3 Truths About Homeschooling

As homeschooling families, we always read or hear mixed feelings regarding our calling. Whether the words are positive or negative, they can leave us with mixed feelings of our own. Regardless if you’ve been homeschooling for several years or you’re just beginning your journey, here are 3 homeschooling truths to ponder.

1. Homeschooling Is Hard.

Homeschooling definitely comes with constant changes and challenges. Some days you’ll revel in the slow, restful pace of crafts and reading classic literature. Other days, you’ll repeat the same mathematical concepts and vocabulary words until your head hurts. You’ll wonder why you ever thought homeschooling was a good idea.

Embrace the Rhythms of Your Home

As a homeschooling family, you’re with your children nearly 100% of the day. You all see the beautiful and the ugly in one another. Therefore, both restful and trying seasons will naturally come and go. Embrace those seasons and lean into the rhythms of your home. Adjust your schedule where needed to allow your family to acclimate to those life changes and busy seasons.

2. You Won’t Do It Perfectly.

So, you gave homeschooling a strong, valiant effort. However, you found it was hard because you just couldn’t do everything. The truth is that no one can. Whether you’re homeschooling one child or several children, you can’t do it all and do it all well.

Turn Away from Distractions

The world compels us to work and give until we eventually have nothing left. We drain ourselves dry in the name of educating our children. “They need to know these things,” we tell ourselves. In the meantime, our children dislike education and so do we.

Social media can stir feelings of doubt and unrest as we view “perfect” pictures of others’ homes and school rooms. We’re left feeling inadequate in our family culture and homeschooling decisions.

Lighten Your Load

Believing the lie that you must live life perfectly only results in a heavy burden impossible to bear. Take inventory of the extra things you’re doing in your homeschool and the culture of your family life.

• Are they cherished by you and your children?
• Do they instill virtue and a love of learning?
• Are they life giving and enriching to your family culture?

If the answer is no, consider letting them go.

3. Homeschooling Is Worth It.

We have the task and privilege of educating our children in our home. We not only play math games and administer spelling tests, but we also cultivate virtue in our children. The dinner conversations, cleaning bedrooms, folding laundry, engaging in dialogue over a literature chapter are all cultivating virtue in our children.

During the tough seasons of homeschooling, I recall these truths to mind. Homeschooling has tough seasons, but they are worth it. When seeds of doubt begin to take root, I remember that I’m instilling virtue in them just as they are in me.

-Danielle

Danielle is a former classroom teacher turned “work-from-home” and homeschooling mother of two. She now spends her days teaching her children, reading numerous books, and sharing her gifts with others. She blogs about her adventures at DanielleHope.com.