The Disease

Homeschoolers, new or old, are immediately afflicted by the same disease.

Are we doing enough?  

Will my children be able to function socially?

Am I going to cover everything my children need to know to give them the opportunity to go where God leads them?

Doubt is a dreadful disease, and it can steal the joy that makes homeschooling so special.

I graduated from my mother's homeschool and went on to a successful post secondary career where I felt prepared to explore the academic choices available to me...and I can hold down my end of a conversation...or I could until I had 539 children.

Did I do everything, read everything, play with only wooden toys and end my days snuggling hand-felted, neutral-expressioned dolls.  Nope.  And we worried and fretted every year about whether or not my bothers and I would be able to assimilate to higher education...

So...

Homeschooling family, I give you permission to sink deeply into each day, love each other more than your schedule, stop looking around in fear and learn to see the moments in each day that matter.

Yes, you must slog through the basics, but after you check that box, there might just be a honeybee on a flower that unfolds a science lesson before you in just the gentle way that will capture your child's mind and heart.

Of course this life is hard.  Of course kids will cry and pitch fits.  Of course you will worry and wonder.  Of course the little ones will bother the big ones.  Of course the laundry will pile up.  But, perfection is not why you entered into this path.  Graduation is not the real goal.

When I graduated from my homeschooling experience this is what I found: the sum total of the facts I learned were secondary to the slowly, quietly, peripherally acquired skill of wonder.

So, from time to time the lesson plans, sensory bins, extra-curriculars and perfectly coordinated unit studies get trampled by life, but school is long and durable and children grow and change each day.  

When doubt threatens your joy, look at those faces so prone to wonder, and find a honeybee

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