A Homeschool Parent’s Greatest Fear


I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and have written 2-3 other posts trying to articulate my thoughts on this issue, but for some reason I’m having trouble getting my points down in a coherent manner.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the issue I’m trying to write about is a homeschool parent’s greatest fear: that once your children leave you, they will turn away from everything you taught them and turn towards the things you tried to shelter them from.

I won’t lie; I share some of those fears from time to time. I wonder if I did enough to give my girls the tools they need to navigate the world we live in.  I watch some of the kids my girls grew up with turn away, while some don’t, and I wonder what the difference is, especially from kids in the same family.

I have heard parents who want their children to go to certain kinds of colleges if they go to college at all, in order to continue in the sheltering atmosphere they grew up in.  I have heard a prominent radio talk show host say that he refuses to send his kids to college because he doesn’t want to pay to have them undo everything he has taught his kids up to age 18.

And then I wonder: Do we have it all wrong?  We cannot force our children to believe what we believe simply by keeping them sheltered and only teaching them what we believe.  We cannot give them credit for our beliefs; they have to come to these conclusions for themselves.  Belief or unbelief, ultimately, is between them and God. We cannot make it happen simply by homeschooling or making them follow certain rules.

I often wonder when I hear these concerns, do we think once they reach 18 we can continue to force them to stay in our bubbles and only be exposed to what we believe?  What age is mature enough to release them into the world if 18 isn’t it?

And I have concluded that the only thing I can do is teach my children critical thinking skills, let them read lots of different viewpoints and summarize said viewpoints into their own words, and make sure from a young age they have a foundation in God’s word and the catechism so they have something to fall back on. And pray.  At the end of the day, you can only do so much.  You can plant, but you can’t force the growth.  And since we are all human, we will all make mistakes.  But God is bigger than our mistakes, and our children are always under His care. 

So I will not be afraid to send my girls into the world; I can’t control it anyway.  I just have to trust that God has it under control, and what happens to them will ultimately work for His glory.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homemaking Isn’t Rocket Science

Image
This is going to be purely my opinion.   I hope I don’t step on any toes, but the idea of girls spending a tremendous amount of time learning “homemaking skills” has confused me for a long time. Homemaking isn’t rocket science.   But it’s okay for your daughters to learn rocket science. In fact, as a homeschool mom, I feel it is easy for our daughters to learn both homemaking skills and rigorous academics by the time they graduate from high school. Let me explain why.   As a classroom teacher, we wasted lots of time in transitions and dealing with behaviors.   The days were long, but the actual amount of instructional time we had was short.   You classroom teachers know what I am talking about. At home, things are more flexible. My kids knew they had to get the work done that I planned for them, and they also knew that they were in control of how much free time they had.   Also, we all had chores we shared since we lived in the same house, so housewor...
Read more

Older Christian Women Paint an Unappealing View of Marriage

Image
I’ve seen a lot of the "Titus 2" influencer set giving what they think is helpful marriage advice. I've read several of the popular Christian marriage books. I have also been married for 31 years, and I have wondered for a good while why a lot of this advice seems to be stuff that doesn’t apply to my life. And I finally came to the conclusion that much of what they say doesn’t resonate with me because they start from the premise that marriage is very hard and they are telling you how to survive. This was clearly on display on X (Twitter) the other day when a woman was responding to the very toxic influencer I have responded to before.   The woman’s comment was this: “We stay married because we fear God and love our children. Make sure the man you marry fears God and is shown by his behavior. Teach your daughters this.” This comment struck me as super odd. If that’s the only reason to stay married, you must be just sticking it out, not joyfully living as husband and ...
Read more

A Word About Our Single Adult Christian Daughters

Image
I recently read a blog post from a patriarchal Titus 2 “influencer” with a large following asking whether it was a sin for a single adult Christian woman to have an education and a career.  While she initially stated she couldn’t definitively say, she proceeded to lay out all the bad things that happen (in her mind) to women who work outside the home, especially as nurses or teachers (traditionally female occupations). In the discussion on her Facebook page, she not only deleted whole sections of comments from very well balanced single young Christian women with careers whose parents are elderly and on a fixed income (therefore cannot support them), she revealed her true thoughts when responding to several people who questioned what would happen if women left education and health care.  “Straw man argument!” she declared, “Not all will repent and come home.” She also stated that only those who didn’t love Jesus would stay in nursing instead of being full-time homemakers or sta...
Read more