The Most Important Things About Homeschooling Ever, Part One

Before I say anything about anything, I want to tell you something. Not the generic "you", but YOU the person who is reading this post and considering homeschooling their kid:

You are about to undertake one of the most terrifying, humbling, thrilling, mundane acts of love humans can give.

This is not what you signed up for.

This is the part of parenting you fully expected to outsource.

This means you are AMAZING. You are flawed and you are impatient or disorganized or scared or have a laundry mountain on your couch. (Or you could be me and possess all of those traits.) You are going to need support and love and prayer every single day. You are blessed and you are beautiful and you are brilliant.

I'm going to tell you this now, so you have it in your mental arsenal when you get overwhelmed. I'll probably still yell it at you occasionally because you will need to be reminded.

GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK!!!

There will be days when you feel like flagging down a school bus and throwing the kids on board in their pajamas. This is normal. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and hide in the bathroom until the feeling passes. If it doesn't, throw them in the car and go get Krispy Kreme. Watch the doughnuts being made, talk about yeast belching. You just had science class.

Okay, onto the list of the most important things...

1. LOVE - Your job as their parent and teacher, first and always, is to love your kids well. Sometimes this means hugging them so tight as you read a book together. Sometimes this means enforcing your schedule and routine so that there's a good framework for learning. Sometimes it means that you're both out of patience and attention and you just have to take a walk and eat a cookie and hit the reset button on the day.

Tell them you love them every single day. Look them in the eyes every single day. Hug them every single day. It is so easy to drift into our roles as busy, often overworked and stressed out adults that we forget how fleeting this opportunity is.

2. QUALIFICATIONS - You do not need Albert Einstein's IQ or a Harvard degree to teach your kids. You do need humility, curiosity, and a profound sense of humor to teach them.

3. TIME - Our most valuable resource as home educators is time. For those of you teaching young ones (preschool through 2nd grade), the most important teaching tool you can give your kiddos is time. Time to sit in your lap and read a book. Time to color together. Time to explore your environment. Math will come. They will learn the format of the five paragraph essay. They will not always want to cuddle on your lap and learn about how their grandfather attended the March on Washington or their great-aunt made the best apple jacks in all of Johnston County, North Carolina.

4. KIDS - I have yet to meet a child with an aversion to learning. It might not be what I want them to learn. It might not be something I find particularly interesting. It might be something I find disgusting or silly or some other grown-up-sounding pejorative, but there is always, always something that fascinates them. The key is to find a way to link what you want them to learn and what they want to learn.

That's it for now. Next up...what curriculum should I use???