Mind Being Renewed

This time last year, as our neighbors and their children returned to school and teaching, several of my online homeschooling friends mentioned feeling a little left out of the back-to-school prayers offered at their churches. I had noticed this myself sometimes, and wrote a post discussing the omission and offering suggestions on how to pray for a homeschooler. Given how infrequently I’ve written in this blog, you will find that post just 2 or 3 posts back from this one.

My friend Carrie responded privately to that post, and I thought what she had to say fit exactly with homeschool moms’ needs. I asked her whether I could republish her note, and she graciously agreed. I have edited it slightly to make it a little more general than her note to me, but have sought her approval of the finished piece. I think most parents who have gone down this past will relater to what Carrie had to say. Pray for your fellow homeschooling parents in these ways.

Pray for confidence. Pray that the insecurities and doubts of our abilities to teach our kids subjects that we may not have even had ourselves not be allowed to take seed in our hearts. Pray that as they grow closer to leaving home and attending college, they not be lacking in any skills and knowledge due to some error on mom’s behalf. As my son’s last year with me begins, I pray that I have covered what was needed, that I have set good examples and instilled study habits that will benefit rather than hinder.

Pray that we have an appreciation of time. Though our days with our kids are sometimes long, the years are still short. So recognize that our small amount of time with these kids is precious, valuable, priceless, and limited.

If I had these last 12 years to go back and do again, I would. I’d be more silly, more fun, spend more time snuggling, more time reading great books and holding stuffed animals. I’d bake more cookies into the shape of whatever we were studying. I’d sing and dance around the kitchen more and louder…. I’d take more field trips and pick up more critters. I’d do more picnics on a blanket in the yard and turn off the phone.

A couple of weeks ago the kids were away on a mission trip, I washed two loads of clothes, one dishwasher run and did not enter Walmart a single time….. 3 days with them back, and I ran the dishwasher 2 times, 3 loads of laundry and Walmart trip 2 times…… As I sit this week making lesson plans and lining up our year, instead of being bogged down, I can only be grateful for the blessings teaching my children at home has brought me. That God would allow me such an opportunity, and have so much incredible time with my children…… well, “grateful” just does not seem enough.

As I prepare for my son to begin college and plan the few remaining credits for my daughter, even typing this makes me want to cry remembering all the years of fun schooling we had. All the crazy moments of clay, flour maps, gluing, reading in a tent….etc. I hope you soak all those moments up and in! We had a visitor today in the midst of the cleaning who was trying to sell us some books to help with schooling…… she was wanting to help us make learning fun! I laughed when the kids started explaining to her that the fun they had didn’t come from a book. About made me want to cry!!!!

So yes, pray for all the things listed, but also tell Him thank you. May this year be filled with moments that fill the heart. Moments where God’s presence is seen, felt and known through the words, actions and hearts of these home school families.

My oldest child has always been hard. Hard to teach, hard to parent, hard to understand. After knowing from experience that he at the least has a math learning disability, we finally chose to have him undergo a psychoeducational from a neuropsychologist. The results were largely in line with what we already knew about the child. The difference between his nonverbal and verbal skills are large, and his low scores on nonverbal items drag his overall intelligence score down to a number that was surprising to us.

His verbal scores are within a normal range, though at a level that seems to his parents, both of whom are academic achievers and both of whom were actually trained in psych testing and thus do know how to interpret the information reasonably well, pretty low.

I’ve been having trouble processing what to do with this information and have shed tears wondering where I went wrong. What didn’t I do that might have stimulated these abilities that are holding him back? What should I have changed?

There are many things in this kid’s life I should have changed. Part of this just goes with his being the first, aka experimental, child. There are other things that I couldn’t have done anything about even had I known I needed to.

So in the midst of the questioning and self-doubt, I’m telling myself one thing. I could be wrong, but don’t go bursting my bubble. What *can* this kid do well? He can read. He reads well and constantly. He, for the most part, gets what he reads and can discuss it. Maybe not as articulately as I would have hoped, but he can discuss it. What one thing did I perhaps do right? I read to him. I read to him a lot. I read to him tons before he learned to read and continued after he learned to read and continue to some degree to this day.

I have no clinical proof, but the straw I’m grasping on is that rather than me failing his brain in those other ways, perhaps those hours of listening and cuddling and looking at illustrations are what elevated those verbal skills up to a normal level. Perhaps that time salvaged a chunk of an impaired (his father’s word) brain. So I’ll cling to that straw. Please don’t pull it away from me.

In my area, the conventionally schooled kids are headed back. The public schools start this week, and most of the private schools will have started back by sometime next week. Our church traditionally spends some time in prayer on this Sunday for the back to school time, which is right and good.

But sometimes this prayer time can leave homeschoolers feeling a little less than validated. Sometimes those leading prayers do indeed specifically mention homeschoolers as they pray, but often they do not. While I have been in situations where church leadership was opposed to homeschooling, I do not think this is the predominant situation. I think rather, as most home educators have experienced, homeschooling just doesn’t make it onto the radar of those who don’t have a personal interest in it. We get that. We do appreciate it and notice it when we are prayed for, but we know that sometimes including this nontraditional path just doesn’t occur to others because of its relative rarity.

I have noticed, though, another category of back to school prayers regarding homeschoolers, and this is what I’ve observed in my own church from time to time. Once at back-to-school time, our preacher invited all students and all educators in whatever venue from preschool to college including homeschoolers, to kneel in the aisles as he prayed. As he prayed for those in conventional education, he clearly had an idea of the things he intended to pray for. When he mentioned homeschoolers specifically (and believe me, we appreciated it), it really came down pretty much to “And those who are teaching their children at home, umm, well God bless them, too.” He had a heart for us, but just wasn’t sure what we needed.

I think people just don’t really have an idea of a specific way to pray for homeschoolers. Let’s help them out.

Pray for alertness. Homeschool moms with very young children as well as school-aged kids are in particular need of this. The satisfaction of a reading lesson well done is greatly diminished upon finding that during lessons with the eldest, one’s 3 year old has been busy decorating the kitchen cabinets with sharpies. Riding herd on 4 kids isn’t necessarily harder than riding herd on 25, of course, but the variety of ages adds a challenging element, as does the fact that said children, oddly enough, feel free to roam throughout their own home rather than being contained to one room.

Pray for organization. Homeschoolers plan and teach with no built-in planning period, and are responsible for being our own cafeteria staff and custodial staff. We are responsible for choosing the extracurriculars for each of our students, juggling them into a workable schedule, and making the transportation work. No wonder we come to the end of the day amazed that these people want to eat again and with no clue what to feed them.

Much as I need greater organizational skills and much as I need energy and perseverance and much as I would appreciate prayers for those things, I do not consider that the primary need of homeschooling parents. You see, one of the greatest blessings of homeschooling is also its biggest spiritual challenge. Homeschooling allows us to spend so much more time with our children than if they were conventionally schooled. Think that through carefully.

That means that we get to have cuddly mornings filled with books read together in jammies. That means we get to have Bible stories and scripture memory and hymn time together. It means we have increased opportunity to instruct them as we go out and as we come in.

It also means that they see everything we do all day every day. When we have had it and blow up over a seemingly small incident, they see that. If we have something unkind to say about the driver just ahead of us, they hear it. If we are preaching diligence without practicing it, they know it. Just like a classroom teacher, a home educator has an opportunity to touch lives with the love of Jesus. But a home educator has to try to live a testimony of grace and love all her waking hours in front of the people who know her best and whose spiritual conditions mean the most to her.

Please think that over. If you spend most of your days away from your kids, how do you think you would measure up if they saw you 16 hours a day every day? One of the things homeschoolers hate hearing is, “Oh, I could never do that. I’m too impatient. My child and I just butt heads too much.” Well, yeah. Me too. I’m too impatient with them. We butt heads. But just like in every aspect of parenting, the patience comes with the doing.

How to pray for a homeschooling parent? Pray like you would for a classroom teacher. Pray like you would for any brother or sister regardless of how and where they spend their days. Pray lilke you pray for any one who is undertaking the immense challenge of parenthood. Pray that as we live our lives in front of those who are both our greatest fans and quickest critics, we will be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which we shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the word of life.

How can we pray for you?

This is for a few of my FIAR sisters who have complained suggested that perhaps I should submit some sort of picture of myself that isn’t a cartoon and that is more recent than 2002. So here is a pic of dh and me that is a mere three months old.  I hate it. But I don’t like any of them, so there you go.  I’m holding out hope that I look slightly better than this.  The person snapping the pic is very short, so you have a little bit of that unflattering angle going on. And Captain Fitness there actually looks a little pudgy, which he isn’t.  So I’m hoping that, while I’m fat and there’s no getting around it, maybe it isn’t quite as bad as this.  But I’m clean, dressed, and even curled my hair, so there we go.  Unfortunately, this is pretty much as good as it gets.