May, 2004

Hindsight is 20-20. And as you look back over this homeschooling year from your now much wiser, much enlightened vantage point , you can see your children, yourself and your homeschool experience more clearly than ever before; whether you want to or not. Back near the end of last summer, today seemed an eternity away.

Daily planners were crisp and clean waiting to receive your well laid plans. Having survived the rigors of another year, they're unrecognizable. Dog eared and christened with the stains of constant use, that planner nobly stands as a symbol of achievement. Do not dismiss its mass of crumpled pages lightly.

So often, at the close of the year, as you fight through just one more page of this or that while junior gazes dreamily at his new baseball glove and the warm breezes entice him to explore the cool woods, homeschool parents tend to look at the things not accomplished: the books unread, the field trips not taken, the projects unfinished or, worse yet, unstarted. In states where end-of-year evaluations loom Goliath-large, thoughts can turn toward worry, doubt and failure. Okay, time-out!

Let me urge and encourage you to go easy on yourself and your family at this point. Oh sure, some things might need adjusting - almost anything can stand improvement! But too often, parents, especially moms, despair at their attempts to organize, plan and track, seeing these tasks as hopeless and their attempts futile. Over the years and through personal experience, I have realized that the problem is not lack of ability or commitment or talent or giftedness - so quit reading those "How To Be Perfect In 30 Days" books. The failure-factor is only as great as our expectations. In our super-mom, super- woman, super-person society our expectations of ourselves, our children and our spouses are much too high for normal living. Therefore, if your expectation barometer is not adjusted correctly at the beginning of the year to the needs, personalities, learning-styles, and overall living style of our family, the failure-buzzer will go off somewhere before the first snow flies. I speak from decades of "perfectionistic"-bondage experience.

So pull out that dog-eared planner or calendar or spiral notebook or the scraps of paper jammed in the shoe box on top of the microwave - whatever you use to satisfy your state's requirements for "documentation." Now look carefully back over the days, weeks and months. Search between the notations on math, reading, phonics and science. Go way inside - look beyond the scribbles, unreadable because of the milk the baby knocked over. Do you see what I see?

Do you remember the first day of that cold snap when all anyone wanted to do was snuggle together on the couch and listen to you read? Remember how guilty you felt because the intended 15 minutes stretched into two hours and no one got much done that day? Now, forget the guilt. Remember the closeness and warmth you felt with your little ones around you. Hear the giggles, feel their wiggles as they jostled to be closer to you. Remember the times you spent with your children. Every moment counted. Remember the talks while sitting around the kitchen table studying. Remember the suddenlies of unplanned discovery - the wonder and excitement in your child's eyes and voice.

Remember when you felt too stretched and exhausted to answer another question but how it turned out that all you really had to do was listen and you did - and it made all the difference. Remember the peace you knew when glancing out the window - there they were - your very own children playing together not because they were grounded to the backyard but because they enjoyed each other. This would have seemed nearly impossible before homeschooling took over your life.

Please remember why you are really doing this. It's not so you can cram enough stuff into their brains so that your children can grow into bigger and better cogs in the machine of life. Neither is it because they need to know certain things to fit into a certain category or someone's definition of success.

I hope and pray that you are doing this thing called homeschooling because you want to hold your children closer and longer, love your children more fully, nurture your children more completely "in the way God has shaped them to be"- so that when you let them go they will be whole human beings ready and able to give to others what they have received from you.

Now, go give someone a hug!

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