Last Saturday my family and I attended an small international student retreat centered around introducing Easter and its history and customs to international visiters to the USA.  Friends of ours put this on every year and this is our second year to attend for a portion of the time.  In large part we go to introduce our children to folks from some other places, since our town is largely made of people who look much like us and who have several generations who have settled right here in this area.

We usually get into a conversation, at least once  in such a setting, on the topic of homeschooling, since it is much less common if practiced at all in most other countries of the world.  This year was no exception as I ended up discussing homeschooling and why we do it with a Chinese woman, the mother of one son and a well educated woman out in the work force.   She had a number of questions to fire at me, but all came from the perspective that we are harming our children, not socializing them well, over-protecting them, keeping their lives too narrow, and so on.  She finally admitted that she never met anyone before who homeschooled and she had never heard of it.    WE discussed socialization and what it means now vs. what it has meant over the thousands of years before the past 100.  We discussed limiting our children's experiences and why my husband and I do not apologize for that.  I think I gave her some good arguments, but I have two regrets about that conversaton.  First, it was cut off prematurely by other good activities scheduled for the evening.  And secondly, I did not think in the time I had to give her my bottom line reason of why I homeschool rooted in the Word of God, which is that I see no other way to effectively disciple my children in the ways of the Lord.  I can't disciple them if I am not spending time with them.  And if my dh and I aren't discipling them then someone else is, and it may not be the ways of the Lord.  I regret that I did not answer her questions and arguments with the Word of God, for His Word is powerful and a two edged sword, the Scripture says.   And I am challenged to handle the next conversation I have differently. 

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Posted by EEEEMommy

I was convicted in a similar way myself, in the early years of our homeschooling. There are so many good reasons to homeschool. It's easy to spend so much time discussing the multitude of secondary reasons while neglecting the primary reason, which is as you say, the sword of truth.

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