Starting School at Home in Light of the Coronavirus

This blog post was originally guest written for Jacqueline’s blog Deeper Roots at Home. You can find it here! Jacqueline also added an abundance of resources and links from homeschooling guidance to natural ways to keep a strong immune system at the end of the post!

Homeschooling?

Does this mean we all have to wear jumpers now? ;) 

I remember when we began homeschooling many years ago and I had so many fears, many unnamed, but some very obvious concerns.

Would our children be socially awkward and societal rejects?

Ha! My motto through the years has become, “Don’t be weird and it won’t be weird.” 😂 

Could I possibly teach them all that they would need to know?

Ummmm, no. No one can teach their children everything they need to know. I don’t even think that’s really in the job description. Some things our children need to chase down for themselves.

Teach them to think.

Teach them to problem-solve.

Teach them to not always need a taskmaster but instead to become their own.  

Will these people be able to write their own names and read books? 😂 

I laugh about it now, but I kid you not, at one time early on these were valid concerns to me.  

Oh, friends, I have learned so many things about my children and myself on this path coined “homeschooling”. 

Hear me in this…  

Your children are designed to learn. 

They are prewired, inquisitive sponges. 

They WILL learn.  

You can’t stop them from learning.

Our job is to expose them to the right things to learn.

I remember two young people sitting at my kitchen table many years ago, both with tears in their eyes. One was me and the other my oldest child who was five years old at the time. “I will never learn to read,” he cried. “He’s right,” I thought. “If he’s counting on me he is never going to learn to read.” 

You see, that’s what fear of the unknown does.  

Fear makes you doubt your own judgment and everything around you.  

Fear is a liar.

That is a fact.

Fear does not equip you to tackle the task at hand.

Fear whispers all the worst cases, probably never going to happen scenarios right into your ears until it consumes your thought life.

Evict it.

Immediately.

Do not rent out space in your mind and heart to it, not for the Coronavirus, the economy, the homeschooling factor, or anything else.  

You were not designed to live in fear.

My humble advice:  

Be careful about how much media and mayhem you consume. 

You see every person, entity, or media platform in existence that shares information with you has their own views and presents that information through a particular lens.  

This includes me as well.

I view the world through the lens of a Bible-believing Christian.

I am unapologetically Christian.

I believe it to my core and I attempt to live that belief system.

We all have a lens through which we evaluate and make judgment calls.

We all believe in something already.

At the end of the day, when it’s just you and you, when you are still with your own thoughts, when you boil it down to the bones….

You have a belief system.

Figure out what it is and live it.

That is step one in dealing with all situations including the one we find ourselves in now.

This newest virus, and the unprecedented publicity surrounding it, has us all in a pioneering kind of place.

People who have never had any inclination to homeschool are now without option as schools are closing nationwide and we are faced with the fact that our children will be at home for the foreseeable future.

As a seasoned homeschooler who has been there and done that (that crying child graduated last year!) this seems like a beautiful opportunity to spread some calm and reassurance in these very uncertain times.

Friends, there is a new-to-us virus out there, and it is contagious, and we don’t know as much about it as we’d like to. 

Those facts are undisputed. 

However, what I challenge myself (and you) to dispute is the mass hysteria, panicking and fear that is being consumed faster than the toilet paper.

Yes, we are living in uncertain times.

We already were long before Covid-19.

Yes, there is an opportunity, and in my opinion, a very real possibility, that we have been, are being or will be exposed to this virus at some point. 

It’s out there and we don’t even know how long it has been for sure.

My aim is not to influence your opinion on what this virus is, how quickly it will spread or how it should be handled at a government and/or social level. 

So many of those things are not within our power to control.

However, there is a silver lining here!

There are so many other things that we do have a say-so in.

Do not forfeit your say-so.

We don’t get to choose what comes at us but we do get to choose our response to it.

If you find your children's’ schools on hiatus until who knows when and your inner freak out alarm is ringing….just go ahead and hit the kill switch on that. ;)  

I’m about to share some earth-shattering news with you.  

You were already homeschooling.

If you are a parent, if you have children living in your home, YOU are a homeschooler!

Welcome to the weird-side ;).

Stay with me here…

Who taught your children to eat, sleep, talk, pray, tie their shoes?

You did.

You are the parent, the example.

You are, have always been, and for a good part of the future, you will be their primary teacher.

Academics are important...obviously. 

This is why we paid for 4 years of Latin for our oldest child, but academics are not the begin all and end all of raising children.

There is an opportunity here amongst the unknown.

You have the beautiful opportunity to create calm in this storm.

You are teaching your children how to handle what life throws at them.

You are teaching your children how to process, think and react when uncertainty comes their way, and it will again and again.

You are teaching them so much more than ABC’s, multiplication facts and even the periodic table.  

All of those things, while they have their place, are secondary to the human being you are developing within your own 4 walls.

Opportunity, Friends.

Your children will be home whether it is convenient or not.  

The circumstance is out of our control, the response is well within it.

Use this time wisely.

Imagine you just received a bonus check and you want to allocate each dollar where it will do the most and lasting good.

You have received a bonus.  

You have been gifted some unexpected time with your children and you get to decide what to do with it. 

Let's all use this time to reconnect, to communicate, to get to know each other better and at a new level.

• Ask your children questions and listen to them. I have learned so many things about what is going on in the minds of my children just by asking and listening. You will find out who they are if you take the time to look in their eyes and have an open heart to hear and see the world through their young eyes.

• Eat more meals together…around the table…everyone at the same time.

• Learn something new together.

• Watch what they watch.  

• Listen to what they listen to (when you can of course). This gives you common ground, something to chat about and it ties another string that bonds.

• Take this time to not just live together but to really LIVE together in a new way.

• Play some board games. Seriously. It’s character building for everyone. 😂

• Be resilient, kids are.

• Do not leave the bonus check of time with your children, the ones you love best and the reason you work for it all, lying on the table uncashed.

I do not underestimate the difficulties that this situation poses to many families. 

The difficulties are here, they beg attention and must be dealt with.

I could give you a million ideas about academic things and how to create a "school" at home.

That is not where my heart lies.

Do what works for your family. 

Google some ideas on how to create structure to stay on task.

Many companies are graciously offering free subscriptions to a plethora of educational websites right now without cost to you.

If you find you have some extra time that you would like to supplement some educational resources this is a list I have found helpful.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t3r618pd8MAi6V87dG2D66PtiKoHdHusBpjPKXgm36w/htmlview?sle=true#gid=0

Most importantly:

Don't forget to keep the main things as the main things.

Perspective is a beautiful thing, friends.

Cheers to a new opportunity and happy homeschooling!

<3 Susan

Patience Mythbuster

“Do. Not. Jump. On. That. Bed.”

That’s what I said for the umpteenth time.

I gave birth to a barrel of monkeys on the end ;).  If you have back to back boys, then you know.  

They are their own party of two.

A two-boy circus with all the acts.

The way our home is set up is almost like a track for them.  They love to run from the living room, through the kitchen, and straight across our (large) bedroom floor.  Our king-sized bed is their favorite landing pad.  I see the appeal, honestly, I do.  I just won’t have my super comfy bed broken for their enjoyment and amusement. 

As soon as those words snapped out of my mouth I heard that old familiar tune echo in my mind.  

 “You must be so patient to homeschool.  I could never do it.”

Just recently a sweet friend in my Tabata class reminded me of how patient I must be.

(Sidenote: Need to burn some calories and stress? Google:  Tabata.)

That patience thing….I’ve heard it a hundred times in the last dozen years.

Every single time, I nix it.  It makes me feel like a fake to let people believe it.

Here’s the thing about me, and every other homeschool Mom out there….

We’re just people. 

Regular, flesh and blood, say and do things we wish we wouldn’t have, people.

I will never forget the day my husband and I decided to homeschool our children.  I can even remember where I was standing, where he was standing, and exactly what he said, 

“Go for it, do the best you can.”

I took a big gulp and swallowed hard.  I swallowed down a whole heart full of 

          “What ifs?” 

“Can I even do this?” 

                        AND

“Are our kids going to be okay?”

I was scared, unsure of myself and pioneering a terrain I had never walked. I felt like I didn’t even know where I was trying to get, let alone using a map. I had a (very) well-meaning friend actually call me and try to talk me out of it.  He was concerned that it was going to be hard, really hard, too hard, for me and the kids.  I do love him for caring.

This year has been quite nostalgic for me as our oldest, who started me down this path, is preparing to graduate high school in the spring. 

I can still see that little boy in those rubber boots sitting at my kitchen table practicing ABC’s and learning all those phonetic sounds.

My mind’s eye can even see a younger version of myself there too as that little boy with tears streaming down said, “I’m never going to learn to read!”   

I can also recall exactly what I thought when he said it.  

“You’re right.  If you’re counting on me, you may never learn to read!”  Just a couple of kids figuring it out. ;)

Blink.

Fast-forward.

Picture the Flash type of speed, and here we are.

Graduating high school?!

What?!

We thought that we would ‘just homeschool until high school’ and now here we are pioneering once again through unfamiliar terrain.  There are transcripts to prepare, big life decisions to contemplate, college classes being taken for the first time and growth taking place.  That little boy that we didn’t think would ever learn to read completed 4 years of Latin.  

I have taught my children many, many things throughout this crazy ride some call home education, I just tend to call it life. I haven’t done all the teaching though.  They have taught me just as much and maybe even more.

I’ve learned things along the way that I didn’t even know were a thing.

For instance, the unfortunate animosity and division that can occur between a homeschool mom and her public school mom friends.  It has been an elephant in the room.  Somehow, in my opinion, when you tell people you homeschool it can feel like an insult to them because they don’t.  Maybe I’m way off here, but I don’t think so.  

It’s like you somehow said, “My kids are too good to go to “regular” school with your kids.” Or somehow implied that you believe you have the market cornered on Mommin’…

Come on now!  That’s nonsense.  

We are all in this together.

I saw some things that gave me pause, just as you have.  I attended a public school and had a front row seat to some of the things that go on each and every day… 

Our choice to keep our children home was so multidimensional that I could write a book about it.   For the sake of time, here’s the cliff notes version…

•We have a small window of time (18-ish short years) to spend with our children. I want to make the most of it.

•Great teachers, with kind hearts and a love for their students, but with both hands tied behind their backs, due to agenda and policies

•Curriculums that do not align with our core values and beliefs and little to no control over what our children are being taught as truth and facts are not okay with us

•The normalcy of sexual activity amongst students (Almost everyone I knew was sexually active in high school)

•Bullying and School Violence has (and sadly will) always be a thing

But some things are for certain, we don’t homeschool because we think we’re better, more patient or more loving than anyone else.  I know myself.  I know my children.  We are ordinary.  I don’t say this in some self-degrading way.  It’s just the facts.  We are regular people.

If I had to boil it down, really reduce it, and put a name on it, I could.  It was ultimately and continues to be, our faith.  Our belief that our children’s best way to withstand what the world is going to throw at them is going to be their own beliefs, their own faith, and what they choose to have faith in. 

 We all have faith in something.  Think on it.

But back to the “Most Patient Mom” title…

I have never had some patience superpower or an extra dose of awesomeness, but I have had a few things that have served me well.

Honesty is at the forefront of the list.

I have a genuine interest and unconditional love for my children.  They know because I have told them and shown them, that I am for them.  They matter to me.  They are valuable.

I have been honest, transparent and real with our children.  I have said, “I’m sorry” when I was wrong and “Please forgive me” when necessary.  

I have never had all the answers, and I never will.  (Thank goodness that is not a prerequisite for homeschooling or parenting.)  

I don’t even think that’s our job, to have all the answers.  I can’t chase down every single thing for my kids and if I did it would only make them weak.  I’m not going to be able to teach them everything they need to know for their whole life,  academically and otherwise.  I am teaching them how to do things for themselves.  I am teaching them how to think and understand that their life is their own and their decisions have consequences, both good and bad.  

I am teaching them how to not need me when they are adults, but hopefully, want me. <3

This is the mark that I am aiming for as Homeschool Mom.  

Ultra patient?  

Not in the cards.

Real-life, all-in, love you to the end, and do right by you as far as I can…I’m all about that.

So if you just took that first gulp or swallowed down your very first heart-full of fears, hugs, friend.

Maybe you have already been around the block with this homeschooling gig and just need a friend to give you permission to be human, you’ve got it. 

You are changing generations to come. 

What you are doing IS worth it.  

It can NOT be perfect.  

It can NOT always be easy, but it will be worth it.

You don’t have to be extra, super-duper patient to make this work. 

You just have to be real.

Speak life into those lives that have been lent to you.  

Give them and yourself some grace.

I’m rooting for you.

<3 Susan

There is no way to be a perfect mother…but a million ways to be a good one.

Mistakes are proof that you are trying.