My husband and I started out with what we thought was a good plan....yet at some point we took our eyes of our goal and ended up derailed from our plan to homeschool. Our story began with a great desire to teach our children at home. At the time our oldest was 5 1/2 and our youngest was 3 1/2. We prayed, felt led and jumped in headfirst. I bought a nice fancy curriculum that showed up on my doorstep in a BIG box with lots of goodies. If that doesn't get a homeschool mom excited I don't know what will! My Fathers World Kindergarten deluxe edition is what I had chosen. I liked that the program was faith based and had lots of hands on learning. It didn't take long for me to realize something wasn't working out as planned. My little guy wasn't receptive to me teaching him....at all. Our days were filled with crying,arguing and lots of complaining (sometimes me, sometimes the little guy- I think we took turns :-). When the fall rolled around we thought we were wiser having given this whole homeschool thing a go. We decided that school would be better equipped to teach our son. We loved the idea of homeschool but felt we had learned it just wasn't going to work for us. After all the teachers get trained in different teaching methods and learning styles, what could possibly go wrong?? So we forged ahead confident in our new decision that our son just didn't learn easily from me and I didn't have the knowledge or skill to make it work. Our little guy was in school until 4th grade. Actually, until about 3 weeks ago.
My little guy is now 10! And my middle son is 8. Did you catch that? I said middle son, yep we added another little guy to the mix, he's 4. I'll tell you much more about each of them and their journeys in the near future. Currently we only homeschool our 10 year old- not sure what else to say besides, it's complicated!
So.....what went wrong with plan?!?!?!?
- We lost sight of WHY we had chosen to homeschool. For us those reasons were our faith, what we felt called to do, and the educational opportunities and flexibility we felt homeschooling presented.
- We believed many lies. Most importantly that God didn't equip us with the skills needed to do this job and.....are your ready....I'm not to afraid to admit it...well maybe I am! After our little homeschool stint that failed horribly, we believed that our son would be better off in Public school. (now please understand, the reason that last part is such a big deal is because we felt called to homeschool and then WE strayed from our conviction. As you read above I have two other kids currently in public school, so no hard feelings, okay?
- We tossed in the towel way to quickly! We should have stayed the course. Looking back I can clearly see now consequences of our decision to not stay the course. Oh how I wish I would have had confidence in my decision and for those moments that I felt lost that I would have just hit my knees in prayer seeking Gods Wisdom and not letting my own insecurities run wild.
- We listened to other people. Now please know I am not blaming anyone else for us deciding to not continue homeschool. I will say however that what we feed our minds-it grows. And if we allow the doubts of others to take over, Satan will happily water that seed. Soon you'll have a thorny weed that's taken over what you intented to be a beautiful garden. We should have meditated on truth and clung to prayer when times got tough.
Much time has passed and we are grateful for second chances. Grateful for Gods grace and forgiveness. Grateful to be starting our journey again. I look forward to sharing our life with you and hope you comment and share some of your life with me.
Blessings,
Melissa
