Summer is coming to a close & autumn is fast approaching (and I’m praying that crisp fall weather is in the near future, as well). For some of you the school year has already started, while others are savoring the last moments of lazy summer days. Wherever you are right now, Homeschool Mama, I hope that this post will encourage you as your school year begins.

It was late August of 1995. I was six years old and in the 1st grade. My mother, three year old brother & I stood at the little kitchen table in our 1200 square foot home, new baby sleeping peacefully in his bouncy seat. After sending Dad off to work with a kiss and a smile, Mother prayed for our day & then we turned our attention towards the little American flag hanging off the top of our new homeschooling bookshelf, placed our right hands over our hearts, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Once this was finished, mom got my little brother started on some Pre-K coloring projects and then sat down with me as we began The Shirley Method Grammar & English book, followed by Saxon math, spelling, writing, Bible, history, and science.

Fast forward ten years to August of 2005. It was my senior year in high school. Dad was getting ready to deploy to Iraq. Five children ages 3-16 in a 2300 sq. ft. home, neat & organized homeschooling bookshelf replaced by individual plastic bins holding textbooks for each child. No American flag. No Pledge of Allegiance. Children scattered about the house in various rooms, one at the dining table, another on the floor, myself upside down in the living room La-Z-Boy since I insisted that was the only way I could get my math completed (and it worked, btw). Lots of silent prayers from mom as she went from one child to another, answering school questions while running around after a three year old who was still not potty trained & wanted to put everything in her mouth.

Completely different pictures between year one and year ten, right?

My mother is a very wise woman, and here are a few truths that she learned and taught me through her own homeschooling experiences. I hope that I will take these things to heart one day as I begin schooling my own children. The following all center around one main idea: FLEXIBILITY.

1. The question is not whether or not children will learn, the question is what will they learn.
You cannot keep a child from learning. Children are like little sponges. They absorb whatever they are around. If your children are around other little children who have learned rude behavior from their own parents and peers, that is what your children will learn as well. They will learn by example. Don’t be afraid that you aren’t teaching your kids enough if they aren’t completing their schoolwork as fast as you think is ideal. They are learning! Homeschooling gives children an amazing opportunity to learn life skills such as cooking, cleaning, household management, child rearing (by helping with younger siblings), communication with people of all ages, grocery shopping on a budget, etc. These are all important life skills that I learned outside of a textbook. They were lessons I learned from experience. Sometimes the lesson for the day is “hey kids, life happens & we have to learn to go with the flow rather than get upset when things get chaotic and don’t go our way.” That’s ok!

2. Children cannot all be taught cookie cutter style. God gives each child unique gifts and abilities.
It’s ok not to have everything “perfect” when it comes to your schooling methods. Some children do very well schooling quietly at the kitchen table. Other children (such as myself) do much better schooling while laying on the floor (or upside down in a chair when it came to math) & listening to classical music at the same time. My husband is an absolute genius at physics, but despises spelling. I completely 12th grade spelling in 8th grade, but never really got the hang of Algebra. People are not robots & God created us differently so that we could work together as a whole to bring Him glory. Don’t fret if your children are not all excelling academically! That does not mean you are a bad parent or teacher. Find their interests and talents & help them develop those gifts.

3. You only get one chance, so make it count! Academics are not the most important thing in life.
One blessing of homeschooling your children is that you are the single most influential person in their lives because you are the one teaching them, spending time with them, and being their example of adulthood. You have the opportunity to mold and shape the lives of your children. I am so thankful that my parents taught me that there are far more important things in life than school and grades. Although I was held to a high standard academically, the expectations were based on the fact that my parents knew me well enough to know that my personal best in many areas meant that I would excel academically. However, this is not the case for all of my siblings & my parents have never pressured any of us to be perfect, but merely to do our very best. After the first year of homeschooling, we became much less structured about it, but my parents recognized that working on our relationships with each other was more vital than learning to spell, so some days spelling just didn’t happen and that was ok!

Do you have specific expectations for what your perfect homeschooling day looks like? Chances are that the majority of school days will not be like that. Let it go. Enjoy life now & savor the little moments of imperfection.

It is now 2012, and my sweet mother has been successfully homeschooling for 17 years, with another 8 years left to go, Lord willing. However, she has two of us out of the house now and we are what the world would deem academically “successful.” I received complete scholarships through my 4 years of college, ending with a 3.9 GPA when I graduated as a registered nurse with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing in 2010 & have worked in a pediatric cardiovascular ICU for the last two years. My younger brother is starting his junior year as a graphic design major and has received multiple scholarships with a high GPA as well & we just found out that he was accepted for a job in graphic design on his campus this year. All this to say, we were never the perfect homeschool family, but we turned out ok.

I look back now and am thankful for all of those wonderfully imperfect homeschooling days.

…the days where we all sat around the living room as mom read history books, the Bible, and The Chronicles of Narnia out loud

…the days where we took a “holiday” and watched movies and ate ice cream instead of doing school

…the days where we spent until dinnertime working on a math concept that I just wasn’t grasping

…the days that we worked on “art and P.E.” aka putting hair bows in my little brother’s hair and then dancing around the living room to the Nutcracker Suite, claiming to do “interpretive dancing”

…the days we sat in a big Rubbermaid tub with our paper towel roll telescopes, pretending to be pirates sailing the seas and looking for buried treasure

…the days where I learned how to be a homeschool teacher because I was the one teaching phonics and reading to my youngest sister

ALL of those grand and glorious days of childhood and homeschooling. ALL of those sweet and precious memories! I would not trade those memories for the world.

Would you like to know the very best part of homeschooling? Because of all of those long, grueling, chaotic days of homeschooling and all of the time my mother invested in me, she is now one of my dearest and best friends. Likewise, my siblings are also some of my closest friends. We are a tight knit family and much of that is due to the precious time that we have spent together over the years. I thank God for that time!

Be encouraged, Homeschool Mama! Your labor is not in vain. These long, imperfect homeschool days will one day be sweet memories of the days you were shaping the lives of your children and if they are like me, they will not have the words to show you the gratitude they have for the impact you made on their lives.