Start Homeschooling for One Reason, but Continue for Another

October 28, 2004 by Leave a Comment

The “last straw” that finally convinced us to begin homeschooling was hearing homeschool advocate Gregg Harris on a local talk-radio program. He was promoting an upcoming seminar (which my husband and I quickly made arrangements to attend) and was giving myriad reasons why a growing number of families were choosing to educate their children at home.

The seemingly trivial reasons that actually caught my attention dealt with the hassles caused by public school’s time schedules. We had found that public school activities and programs frequently kept our children up past their bedtimes, causing them to be difficult to start off again the next morning. Mr. Harris touched on the rush to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and get to school on time — a continual struggle at our house. He light-heartedly mentioned that homeschooling removes all those rush-rush problems: if you find yourselves up too late at night, sleep in a little the next day, and then begin school on your own timetable. School lunches would no longer be offensive to picky eaters: Mom’s cooking would always be readily available. Homework would also disappear as an after-school trauma: enough time could be allotted during each subject to do all the work necessary for the day’s lesson. I found myself much more interested in homeschooling after hearing just a few of these statements by Mr. Harris, reasons that I had not personally considered before.

For many years we had known families who homeschooled. We met the first ones when our daughter was a year old. We currently had several families in our church who homeschooled, making no lack of people to turn to for support and encouragement. I had never considered homeschooling as an option for us until this point, when, suddenly, homeschooling looked like the solution to many of the problems plaguing our household.

The primary reasons for homeschooling that we gave to family and friends were health-related. They all knew that our daughter had been plagued by tremendous headaches for several years and sympathized with our need to make a drastic lifestyle change for her sake. She often could not endure an entire day at school: once her headache became intense, the noise of the classroom was intolerable and she needed to come home for relief. She was always able to do some subjects without difficulty, but others critically depended on her ability to concentrate. We had been to doctor after doctor, endured all sorts of tests, tried a variety of medicines (to no avail), and fought ten rounds with the schools over attendance policies (even though her grades never lagged). We even changed from one public school to another in an attempt to find an administration that would listen to us and help us cope. When the school nurse declared that a child who did not run a temperature or vomit was not actually “sick,” we knew we had finally reached the end of that rope. Something drastic had to happen. Homeschooling provided an ideal solution: our daughter could do schoolwork during the hours when she felt well, and she could lie down to rest when she felt ill without conflicting with anyone. She could do the easy subjects any day and save the harder subjects for the days when her head could tolerate intense concentration. (Along with our adaptation to homeschooling came a change in diet, prompted by much research into the various probable causes of headaches, resulting in success in controlling her headaches and other related symptoms.)

As our first year of homeschooling passed and we began our second year, we became more enthusiastic about learning at home. We were shaking off most of the public school trappings of schedules and preconceived ideas of what certain academic subjects should resemble. We were becoming independent in our homeschooling. We attended field trips, play days, and family potlucks with other homeschoolers. We took days off to have spontaneous family days with Dad. We drew closer as a family unit; we enjoyed each other’s company. We began to see other, deeper reasons for homeschooling.

I had read about people who said they homeschooled for “religious reasons.” I was not sure I understood that at the time, thinking they must be much more radical in their faith than I was, but now I was beginning to see their point of view. Public school had a very anti-family overtone to it that was not voiced aloud, just understood: they were the professional educators; we could not possibly pass anything of importance on to our children. Personal Christian values were pushed aside at public school, even by teachers who were themselves faithful, believing Christians. By homeschooling, we could make our beliefs the most important aspect anytime, all the time, if we wanted. We could ignore the witches and hobgoblins of Halloween. We could be truly thankful for God’s blessings at Thanksgiving. We could take time to celebrate “Christmas,” and not “Winter Break.” We could sing songs with their original words and not the carefully rewritten, politically correct lyrics we were so often forced to endure in public school programs.

Although we had begun homeschooling for the reasons of caring for our daughter’s health and adapting family-friendly scheduling, we soon began to realize that our Christian faith played a dramatic part in our reasons to continue homeschooling. We thoroughly enjoyed being able to concentrate on creation science and point out the difficulties with evolutionary theories. We could count Christian fiction as literature, not just as pleasure reading material only to be indulged in during one’s private hours. We designated a large block of time each day to Mom reading aloud from Christian books — a huge children’s book of Bible stories, the Chronicles of Narnia series, the Little House series, Frank Peretti’s Cooper Kids series, and many others. We discussed our faith, what made it important to us, and how we saw it being strengthened through homeschooling. We could tie in scripture to any subject where we saw an application, without fearing that we might offend another student or violate an administrative policy. We sadly watched public school friends become increasingly influenced by peer pressure in all areas of their lives, including Christians who made choices contrary to their faith.

We made the decision to homeschool based on one set of reasons, primarily health related. We continued our decision to homeschool based on another set of reasons, primarily the freedom to practice our chosen religion in every facet of our lives.

Filed Under: Deciding to Homeschool, Family Unity, Leaving Public School

Choose Your Battles

October 22, 2004 by Leave a Comment

As a parent, you realize this child-rearing business is war. However, your opponent is not your children; your opponent is every evil influence that tries to come between you and your children. The winning strategy in this war is to choose which battles you want to fight. Some battles are much more easily won than others are. Some battles are not worth your time and energy at all.

We went to church one warm, Sunday morning. There in the entry hall was another family greeting everyone who came in, but never acknowledging the appearance of their young son. Little Man stood proudly beside Mom and Dad in his Hawaiian shirt, soccer shorts, and cowboy boots. It was a moving moment for me to watch each family walk in, dressed in their “Sunday best,” greet Mom and Dad, glance down at Little Man, and then smile at the parents with only a silent nod as they moved on into the sanctuary. When one person did finally question Dad as to the unusual attire, Dad just chuckled and said, “You have to choose your battles.” The battle over shorts with cowboy boots was just not worth fighting, especially since this was merely a 4-year-old boy.

My son (at age 14) wanted to bleach his hair. A friend from church was known for bleaching his own hair often and offered to do my son’s at no charge. I am partial to naturally beautiful hair (like my son’s) but agreed to let him do this once. (Famous Last Words — The bleached hair phase actually lasted about 3 years, then progressed into the how-long-can-I-grow-an-Afro phase, and is now followed by the hey-look-a-goatee phase.) Hair grows out. Bleach it, dye it, shave it, grow it out — hair is flexible. Piercings and tattoos are a different story. I do not permit anything that permanently disfigures. After all, wedding pictures can be humiliating enough after a few years; they do not need any help from artificial adornments.

Shortly after my son’s first bleach job (just the tips: light blond on his nearly black, oh-so-wavy hair), we were shopping in a large department store. The clerk who rang up my purchases felt compelled to comment on my son’s appearance. She did not like it. She did not think I should have allowed him to do it. Her son had wanted to bleach his hair, and she said NO. “So what did he do? He went right out and got a tattoo and two piercings!” I smiled and replied, “Hair grows out. I can live with it.”

Back when my dear son was a darling little boy discovering a mind of his own, I had daily (make that hourly) battles with him over everything you can imagine. One particular day, we were going head-to-head over some long-since-forgotten subject. I was frantically praying for guidance in this current set-to, when I clearly heard The Voice I was calling out to. “This is a critical battle — hold your ground for just 30 seconds more,” was the directive. “Yeah, like that will make a difference,” was my instinctive reply, but I hung in there. It only took about 17 more seconds, and my strong-willed son caved. Mom won a very important victory that day. It was a turning point for us in the “Who’s In Charge Here” department. All the battles since that day have been negligible.

I watched other parents interacting with their children before I had my own and later as mine were growing up — keeping abreast of what phases were coming next and how to (or not to) handle them. I watched parents draw a hard line on simple things, only to lose the battle to a much more serious attack. One teenaged boy from our church wanted very much to put gel in his hair, but his ultra-conservative father protested. The boy used every substance he could find in the house on his hair, from vegetable shortening to toothpaste. If only the father had given in on allowing what he considered a “cosmetic,” he may have saved himself from the pain to come. The father and son battled throughout the high school years, until the son finally left for college — not the college the son had chosen, where all of his supportive friends were going, but the college where Mom and Dad had attended and fell in love with each other. The son soon returned home as a college drop-out, dressed in total rebellion, and behaving in ways that put the hair gel battle in its proper perspective. If only Dad had wisely chosen his battles…

I read somewhere once that children need a little rebellion to help them discover their own identities. The secret is to allow them to have small rebellions so that they do not need large rebellions. Hair grows out — hair is a small rebellion. I allowed the bleached hair to avoid the need for any larger rebellion.

Many parents make the mistake of thinking that they have to win every battle, every time, on every subject in order to maintain their authority. I think they are wrong. All they will succeed in maintaining is a dictatorship. Surprise your children once in a while by letting them have their way in something that amounts to a small battle — it will save you from a much larger battle later on.

Filed Under: Behavior, Discipline, Family Unity, Parenting

A Valuable Jump-Start in Math

October 18, 2004 by Leave a Comment

My son continually reiterated his aversion to math: he protested over and over that he hated doing math. I saw through his arguments, though, because he had never met a math problem that was too difficult for him to understand. What he hated, in reality, was the time it took for him to do his math. To him that was valuable time that could have been spent on much more enjoyable endeavors. We tried holding math until last each day, thinking that would help him get through it more quickly. (“Ten more problems and you can go play.”) We tried skipping every other problem. We tried everything we could think of. Finally, the years rolled (crawled?) by.

We did not attempt to complete each Saxon book in just one year. I am not sure that he ever completed a Saxon book in the prescribed time, but since we had started his math career with Miquon Math, he had a jump-start on Saxon. I had found Miquon through a glowing review in Mary Pride’s Big Book of Home Learning. Miquon consists of 6 workbooks, done 2 per year for grades 1-3. Holding my son down to only two pages per day at that time, he still finished 3 workbooks per year, completing 3rd grade math by the end of his 2nd grade year. (Those books he loved doing and often begged for more.) Mary Pride had lauded Miquon for giving her children the foundation required for stepping directly from Miquon’s final 3rd grade book into Saxon’s 6/5 (6th grade) book. She was right. My son also made that move with no academic difficulty — just his personal distaste for sitting still and working problems, but this was a 9-year-old boy.

Since he began Saxon so far ahead of schedule, I allowed him to do half a lesson each day, spreading the book out over 2 years. Following that routine, I theorized that, by the time he got to high school, he would be right on track, and by then he should be well able to handle the full lesson each day. However, since he still grasped every concept remarkable quickly, we skipped over some of the repetition in the problem sets (he did often one problem instead of all 3 when they were all of the same type).

Let’s skip ahead now in this story to the point when we arrived at Saxon Advanced Mathematics — the equivalent of pre-calculus and higher math than I had personally taken. The best way for me to teach it to him was to learn it myself first, so I studied each lesson and did the entire problem set myself each day. I have always loved math anyway, so this was something I did not dread. Math class then became a race for my son, trying to see if he could get it done before Mom did. (Larger families certainly have a distinct advantage of built-in competition!) We were proceeding on the author’s recommended two-year plan through that book, right on schedule as summer approached. My daughter then found she needed pre-calculus as a prerequisite for one of her fall college classes and challenged her brother to take it with her in the community college’s upcoming summer term. He jumped at the chance to complete all of next year’s math in only one month and enrolled immediately.

Warning! The super-fast pace of college summer school is not for everyone! With barely enough extra time to eat, sleep, and shower, the two of them spent nearly every waking moment doing the homework assignments, in addition to the 5 hours of class time each day, 4 days a week. Four long weeks later, they were finished and so proud of themselves for persevering through it! My son had the added accomplishment of tutoring several other students through the tough parts, and he was only 15 years old at the time! His outlook on math was changed significantly: he was forced by the pace of that class to speed himself up, he enjoyed the competition with other students, and he finally saw himself as truly gifted in understanding math, something he had overlooked previously because he was so distracted by the time factor. He realized his “gift” when he found he could recite answers to problems done in his head (the Miquon way) faster than other students could punch the numbers into their calculators.

As you can tell, I have the highest praise for Miquon Math. I truly feel it gave my son a foundation of “thinking” math, not just “doing” math. My daughter did not have the benefit of that foundation, and although I did teach her some of the Miquon thinking processes, she still does not have the ability to see through a problem the way my son does. Please understand — my daughter has great mathematical understanding and has tutored college-level statistics, but my son has kept the definite headstart he received from Miquon. (End of sales pitch — too bad I’m not getting commissions from Miquon!)

Filed Under: Curriculum Choices, Math

Spoken Destinies & Learned Behaviors

October 14, 2004 by Leave a Comment

“I just HAVE to keep moving and making noise! That’s what my mom says.” I heard these words with my own ears. What was more surprising to me was the realization that this 10-year-old boy had taken his mother’s observation and turned it into an assignment. Moms and Dads, be careful that your idle comments and observations do not become “spoken destinies” as this mom’s had. Children will learn to behave exactly as you say you want them to, as this boy had done. Unfortunately for this family, the words were not intended to express an expectation of the future, but just to be a summation of past experiences.

“‘Turn at the red flowers’ — that’s an ADHD-marker.” Why was it not considered simply “being aware of one’s surroundings” or “noticing a landmark” since the street sign was missing? It seems apparent that the family responsible for this remark expects ADHD-type behavior and watches for any little sign that can be attributed to it. Never mind the fact that the same boy who knows the turn is marked by red flowers also can sit calmly during an entire 2-hour movie without a wiggle, and he can focus intently on a subject of his own choosing. It seems to me that this student has incredible powers of concentration — powers that simply need to be taught how to focus on different subjects at different times.

A dear “church lady” told me the following story in order to teach me, a new mom, a thing or two about raising my children. She had been the babysitter for many children over many years and had learned much wisdom in the process. I greatly appreciated her insight and put it to use as often as possible. She had one particularly ingenious little boy in her care at the time and had caught him trying to reach the cookie jar by climbing on a kitchen chair that he had pushed over to the counter in order to facilitate his endeavor. When she had removed him from the chair and replaced the chair at the kitchen table, she told him, “Do not push that chair over there again.” A few minutes later, she realized her error as she heard an extended scraping noise and concluded that he was pushing a chair from the dining room all the way into the kitchen. The woman made sure I understood that this boy was not being disobedient — he was doing exactly according to her command. The error was, in fact, hers for not telling him all chairs, stools, and other climbable furniture were not to be used; the cookie jar was off limits.

I had a similar experience in a college computer-programming class. My program would not run corrrectly, and after much frustration I finally turned to the teacher for help. He took one quick glance at my notes and smiled, saying, “Machines are stupid. They can only do exactly what you tell them to do.” I checked back through the program and soon found my error — I had told it to do the wrong thing, and the machine was merely obeying my commands.

The point of these seemingly unrelated stories is that we need to be cautious of our words and our actions, lest they work against us. Although our children are not machines and are not “stupid,” they are to a certain extent “programmable” and can be heavily influenced by our words. We can unknowingly, unintentionally fight against our own best plans by simply tossing about a few careless phrases. Our words are like bricks: they can build up great fortresses or they can become weapons of random destruction. A few well-chosen, positive words can do wonders for our children’s behavior and attitudes. Words of confidence can instill hope in a child and the strength to try a difficult task one more time, the time that results in success.

Filed Under: Behavior, Family Unity, Parenting, Roadblocks to Learning

Help! My Student Finished the Book Too Fast!

October 12, 2004 by Leave a Comment

This question appeared in my email box one day: What would or did you do when your children zoomed through a book with only one problem? He did great except for the part where he had to read a riddle and figure out what the answer was. He didn’t know what “pup” was so he missed it. It was also hard for him to comprehend because he reads slowly. By the time he gets to the next word he already forgot what he read. But when I read to him he can tell me the correct answer. The mom who wrote the email was puzzled by a student who had no difficulty reading his first book. They had worked together on letter sounds and short vowel words and were attempting to have him read an actual book. Young Son read slowly, methodically working word by word, but stumbled over only one word. Mom was not at all sure that it should be so easy.

First, there is no reason to dwell on lessons that have already been learned. Make sure your student learns the part he had trouble with, and then keep going forward. His reading speed will increase with practice — just like riding a bicycle, you start slowly and shakily, but you get better and faster the more you do it.

Second, if your early reader is able to answer questions from what you read to him, then you know his listening skills and comprehension are good. What you will be working on improving is his own reading — do not expect fantastic comprehension immediately from his own reading time. It will come with practice. Remember that your student is just entering a new world of written communication: up to this point, he has only had to interpret pictures and symbols, not words. Try mentally relating it (for your own understanding) to developing a brand new skill yourself, such as learning to read Chinese. An entirely new system of symbolizing words and thoughts would be difficult to comprehend all at once, but practice would enable you to learn little bits, then bigger bits, and then bunches. Your student will master reading in the same way.

Perhaps the child having difficulty with comprehension would benefit from decoding 3-4 words individually, then backing up to read those words together, gradually assembling the separate words into a sentence. In that way, his mind will learn to switch back and forth from decoding mode into reading mode: solving what the word is and then remembering it to read it in context with the other words. Getting the hands involved often helps transfer an idea to the brain, so if your student needs a little more help, you might consider supplementing (at least for a while) with homemade flash cards of the individual words to touch and hold and slide around on the tabletop. Let him decode each word as a task in itself, then line up some words on the table to see how a few words can form a sentence and actually SAY something. Then he can begin to understand longer and longer sentences. This is the “learning to balance the bicycle” stage. Expect it to be a little shaky and ungraceful temporarily. Also expect it to be mentally and physically exhausting to your little one as he struggles his way up these word-mountains, so do not push him beyond the limits of his endurance.

Third, for proceeding to the next book, if your diligent reader is ready, move on with confidence! Just remember that learning is like terrain: uphill climbs, downhill coasting, and an occasional plateau. The boy at the beginning of this story was fresh and ready and ran up an easy hill — no problem, little expenditure of energy. He may continue that way for a while. Then, just when you have gotten used to his jackrabbit pace, he will hit a plateau and need to stay there for a while to absorb all that he has been taking in rapidly. Sometimes progress will seem so slow that you will wonder if the hill actually has a top or if you are possibly sliding backwards!

Children grow physically in the same way — in little spurts — but we do not worry that they are going to shrink the next week. We know they will keep going forward, and eventually they may skip a size here and there. Children will learn in little spurts, but will always continue to move forward. Sometimes it may seem that they have forgotten a lesson or tended to slide backwards, but in actuality they are resting on a plateau and absorbing all that has been learned. Whether you can see it or not, the child’s mind is sorting all the information and contemplating how it all fits together. Give him time to “catch his breath” and he will soon be ready to move on again.

Filed Under: Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's, Reading, Visual Learning

Life is Black and White — There Is No Gray

October 8, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Either you accept the title statement, or you attempt to tell me there are “degrees” of wrong. I am not buying it. God’s Word, the Holy Bible, does not blur right and wrong, therefore neither should we.

I have spent many years showing my students how things all stem from a clear concept of right or wrong, black or white. The result has been phenomenal — I am blessed with offspring who can tell in an instant whether or not they should be involved in activities that their peers may deem worthy.

After years of hearing my life-is-black-and-white-there-is-no-gray speech, my children found themselves in a test of that philosophy. The church youth group was holding a lock-in, an overnight party held at the church, complete with games, videos, junk food — everything teens would want for a night of fun and fellowship. When the time came for all good children to settle down to sleep, the girls collected in the nursery room and the boys were corralled into another classroom on the opposite side of the fellowship hall. One of the married adult chaperones thoughtfully laid his sleeping bag in front of the door to the girls’ quarters, just to prevent any shenanigans.

At some point during the night, my son was awakened by one of the rather mischievous boys tiptoeing out of their room, attempting to sneak over to pay a visit to the girls. A quick debate in my son’s mind about the situation resulted in his repeating my oft-quoted speech to himself: “Life is black and white, there is NO gray,” and he woke the youth leader next to him to report the missing boy. At the same moment, a slight ruckus was heard as the offender attempted to step over the doorway chaperone, whom he had mistakenly assumed to be a heavy sleeper. Discipline was affected and all was well with the party, but I later rejoiced heartily at hearing the ease with which my son had made his decision to “tell on” a fellow student. Right is right, and wrong is never right.

Filed Under: Behavior, Parenting

Is Learning Limited to Books?

October 5, 2004 by Leave a Comment

[The following article was written by Intern Jenny.]

Throughout the years that my family homeschooled, one of the most important principles we had was that homeschooling is not just bookwork. Mom loves to say, “Everyday is a learning day and the world is your classroom.” That is a good saying, but I want to explain what that saying meant to me.

As a former public school student, I resisted anything to do with public school. It frustrated me to tears to have any resemblance to public school in my homeschooling experience. I did not enjoy any curriculum that was just a book packed with facts to be memorized and regurgitated without any personal touches. I did do well with curriculum that was more relaxed, even if thousands of facts were hidden within its pages. However, some of the experiences that I learned the most from were not from the books that I read or the workbooks I filled out.

Mom made learning easy by allowing my brother and me to explore our interests. When a sunny day came along we learned how the sun and a magnifying glass can produce heat capable of starting a fall leaf on fire (carefully, on a fireproof brick patio, with Mom’s supervision, mind you).

Instead of having art class, we often copied our favorite book illustrations onto the front sidewalk with chalk. Dr. Seuss’ “Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz” was a hit with the neighbors, and the long circus trains we made from our imaginations were always memorable.

Our antique button collection became not only a lesson in history, but also in many other subjects. It was science as we discovered what material each button was made from. It was art history as we learned about and identified the art periods represented on the buttons. It was literature class as we learned about the operas and stories that inspired some of the buttons. Our collection (as many types of collections can be) was more than just a silly hobby, but an exploration of subjects and learning that we had never realized before.

Literature became so much more than just reading as Mom read aloud to my brother and me as we worked on our math everyday. We discussed the storylines together daily as we anticipated the next twist.

Most of all, daily activities with Mom and Dad helped my brother and me to develop a healthy grasp of life. We learned practical economics by shopping with Mom, we learned how to paint and fix things around the house and yard with Dad. I learned to cook by helping Mom fix supper every night. Laundry was a household-team chore: whoever needed something cleaned or noticed that the laundry was piling up was expected to take up that responsibility.

Although the schoolwork we did taught us much, I believe my brother and I benefited most through the many other activities from which we were able to gain experiences. Books are definitely a worthwhile tool to use, but do not forget to learn from life as well. Recognize the skills and facts that can be accumulated by simply analyzing day-to-day activities. Sometimes a break from books can actually be more beneficial than detrimental.

Filed Under: Auditory Learning, Family Unity, Homeschool v. Public School, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Tactile Learning
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