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After many days, weeks and months of trying to find an ‘itch’ that just could never seem to be scratched - I have found there is one potentially major, fundamental flaw in home schooling. I am and always will be a proponent of home education, so don’t get me wrong when I say there is a flaw. As my firstborn graduates, that flaw has come to show itself clearly and I wish I had seen and fixed it earlier. That flaw is so well disguised and hidden from the naked eye by the guise of what is best for my child, that it has actually taken me over three years to find and begin repairs.
As with many home schooling families our choice to follow this path of education had many deciding factors: quality of education, amount and quality of family time, a sense of God’s calling to home educate, our children’s own choice and many other factors. While plowing through the wide variety of curriculum, it seemed that the opportunities were endless and would meet their needs of education, . The joy of learning was sparked and we were off and running! The students or myself would need the occasional ‘booster shot’ - but for the most part, we enjoyed the challenge and freedom home schooling had to offer. Our family decided that THIS was the best choice. There is no regret about the choice to home school. It is the best thing for our child(ren).
In hind-sight, it wasn’t until my eldest started his high school career that the flaw began to take root. Very unnoticed, it is always there, undetected - but ever pushing in a direction. The endless opportunities of groups to join, activities to do, field trips to take, hands-on unit studies and fun-learning-style seemed to dwindle. Our scope became narrowed because of the number (or lack of number) of home schooling High-Schoolers and the ‘pressure‘ of High School State requirements. Surprise! THIS is NOT the flaw. This is reality, a challenge, an obstacle to be overcome. The flaw was not and is not there. It is out of wanting what is best for the student (my child) that the flaw took an ugly turn.
With the onset of High School, the pressure is on many of us, not just the student. Comparisons can surmount to unprecedented heights as the sand drains from the hour glass of our child’s time at home. The flaw is not wanting to give our child every opportunity to succeed...it is wanting to give them every opportunity. Period. It is here, in me, the mother-teacher - trying to broaden too many horizons, trying to match the choices of public or private schools, trying to make sure they have more than I did at that age, trying to put them in places/situations where they can succeed. THIS, out of a parent’s own feelings of love, yet inadequacy, is the flaw.
Recognizing the flaw and stopping it from taking over are two different things. When this flaw goes unchecked we run the risk of alienating our own children by ‘forcing’ them into things that WE orchestrate ‘for their benefit.’ Truly, in some things we DO have to strongly guide and suggest and even arm-wrestle to have a positive outcome for them, but when we are searching and providing endless opportunities, there is no benefit for them. I don’t do their school work or even spoon feed it to them, but I have agonized over the socialization issue (you know what ‘they’ all say about home schoolers not being ‘social’), prom, high school sports, rural home schooling issues that limit their ‘opportunities.’ These have driven a tension into our home school environment that leaks out with every attempt to encourage my students to broaden their horizons.
The solution is simple yet a priceless jewel that I had wished I had found long ago. The solution is NOT giving my home schooled children endless opportunities. It is not in broadening their horizons. It is not living in home school friendly State. It is not trying to ‘fill the gaps’ that they might have had filled in public or private school. The solution lies in the RIGHT opportunities - not endless ones.
Those RIGHT opportunities are orchestrated by a much more loving and wise Teacher than myself. In stead of searching for a way to ‘scratch the itch’ of having every opportunity, I am now resting in knowing that the Author of my children’s very lives will bring the RIGHT opportunities to them - or - even cause THEM to seek the RIGHT opportunities. God will bring the right ones into their hearts. One right opportunity is far more valuable than a huge range of opportunities or experiences. Who am I to usurp what The Almighty has to bring to my children by searching endless opportunities, when He has just the right ones on the Way.
“Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the traditions of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” Col 2:8 NKJ
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