Dreading the Start of School

                                                          Fall 2006

As the start of school draws near every summer/fall, I hear homeschooling moms say over and over how they are either (1) dreading the start of school (for various reasons cited below) or (2) welcoming the first of school so they can have some semblance of order again! The ones who say they are dreading the start of school often cite many reasons for this, but these reasons usually fall into a few definite categories. It is these reasons for dreading school that I would like to address in these “thoughts.”

Reason #1: Hard to get back into a routine. The funny thing about this reason is that as many people who cite it for a reason to not want to get back into school also cite it as a reason to want to get back into school---they want the order and routine that a school schedule affords. I won’t spend a lot of time on this reason since I discuss it below in my Ten Tips for a Great School Year Part I article, but I will say that the more order and schedule you develop in your children’s lives all of the time, the easier it will be to get back into school each fall.

Reason #2: Dreading dealing with the discipline issues involved in making children do what they need to do in school. I have dealt with this through the years many times, so I understand how this feels. There have been times in my homeschooling life that I dreaded getting out of bed in the morning because I didn’t want to deal with a child’s behavior or lack of cooperation. It is a terrible feeling—one that homeschoolers, especially, cannot afford to have. We are responsible for our children’s education, and if there are character, behavior, or cooperation issues, it will make it impossible (or nearly so) to provide our children with a good education.

As Christian parents, we have an obligation before the Lord to try to turn our children’s behavior problems around. The Bible makes it clear that we are disobeying if we do not discipline our children. If our child’s attitudes or behavior makes it such that we dread school, we have to do something about it.

As I mentioned earlier, this dread of school due to behavior issues (in two year olds and twelve years---all ages) has happened to me many times throughout the years. Thankfully, Ray is a better disciplinarian than I am, and no discipline problem has been too big for him yet, so that has helped me turn things around a lot. But in general, we talk through the situation, trying to pinpoint the root of the problem (in a two year old, too many choices too early; in a twelve year old boy, the need for Ray to take over much of the accountability and follow-through; my lack of consistency; an overemphasis on academics while neglecting character; too much busy-ness; too many peer-related activities, etc. etc.) and try to act on it. It usually takes both of us working hard to solve the problem, and sometimes I don’t even realize it has been solved—I just wake up and realize that I no longer dread dealing with that child—and I look forward to school again.

I cannot emphasize enough the need to get a handle on the discipline problems in our children. I am amazed at the number of homeschoolers who dislike dealing with their children. Everything is a battle; every assignment another argument; every chore another task to be debated; every rule another reason to complain. I don’t know how a mom can handle homeschooling with ongoing discipline problems like those. Don’t get me wrong. Every family has its moments; every homeschool has its moments; every child has his moments; for that matter, every mother has her moments. However, every day should not be a battle that has to be fought or an hour-by-hour struggle.

I know I sound like a broken record, and I am sorry for that. I just want homeschoolers everywhere to succeed. I want to help homeschooling families raise children who love the Lord and serve others and Jesus Christ. I want to raise children who love the Lord and serve others and Jesus Christ. This is nearly impossible in a home in which children rule. I cannot emphasize enough the need for homeschooling parents to get help with their discipline problems. Check out Gary Ezzo’s Growing Kids God’s Way, James Dobson’s Strong-Willed Child, SM Davis parenting tapes, Reb Bradley’s materials, or others. Get into a parenting support group or small group, especially one filled with homeschoolers who have the same goals you have. We went through Growing Kids God’s Way (GKGW) a dozen years ago with fellow homeschoolers (and then led some other GKGW groups), and it literally changed nearly every family in it. We still share our successes and goals as a result of taking that class together.

Reason #3: Too much summer freedom for Mom! Homeschooling moms deserve breaks! I say Friday lunch out and scrapbooking for all homeschooling moms around the world every week! J Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Those with younger children find it difficult to find someone to care for the littles. School doesn’t just happen without mom there to supervise. Those with older children often find it challenging to get away without the older children needing something—either taken to lessons, tutored, or discipled. Homeschooling moms are busy people!

Because of the demands of homeschooling, I see many moms shutting down in the summer—in more ways than just academically. We are all ready by May to turn our attention to other things. For many of us, we just need some time off from school to get household projects done that simply didn’t get done during the school year. For others, it is a time to enjoy the sun and traveling. Whatever the reason, we can, if we are not careful, shut down as mothers too.

Moms whose children are involved in summer sports and activities can find themselves separated from their children as much as if the children were in school. Without realizing what is happening, we start shuttling kids to their things in the summer, and then we are no longer teacher, and sometimes no longer mom (in terms of meeting emotional and spiritual needs, disciplining, and training). It becomes easy to not have to deal with sibling disputes (they’re each on a different team), undone chores (easier to do ourselves while the kids are at practice), uncooperativeness (they cooperate for summer teachers and coaches), and more. We go to the games, sit in the stands and visit with friends, then take everyone home and start again the next day. Before we know it, fall is over, and we have to resume our many roles—after having had time to garden, tan, read, and visit with friends. (I’m not saying any of that is bad; it is just different than our normal routine and makes it difficult to want to get back to the hard work of school.)

Even if our children are not being shuttled to activities all summer, they might play with neighbor kids, go to camp, go swimming, or fish with grandpa more than usual—and we get some much-needed free time to finally read or nap some afternoons. Or we decide (as I have in the past) that I’m going to scrapbook every week this summer—I haven’t gotten to scrapbook in four months, and I owe this to myself. Regardless of the circumstances, summer free time for Mom can make the start of school look less than inviting!

It is too late this fall, but I urge you to evaluate your summer activities carefully next summer. Be sure training is still ongoing, so you don’t have a lot of undoing to do once school starts. Be sure you have a good balance of activities—not too much peer interaction for kids nor too much extravagance for Mom. Either extreme can make school books and lesson plans seem overwhelming come September.

Reason #4: Feelings of inadequacy. I describe in great detail the dangers of comparing ourselves with others in our prioritizing tape (and I do not have space in this newsletter to convince you that it is not a good thing to do), so I won’t go into a lot of detail about that now. I also realize that no matter how often we are reminded of the dangers of comparing ourselves to others, we all still have lapses into that damaging pastime. So….I instead will address the result of comparing: feelings of inadequacy.

As homeschooling moms we can have feelings of inadequacy in any number of areas—our children’s character, our children’s academic achievements (or lack thereof), the season of life we are in, teaching not being a strength, and much more. I won’t spend much time on our children’s character making us feel inadequate. We have all been there—everybody else’s kids are perfect, and ours are impossible! I fell into this rut so much when my older kids were younger that they actually acted good in order to keep me from stressing out! (We now talk about it in great detail and I realize how damaging that can be to kids; I don’t repeat that with my younger ones.) Character issues make us not want to start school at all (as described above). Of course, the anecdote is not skipping school this year! It is digging in and facing the behavior and character issues as described in the article below.

A major area of feelings of inadequacy in homeschooling moms is that of our children’s academic achievements. We often dread starting school if we have a child with a learning problem. It is tough to face. We are sure that we are ruining that child. (Been there, done that!)

First of all, we have to understand that many, many homeschoolers have children with learning problems. (We always think others’ situations are ideal, and this just isn’t so.) I have had two children who did not learn to read until they were nearly nine—and one of which who never learned to spell above about a junior high level due to learning difficulties. Learning to read and write was a struggle with each of these children. I have one now who is over eight years old and still struggling with short vowel families. I can become discouraged, sure that he would be better off in school, or I can keep pressing on and try to make reading happen for him.

Second of all, we have to believe (see writing your homeschool vision in the article below!) that homeschooling our children is God’s best. We have to believe that not sending them away to school is truly superior. We might need help along the way (there are sources of help for those dealing with vision/tracking difficulties and dyslexic tendencies nowadays that were not available to me fifteen years ago), but our children belong at home with us.

We are brainwashed into believing that “real” teachers can do a better job with our children than we can. To that, I have two answers: (1) Nobody knows and loves your child more than you; and (2) Real teachers are not necessarily good at teaching.  I was a trained teacher, nearly finished with a reading specialist’s master’s degree (and I had a 4.0 grade point average) when my second child was learning to read. Yet I had no idea how to help her. Public school teachers learn to teach by teaching (not from teacher’s training in college)—the same way homeschool teachers learn to teach. (Teachers learn classroom management, grouping children, lesson planning, scheduling, bulletin board and game making, and similar things in college.)

My latest inadequacy has been interesting: that of feeling inadequate because of my season of life. I feel like a “has been”! I envy young moms so much and find myself crying because I’m no longer one of them. (I’m not sad because of my age; I’ve never been one to care about getting older in terms of numbers; however, I do care that I will never be a mother of young children again.) What a strange thing! Young moms wish they were in a different season (one that looks easier to them from a distance), and older moms long for the “good ol’ days.” I don’t have a real solution for this inadequacy—especially not in the fall of the year when my season of life and past losses are the most pronounced. I do know that despite my feelings of inadequacy in this area, I must enjoy the season that I am in (which I do) and not let those feelings of inadequacy get in the way of having a terrific school year! J

Because I love teaching (and I love learning how to teach as I go through the years teaching my children and tutoring), I have never dreaded the start of school because of my not enjoying teaching. However, I have come to look at this whole “all homeschoolers have to love teaching school” concept differently in years past. It suddenly dawned on me how blessed I am to be homeschooling since I love teaching so much. I mean, teaching is fun! I adore it. When my older kids were little and Ray worked twelve hour days, I used to “do school” eight to ten hours a day most days. It was my hobby.

Anyway, then I began thinking about moms who studied biology or business (or anything other than teaching), and it hit me: not all homeschooling moms love teaching. (Okay, I’m a slow learner!) There are many whose major area of interest is not education. There are those who would rather draw blood and analyze it (aghh..) than teach school. There are those who enjoy working on computers (double aghh..) rather than educating. There are those who would rather do almost anything than teach (like I would rather do anything than draw blood or work on computers!).

If it is dealing with or biblically training your children that causes you to dread starting school, then you need to take that up with the Lord. He doesn’t leave those things as options according to whether we enjoy them or not. We are called to those.

However, I also feel that we are called to homeschool. Does that mean that every homeschooler has to love teaching academics? I don’t necessarily believe this is true anymore. There is so much more to homeschooling than teaching math lessons. If it is the actual “teaching” that is causing you to dread school, and you can afford to get some video classes, cd studies, internet courses, and/or pace-type workbooks for your children, I say, go for it. Just because you homeschool does not mean that you have to “teach” six subjects a day to each child.

A major part of homeschool success stems from doing what works for you and your family. If getting a video teacher or self-teaching program helps you meet your homeschool goals, you should do it. If teaching eight hours a day works for you, you should do that. All homeschoolers are teachers—teachers of God’s Word and ways, teachers of character, teachers of life principles, and much more. Just because you don’t like teaching math does not mean that you should dread starting school.

So…what’s making you dread the start of school? Let whatever it is go, and enjoy your school year. There are great things in store for you and your children as you learn together at home! J

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