent that I was expected to teach him was "to love the Lord, his G-d, with all his strength, with all his soul, and with all his might." and I was to do that be teaching him (and her) "when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.." Nowhere in scripture could I find anything about Algebra or Chemistry, textbooks and research papers. So I didn't worry about any of those things. I train them in Torah, and compassion, in living in the world as G-d had commanded, I put full trust in G-d that if he wanted my son or daughter to go to university, then he would put that desire in their heart (not mine) and that the requirements to do would be met through the path we were taking. Crocus had the desire to go to university. I "relaxed" or "unschooled" him the entire time. He got 5 of his HighSchool credits from a box, and he had a very unusual transcript. He's graduating from college in 6 weeks and his career and opportunities continue to bloom and take him where I'm sure G-d wants him to go. But, I could have killed that Crocus, too. I could have forced him to finger paint and take art lessons, and chastised him for not staying in the lines. Instead he did research on art history and fell in love with VanGogh. I let him quit piano lessons after only one year, and let him sing in the choir instead. I could have forced him to learn only from Textbook A pp. 101-135, do a research paper and a silly crossword puzzle; instead he watched CSPAN and British House of Commons on cable and memorized all the capitals of every country in the world. I could have demanded he finish the World History homework instead of being in the local HighSchool musical (I let him get an F in history and letter in Drama). I could have made him take Algebra II (I didn't, Algebra I was enough of a nightmare), Rather, I let him do an internship for the GOP and he took remedial algebra in college. I could have made him practice his penmanship, instead of teaching him to type. I encouraged his love of learning, never told him to wait until next year when we study that, and I always encouraged his genius and helped him with the difficult areas. That's how you make a this Crocus bloom. But I can guarantee, he is no Chrysanthemum, and sometimes I wish he were more like her! But he is what he is and she is what she is. And I'm so proud of what both of them have become...successful in their own right. In closing, I admonishes all of us to "Train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from it". Help them to grow and follow the path G-d is putting them on. To try to turn our children into something the world thinks they should be, would mean to deprive the world of what they were meant to be. Thanks for the soapbox time, |
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