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The Most Important Things to Teach Our Children

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I’ve been thinking about this as I transition into empty nest status and think back on our homeschool years while writing a homeschool resource book.  What (outside of the gospel) are the most important things to teach our children? Academics are important and should not be neglected solely in favor of teaching good character, but there are some things that our society desperately needs to restore in bringing up our children. One look at anything on the internet tells us basic civility is dead and something needs to change. The first thing I think we need to make sure we teach our children is that what we do affects more than just ourselves, and we need to treat others the way we want to be treated. My parents didn’t really push this when I was a kid, but I spent a lot of time with my very amazing grandma, and I definitely heard this message loud and clear from her.   All her grandchildren agree, we were often admonished with the verse “Be ye kind one to another” and reminded to tr
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Should Women Keep Up With Current Events?

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It seems every few weeks I find something else from that “Titus 2” blogger/influencer that makes me cringe.  Last week was another one I sent to my girls…naturally with the eyeroll emoji.  Not very mature of me, but I digress…this week’s topic was when the lady in question reposted a screenshot of a tweet from a fundamentalist pastor who said, in summary, his wife is too busy raising his 6 kids to fret about whatever “psyop” the news wants her worrying about.  Now, I can understand being busy and not watching the news.  Sometimes it is good to take a break from whatever is going on in the world.  But I don’t think we should totally check out of things, for a lot of reasons. It isn’t just the original post that made me roll my eyes.   Sometimes the comments and the “Titus 2” lady’s replies are worse than the original post.   Despite the fact that this woman says she only teaches women (because that is Biblical) there are many men who love to hate on women who follow her and absolutely
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The “Umbrella of Protection” and the Damage It Causes Adults Raised Under It

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I just finished reading Jill Duggar Dillard’s book, Counting the Cost , and I have a lot of thoughts.  This is going to be less of a book review and just some observations after reading both her book and her sister’s book and personal contact with some IBLP families.  On the book, it was good.  Nothing in it surprised me from what I know of IBLP.  I felt she was much more charitable towards her parents than I thought she would be.  She clearly still loves them, and the hurt is deep from her father’s actions.  The thing that stands out to me the most is that a lot of what she struggled with is due to the “Umbrella of Protection” idea that is one of the cornerstones of IBLP teachings.   If you aren’t familiar with it, a graphic is below. Under this idea, the father and his wishes are supreme, and he must be obeyed without question. After all, God placed him in authority over you, and to question what he says is akin to disobeying God.   And if you disobey him, you will put yourself at
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Are Women’s Bible Studies Harming You Spiritually?

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I hate to do two posts in a row debunking the popular but still unnamed “Titus 2” blogger/influencer, but this one has been posted by her every 6 weeks or so, and every time, I just wonder what kind of women she has been around. The posts go something like this: What happens with many women is that they attend women’s Bible studies faithfully (where they learn NOTHING about being godly wives) which puffs them up with pride and makes them feel spiritually superior to their husbands since their husbands don’t attend Bible studies.   Women NEED to be learning how to be godly wives.   And only that.   It is wrong for women to teach theology to other women. The comments on these types of posts are just as bad.  Some insinuate that women just want to go to Bible studies run by other women because they want to usurp authority from men.  The general sentiment of those that believe the same way this “Titus 2” influencer does is that women are so easily deceived that they lead one another as
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Does College Turn Our Daughters (or Sons) Away From God?

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I have been kind of following a particular fundamentalist blogger on social media for a little over 6 months now, who shall remain unnamed because I think her beliefs are toxic and legalistic and I don’t want to drive more people to her posts. But she is not alone in her belief that college is a bad place for children raised in Christian homes to go, and this has been on my mind a lot lately. Every couple of weeks, this blogger posts on social media something along these lines: Women, do not send your daughters to college unless you want them to become feminists and lesbians with a lot of debt. Everyone in college is drinking and fornicating, and this is a bad environment for our daughters. Women are better off skipping college and finding some way to make money from home rather than being indoctrinated into Marxism.   Men don’t want a woman more educated than them, and all college does is drive them into the workplace and away from God’s will for them, which is to marry, have child
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My Thoughts on ‘Shiny Happy People’

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I have been thinking about this for about a month, not sure whether I should weigh in or not.  It’s been a very crazy month for us, including everything from a Facebook hack (don’t get me started), many job interviews and no clear direction for one of our girls, and an illness for another that involved two trips to urgent care and an evening in the ER.  So my mind hasn’t been processing all the information about the documentary and how it came across until now. I realize some have dismissed the documentary as illegitimate because it was done by secular people and did not give disclaimers that not all homeschoolers or Christians subscribe to these beliefs.  But I believe to dismiss it on these grounds is a mistake. While there was a subtle attempt, especially near the end, to paint with a broad brush and include a bunch of different Christian “influencers” in a montage that may make some think all are the same, the documentary was definitely heavily slanted towards exposing the Duggar
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What is a Woman’s Highest Calling? Or What Should Our Daughters Do After High School?

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This is a topic that has been swirling around the Christian blogosphere and social media lately, partially because of Mother’s Day and partially because of a few controversial voices saying that women can only teach “Biblical womanhood” to other women and not theology. This topic has been on my mind a lot over the years, mostly because I have three daughters (no sons) and because the topic of what our homeschooled daughters should be learning/pursuing has been a topic of discussion the entire time I’ve been a homeschool mom.   Opinions are strong, but we have kind of landed in the middle of the road on this issue.   So what are the most common options?   The regular route has been to graduate from high school and go to college, then get a job or get married or both. This applies whether you homeschool or not, and is probably the most common route. The other idea that was (and still is) popular in some segments of the homeschooling community is for our daughters to stay at home un
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