As we wind down our first year of homeschooling, I wanted to
just take some time to reflect on this journey.
We have come a long way this year but we still have a lot to learn.
There were many reasons why we chose to take our kids out of
public school. It was something I had
prayed over for over 4 years. M’s
seventh grade year was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Back when M was beginning 4th grade, he was
placed in a class with a teacher whom we were familiar with. Z had the same teacher 5 years
prior. I received a phone call after the
very first day of school. The teacher
reported that M was very talkative. He
was so talkative, in fact, that the teacher felt it necessary to move his desk
next to hers, by himself, away from all of the other children. The first day. Then, this came out of her mouth; “I had such
high hopes for M, knowing how well behaved Z was.” The very next day, we were making phone calls
and sending emails to get M out of that class. We had meetings and they did oblige and move
him to another class but that was the first time I threatened to pull him out
and homeschool him myself.
Over the years, I’ve watched M go from having lots of
great friends to having no friends to having the wrong kind of friends. If you know M, you know that he’s always
had trouble with social graces. Kids are
much more accepting of differences when they’re young. As they grow, they tend to slowly push kids
like M away.
Kids have always been cruel.
I remember getting picked on up until about 7th or 8th
grade, but I think it’s gotten worse over the years.
M was the type of kid who absolutely needed to have breaks
throughout his school day. It would help
him decompress and refocus.
Unfortunately, M was also the type of kid who lost it nearly every
day. I pleaded with teachers to see if
there were other ways we could enforce consequences for his actions. We were never able to come up with anything
so the behavior continued. I never asked
for there to be NO consequences, just different. Clearly, it never helped the negative
behavior; it only caused a never-ending cycle.
In fifth grade, kids started calling M a lesbian. Unfortunately, M didn’t come home and ask
us what it meant. He looked it up
online. Imagine the Google images that
popped up. I sobbed when I checked his
internet history and saw what my little boys’ eyes had seen.
M stopped getting invited to birthday parties or
sleepovers. It would have been fine if
he hadn’t known but the kids who he thought were his friends made sure he
knew. I stopped having “friend parties”
for M for fear that nobody would show up.
That’s heartbreaking as a parent.
One night, at sneaker night, M got bullied pretty badly by
one single kid. M tried to play
basketball with a group of boys and one kid kept knocking him down, laughing at
him and really just being a little punk.
C was so mad, he called the kids father when they got home. We’ve never done that before but he was fed
up.
Seventh grade was the worst.
Not a day went by that M didn’t come home with some bullying
incident. They literally picked on him
for everything. M started school that
year with new Nike sneakers. The kids
called them “dollar store Nike’s” and picked on them for 3 months
straight. M would practically beg us
to buy him Jordan’s because that’s what the “cool kids” wore. His Aunt bought him a pair right after I
shared this with her. I bought him a
second pair for Christmas. Apparently,
they weren’t good enough, because the kids called them fake. M would come home and do Google search
after Google search on fake Jordan’s and how to tell if yours were real. He grilled us on where we bought them from
and how much we paid for them. The kids
told him that if they were real, there wouldn’t be a Jordan symbol on the
bottom. One pair had it and one pair
didn’t. They said the color was off and
both pairs were fake. They picked on him
because he joined the track team and he was too slow and fat. They picked on him if he got good grades or
if he got bad grades. It was never
ending. M would come home from school
and say “we had an anti-bullying assembly today and we weren’t even out the
door of the auditorium and they were already picking on me.”
Sometimes when kids are different, they cling to whoever
will be friends with them. That’s what
happened with M over the years. He
ended up hanging out with kids I wouldn’t necessarily want him to hang out
with. What can a parent do while they’re
in school, though. We can only control
so much. Grades slipped, behavior suffered. Seventh grade was a horror show. A constant struggle. It was the straw.
I don’t think kids should have to tough it out because it
will make them stronger in the long run.
That isn’t always the case.
Sometimes people grow up and suffer all their lives because of the way
they got bullied. If you’ve spent 10 or
12 years hearing the same things over and over again, you begin to believe
it. Sometimes kids can’t even live
through it. Sometimes they take their
own lives because of it. It’s easy to
say “not my kid,” but how do you know?
What if it IS your kid?
What if you need to get hit over the head with a 2x4 to get
you to listen? I’m convinced that the
reason M’s 7th grade year was so bad was because God had been
trying for 4 years to wake me up to his will for our family and I wasn’t
listening. It was a scary thing. I pushed it off for selfish reasons. I love my kids but did I really want to spend
24/7 with them? What about MY time? MY money?
MY freedom? See a pattern
here? Plus, I’ve never felt smart. There’s no way I felt capable of teaching my
kids. There are people trained for that
purpose.
The week I finally made the decision, I really
struggled. I literally went hour by hour
changing my mind back and forth. I can’t
do this; I’m SO sick of being broke. If
we do this, it’s for the long haul.
S was only 2 at the time and that meant years and years and years
of not working and struggling financially.
Then, I HAVE to do this! God will
take care of us, He ALWAYS does. Then I
worried that they would miss their friends too much. But it’s not like we’re hobbits. They can still get together with their
friends for playdates, Church, Sunday school, 4H, family Bible study and youth group. Then I’d think of just how unqualified I
was. So unqualified. God’s grace would cover me. Where I’m weak, my husband is strong. All of the negative things I was focusing on
were worldly things; things that people say are important. It wasn’t until I started praying a prayer
based on 1 Samuel 16:7, that I was able to finally make the decision. It says; But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not
consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people
look at. People look at the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
In other words, our focus should be on things which God says are
important, not what people think are important.
I also prayed with Proverbs 22:6 in mind. Train up a child in the way he should go and
when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Putting things into perspective with eternity in mind, it was clear.
This year has been difficult. Highly stressful at times. My kids fight like any other siblings. It’s hard to listen to it day in and day out. My kids can be disobedient, like every other
kid. It leaves you questioning your
parenting skills. It makes you wonder if
you’re doing something wrong. There have
been times when I’ve wanted to run away and not come back for days. I’ve been impatient and sometimes downright
mean. It’s ugly, sometimes. I crave breaks and often feel sorry for
myself because we have no money to get away for a couple of days every other
month or so. My house suffers. It’s never really cleaned like I’d like it to
be. But, there I go again, focusing on
worldly things.
All that being said, I have had such peace with this
decision and the direction our family is going.
I KNOW with all certainty that this is God’s will for us. I know that I’ve focused on M throughout
this, but L had his own struggles in public school as well. My kids have learned more, not because I’m a
better teacher (by NO means) but because my kids have one on one attention. There’s no missed work because they can’t
focus. They take lots of breaks
throughout the day and the work just gets done eventually. It’s a completely different lifestyle. Much more laid back. We have so much freedom. If we decide we want to go in the back yard
and have a bonfire and roast marshmallows at 8:30 on a school night, we have
that freedom because we don’t have to wake up at 6am to get ready for school
the next day. We can go away during the week,
if we’re able, when it’s cheaper and less busy.
We’re able learn with a Biblical worldview which strengthens our faith
in God. It’s been amazing learning
alongside my kids. All of the things I
didn’t learn in, or remember from school, I’m learning now. I started because of bullying and it’s turned
into doing what I know will honor and glorify God. I believe it’s the best shot I’ve got at not
having my kids walk away from their faith and losing them to an ungodly
world. To be able to choose curriculum
that’s steeped in Gods word is an amazing blessing. It’s impossible to deny our Creator when you
learn science and history and health and English from a Biblical
worldview. Ultimately, our biggest
prayer for our kids is that they would live to love and serve Christ and love
and serve others. Their salvation and
their eternity is number one priority. I
only wish I could influence more families to take this path so that they could
see for themselves the amazing blessing it is.
It’s ugly and beautiful and stressful and amazing and Lord
willing, I will never have to give up the right to educate my children. I am blessed beyond measure.
If you are thinking of homeschooling your kids, I would love to talk with you. To encourage you. To pray for you.
*M is my 14 year old 8th grader
*L is my 8 year old 3rd grader
*Z is my 18 year old public high school graduate
*C is my husband
*S is my 3 year old daughter
