Yes, I know that “destressifying” isn’t a word.  I just made it up. (Hmm…maybe I should trademark it!) And by the way, does the guy in this picture not look like the most destressified person you’ve ever seen?  :)

In any case, today I am featuring a guest post by Aaron Schulman, who gave us advice a few months ago on how to find low-cost (and free) music resources online.  Today he is offering advice on how to make your travel plans less stressful – which in turn should make them more enjoyable!  I encourage you to not only read this post, but consider bookmarking it or printing it out so you have it handy for your next vacation!

One of the great advantages of homeschooling is that you may experience more diversity in your choices for educational and family travel. One of the possible disadvantages is that you may not always be able to benefit from the savings and added safety of group travel, unless you can join a homeschool travel group or condominium travel club.

As the old saying goes, it’s always better to be safe than to be sorry, and when traveling or going on a vacation alone, or with your family, or even with a homeschool travel group this rule certainly applies. Many people don’t realize how important it is to plan ahead before traveling until they get stuck in a difficult “unexpected ” situation with no idea how to get out of it. To avoid something like this happening to you, here is a starter-list of what you could be doing before going on a journey.

1. Have a friend or a relative check up on your home regularly. An empty apartment or house is the perfect target for thieves and if they realize you are away they won’t think twice before trying to break in and get their hands on some free stuff.

2. Never use social media sites to advertise the fact that you are going away for a longer period of time because that’s like sending burglars an open invitation. The truth is that potentially one of the people that you have listed as friends on these sites are not necessarily “friends.” If you are in a small social network online and trust everyone associated as a “friend,” don’t put too much confidence in your privacy settings for your posts because technology can experience glitches, and some settings may be overlooked, allowing unwanted readers to be informed of your vacant home.

3. A nice and simple way to keep your home “apparently” secure while you are gone is to use a timer for your lights and set it to turn them on at preset intervals to make it look like the house is not empty. Some outside lights with motion sensors can also help you with added protection.

4. Before you go, ask a friend to pick up and keep your mail for you on a daily basis. You can also go directly to the postal office and ask them to hold anything that you receive.

5. If you are going on vacation, start making a list of everything that you need several weeks before leaving. Include all the essential stuff that you need on the road and everything that you need when you get to your destination. Keep the list close and every time you remember something, write it down.

6. Before you leave, make sure you remove everything that might spoil from your freezer to avoid the hassle of cleaning it when you get back. However, it’s not a bad idea to freeze some food for when you return because you might be tired and cooking will be the last thing you’ll want to do. Additionally, you can save a little money and use up some items in your fridge by having leftovers the last few nights before you leave for vacation.

7. Leave a list with all the places that you will be visiting and all the hotels that you will be staying at so that your relatives can reach you in case of an emergency. Make sure you also leave the respective phone numbers and any other necessary information. You may even want to purchase an inexpensive pre-paid cellular phone as a backup. Many of these sell for $20 or $20 and come with minutes already packaged.

8. Check the weather forecast and prepare ahead. If sudden weather changes are to be expected you should pack some extra clothes and appropriate footwear. Also get additional provisions to be used in the eventuality of delays.

9. Have copies of all your important documents on you so that you are able to use them in case of an emergency. It is best to take care of all the travel arrangements several weeks before the departure date so that you are able to modify aspects with which you are not satisfied.

10. If you are taking any necessary medications, make sure you have enough of them before leaving. You certainly want to avoid running out of them while you are still on vacation. You can even pack a little extra just in case of delays on your return date.

11. Make sure you have the medical background or health information of the entire group (if necessary). If anyone coming with you suffers from a medical condition or has a medication allergy, you must be able to provide this information to the emergency care provider if and when needed.

12. Last but definitely not least, pack a simple first aid kit because it can save lives. You never know what can happen and you might even use it to help others that are not in your group.

If you follow these simple instructions and plan ahead accordingly, you should be able to successfully handle most situations that you might encounter on your journey. You can also avoid a lot of nuisances that are usually caused by poor, last minute decisions. Although this is not an exhaustive list for preparation, you can easily use this to get started and add any additional custom items through personal research or experience.

P.S. Anne here…you know I couldn’t go without adding my two cents! I highly recommend #5 above, i.e. I heartily agree that you should make a list of all the various items you will need while traveling. I always do this. Items that are easy to forget are things like clothing accessories (such as belts or jewelry) or nightwear (such as pj’s, bathrobes, slippers, etc.)  I know that these days there’s all kinds of advice about how to travel “light.”  Frankly, traveling with a family, I’d rather travel heavy…what I mean is I’d rather everyone have an extra outfit or two rather than to find out that we’ve been offered an unexpected opportunity to attend a special event but no one has a decent thing to wear.  And it’s especially important if you’re traveling with infants or toddlers to bring along extra outfits! (You know what I mean!)

One last tip: if you are going to be driving your own vehicle for your trip, get it into your mechanic ahead of time.  Have them change the oil (if needed) and do a “trip check.”  This should include checking all the belts and hoses, fluids, brakes and tires, etc.  Not only will it save you a breakdown on the road (been there, done that, not fun) but they might even find something that could save you a more expensive repair.

So now, hit the road and make some memories!

About the author: Aaron Schulman is a web developer and homeschool parent who enjoys cooking, learning, traveling with his family and writing reviews on various topics, like the Baby Taylor travel guitar. One recent editorial he wrote covers how economic changes in the travel industry have led to great travel savings through concepts such as timeshare alternatives. You can read more about him at his site, Aimadvantage.com.

For those who’ve been following my blog for a while you may remember me talking about being ill in the last six months or so.  While I did recover from an acute illness that I had at the end of December, I was still experiencing severe fatigue when I went in for a routine check-up in early April.  I told the doctor about my symptoms and she was concerned.  She ordered an EKG, chest X-ray, and lab work.  The results?  I had mono.  Seriously.

I’d already had mono at the end of my senior year when I was 17.  Made me miss Grad Night, in fact.  Now you may think that once you’ve had a disease, you’re immune to it.  Not so fast.  Apparently, as I have only recently learned, once you’ve had mono it’s in your system forever.  And it can be “reactivated” by severe physical and/or emotional stress.  I can’t be sure, but I’m guessing the illness I had late last year (which was definitely physically and emotionally stressful) triggered the mono.

In any case, here I am a 50-year old mother of four fighting mono.  It’s not funny.

I spent all day today in bed.  I had a lousy week dealing with various hassles – I felt like the enemy was just pushing all my buttons.  And as a result, I was thoroughly exhausted today.  I mean, I could not move.  So I decided I was just going to take the day off.  Forget the paperwork, the e-mail, the laundry (though I did end up folding one load).  My kids were on their own with meals, but the boys lucked-out because my daughter came over and fixed spaghetti.

I lay in bed all day listening to my favorite radio stations that I stream over the internet.  I got up to eat dinner with the kids, but that was about it.

In any case, I had a lot of time to think today.  I won’t share 99% of it because for the most part I was so angry at being sick that my thoughts had a decidedly angst-filled tone.  However, about midnight I was still lying in bed just resting and I started, as I often do, writing a blog post in my head.

I don’t know if any of you reading this are “writers” by nature, but I am and always have been.  And I do virtually all of my writing in my head.  I’ve literally written entire books in my head.  I can’t help it, it’s just something I do, often without even realizing it.  Any post you read on this blog has probably been written at least a couple of times in my head before I ever get to the point of sitting down with my computer.  Often they may have been written and rewritten a dozen times or more!  If I could just figure out a way to connect my brain directly to the computer I would get so much more production!

Well, I decided to share with you the post I was writing in my head.  It might make a good “guest post” somewhere, but frankly, I’d rather share it with my faithful readers!  I hope you enjoy it and that maybe it causes you to take the time to document some of your own family memories.

So this is how the post I was writing in my head started…I was thinking about a newspaper column I read once that was incredibly stupid.  I can’t say for sure that it was the “Miss Manners” column but I’m pretty sure it was, so we’ll just go with that and my apologies to Miss Manners if I’m wrong – which I’m 99.9% sure I’m not.   As a little plaque my kids gave me says – and it’s got a picture of Lucy from Peanuts because apparently I’m as crabby as she is – anyway, the plaque says, “I never made a mistake in my life.  I thought I did once, but I was wrong.”

In any case…I will grant you that in 50 years of living I’ve heard a lot of stupid things.  More than I could ever count.  And this example I’m about to relate would certainly not make the “top ten” list of stupid things I’ve ever heard, but it was still incredibly stupid.

In this column a woman was writing for advice.  Her daughter had given her a lovely framed photograph of her family – i.e. the daughter, her husband and kids.  This woman planned on hanging the picture in her bedroom because she didn’t think it was “appropriate” to hang family photographs in the living area.  Her daughter was upset, because she had assumed her mother would hang the picture where people could see it.

Can you guess what “Miss Manners” said?  I’ll bet you can’t.

Miss Manners agreed with the mother.  I kid you not.  According to her “expert” opinion, it is indeed inappropriate to hang family photographs in the living area!

To which I have to respond: then what is a “living area” for?  My house is not a museum.  It’s where we live.

I could not believe the stupidity of thinking that a HOME is supposed to be devoid of photographs of the people who live there, or are loved by those who live there.  If you agree with this mother and Miss Manners, I can assure you – you don’t ever want to come to my house.

I’ll start with my living room…on the wall facing you as you walk in is a very large framed photo of my mother, her parents, and her ten siblings.  It was taken, I believe, in 1945, which would have made my mom about seven years old.  Whenever anyone comes over to our home for the first time they are always drawn to this photo.  And I will ask them if they can guess which child is my mother.   They always get it right because there is a strong family resemblance between my mother and my daughter.

If you will now look to your right, you’ll see a half-dozen or so family photos – half of which are of my grandmother and her two sisters from when they had an act on Vaudeville called “Doll Frolics.”  They opened for quite a few famous entertainers.  I actually have a file containing newspaper clippings of ads from the papers of the dozens of cities they performed in.  These photos on my wall are approximately 90 years old.  And I should hang them in my bedroom???  They are history, for goodness sakes!  My family’s history.

Along with the photos of my grandmother and her sisters are a few pictures of my dad from his days as an entertainer.  Like his parents, he grew up singing and dancing.  (His parents were both Vaudeville entertainers, which is how they met).  In one of the pictures, my dad is only about five years old and is dancing with a lovely little girl.  One of the other pictures is possibly my favorite picture of my dad.  He’s about 18, dressed in a tux, striking a dance pose from one of the many shows he was in.  He is dashingly handsome and looks so happy.  And I should put this photograph in my bedroom because…?

On the coffee table in the living room is another picture of my dad in a dance pose, and on the end table is a picture of his dad, my grandfather.  I have only pictures to remember either of my grandfathers by, because they both died when my parents were young.

Next to the picture of my grandfather is a photo of my older brother (now deceased), me and my younger sister.  Our ages in the picture are approximately 5, 3, and 2 years old.  My sister-in-law pointed out once how much my youngest son looks like this picture of me.  I had never before seen a resemblance between this son and myself, but in this picture you can definitely see my son’s eyes shining out through my own.

I have a couple dozen photo albums on the shelves in my living room as well as some framed photos.  One is of my older brother when he was about 25.  I also have photos of my niece who passed away five years ago at the age of 19.  In addition to her pictures I have a beautiful photo of a little girl who was my friend’s daughter.  She passed away at the age of 10 of cystic fibrosis.  This photo is a precious reminder of that sweet little girl.

On another wall in my living room is a photo of my brother taken just a couple of months before he passed away at the age of 37.  I have the photo framed with a memorial card from his funeral and a quote I found in an obituary section of the newspaper.  The quote says:

Love is eternal and love is immortal and death is only a horizon.  And a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.  - By Rossiter Worthington Raymond

I love this quote because it is a beautiful reminder that, for the Christian, this life is not the end, or even the best, that we have to look forward to.  There is so much more, something so much lovelier waiting for us on the other side, where our loved ones also await us.

To continue my photo tour…in the entryway you will see a dozen pictures or so of everything from my wedding day to baby pictures of my kids to my oldest son’s college graduation.  There’s also a picture of my husband and his six siblings when they were kids and there are pictures of my dad and his sister – those photos are easily 60 years old.  In addition to those photos are a series of three pictures of my parents: one shows my dad is in his Air Force uniform, the second is of my parents on their wedding day and the third was taken shortly after my older brother was born.

Down the hall towards my kids’ bedrooms are 8×10 photos that cover my four children’s “school years.”   There are only a couple missing…for instance, the year that we got hit by Hurricane Andrew I didn’t get my daughter’s third grade picture taken.  Nevertheless, this wall documents my daughter’s and sons’ childhoods – you can see not only how they grew but precisely that time when they began to change from children to young adults.  I plan to give these photos to them someday…they can show their own children the course of their growing up years!

Around the corner and down another hall are numerous collages of family members from various branches of the families…Christmas photos and family reunion photos and all kinds of miscellaneous photos that remind us of our loved ones.  The den that serves as our computer room also has its share of family photos.

My kids all have family pictures in their rooms and yes, I do have a number of photos in my bedroom as well!  (Which Miss Manners surely approves of.)

But down the hall from my bedroom I also have more family photographs – including a collage of photos that I made in memory of my cousin Paul who died at the age of 35.  Paul and I were very close, as you might gather if you saw the photo in the middle of the collage.  It was taken in the front yard of the house I grew up in, and it shows Paul and I when we were in high school…Paul’s arm is around me and we’re smiling at the camera.  How I miss that smile!

The last room we’ll visit on our tour of my home is our family room/school room.  You may be surprised to learn that this room has the least number of family photos of all the rooms in my house!  The reason is that this room doubles as our schoolroom so one wall is taken up with a timeline of the world and another wall has a giant periodic table and there are historic photos and the pledge of allegiance and the Ten Commandments and a Despair.com poster or two (just for fun).  But I do have a few pictures in this room.  One of them is of my late brother, a University of Florida Gator fan (we still managed to get along even though my family are diehard Seminole fans!)  In this photo he is wearing a Florida Gator hat and is holding a live baby alligator!  He caught this little gator one year when he went camping with some friends in the Everglades.  (No, he did not bring the gator home!)  He was in his 20’s in this photo and it might be my favorite of him.  He is so good-looking and it’s just too crazy that he’s wearing his Gator hat and holding an actual alligator.  I love it.

On the shelf next to my brother’s photo I also have a picture of my late niece, taken about a year or so before she passed away.  In it, she is pursing her lips and has a kind of, “What do you want?” look on her face.  She was an absolute knock-out and this picture of her just captures her in a sweet, yet sassy way that I love.

The last picture I will point, out as I finish our tour, is of my dad and I’ve posted it below.  For at least thirty years, my dad’s second job was as a referee/umpire at baseball, football, and basketball games.  When my parents moved from our native Miami in 1989 my dad was 55, but he still got involved in refereeing in their new hometown.  After his first surgery for cancer in 2002 he could no longer run up and down football fields as a ref, but he still managed to stay involved for a few more years, as a timekeeper at high school football games.  I believe he truly loved his years refereeing even if it meant being out at night after working a full day as a letter carrier.  In fact, a friend recently told me that in his memories of my dad he’s always wearing either his postal uniform or his referee uniform!

Several years ago my parents showed me the newspaper clipping in the photo below.  I didn’t remember ever seeing it before, though I surely must have seen it when it first came out.  The clipping is from “The Miami Herald” – from the front page of the sports section – and it’s probably about 30-35 years old.  When it came out in the paper’s sports section, understandably, my parents’ friends and family all cut out the picture from their copies of the Herald and gave them to my parents, so they had several copies.

When my parents showed me the clippings a few years ago, I took a couple of them and had one framed for my parents, and the other framed for me, for my family room.  By this time my father was already fighting the incurable cancer that we knew would take his life, and it was a special memory I wanted to preserve.

The caption, as you can see, is “Shout It Out.”  This photo was taken about the time that Shout stain-fighter was first hitting the store shelves and their tag line, “if you can’t get a stain out, shout it out” was well-known, which is obviously the reason the editor, or whoever named the photo, chose that caption.  But it is perfect, don’t you think?

To set the picture up for you a little bit…the game being played was between Hialeah High School and Norland High School.  In the caption it says that my dad called the runner out (the Hialeah player) after the catcher tagged him out at home plate.  What the photo doesn’t indicate is whether the player was stealing home, or whether the play was made after a hit.  The reason I say it’s unclear is because you have another Hialeah player behind home plate, holding a bat, and pointing at home plate.  Was he the batter who got  out of the way of the runner stealing home plate? Or was he the player on-deck who is saying to his teammate, “Hey dude, you missed the bag.”

I love the picture not only because it’s of my dad in the referee uniform we saw him in so much, but also because of his emphatic expression.  I also love the way the runner is turning around to look at my dad after the call. Is the runner thinking of arguing with the ump?  If he knew my dad, he wouldn’t have tried it!  My dad took his umpiring and refereeing duties very seriously, and you did not want to give him any grief when he was calling a game.  He’d throw you out in a heartbeat!

In any case, I know that no one can quite love this photo the way I do, unless they also knew and loved my dad.  But I still think it’s kind of fun to look at and I hope you get a kick out of it.

And if you ever do come to my house, you can see this photo and the dozens (hundreds?) of other photos spread around my house because I most certainly do not hang family pictures only in my bedroom!

In my last blog post, I spoke about the insidious nature of the excuses bureaucrats make to justify their infringements on parental rights.  But this isn’t a problem that just affects bureaucracies, it affects the church too.

I can’t tell you how many Christians I’ve seen abandon their families, and especially their children, using the excuse that what they are doing is “for the Lord.”  And by abandon, I don’t mean physical abandonment – these parents are still “there” – they’re just never around!

They drop their kids off in nursery or children’s church or youth group several times a week because they have a “calling.”   Yet in 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul tells us that those who do not provide for their families have “denied the faith” and are “worse than an unbeliever.”  As parents, we are obligated not just to provide a roof over our children’s heads and three squares a day.  We are also responsible to provide for their emotional, mental, educational and spiritual needs.  But to watch many Christian parents you would think they had gotten some kind of special exemption from that responsibility!

And again, it’s insidious because someone will pull out a Scripture to justify their behavior…yet even Satan used Scripture to tempt Jesus!  Merely quoting a Scripture or two doesn’t suddenly do away with all the other Scriptures that indicate what our responsibilities are as parents.

One Scriptures that has often been used to justify parents abdicating their parental responsibilities is Matthew 5:13-16.  If you’ve been homeschooling for any length of time you’ve certainly heard the excuse that Christian parents should send their children to public school to be “salt and light” to the heathens there.  (That may sound like an exaggeration but that’s what it amounts to!)

However, there is no basis, if you take the whole of Scripture, to justify parents sending their kids to public school to bring the other kids to Christ.  In fact, sending Christian kids to public school is downright dangerous.

I have read more articles than I can count which were focused on the fact that most Christian kids end up falling away from the faith when they hit their 20’s, if not before.  These articles bemoan this fact, offer reasons why it’s happening, and then offer advice to churches and parents as to how they can keep this from happening to their kids.  But the reason is so obvious I have to wonder what these people don’t get?  The reason most kids who are raised in Christian homes eventually reject Christianity is because they go to public schools.  It’s really that simple.

Today’s post is a “guest post” by Jonathan Lewis, a homeschool grad who, along with his brother and parents, founded the “Home School Enrichment” magazine.  In this post he points out research that reveals that while 85% of Christian kids who attend public schools end up rejecting the Christian faith, less than 10% of Christian kids who are homeschooled ultimately reject Christianity.  Those are some sobering statistics.

So many times I have had to bite my tongue while listening to Christian parents offer excuses for why they send their kids to public school.  My heart breaks for those innocent kids who might very well have their innocence snatched forever by a piece of curriculum or a school assembly that presents perverted, explicit sexual content.  This is happening far more often than parents realize.  And it’s too late after the fact to say, “Maybe we shouldn’t have sent our kids to public school after all.”

A few months ago I was featured at a website that is designed to support women bloggers.  In the comments many of the readers expressed a real interest in homeschooling and said they were glad they had learned about my website.  Others had the typical, “Oh, I could never homeschool” attitude.  But there was one comment that infuriated me while at the same time it broke my heart.  It was from a mom who said she often felt guilty for not homeschooling, but then her pastor’s wife told her, “Not everyone is called to homeschool.”

I’d really like to know where that pastor’s wife gets Scriptural support for that view.  I just don’t see it.  Perhaps that “guilty feeling” that mom described was actually a nudge from the Holy Spirit.  But because of one person’s opinion – not Scripture – this mom suddenly felt justified in not homeschooling her kids.  And I have to say – or maybe I don’t have to, but I will – that those who are in positions of influence in the church should be much more circumspect about issuing their opinions concerning how other people raise their kids, especially when their opinion has no basis in Scripture.

The article below first appeared in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of “Home School Enrichment.”  I was fortunate enough to receive a complimentary copy of that issue.  As I read it, I was struck by the comprehensiveness of the argument being presented.  I had never seen anything so thorough and compelling, on this topic, and so I asked Jonathan Lewis if I might share it with you.  He has graciously agreed.  So at this time, I will “turn the floor over” to Jonathan.  I sincerely hope you will read this excellent article through…and then consider sharing it with a friend.  So many Christian parents need to hear this message today!

Salt & Light: A Valid Argument, or a Misuse of Scripture?
By Jonathan Lewis

Throughout the years of the modern homeschooling movement, a number of arguments have been raised against home education. Doubtless you’ve heard many of them. “How can an untrained mother teach her children? What about socialization?  How are you going to teach higher math? How will your kids get into college?”  In Christian circles, there’s another argument that’s frequently brought up by parents who have opted to send their kids to public school. Perhaps you’ve heard it from parents in your church: “I’m sending my kids to public school to be salt and light,” they say. “If all the Christian kids leave the schools, who will reach the students left behind?”  This argument, because of its spiritual overtones and scriptural reference, often seems more difficult to answer than other arguments against homeschooling. After all, how can we argue against being salt and light? Wouldn’t that mean we don’t care about kids and teachers who don’t know Christ?

This argument has left many current or would-be homeschooling parents feeling torn and conflicted, unsure of how to weigh their responsibility toward their own children against their sense of responsibility to further the Great Commission—to reach the world with the gospel of Christ. Somehow it seems unchristian to leave the schools without a godly influence, and yet . . . should I risk my child’s spiritual well-being by sending him away to school? No wonder parents are feeling torn!

Is there an answer to this argument? Can Scripture be used to justify sending our children to public school? Should we send our children out as missionaries, or should we keep them at home? What is the scriptural answer to this conflicting sense of responsibility parents are feeling?

The Source of the Argument

The salt and light argument finds its source in Matthew 5:13–16, where Jesus tells His disciples that they are the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world,” and that they should let their light “so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”  Thus, the argument says that Christian kids should attend public school to be a witness for Christ. They further argue that if all Christian kids are removed from the public schools, the students and teachers left behind will be stranded without a voice of truth or the opportunity to see a positive Christian witness.

First Things First

Before looking at possible responses, it’s important for us to realize something fundamental right from the beginning. The salt and light argument itself inherently acknowledges that our schools are largely godless. No one uses this argument to justify sending kids to a Christian school, because presumably the students there either already know Christ or at least have opportunity to hear about Him in ways other than through Christian students.

In other words, we only send missionaries where they’re needed—where there is a sufficient lack of truth and godly influence to give them room and opportunity to work. Thus, the argument itself acknowledges the largely godless condition of our public education system, and the parents who use this argument are as much as admitting that the overall environment at school is more or less hostile to the Christian faith. Some would attempt to maintain that the schools are not hostile to our faith, but are instead religiously neutral; this, however, is a difficult case to support, especially in view of Christ’s declaration in Matthew 12:30 that “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” Christ doesn’t leave neutrality as an option.

In this context then, the salt and light argument assumes two things:

First, that the potential good a Christian student can do in the public school system outweighs the personal spiritual risk of sitting under humanistic teaching and spending hours every day in an admittedly ungodly environment.

Second, it assumes that being salt and light is a child’s top priority, as opposed to, for example, receiving a distinctively Christian education. In other words, it’s more important for children to be missionaries—while simultaneously receiving a humanistic education—than to be taught from a Christian worldview, protected from overtly negative peer influences, and so on.

With these basic presuppositions in mind, let’s progress now to looking at possible responses to this classic Christian argument against homeschooling.

The Context of “Salt and Light”

First, we should look at the context of the salt and light passage. Whom is Jesus speaking to? At the beginning of Matthew 5, we see clearly that Christ is speaking to His disciples. Verses 1–2 read, “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying…”

As we can see, Jesus was speaking to a specific group of individuals: His disciples—adult men. Thus, in the original context, the salt and light passage was addressed to adults, not children.  That doesn’t mean children shouldn’t be a positive witness if and when they encounter those in the world around them. But it’s quite a leap from there to say that they should be deliberately placed in a spiritually hostile environment at young ages where they will be actively taught in ways contrary to the Word of God. Being salt and light is one thing. Sending our children to the training camp of the enemy is quite another—and we only need look around us to see the failure of this tactic.

We should also note that Christ’s disciples spent approximately three years with Jesus before He gave them the Great Commission and sent them out into all the world. In other words, they experienced three years of intense, hands-on training and preparation with the perfect, faultless, infallible Son of God before He deemed them ready to go out on their own. How much more preparation will our children need before they can stand on their own? After all, they have fallen, fallible, sinful parents responsible for their training—not the perfect Son of God in the flesh.  Looking further at the context, we see that Jesus was instructing His disciples to be salt and light while they were still in His presence, under His direct teaching and influence. Thus, we can see that it’s possible to fulfill this command even without being sent out alone, away from the protection and influence of one’s God-given teacher or mentor. If parents, biblically speaking, are the appropriate teachers and mentors of their children (more on this later), it’s possible for children to fulfill the salt and light mandate within that framework, rather than having to be sent away.

In view of these contextual considerations, it’s difficult to make the case that this passage directly applies to children in the way in which our critics suggest. Since it doesn’t specifically mention or command sending children to a spiritually hostile environment to be salt and light, it certainly doesn’t constitute the final word on the matter, and therefore we should look to other biblical passages and principles for more clarification.

Training Ground, Not Mission Field

One consideration which the proponents of the salt and light argument often seem to overlook is the reality that they are not simply sending their children to a mission field, but a training ground. In other words, these Christian kids are not being sent out to reach other students and teachers while being isolated from the humanistic teaching that occurs in the schools. The teaching is an unavoidable part of the package.  Thus, in order to justify sending his or her child to public school as a missionary, a parent needs to simultaneously justify sending his or her child away to receive an education based on humanistic philosophy instead of one that is built on Scripture and a Christian worldview.  Those proponents of “salt and light” who do recognize the educational aspect of the situation apparently maintain the assumption that their children can withstand whatever humanistic teaching they will encounter and escape unscathed. In other words, they assume that their children can sit under hours of teaching from a perspective other than the Bible, surrounded by peer influences that tempt them in the wrong direction, and not be negatively influenced by any of it.

In addition to being dangerously naive, this view contradicts such Scriptures as Luke 6:40 (“The disciple is not above his master [teacher]: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master”), Proverbs 13:20 (“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed”), and 1 Corinthians 15:33 (“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners”).

I would challenge anyone to search the Scriptures and find one verse advising parents to hand the teaching of their children over to those who don’t know God or uphold His truth. As Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” And in verse 17, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.”  We are to be distinct from the world. There should be a separation between the world’s philosophies and methods and our own.  We are not to mingle ourselves in their practices or partake in their way of life.

The command to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers is also worth noting. When Christian children are placed under the authority of unbelieving teachers, principals, and other school administrators, we would do well to ask if they are in fact unequally yoked.

Certainly they often do not have the freedom to fully express their identity as followers of Christ; in that sense, they are “yoked” to those who do not share their faith, and their activity, at least in some measure, is dictated by unbelievers who are in authority over them.  Proverbs 1:7 says that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and Colossians 2:3 tells us that in Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” In Proverbs 9:10 we again see that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”  It’s no small matter to give the education of our children to those who remove the foundation of wisdom and knowledge. Unless the proponents of “salt and light” can make a convincing scriptural case that it doesn’t matter if we allow our children to be taught from a worldview contrary to the Bible, we are already beginning to see major cracks in the foundation of their argument.

Peer Influence

Children – indeed, all of us -have a natural propensity to do wrong. That comes naturally to us. Doing right, on the other hand, is contrary to our natural inclinations and tendencies.

When children are sent to public school as “missionaries,” they are surrounded by other young people who, by and large, are following their natural desires, thus creating the negative peer pressure we so often discuss. And since our children have a natural propensity toward wrongdoing—even if they already have their own walk with the Lord—placing them amidst this negative peer pressure for hours every day is questionable at best.

We can examine Scripture to see what the Bible says about this. We have already noted Proverbs 13:20 (“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed”) and 1 Corinthians 15:33 (“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners”). Both of these passages give strong warning to those who would willingly and knowingly allow their children to be surrounded by negative peer influences.

The influences surrounding our kids make a difference. They’re going to be impacted. We all know that in a typical scenario, kids generally tend to pull each other down, not lift each other up. Let’s go back to Proverbs 13:20 for a moment: when we pair its warning to the companion of fools with Proverbs 22:15, which tells us that “foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,” it’s easy to see why extensive peer-based socialization can be so destructive. Foolishness is bound in the hearts of children, and the companion of fools will be destroyed. Is it any wonder that we so often see children and young people making destructive life choices as a result of peer pressure? Children are impressionable. When they are sent out alone to confront the world and interact all day with those who have a different system of values, they are placed at high risk of adopting those different values. Scripture warns us of this, and it shouldn’t be surprising when we see it occurring around us.

Seasons of Purpose

Different seasons of life bring different opportunities, activities, and purposes. One helpful question to ask, as we examine the salt and light argument, is this: what is the purpose of childhood?  Is it to fulfill some kind of mission for the cause of Christ, or is it instead a season of preparation for later work and ministry?  Throughout the Bible, we find numerous commands and references to parents training and teaching their children (Deuteronomy 6:6–7, Deuteronomy 32:46, Proverbs 1:8, Isaiah 38:19, Joel 1:3, Ephesians 6:4).

Put together, these passages form a consistent pattern throughout the whole of Scripture, emphasizing again and again the importance of parents raising their children in the ways of the Lord.  The biblical model of education is always God-centered, faith-driven, and parent-directed.  At the same time, we see a profound lack of passages suggesting that children have a specific mission or calling to go outside the discipleship of their parents to reach the outside world.

Most of those who use the salt and light argument seem to assume either that their children don’t need any preparation to be missionaries in the schools, or that a few hours in church each week and perhaps a little time with Dad and Mom in the evening will be adequate to not only counteract the secular teaching in the schools, but also prepare them to be bold witnesses for Christ. And of course, children need preparation for the rest of life as well—not just their childhood years.  In other words, it’s no small undertaking to raise a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  The reality is that the preparation must be adequate to the task at hand. The greater the task, the greater the need for adequate preparation.

And is there any greater task than sending out the next generation ready and equipped to do God’s work?

God lays out for us a model in Deuteronomy 6:6–7 when He instructs parents to teach their children His commands. “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”  In his article “The Christian Education Manifesto,” Israel Wayne observes of this passage, “This describes a 24/7/365 discipleship paradigm, centered on the commandments of God.”

Precisely. God apparently didn’t think an hour of Sunday School and a few minutes in the evening with Dad and Mom was adequate to prepare children to live righteous, holy lives. He commands parents here to teach their children with a diligence and constancy that most parents never come close to reaching.

We can gain more insight into this issue by considering the words of Christ Himself in relation to adults and children. Consider this contrast between two messages: Christ commanded His adult disciples to be salt and light, and sent them out to do His work.

But what did He say of children? “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14). For adults, His word was “Go.” For children, His words were “Let them come.”  These words of Christ create a compelling picture and clearly illustrate the concept of different seasons of life. During the early, formative years, children are to be brought to Christ—taught about Him, nurtured in His ways, and discipled to live for Him. As adults, they are then able to go out and make a difference for Christ after that first season of preparation. Childhood is the time for coming, adulthood the time for going.

Right Priorities

As a parent, you must ask yourself, “What is my top priority? Is it to reach someone else’s children for Christ by placing my own children’s spiritual well-being at risk, or is it to raise my children in the ways of God, discipling them to the point that they are solid, well-grounded young adults who can stand on their own?”  God didn’t give you someone else’s children. He gave you your own. That doesn’t mean we should never seek to reach out to others, but it does suggest a hierarchy of priorities. Generally speaking, our top priorities are those that are closest to us. We find this principle illustrated for us in 1 Timothy 5:8 where Paul says, “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” When it comes to physical provision, a man’s immediate household is his top priority. Those closest to him should command his first attention.

Similarly, Paul stipulated that a man must be able to “rule his own house” (1 Timothy 3:4–5) in order to be considered for the position of bishop or deacon in the church. Thus, before a man’s ministry could expand to include one of these positions of leadership, he first had to show the capacity to lead in his own family. Here again we see the hierarchy of priorities: attention to your own family first, expanded ministry second.

We see the same principle in the Old Testament in Genesis 18:17–19 where God is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and decides to share His plans with Abraham. In that passage we read, “And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.”

Here we see that Abraham’s ability to raise and train his children was a key factor that brought greater confidence from God, and was apparently even a factor in God’s promises and blessings to him. Thus, we again see that proper attention to the closest priorities came before increased responsibility and opportunity outside.

None of this means that we shouldn’t reach out beyond our own families. I’m not saying your family should be your sole focus, but your first focus. Parents who use the salt and light argument, however, are essentially saying that the needs of students in the public schools come ahead of their own children’s need for a Christian education, the intensive discipleship of their parents, and appropriate protection from negative peer influences. Biblically speaking, however, parents should place the greater emphasis on their own children’s needs and only thereafter look beyond their family to the needs around them. That is the biblical order.

Wishful Thinking

We’ve already seen multiple reasons why the salt and light argument is contrary to biblical principles. We can also look outside Scripture to find an additional compelling reason why this argument doesn’t withstand scrutiny: generally speaking, the idea that children can be effective as salt and light in a hostile, secular environment is simply wishful thinking.  Lee Duncan, Dean of Administration for The Master’s College, wrote in his article “A Case for Christian High Education”:  Why would we expect Christian young people who are in their most impressionable time of growth to challenge mature teachers who will attack their faith? In reality, most Christian students in public schools challenge no one; they simply stay quiet and try to avoid any confrontation.

And in her article “Culture of Answers,” Jill Carattini of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, wrote the following:  A recent study on the faith and belief of today’s youth laments the growing inarticulacy of students when it comes to talking about what they believe . . . The researchers were troubled as they realized how seldom teens found opportunity to practice talking about their faith. They were astonished by the number of kids who reported that this was the first time they had been asked by an adult what they believed. One replied as if he was caught off guard, “I don’t know. No one has ever asked me that before.” (emphasis in the original)

In other words, by and large, students aren’t talking about their faith at school. It’s not happening. And as Lee Duncan points out, why would we expect them to?  Why would we expect them—at such an impressionable age—to draw attention to themselves and challenge those around them when in school the supreme virtue is to do as you’re told and not cause disruption?

Consider it in another way: if the salt and light argument were solid and Christian kids were really making a difference in their schools, why have we not seen a great spiritual awakening in our public education system? Why do we instead see our church pews increasingly empty as young people continue their mass exodus from the faith? It’s not our Christian youth who are winning the world, but the world who is winning our Christian youth.

Research indicates that up to 85 percent of young people from Christian homes who attend public school end up walking away from the church by the time they graduate high school. Many parents will insist that their kids are the exception—that they can handle the unbiblical worldview and negative peer pressure and remain true to their God and strong in their faith. But is that a chance we should take? Do we want to risk that our kids will be among the 15 percent instead of the 85 percent? Sure, we’d all like to think that our kids can stand strong—that they’ll defy the norms, beat the odds, and emerge victorious on the other side. But is that really rational?

Imagine yourself the unexpected owner of a ten-million-dollar inheritance. Your financial adviser gives you the opportunity to invest the money and earn enormous dividends, but the opportunity comes with a risk. “I have to tell you,” he says, “there’s an 85 percent chance you’ll lose every penny in this investment.” Then he smiles and says, “But there’s a 15 percent chance you’ll double your money and walk away with twenty million!”  What would you decide? My guess is that you’d turn it down with a flat no and tell your broker that someone would have to be crazy to take a risk like that. And you’d be right. Why would you risk such an incredible treasure when the odds are stacked so heavily against you?

Why should it be any different with our children? God has entrusted every parent with a treasure worth far more than ten million dollars—and we’re going to invest that treasure in a risky venture, hoping we’ll be in the 15 percent instead of the 85 percent? Not with my kids. The risk must be weighed, and with the stakes so high, shouldn’t a godly caution guide our steps?

The numbers for homeschooled students are radically different. According to Dr. Brian Ray’s 2003 report “Homeschooling Grows Up,” more than 90 percent of homeschool graduates report that their religious beliefs are essentially the same as their parents’, and more than 90 percent continue to attend church on a regular basis.

Why the difference? Because Christian home education and public school are as different as night and day. When we follow a radically different process, it’s predictable that we’ll end up with a radically different result. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing.  If “salt and light” were really working as well as its proponents wish, we wouldn’t have these unfortunate statistics. We’d have churches overflowing with crowds of young people brought in by our Christian kids who are in the schools. It’s not happening.

In discussing all of this, we should also heed Jesus’s strong denunciation of those who offend children who believe in Him: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).  Considering the rate at which children from Christian homes are leaving the church after attending public schools, we are forced to wonder if our school system is guilty of offending untold numbers of these “little ones” who believed in Him. And what of the parents who voluntarily send their children there when valid alternatives are available? My intention is not to be judgmental, but to help us to think about what we’re doing. The risk must be weighed, and again I ask: with the stakes so high, shouldn’t a godly caution guide our steps?

We would also do well to note that the very same verse that instructs us to be salt and light also warns us that if the salt loses its saltiness, it’s good for nothing but to be thrown in the streets and trampled underfoot. Thus, we have a command and a warning given together. The warning portion, however, seems largely overlooked by the salt and light proponents. The significance of the warning is intensified when we realize again that the large majority of children from Christian homes are in fact losing their saltiness in the public schools. If parents would pay as much heed to the warning as they do the command, their perspective might change.

Wrong Becomes Right?

One reason so many parents have difficulty answering the salt and light argument is because it appeals to Scripture. On the surface, it can look like a scriptural justification for sending Christian kids to public school. But there’s more to it than that.  We all know that we must use Scripture appropriately—that we shouldn’t take verses out of context, twist their meaning, or seek to use Scripture to justify something unscriptural. Wrong actions are still wrong actions, even if we can pull an isolated verse out of the Bible that seems to justify what we’re doing.

Let’s take an obvious example. God instructed Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 to “be fruitful, and multiply.” He gave Noah and his sons the same command in Genesis 9:1 and repeated it six verses later in Genesis 9:7. Additionally, Psalm 127:3–5 tells us that “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.”  Thus, from these verses we see that it’s good and appropriate for us to desire children and to consider each child a blessing from God.

Now, imagine you meet a man who is pursuing numerous immoral relationships outside of marriage and who uses these Scriptures as justification. Imagine he tells you, “The Bible says to be fruitful and multiply, and that children are a reward from God. I realized that I can have more children if I don’t limit myself to only one woman. I know some people would frown on what I’m doing, but I’m just trying follow the Bible’s command to multiply and get all of God’s blessings that I can.”

Would we say that what this man is doing is fine and good because he was able to give us a few Bible verses that appear, at a quick glance, to support his case? I hardly think so. Why? Is being fruitful and multiplying suddenly wrong? Are children not a blessing? Quite the contrary. Yet we would recognize this man’s profligate lifestyle as wrong and displeasing to God, even though he gave us some Bible verses.  His motives (theoretically, at least) could be perfect: he desires the blessing of more children, consistent with the Bible’s teachings. Yet his actions are still wrong because they are contrary to the message of Scripture taken as a whole, which commands moral purity.

Trying to justify sending our children to a godless environment to be educated on the basis of “salt and light” is akin to the man justifying his immoral lifestyle on the basis of being fruitful and multiplying. In either case, a biblical reason is used to justify something that contradicts the overall thrust of scriptural teaching. I repeat: the biblical model for education is always God-centered, faith-driven, and parent-directed. Remove one of those elements, and you’ve fundamentally altered the model God has given us in Scripture.

Being salt and light isn’t wrong. Exactly the opposite. But that doesn’t mean that every possible idea we could think of to allow us to be salt and light is acceptable and good in the sight of God. The message of Scripture is clear: children are to be taught and nurtured in the ways of the Lord, not the ways of the world. If a particular approach to being salt and light violates this truth, then we must reject that approach as unscriptural. Our motives may be pure, but that doesn’t make our actions right.  In short, we can’t justify doing something wrong for a “good” reason. Sending our children to a godless environment for their training and education is wrong. Plain and simple. There is absolutely no biblical basis on which to say it’s fine. To justify it with the claim that our children can be salt and light is to say that wrong has become right because something good might come from the wrong action.

We’re in a Battle

Perhaps one of our problems is that we fail to see life as it really is—as a battleground between light and darkness, righteousness and unrighteousness, good and evil. If our goal is to simply raise children who can get a well-paying job and enjoy “the good life,” then we are likely to be far less concerned about how and what they are taught. But if we realize that our goal is to raise soldiers for Christ who can go out and make a difference in the world, the issue of our children’s training and preparation becomes far more important.  What army would send their troops to be trained in the camp of their greatest enemy? No, the people in the public schools aren’t our enemies. We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12). We do have a spiritual foe, and he is alive and well in our secular educational system of today.

In the realm of nations and governments, we would consider it reckless beyond belief to send our troops to be trained by the enemy.  In World War II, Winston Churchill would never have considered sending the troops of England to be trained by Hitler. In the days of the Cold War, America wouldn’t have sent her soldiers to be trained by the Communists.

Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing when we send our children to be taught in schools where God is excluded and a biblical worldview is ignored. The next generation of Christian soldiers is being trained, but not in the right camp.

Whatever Remains

Sherlock Holmes, in The Sign of the Four, neatly summed up a simple reality: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Some say we have no scriptural command to home educate—in other words, there’s no chapter and verse we can point to that says public or private school is wrong and that we must teach our children at home. However, I would contend that if all the biblical principles and passages that discuss the training of children consistently uphold one model, then all other approaches are excluded—if not explicitly, then by clear implication.

In other words, if God has instructed us that children should be taught in the fear of the Lord, then we don’t need a specific command telling us that they shouldn’t be taught without the fear of the Lord—we already know how they should be taught.  If God has commanded parents to be the diligent, day-in, day-out teachers of their children, then we don’t need an explicit command not to send kids away for hours every day to be taught by someone else—we already know who their teachers are supposed to be.  If God tells us that negative peer influences are destructive, we don’t need a command telling us to give appropriate protection to our children—we already know they should be protected.

Let’s illustrate it this way. If you were to tell your children, “Be nice to the kids next door,” you wouldn’t have to explicitly and specifically forbid all of the potentially unkind things your children could do. You don’t have to tell your son not to punch the neighbor boy in the nose. You don’t have to tell your kids not to steal the neighbors’ toys, make fun of them, throw rocks at them, or any number of things they could conceivably do.  All of that is excluded with the single command, “Be nice to the kids next door.”

Similarly, when God told parents to teach their children diligently in His ways, He didn’t need to specifically outline all of the ways they shouldn’t be taught. All of that was taken care of by telling us how they should be taught.

What About the Success Stories?

There are those who will listen to all these arguments against the salt and light proposition and still maintain that children ought to be sent away to school as missionaries. In some cases, they may have seen (or even been) a Christian young person who successfully navigated the turbulent waters of the secular schools and emerged on the other side relatively unscathed. They maintained their Christian testimony, were outspoken for their faith, and perhaps even succeeded in winning classmates for Christ. These students may even argue that their experiences in a secular school strengthened them in their faith.

Some then use this as justification that “salt and light” really does work after all.

Arguments from experience, however, should not be elevated to the level of Scripture. We have clear teaching from the Bible about how children should be taught.  The general rule we’re seeing is that the faith of kids from Christian homes is being decimated in public school. If we encounter an occasional exception to this rule, that can hardly be considered justification for others following in their path.

If we look hard enough, we can find people willing to justify virtually anything based on their experience. There are those who argue, for example, that God led them to divorce their spouse—and that their life was better because of it—despite God’s clear declaration in Malachi 2 that He hates divorce and Jesus’s warning in Matthew 19:6 and Mark 10:9 that “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”  We cannot argue against Scripture based on our experience. Just because we see someone else ignore the warning signs, jump in the alligator-infested river, and swim successfully to the other side doesn’t mean we should follow suit. Did someone else survive?  Yes.  Does that make it right for us—or, for that matter, even for them?  No. We must heed the instruction of Scripture more than the voices of those who would tell us of their experiences.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has not been to criticize or judge the motives of those who advance the salt and light argument, some of whom are sincere, godly Christian parents. Rather, my intent has been to provide a much-needed alternative perspective—one that looks at the issue not just in light of one or two Scripture verses, but that examines the overall message and thrust of the Bible as it relates to education and children.

The bottom line is this: the concept of voluntarily sending God’s children away—for any reason—to be educated in institutions where He is rejected, is utterly foreign to Scripture. If the God-centered, faith-driven, parent-directed model of education found in Scripture means anything at all, then the concept of subjecting children to secular, God-absent education is beyond any rational biblical justification. Search for a lifetime, and you will still fail to find the smallest piece of evidence that God approves of sending the children of His kingdom to the halls of humanistic learning.

It was Christ who declared that anyone who offends one of these little ones would be better off drowned in the depths of the sea.  Would He now be in favor of education that leaves Him out? It was the apostle Paul who boldly asked, “What communion hath light with darkness?” and “What part hath he that believeth with an infidel?”  Would he now stand up and say it doesn’t matter if the children of God are taught in darkness and educated by unbelievers?

Let’s make sure we’re taking care of our first priorities first. Let’s give our children a God-centered, parent-directed education as outlined in Scripture, and then, as God leads, we can reach out to others. Just because we’re homeschoolers doesn’t mean we can’t be salt and light. And our children will be more effective in God’s service for a lifetime if they don’t lose their saltiness in their youth.

Jonathan Lewis, 28, is a homeschool graduate, and glad of it! In 2002, he helped start Home School Enrichment Magazine with his family, and now enjoys writing and speaking from his perspective as a homeschool graduate.  If you would be interested in having Jonathan speak to your group (or to get in touch with him for any other reason), drop him a note at: jonathan@HomeSchoolEnrichment.com. He would love to hear from you!

 ©2011 Jonathan Lewis. This article was originally published in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of Home School Enrichment Magazine.

While you are going about your day, homeschooling your children and taking care of your other family responsibilities – minding your own business – do you realize there are still people in this country who believe you should be in jail for homeschooling your own children?  If you think I’m exaggerating, read some of the comments that were posted in response to the New York Times op-ed piece I wrote last year.

It’s staggering that while study after study proves that homeschoolers not only excel academically, but also are much more “socialized,” (i.e. they participate in politics, community events, charitable organizations, etc. at a greater level than public-schooled kids) there are still individuals and groups in this country who would ban homeschooling if they could.

And do you want to know why?  It’s simple, really.  On the one hand, it’s about money and power.  When parents decide to take responsibility for their child’s education it means there’s less money in the “system” for the bureaucracies that keep running via “other people’s money.”  The National Education Association, aka the teacher’s union, is one of these bureaucracies that can only be sustained by demanding (and unfortunately, maintaining) a monopoly on the education system in this country.  While they will pay lip service to wanting children to get a good education, it’s simply not true.  And if you think I’m wrong, just suggest to your local NEA chapter that parents should be able to get vouchers to send their child to any school they want: whether public, private or homeschooling.  Now I am not commenting here on the voucher debate, per se.  I’m only saying that the mere suggestion to the teachers’ union that their monopoly on our education system might be jeopardized inevitably results in their launching into attack mode.  They will spew lies and slander with a venom that must be seen to be believed.  If you doubt me, check into what happened in Wisconsin and Florida when the governors of those states proposed minimal changes in teachers’ contracts, in order to avoid having to lay-off hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers.

Those governors were also trying to balance their state budgets which, in Florida at least, is required by state statute.  But we shouldn’t let a little thing like a state budget stand in the way of the power brokers at the NEA, who continue to demand more and more control over our nation’s children.

There is also a deeper, more insidious reason that some want homeschooling to be banned.  This world we live in is in a struggle between light and darkness…good and evil.  It has been going on ever since the Garden of Eden and it will continue until the Messiah – Jesus Christ – returns to establish his kingdom once and for all.  Until then, those who harbor a hatred for Christ and his Truth as revealed in his Word will continue to battle.  And one of the primary battlegrounds is the hearts and minds of our children.

Don’t be fooled by those who say they want the best for your children, yet would go behind your back to help your child obtain an abortion without your knowledge.  Don’t be fooled by those who say they care about families, but continue to implement policies that give the government more power, and parents less.

As I said, it’s insidious…because who can argue with someone who says, “It’s for the children!”  But the truth is, generally speaking, it’s parents who want what’s best for their children.  It’s parents who are willing to sacrifice, even their own lives if necessary, to provide for and care for their children.

But there has been a movement going on in this nation for a century or more, that wants to decide what your children are taught.  They will tell you that as a Christian you have no right to tell your children that there is such a thing as right and wrong.  That if you teach your child that certain lifestyles are sinful, you are a “hatemonger” and that your children would be better off being raised by someone else.

At the time I was writing the original draft of this post, there was a battle going on in Canada over legislation that would have mandated that homeschooling parents could not teach Christian values during the hours their child was considered to be “in school.”  Canadian officials also wanted to require that homeschooling parents, including Christian homeschooling parents, teach their children what these officials term “tolerance” of “diverse” lifestyles.  Fortunately, that legislation was defeated.  But it was an example of how some bureaucrats and politicians believe they know what’s best when it comes to raising your children, and more than that, they believe they have the right to impose their beliefs on your family.

It’s funny how we’re always told that Christians want to impose their beliefs on others, when the fact is Western governments in supposedly free countries have been consistently, for decades, encroaching on the rights of Christians to raise their children according to Christian principles.

Moreover, there are some in our society who have had almost carte blanche to remove children from their parents on the flimsiest of excuses.  No reasonable person wants to see children abused.  But for social workers to be able to go to a family’s home, insist on strip-searching their children and then force parents to “prove” that they aren’t abusers, on the basis of some anonymous tip, is beyond the pale.  Frankly, I believe the actions some social workers have taken against homeschooling families is tantamount to child abuse.  There are homeschooling children who are now terrified of police because they saw mommy or daddy taken away in handcuffs in spite of the fact that there were no legitimate allegations against these parents.  If you don’t believe me, you need to read some of the files on the Home School Legal Defense Association’s website.  For that matter, you can take a look right now at a case HSLDA has recently taken on behalf of a homeschooling family where a mother, who had just given birth, was escorted out of the hospital by police simply for asking questions about her newborn baby’s health.  The conduct of the employees of this hospital and the social worker they called in are inexcusable, and I hope this family receives a very favorable result in their suit which amounts in the millions of dollars.  I really do.  Because it’s not until it hurts some people in the pocketbook that they will treat parents with the respect they are due.

Likewise, there was another case recently of a boy who had been treated for cancer, whose tests showed he was cancer-free, yet doctors wanted to force his parents to continue treating him with drugs that aren’t even approved for children.  These parents have been going through hell not only because their child was fighting cancer, but also because the powers-that-be think they know what is best for our children.

I have said all this to say: our right to homeschool will only be secure as long as we are vigilant.  There are countries in this world, and I don’t mean China and Iran, I mean countries like Germany and Sweden, where homeschooling is still illegal and parents are going to jail and having their children removed from their homes simply because they want to homeschool them.  (And, believe it or not, the Obama administration is fighting against a German homeschooling family that was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2010.  Parents in Germany face fines, jail time and/or the removal of their children if they choose to homeschool.  The Romeikes were granted asylum in the U.S. but face being deported back to Germany simply because the Obama administration is more concerned with appealing to their friends in the NEA than they are concerned with the freedom of a homeschooling family that simply wants to live and homeschool in peace.)

Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”  Whether or not Jefferson ever said that has no bearing on the fact that the statement is, indeed, true!  If we want to continue to homeschool, or for that matter, to parent our children according to our beliefs, we must be vigilant.  One way you can be vigilant is to help in the fight to pass a Parental Rights Amendment to our Constitution.   From the time I launched this website in May of 2010, I have had a banner ad in my right side-bar with a link to Parentalrights.org.  This organization is dedicated to the passage of an amendment to our Constitution which is the only way we can guarantee that the erosion of parental rights that is taking place around the world, and in our country, does not permanently take away our freedoms.  The threat to parental rights is real, and growing.  The current administration is committed to the passage of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child which, if it is ratified, will have the same force of law as our Constitution.  The only way to keep international courts from telling us what we can and can’t teach our children is to pass the Parental Rights Amendment which will have the full force of constitutional rights behind it.

By the way, in regards to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of the “rights” that the U.N. is pushing is the right of children as young as 10 to have “sexual freedom.”  That’s right, I said ten.  And the teacher’s union – the NEA – wholeheartedly supports this.  I kid you not.  I have talked on this site before about the NEA’s work at the U.N. where they testified that they want young children taught about sexuality in the most graphic of terms.

So I am asking you to do something.  Just one thing.  Go to Parentalrights.org and sign up to receive their e-mails.  Educate yourself about the erosion of parental rights.  And then if you feel led to act, and I hope you will, consider donating of your time and/or resources to support this critical legislation.  I don’t know about you, but I prefer not to trust other people’s “good intentions” when it comes to my children’s welfare.  I’m the parent, and I intend to fight for the right to raise these children in the way I see fit.

P.S.  Actually, I’m going to ask you to do two things.  After you’ve gone to the Parentalrights.org website, please consider sharing this post.  You can share it to any number of networks via the “Share” button below.  Tweet it, Facebook it, Stumble it…whatever you like.  But please share it.  Thanks!

First, a disclaimer: this post technically doesn’t have anything to do with homeschooling.  And yes, it is about the Bible.  So if you are only on this site because you want to know about homeschooling, I suggest you check out some of my previous posts listed in the right sidebar.  As my regular readers know, at least 95% of my posts are specifically related to homeschool advice, ideas and encouragement – such as my most recent post “9 Helpful Hints for a (Relatively) Happy Homeschool.”  So if that’s what you’re looking for – dive in, there’s plenty to keep you busy.

By the same token, if you don’t like when people talk about the Bible or share their personal religious beliefs, you might want to check out some of my previous posts or series, such as my “Getting Started” series or my “How To Teach…Anything” series.

As I said, rarely do I stray from homeschooling topics, but occasionally I feel inspired to share something non-homeschool related which I believe is informative or enlightening.  Other times I feel led to share a personal experience that just might help my readers in a different way.  And when that happens, I do go off-topic.  But you can be sure I’ll be back to homeschooling topics soon.  In fact, I have a long list of post ideas to get to.   But in the meantime, I want to talk about my favorite book of the Bible: the book of Psalms.

Why the book of Psalms?  Because I believe there’s probably not a single issue that our hearts struggle with that is not addressed, in some way, in the Psalms.

In my adult life I have read through the entire Bible multiple times.  For many years, for my personal Bible reading, I would simply begin in Genesis and read straight through.  And when I finished at the book of Revelation, I’d just start all over again.

But time and time again, when I would be going through a particularly difficult season in my life, the Holy Spirit would prompt me to delve into the book of Psalms.  And without fail, I would be comforted and strengthened.

The book of Psalms is a collection of prayers and songs that were used during times of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as in the Tabernacle before the Temple was built.  While scholars will continue to debate the actual authors, dates of authorship, etc. there is no doubt that many of the Psalms were composed by David.  Other authors were members of the Levitical priesthood.  The Levites were responsible for the care of the Tabernacle and the Temple and the ceremonies that pertained to them.  So it is understandable that they would have authored many of the Psalms.  Some of the Psalms were written to commemorate an event in the life of the king.  Often these commemorative Psalms have a prophetic quality, since the Messiah who was to come would be a descendant of King David.  In fact, on the cross Jesus quotes several times from the Psalms.  And Psalm 22:14-18 describes Christ’s crucifixion clearly.

But most of the Psalms are simply a cry from the heart of man, to the heart of God.  And time and again, God answers.  Often, in Psalm 13 for example, the Psalmist begins with an anguished cry for help, and then concludes with a declaration of praise for “he has been good to me.” (vs. 6)

In my own life, whether it was a time of extended illness or personal tragedy, I would be prompted by the Holy Spirit to go back to the Psalms, and they have never failed to give me peace or comfort or courage.

And I don’t just read the book of Psalms but I also underline words and phrases that strike to the heart of what I am feeling.  I write in the margins.  In fact, I have gone through several Bibles in my adult life – they eventually fall apart from use – and looking back through them I see actual dates next to verses that spoke to me at that point in my life.  To me these markings are like commemorative stones, they are a legacy for me of God’s faithfulness.  And maybe someday they will be a legacy for my children – they will be able to look through them to see how God spoke to me at difficult times in my life.

For example, I just pulled an old NIV Study Bible (my favorite version – in fact the Bible that I use now is another NIV Study Bible that my husband gave me for Christmas two years ago).  In my old NIV, with the cover that is falling off and that is covered from beginning to end with notes and markings and reflections, I can see that I used it at one time – probably about 20 years ago – to make some notes about homeschool plans for my two oldest children, who were very young then.  I find a note on Psalm 9 dated May 19, 1989 that says that I was praising God for his gift of healing.  At that time I was dealing with an extended illness that began with my second pregnancy and lasted long after I had given birth to my son.  My praise at that time was in faith that I would recover.  And I did – though later – twelve years ago in fact – I became ill again and have been chronically ill ever since.  But through the years of this illness I have again gone to the Psalms many times for comfort.

In another NIV Bible that I used for many years I find memories of the most difficult and trying years of my life.  As there are in many Bibles, there are pages in the front of this Bible to list births, special events, and deaths.  On that last page I find a record of my brother’s death in 1997 when he was killed by a drunk driver.  That day changed my life forever.  If you have ever experienced that kind of tragedy you know what I mean.  And if you haven’t, well I hope you never do.  Taped on the page, under the notation where I marked my brother’s death, is a cut-out from the newspaper.  My parents had put a little note in the obituary section of their paper marking the one-year anniversary of my brother’s death.  It says, “Always remembered, always missed.”  The darkness of the days, weeks, months and years following my brother’s death is impossible to describe.  I would wake every morning and go to bed every night crying.  Any time I was alone I would cry.  I would cry for hours if I found myself alone for that long (which was rare).  But I needed it.  Because the rest of my days were filled with caring for my three children who were depending on me, and I couldn’t fall apart in front of them.  So I fell apart when I was alone.

I have notes in the Psalms, with dates, from the months and years before my brother’s death and after.  One verse, Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”  Next to it I have a note that says, “This is how I feel,” and it’s dated October 7, 1998 – a little over a year after my brother’s death.

The effects of my brother’s death were unpredictable.   I had never gone through an experience like this and didn’t know what to expect or how to deal with the trauma my heart was experiencing.  In the year after my brother’s death I began to have anxiety attacks.  In fact, for years after my brother’s death I would begin experiencing severe anxiety about a month or so before the anniversary of his death.  It took me a long time to figure out the connection.  Our brains are strange in how they remember and deal with events in our lives.

It certainly didn’t help matters when 18 months after my brother’s death my cousin Paul died of a rare blood disorder, at the age of 35, leaving behind a wife and 3-month old baby.  Paul was more like a brother than a cousin.  In fact, I have a lot of cousins like that because I grew up in a large, but very tight-knit, extended family on my mother’s side.  I have cousins that grew up a block away from me.  Paul’s family lived a little further away, in Hialeah (I grew up in Miami) but we spent every birthday and every holiday together for our entire childhoods.  Paul and I had a special spiritual connection as well.  In fact, when he was very ill at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, I took a week away from my family and visited with him.  I spent every day with him in the hospital that week.  Sometimes his wife would leave their tiny baby with me so she could go get something to eat, and I would rock the baby in the stroller while Paul slept and I prayed.  How I prayed.  One of the days I was there he was awake enough for us to have a very special conversation about the Lord.  It was too private to share but the memory will stay with me for the rest of my life.

When he died it was like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.  It not only broke my spirit but my body as well.  It’s the reason that I have been chronically ill for twelve years.  Less than a year after Paul died, I came down with what I thought was the flu, but I never got better.  Months of doctors’ visits and tests produced no answers.  Through research on my own I came to believe that the emotional trauma of my brother’s and cousin’s deaths had burned out my adrenal glands.  In fact, I’m firmly convinced that I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but in spite of my seeking help from at least two professional counselors, they never saw it.  I know many get help from counseling but sadly, my experience was quite different.

In any case, as I researched I began to take various supplements: vitamins, herbs, enzymes – dozens of supplements designed to help with specific issues I had related to adrenal burnout.  Unfortunately, adrenal burnout is not easily treated, especially if it is not diagnosed early, and mine wasn’t.  To this day I take handfuls of supplements every day so that I can simply function.  So that I can get out of bed and care for my family.  Because for about two years I was virtually bedridden.

Oh, did I tell you that in the middle of all this, at 40 years of age, I gave birth to my youngest child?  Between my illness and a difficult pregnancy, for more than two years the only time I left the house was for doctor’s appointments and maybe, if I had the energy, to go to the grocery store.

And during that time I turned to the Psalms again and again.  Almost in desperation, you might say.  I was emotionally drowning and the book of Psalms was my anchor.  I clung to it with all my might.

Over the years God taught me many things about himself.  About grief and loss.  My faith was utterly challenged by my brother’s death.  And when my cousin Paul died after I had spent so many hours in prayer for his healing, my soul cried out, “Why God?  Why?!”

For the record, I’ve heard many Christians say that we shouldn’t ask God “why.”  I’ve heard Christians, very respected Christians, say it’s pointless to ask God “why?”  But on the cross Jesus himself cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  You can find that in the Gospels, of course, but it’s worth pointing out here that Jesus was actually quoting Psalm 22:1.  Think about it: Jesus knew why He came here.  He knew why He was hanging on that cross.  Yet He still cried out “why?”  And I believe it was, at least partly, to let us know that it is okay to ask why.  We may never get the answer in this life but that doesn’t mean we can’t, or shouldn’t, ask.

The faith I have today in God is due to dealing with the intense grief and loss of those years.  It’s a completely different faith than I had before.  It would take too long to explain it in detail.  But I now have a truly personal faith.  I know God in a deeper way than I could have ever imagined.

Does that mean that life has been somehow easier?  Hardly.  Because in the front of that same Bible where I noted my brother’s death I have another notation.  One that I can’t look at, even all these years later, without bursting into tears.  It is a memoriam for my niece, Amanda, who was killed in a traffic accident on April 11, 2008.  She was 19 years old.

The afternoon I got the news from my dad about Amanda’s death – another horrible telephone call so reminiscent of the one I had received about my brother almost ten years earlier – I called my husband to tell him of the accident, and called my daughter to simply tell her to come home (I didn’t want to share this terrible news with her at that moment because I knew she was driving somewhere).  And then I went into my bedroom, laid myself flat out on the floor, and begged God to let it be a mistake.  I cried and begged with all my might.  But it wasn’t a mistake.

You know, there are some days when I think that I have learned to “accept” my brother’s and my cousin’s deaths.  It’s a fallacy, of course, as I am reminded whenever I unexpectedly hear a certain song that reminds me of one of them.  Or I see a picture in a photo album in the days when we were all so young and alive.  I can quite easily get caught unaware when I stumble across a photo of either of them, and that all-too-familiar gut-wrenching feeling of loss brings the tears rushing to my eyes.  They were both so handsome, and sweet, and I love them so much.

When it comes to dealing with Amanda’s death, however, I have never even imagined that I could ever accept her death.  Maybe to some that means that my faith is weak in some way.  I really don’t care what anyone thinks when it comes to my personal grief.  You can’t walk this journey for me, only I can.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve already dealt with too much tragedy, and my heart simply isn’t capable of processing another.  Or perhaps it’s because I watched that precious little girl grow up from the day of her birth.  My sister’s three oldest children and my two oldest children were all born within four years of each other.  Yes, I said that these five cousins were born in the course of just four years!  In fact, when I was barely pregnant with my oldest son – and still suffering from all-day sickness – I flew with my daughter, who was two years old, to my sister’s house in Corpus Christi, TX (where her husband was stationed in the Navy) to stay with her 18-month son, while she went into the hospital to give birth to Amanda.  I held that little girl the day she was born.  I changed her diapers and played with her and watched her grow into a beautiful young woman.  Beautiful physically, yes, but also beautiful spiritually.  And I loved her with all my heart and soul.  And I can’t deal with her death still.  That’s just the way it is.

I had thought there wasn’t any part of my heart left to be broken until Amanda died.  But I found out that I was wrong.

I don’t know how it is for other Christians, but as for myself, I agree with what the apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:21 – “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”  I don’t live this Christian life perfectly by any means, but it is my goal to live in a way that pleases God and that, especially, prepares my children for a life lived with Him – in this life, and into eternity.

But I can’t wait to set aside this earthly body that I have to constantly maintain with my regimen of supplements and exercise, to step into the next life where I will see Him face to face.  Where I will finally embrace my loved ones – not only my brother Bobby and my cousin Paul and my niece Amanda, but also my dad who passed away 14 months after Amanda’s death.  And my grandparents – I never even knew either of my grandfathers because they both died when my parents were young.  I will see my cousin Jeff who was 22 when he died in a rock-climbing accident and my cousin Bridgette who died of leukemia at the age of 39.  I have so many relatives who have passed away that it will be quite a family reunion.

I am going to tell you a little story that I have never told anyone.  You may think it sounds weird, and I don’t share it lightly.  But before I relate my story I need to tell you something right up front for clarification.  As much as our hearts may long to reconnect with loved ones who have gone before us, the Bible makes it very clear that we are not to attempt to contact the dead.  (Leviticus 20:27)  The Bible is adamant that this practice is completely forbidden.  This means that we should steer clear of any of these types of associations, including watching television programs that feature “mediums” who claim to be able to contact the dead.  Our modern culture often embraces a “spirituality” that is not biblically sound.  So, once again, I want to be clear that I abide by the Bible’s instruction that mediums are not to be consulted, ever.

That being said, after my brother’s death I began to understand the longing I would hear in the voice of someone who had lost a close loved one.  I began to understand the stories that my great-aunt had related to me after my grandmother died.  My grandmother and my “Beba” (as we called her) were twin sisters who, because my great-aunt never married, had lived together most of their lives.  After my grandmother’s death, I would occasionally help Beba by driving her around so she could get to the grocery store and take care of other errands.  One day I was visiting with her in the house she had shared with my grandmother for decades.  She told me she had had a vision of my grandmother walking with Jesus in their backyard.  My grandmother had looked straight at her and said, “Don’t worry, I’m with Him now.”  It still gives me chills to think about.  My Beba was a godly woman, so I had no reason to doubt that God had indeed given her a vision to comfort her.  In fact, when she told me the story it was very reminiscent of the Apostle Paul’s description of being taken into the “third heaven.”  (2 Corinthians 12:2)  When Beba shared her story she said she didn’t even know if she was awake or asleep when she had her vision!  But she remembered it vividly.

Beba also told me that she would often walk into a room and start to talk to my grandmother, only to remember that she was no longer with her.  Beba died only a few months after my grandmother.  She had no apparent illness.  I firmly believe she died of a broken heart.

But that is my great-aunt’s story, not my story, the one I have not told anyone until now.

Through the years of experiencing numerous deaths in my family I have come to believe that God may very well send our deceased family members to us, to accompany us on our final journey.  Don’t ask me to quote chapter and verse on that.  It’s simply something I have heard on too many occasions.  For instance, when one of my aunts was dying of cancer, in the weeks before her death she said that she often saw her sister, my aunt Terri, who had died 14 years earlier.  I certainly believe God sends angels to accompany us Home.  There are numerous accounts in the Bible, and in recorded literature, of people seeing angels during times of great difficulty or when they are nearing death.

In my case, I had an experience a few months ago that was, for me, very beautiful.  I was in my house late at night, and I was walking through the hallway to my bedroom when I heard or sensed something.  Now, I realize it could have been anything.  And the truth is I don’t know what it was.  What I do know is that when I got this feeling of having heard or sensed something, the thought flew into my head – “it’s Bobby – he’s come to take me Home!”  Bobby is my deceased brother.  Why I thought that, I don’t know, but as soon as that thought came into my mind I experienced a joy that I can’t describe.  Elation would probably be the best way to describe it.  There was no sense of fear at all, only pure joy.  And then it was gone.  The whole experience, from the time I “sensed” something and had the thought that it was my brother come to take me Home, along with the brief but profound feeling of joy, probably lasted only ten seconds.  But it was wonderful.  Like a taste – just a little taste – of the ecstasy I will experience when the time comes for my Savior to speak my name and for me to step into the next life.  A life in which I have been promised there are no more tears, only unending joy – where there is a “room” that Jesus has prepared especially for me.  (John 14:2)

I look forward with longing to that day.  But in the meantime, I have His Word.  And especially, I have the Psalms.

Recently I’ve been going through a tough time.  I’ve been having a hard time physically, after dealing with an acute illness that I am very glad to say I have recovered from.  However, the illness itself, along with the doctor’s visits and the tests and the crazy insomnia that took over my body, really took the wind out of my sails and I’ve been experiencing debilitating fatigue for months now.  I’ve been dealing with emotional issues as well.

And a couple of weeks ago the Holy Spirit whispered to me again, “Go back to the Psalms.”

So I did.  And once again I am writing in the margins of my Bible and underlining and dating verses.  God is speaking to me in a powerful way – just what I need to hear now – dealing with what I am struggling with in this season of my life.

I don’t know about you, but I hate going through hard times.  I remember once hearing a woman talk on the radio about how God allows the hard times in our lives to “build our character.”  Then she made a remark that made me laugh, because I so understood where she was coming from.  She said, “I’d rather be shallow.”

Now, of course, she was being facetious.  Or at least partly.  But I get it.  I’ve often thought that myself, “Lord, couldn’t you just let my life be easy?  I wouldn’t mind being shallow.”  But that’s not how the Christian life works.  One thing I have learned is that true Christianity always has a cross.  So if we’re not paying some kind of price to live the Christian life, maybe our Christianity isn’t all that authentic.

And so, I recommend, if you haven’t guessed it already, that if you are going through a tough time – open the Psalms.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of some Bible study at your church or other group, or your own personal Bible study, and it would get things “out of order.”  Just read a chapter or two a day.  In fact, if you find a Psalm that speaks to you particularly, re-read it…and re-read it again.  Let it soak into your spirit.

Perhaps the book of Psalms will become your favorite book of the Bible as well.

Today I am offering some tips that have been gleaned from my 20+ years of homeschooling.  I hope that you will find that applying one (or more!) of these tips helps your homeschool day go a little more smoothly!

#1 – Don’t get into schoolwork when you have somewhere to go or are otherwise in a rush.  I can pretty much guarantee that your little darling will suddenly forget their times tables or the previous day’s history lesson right at that moment and you will end up frustrated and one or both of you will end up in tears…it’s just not worth it.  As I have pointed out on various occasions, it’s okay to skip a day (or a week!) of school if you have other pressing obligations.  Rather than trying to rush through lessons, do yourself (and your child) a favor and take a day off!

#2 - Do feel free to skip pages in your child’s: math/reading/science/name the subject curriculum, if you feel like the information is too repetitive or just unnecessary.  When I get to the section in my kid’s math book where they spend pages on measurements, I breeze through or skip it.  Why?  Because my child (and yours) is going to learn plenty about measurements while helping to bake cookies or figuring out how much they grew in the last year, or any number of life experiences that your child will actually experience, because, contrary to the assertions of homeschooling’s detractors, homeschooling actually does introduce children to the realities of living in our world.  Also, keep in mind that if you use textbooks that are also used in schools, they will be full of busy work…they are designed for the classroom teacher.  As a homeschooler you can (and should) spend as much or as little time on a subject as you see fit.  If your child needs more review you can slow down the pace or use some other resource (such as math drills) to reinforce concepts.  For the advanced learner you can go at their pace and skip the busy work.

#3 – Do combine grades/subjects if you have more than one child.  Until your children are of high school age, there is no reason not to combine subjects like history and science, not to mention geography or literature, etc.  I’m at the point in my homeschool journey where I am only homeschooling one child, even though my 18-year old is a senior and technically homeschooled.  But he is dual-enrolled at the community college and that is his schoolwork.  The most I do with him is to ask him if he’s got a test coming up so that I know to give him a reminder or two about studying.  But honestly, this kid is very self-motivated (and making “A’s”) – just another reminder that if you actually parent your kids they really do start taking responsibility for themselves!  In any case, I am only directly homeschooling my 4^th grader, but years ago when I was homeschooling multiple kids, I always used “unit studies” for subjects like history, science, and the like.  Of course, you’re usually going to need to individualize their math, and if you’re teaching one of your children to read, then there’s the phonics, but otherwise, make the whole process easier on yourself by utilizing resources that can be used with more than one child.  Take a look at my post on “unit studies” for more information on how to implement this teaching style.

#4 – Do have older children work with their younger siblings.  I am going to let you in on a little secret: when my youngest son, who is now in fourth grade, was in kindergarten through 2^nd grade, my two oldest children did all his schoolwork with him.  Since I’m not a big fan of loading little kids down with a bunch of schoolwork, this meant they worked with him on his math and handwriting and my daughter would occasionally do fun science experiments with him.  Maybe they did some geography and reading comprehension – I honestly don’t remember.  What I do know is that it never took more than 30-45 minutes to get through his schoolwork with him.  And they did it all.  My role at that time was purely of a supervisory nature.  Moreover, since he had taught himself to read by the age of four (seriously, it surprised me as much as it does you, but it’s the truth) and was doing PowerPoint since he was five, at least part of the rest of his day was spent creating things on the computer.  This kid has created literally hundreds of PowerPoint presentations that focus primarily on his fixation with movie credits.  But I digress…bottom line, if you haven’t already figured this out by now, your older kids can be a great asset when it comes to taking some of the homeschooling burden off your shoulders – use them!

#5 – Do make the computer your friend.  We all know about the dangers the internet can pose.  But install some parental security software and by all means, don’t let your kids on social networking sites.  But otherwise, the computer can be a valuable asset that can save you oodles of time.  My fourth grader has three computer software programs that he uses and I recently started requiring him to spend 15 minutes every day on each one.  Those programs are: Rosetta Stone Italian, Quarter Mile Math and Typing Instructor.  That’s 45 minutes of schoolwork every day that I have absolutely nothing to do with (other than to ask him if he did them)!  I might also ask him what new Italian word he learned that day or instruct him to spend more time on certain multiplication facts he’s still struggling with, but I don’t track his progress – I simply don’t worry about it.  If he’s consistently using the programs he is going to learn from them!  He also likes to visit the PBS Kids website and has learned a surprising amount of science from Fizzy’s Lunch Lab.  Find ways to incorporate computer software and truly educational games and you’ll have just found another way to make your homeschooling days happier.

#6 – Do use workbooks!  I’m not sure why, but workbooks often have a bad rep amongst homeschoolers.  Maybe they are just a little too “schoolish,” or maybe parents think of them as boring or a waste of time.  But I have found that workbooks can be a great tool and, often, a great time-saver as well.  You can use workbooks to reinforce a subject that you have already taught, or you can use them to introduce a subject.  Check out my “Six Workbooks That Work” post for ideas on workbooks that can make your homeschooling burden a little lighter.  Additionally, if you’re going to be attending a home-school conference this spring or summer, pick out a couple of workbooks that your kids will enjoy and that will enhance your curriculum.  Another tip: if running errands is something you have to do with kids in tow, stick a couple of their favorite workbooks in the car and allow them to use them only when you’re running around doing errands.  You can kill two birds with one stone: you’re getting schoolwork done while taking care of your obligations, and your kids won’t be whining that they’re bored.   Don’t forget to keep a supply of pencils in the car too!

#7 – Do keep the big picture in mind.  Believe it or not, your children will grow up some day.  And knowing that you were the one who taught them not just their ABC’s, but also their times tables and the difference between a noun and a verb and a thousand other things, will give you a sense of pride that is unmatched.  In addition, the memories you will have to cherish, because you actually spent your child’s childhood with them, are priceless.  If you work at keeping the big picture in mind, along with the reasons you decided to homeschool your kids in the first place, it will make it much easier to let the everyday aggravations fade in importance.

#8 – Do sleep in.   Yeah, I know, “early to bed, early to rise…”  Let me tell you something about adages like the one I just quoted:  they are pithy statements that sometimes apply, and sometimes don’t.  Think about it: how many times have you heard “haste makes waste.”  Yet there is also the adage that “he who hesitates is lost.”  Well, which one is it?  I suppose it’s the one that applies in that situation.  In the same way, if you have a lifestyle that demands that you get up early, then you have to get up early.  But if I’m going to homeschool my kids, why would I feel the need to submit myself to an artificially imposed schedule?  Frankly, if you knew the schedule we keep around our house, you might very well be horrified!  I’m not a morning person and neither are my kids, so I’m not a stickler for being up at any certain time.  I just don’t see the point.  And you may find that if you allow you and your kids a little more sleep, everyone’s attitude might be a bit brighter, and hence work will be accomplished with less frustration and more cooperation.  Just a thought!

#9 – Do give yourself a break once in a while!  Being faithful over the long-term as a homeschooler is far more important than the fact that your plans for today went completely awry.  Shrug your shoulders, pour yourself a glass of iced tea and just do nothing for a little while!  It’s okay.  Really.

I hope my list helps your homeschool days go more smoothly!  And by the way, if you have any of your own helpful hints to offer your fellow homeschoolers, I hope you’ll take a minute and share them in the comments!

Recently I was asked to speak to a local homeschooling group and as I was pondering what I wanted to say to them, the following thoughts took shape as the foundation, or starting point, of where I want my talk to go.

I will tell you right up front that the following post may well offend you.  I hope not, but it’s a possibility.  I decided long ago that life isn’t about winning popularity contests.  The purpose of my website is not to make me “popular” but, rather, to educate.  When I started home-schooling over 20 years ago, when home-schooling was in its toddlerhood, if not its infancy, it surely didn’t win me any popularity contests!  But I am the parent and that means, not only do I get to decide what’s best for my children, I’m supposed to decide what’s best for my children.

I’m willing to take the risk of saying things that need to be said – like, for instance, that musical artists who claim to be Christians shouldn’t put out sex videos.  Or that, as the parent, you’re supposed to be making the decisions for your children and, if you’re a Christian, and you abdicate your responsibility to make the decisions for your children, you are failing to live up to what God has called you to do.

There are various facets to this topic of “I Am The Parent” so I’ll hope you’ll stay with me all the way through, because you may just find I hit on something that you have wondered about.  Or you might get convicted about some of your parenting decisions.  Remember, I’m not purposely setting out to offend anyone, but if it happens, I take the risk because I feel it’s worth it.

One more thing: this post is a tad long but I felt it would be counter-productive to divide it into two posts.   I hope you’ll take the time to read it regardless, and share your own thoughts in the comments.  So to begin:

Point A:  Your children should not be the ones deciding whether they are going to be homeschooled or not.

I really don’t care if my children want to be homeschooled.  I am the parent.  I not only get to decide, it’s my job.

My husband and I decided before we had kids that they would not attend the public schools.  Why?  Well, for one thing, the public schools are entirely built on humanistic theology that contradicts the Bible (yes, I said “theology” – you really think humanism isn’t as much a faith as Christianity is?)  From the time our oldest child, and only daughter, was two years old and I heard about homeschooling through the Focus on the Family radio show, I had been planning to homeschool my children.  I had even started attending a local homeschool group’s park days, despite the fact that our daughter was not yet old enough for kindergarten!  Unfortunately, when the time came for her to “enter” kindergarten, my oldest son was 18 months old and, I felt, too much of a handful for me to even consider homeschooling my daughter.  Looking back, of course, I realize how ludicrous it was that I thought I couldn’t handle teaching kindergarten because I had a one-year old.  But I was still steeped in the concept that education was some kind of mystery that could only be approached when everything was going well in your life (my post “Why Homeschooling911?” explains how I learned what a foolish notion that was!)

So we enrolled my daughter in a little Baptist Christian school where she excelled.  She made straight “A’s” and was the “class valedictorian.”  She even gave a valedictorian speech!  I wish I had it on tape because it was cute and hysterical at the same time.

But despite my daughter’s success I found out that even a little private Christian school had its drawbacks.  For instance, one day when we were leaving the mall my precious 5-year old daughter pipes up from the back seat, “Mommy, when I grow up I’m not going to take sex.”  Naturally I was, well, “alarmed.”  We didn’t even own a TV at the time so where she had heard about sex I had no idea.  Fortunately, I was able to stay calm.  I simply asked her where she had heard about it.  Her response, “Susie told me about it on the playground.”  Apparently little Susie (whose parents were not Christians) had given my daughter the idea that sex was like drugs and was something you should never “take.”  I let the whole issue slide because I knew my daughter was too young to understand any kind of real explanation and that she’d probably forget about it in a week.

But that was the first hint that enrolling my child in a private, Christian school would not protect her from exposure to subjects that were not appropriate for her, as I had assumed.  The “straw that broke the camel’s back” came a little while later when, at a school-wide parents’ meeting, the principal announced plans to expose the children to a book series that focused on “difficult topics.”  Not liking the sound of what I was hearing, I made an appointment to meet with the principal to preview these books.  What I found not only alarmed me, it made me furious.   One of the books in this series was about a father who was molesting his young daughter!

Now, I’m pretty sure you will not find anyone that’s more concerned about sexual abuse than I am – as demonstrated, for example, by my constant and consistent condemnation of the fact that our judicial system sentenced Bernie Madoff to serve a 157-year sentence for a Ponzi scheme while child predators can serve less than a decade in prison only to be released to molest more children.

HOWEVER, my innocent 5-year old daughter did NOT need to be exposed to deviancy, incest and pedophilia in her school classroom!  It is my job to teach my children about what is appropriate and inappropriate touching.  Moreover, it is my job to protect my children from predators.  Which, for example, is why I had a policy of not permitting my children to stay overnight at friends’ homes.  What?  Isn’t that being over-protective?  Let me ask you something, have you ever read a story about someone who was caught with child porn or was caught molesting a child and everyone said, “Oh, I just knew something like that was going to happen!”  No, everyone is always shocked to find out that so-and-so was actually a child molester.  I don’t automatically trust anyone with my children and I don’t think you should assume you know what is going on in someone else’s home!  Over 99% of women and children that are sexually assaulted are assaulted by someone they know, and should have been able to trust.  I’ll stick with being “over-protective.”

In any case, why the long history about my daughter’s experience in kindergarten?  It’s to point out that I realized from this experience that, as her parent, I am the one that knows what’s best for my child.  Not a school principal.  Not a teacher at a seemingly-ideal private Christian school.  No, I am the one who knows what is best for my child.

So…if I don’t think other adults know what’s best for my child, why for heaven’s sake would I think that my child knows what is best for them?  Why would I allow my child to decide if they are going to be homeschooled or not?  For that matter, why would I even take into consideration what their opinion or desire is?  I am the parent for a reason.  I am the one with the wisdom and experience to make the best decisions for my child’s present and future.

Point B:  Most Christian parents have bought into the notion that when their children are say 15 or 16, they need to let them make the important decisions about their lives.  Like whether they should go to college.  Or who their friends should be.  Or what activities they should be involved in.

This is a lie.

That philosophy is, in fact, a humanistic philosophy that began to be popularized in the late 1800’s.  It was right about the same time that compulsory education came into being in this country.  Coincidence?  I think not.

You see, even Christian parents have bought into the notion that decisions about our children are best left to the “experts” – whether those experts are public school teachers or youth group pastors.

So when these “experts” tell parents that they shouldn’t be choosing their children’s friends or making decisions about where their children should go to school or- egads! – actually having input into who their children marry – well, even Christian parents have bought into that malarkey.

To give you some biblical background to what I am talking about I will ask you a question – do you have any idea how old Isaac was when he married Rebekah?  Genesis 25:20 tells us that he was 40 years old.  And you know what else?  Isaac didn’t even choose his wife – his father did!

Why did Isaac trust his father with this momentous decision?  Well, first of all, he knew his father walked with God.  He had been there when his father was going to sacrifice him in obedience to God.  He had watched his father follow after God, not perfectly, but faithfully.  He also trusted his father with this decision because he knew why his father did not want him choosing a woman from the land in which they were “strangers.”  He knew that God was doing a “new thing” by choosing Abraham to become the patriarch of a people that would worship the one true God.  And he trusted that God could lead his father (and ultimately his father’s servant) to find the woman who would be part of that plan.

If your children do not trust you to make the important decisions of their lives it’s because you have failed to let them know: a) that you walk faithfully after God and/or b) that you are the parent.  It is your job as you raise your children to demonstrate your faith to them and to let them know that God made you the parent for a reason!  And it was not just to change their diapers and teach them their ABC’s!

The Bible is very clear that it is God’s will for parents to raise their children, to teach their children, and yes, to make decisions for their children!  And that doesn’t end just because the worldly system has said that you are supposed to let your teenagers choose their own friends or decide where they will go to school.  That is simply unbiblical.

Point C:  There are those that will say that your children need to make mistakes while they are teenagers living in your home because that is somehow better than them learning from, say, your godly example, or their successes, or the Bible, or the godly example of people who made a difference in history…

I have heard this idea spouted by Christian parents and what (I would assume) they didn’t realize they were actually saying is, “God wants my child to sin.”  Seriously.  I remember having a conversation (sort of) with a woman I knew from a church we attended some years ago – for the record, while this woman was very respected in our church community, I had no respect for her at all because I had watched her parenting (or lack thereof) – and that is another very sad truth that, usually, moms who are devoted to their families are ignored in churches while mothers who are happy to abandon their families so they can work with the youth or lead women’s groups are lauded as heroes – in any case, this woman was saying that if her daughter “got into trouble” maybe it was God’s will.  She justified her statement by pointing out that there was a man in our church who had struggled with drug addiction for many years who now had a ministry to addicts.

I didn’t bother trying to argue the point with this woman because she was the type who “had all the answers” and nothing I said would have swayed her, but she clearly mistook the grace of God for the will of God.  In other words, just because God uses a person’s past mistakes doesn’t mean it’s his will for that person to have made those mistakes!  That would be like saying that if a woman has an abortion, and then later God uses her to minister to women who are seeking abortions, that it was God’s will for her to have an abortion!  Somehow when it’s stated like that it becomes a little plainer, doesn’t it?

For those parents who think that it’s “better” for their kids to learn from their mistakes I would ask: just what mistakes are you willing to accept?

• What if your daughter goes out partying, gets drunk, and is raped.  Is that an acceptable risk to you?
• What if you allow your daughter to participate in what I call “recreational dating” and she comes home pregnant?  Or, conversely, you allow your son to date and he gets his girlfriend pregnant? Is that an acceptable risk to you?
• Or what if you allow your children to choose their own friends and they get involved in partying.  Then one night your son gets behind the wheel of a car and ends up in the morgue.  Is that an acceptable risk to you?

As for me, none of those are acceptable risks.  And they are entirely unnecessary risks if I act in a way that demonstrates that I am the parent.

My older kids were involved in many activities in their younger years.  Frankly, I can’t even remember all of the activities they participated in!  But whatever activity they were involved in, I was directly in contact with their coaches, instructors, Royal Ranger leaders, etc.  We pulled my oldest son off one baseball team when he was 6 or 7, and we pulled my middle son off a baseball team when he was about 11 because their coaches were idiots.  We found other baseball programs where the coaches were decent, reasonably intelligent people and it was a positive outcome for our kids.  If your children are involved in an activity and the leader, coach, teacher (or whatever) is immoral or just plain stupid, please pull your kid out!  It is just not worth it to jeopardize your child’s safety or, for that matter, their soul just because you might look like an “overprotective” parent.

In addition, until my kids were college age they were not allowed to hang out with whoever they chose.  And for that matter, we limited their time socializing outside the home.  One of the most obnoxious things I see with kids today (and especially teens) is that they think they are entitled to spend their whole weekend socializing with their friends!  I don’t know about you, but I hardly ever see my friends.  My life is far too taken up with caring for my family.  So I certainly wasn’t going to allow my kids to spend a lot of time socializing.  It’s just another example of how kids who go to school are actually not being prepared for real life.  As an adult, you will spend most of your life taking care of responsibilities, not running around with your friends – so why give our children the artificial impression that they have the right to spend every weekend hanging out with friends?

My daughter’s friends growing up were other homeschooled kids.  Their moms and I would arrange for them to get together at a park or home and we were always there.  These activities were never unsupervised and, until my daughter was well into her teens, these activities were not coed.  And when she did start attending coed events, those activities were also well-supervised.

The bottom line about friendship is that you are abdicating your responsibilities if you allow your children to choose their friends and spend inordinate amounts of time socializing.  They need to learn that life is mostly work, and that play is a privilege, not a right.

Point D:  If you allow your teenagers to date you are playing with fire, not to mention their future and maybe their lives.

I spoke earlier about something I call “recreational dating” which often involves “having a boyfriend/girlfriend.”  This is another area in which most Christian parents have utterly abdicated their responsibility (and then wonder why most Christian kids no longer identify themselves as Christians by the time they’re in their 20’s).

Our family doesn’t have a strict “courting” rule like some homeschool families, but I also don’t allow my children to date until they’re out of college.  Seriously.

There are numerous problems with what I call “recreational dating.”  Christian parents who think they can “trust” their kids and who allow them to date are obviously unaware of a little (or not so little) thing called “hormones.”   It’s not that your children are necessarily “untrustworthy” it’s just that they have these chemicals flooding their bodies that are telling them that sex is the ultimate goal of life.  God gave us those hormones to incentivize marriage, not so that we can fulfill our lusts.  To ignore the effects of these chemicals and to ignore the fact that even the most mature teenager is still no match for those chemicals is, well, I’ll just go ahead and say it – it’s stupid.

My children have had many friends of the opposite sex during high school and college, but all coed activities have always taken place in a group setting.  I actually think that it is a wonderful experience for our sons and daughters to have friends of the opposite sex during this time because it gives them the opportunity to evaluate what their expectations and wishes are in terms of a future spouse.  BUT – my kids were well-supervised until they were in college and even while they were in college I always knew where they were and who they were with.  How did I know that?

Well, for one thing, I raised my kids to understand that I am the parent so when I questioned them about their friends or activities, they didn’t get an attitude like how dare I ask them about where they were and what they were doing!  Moreover, they lived at home while they were in college.  More about that later.

I also raised my children to understand, and subscribe to, biblical standards for morality.  In our home the Bible is our standard for life, and when it comes to sex the biblical standard is very clear: purity until marriage and monogamy within marriage.  (I want to point out here another lie of the world – that Bible-believing Christians are “hung up” about sex and that’s why kids need sex education in the schools…that lie is too involved to go into detail about it here, but I will say that in our home we are very frank about sex but we are also very clear about what the Bible teaches and what we expect from our kids).

So…what does “purity until marriage” mean?  Well, to put it simply, I define it as no touching below the neck until the wedding night.  That’s pretty clear, don’t you think?

We have taught our kids the biblical standards for sex and they all are committed to adhering to them.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t exercise “due diligence.”  By that I mean, I don’t give my kids “the talk” and then move on.  I’ve had many conversations with our kids about sex and purity.  I’ve taught my sons very clearly that pornography is NOT harmless, but that it objectifies, abuses, and exploits women and children and that it has the potential to distort their relationships with the opposite sex permanently.

I also make it clear that the exclusive type of boyfriend/girlfriend relationships they see all around them are purely a concoction of the world and that they are not biblical.  This may sound like a strange and new, if not absurd, concept to you, but it is the truth.  Why should my daughter limit her time, conversations, or relationships to a particular guy if he hasn’t put a ring on her finger?  Your son or daughter has no right to have an exclusive relationship with a member of the opposite sex until there has been the exchange of an engagement ring, plain and simple.  Once your child has taken the life-changing step of committing to a person in marriage, they’d better have an exclusive relationship!  But until then, they are free to have friendships with members of the opposite sex without worrying that so-and-so will get jealous and/or be mad at them for talking to another girl/guy.  That is the way it is supposed to work.

On the other hand, the way the world conducts relationships with hooking up, friends-with-benefits, 12-year olds having boyfriends and girlfriends and so on, is not just unbiblical, it’s harmful to our kids and does them an injustice.

But it’s not enough to say, “Well, of course, I’m teaching my children it’s wrong to hook up.”  If they have a boyfriend or girlfriend before they are ready for commitment, you are setting them up for sexual sin.  God designed for us to be strongly attracted to the opposite sex.  As a parent, it is your role to step in and not allow your child to put themselves in, or be put in, situations where their hormones will get the better of them.  Again, I choose to be called “over-protective” rather than to have my daughter come home pregnant or for one of my kids to get an STD they will suffer with for the rest of their life.  There is another way, a much better way, for your child to go about finding their future spouse.  Recreational dating and boyfriend/girlfriend relationships set your child up for failure.  Of that I am convinced, because I’ve seen it all too often.  And if you’re honest, you’ll admit that you have too.

I’ve also had discussions with my children concerning what the Bible calls “the appearance of evil.”  Once your children are adults and are embarking on finding a spouse, they still need to be careful because the world is watching.  And we have a responsibility to be a witness for the Lord.  In practical terms, that means that even though my daughter (who is 27) is dating, she and her date do not go to her house or his apartment alone.  I’ve also made it very clear to my sons that they are responsible for protecting the reputation of any girl they might take out.  What an archaic notion!  It is sad and reprehensible that our society, which was originally built on Christian principles, is so far from the notion of a guy protecting a girl’s reputation that most would consider it laughable.  But that is how I have raised my sons and that is what they are committed to.

The last thing I will mention, briefly, is that since I am the parent, I should have more than a little to say about my kids going to college.  In that regard, I have raised my kids to understand that not going to college is not an option.  My kids are required to get a college degree.  And with the availability to homeschoolers of dual-enrollment, online AP classes, CLEP tests, etc. there’s no reason your child can’t have a Bachelor’s degree by the age of 20 or 21 (if not earlier).  And if they live at home, like my kids do, it cuts the cost in half, at least.  I discuss this at length in my post “College and the Homeschooler” so I won’t go into detail here.  I will say that I’ve done it with two kids already.  My daughter has a Master’s degree in Forensic Drug Chemistry and lived at home until she was 25 (and if she wants to move back home she can – any time!)  My oldest son graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Management at the age of 20, with a perfect 4.0 GPA.  My 18-year old son will have 42 college credit hours when he finishes his senior year in high school in a few months, and will be living at home while he gets a degree in Computer Science from Florida State University.

By the way, did I mention that I am also opposed to the modern notion that we should want our kids out of the house the minute they turn 18?  Oy vey.  Maybe I shouldn’t even get started on that one!  But historically, the various generations – grandparents, parents, kids, unmarried relatives – have lived together in close proximity, if not the same household, and frankly, if you raise your kids right – after going through all those difficult, exhausting years while they’re young – why wouldn’t you want them home when they are grown and fun.  Yes, my kids are fun.  I’m not saying we never get on each other’s nerves…that’s just life.  But my daughter and I can talk about make-up and shoes, and my sons and I share our addiction for the TV show “Burn Notice.”  I love having my adult children living at home!

Well, if you’ve read this far…congratulations!  And thank you.  I hope you’ll consider leaving your thoughts and experiences in the comments.  I truly appreciate when my readers take the time to share their thoughts, and share these posts with their friends.  And if you’re new to my site you can use the RSS feed or e-mail sign-up on the top right so that you don’t miss out on future posts!  I hope to “see” you here again!

In my last post I pointed out that “Homeschooling911” actually started as a book idea – that my original goal was to write a book that would give homeschoolers the tools they needed to continue to homeschool even when life got complicated…or worse.  While “Homeschooling911” did ultimately evolve from a book idea to a website, and while I have actually spent almost two years sharing the “nuts-and-bolts” of homeschooling with prospective and current homeschoolers, I still want to be of assistance to those who are in the middle of a crisis, tragedy or challenge of any kind.

And it became even clearer to me recently that I needed to address this subject while going through an unexpected and unwelcome challenge of my own.  I won’t go into details but I was very ill during the latter half of December and the beginning of January.  The problems actually started in early November but escalated in the week before Christmas, to the point where I ended up in the ER on December 22^nd and subsequently spent hours (and thousands of dollars) on doctor’s appointments, lab work and other unpleasantness.

In the middle of this, not knowing how long it would take for me to regain my health I began to plan what I would do with my 4^th grader for school once the “Christmas break” ended.  I decided that I would start with only committing to one subject a day, and that subject would be math.  If I managed to do anything else with him, that would be gravy, but math would be my first priority.

And that brings me back to what I discussed in part one of this “mini-series” – when life throws you a curveball, you need to do two things in order to continue to homeschool successfully: prioritize and be flexible.

If you haven’t read that post yet, I suggest you do that right away.  It’s okay, I’ll wait…

So you’re back.  Having read that post you now know that I discussed, in a general way, why I believe prioritizing and being flexible are so crucial to dealing with disaster, change, turmoil and the complications of life – and that’s true for anyone, but particularly for those of us who have taken on the additional responsibility of homeschooling our children.

In this post I am going to go into specifics.  I am going to share those tactics that actually helped me deal with tragedy, turmoil and circumstances that turned my life upside down.  And I firmly believe that these tactics will help you as well.  I also believe that you can continue to homeschool when your life becomes topsy-turvy.

As I pointed out in my previous post, in order to prioritize in difficult times you must learn to be flexible.  If you need to throw a temporary tantrum because of all of your wonderful plans have gone awry, by all means do!  But after you’ve had your fit, take a deep breath, and start prioritizing.  What do your children really need, right now in order to continue to progress in their studies?  What can be put aside for next week, next month, or even next year?

I will contend (and I’m not claiming any kind of special knowledge because this seems pretty obvious) that your children really only need three things in terms of their schooling – those three things are traditionally called “the three ‘R’s.”

Mathematics, reading and writing are the foundation of your child’s education.  Everything else is gravy.  If your child can read, they can find information for themselves.  If they have a solid grasp of mathematics, they can interact with their world in any number of circumstances.  And if they have been trained in composition skills so they can communicate effectively, well, they’ll be ahead of the vast majority of their peers.

I also believe that the order of importance of those three subjects matters, and I put them in the order I have for a reason.  I will explain why below.  When tough times come, and they will, I believe if you follow the methods I have used you can’t go wrong!

Mathematics: At the beginning of this post I mentioned my decision to focus solely on mathematics with my fourth-grader while I was dealing with a debilitating illness.  Why math?  Unlike other subjects, math is the one subject that constantly builds upon previously learned facts and material – and unlike other subjects it also tends to need constant review in order to make those facts and material “stick.”

For example, once your child learns to read, they are not going to forget how to read.   Sure, you will want them to read more challenging material over time, but they will still know how to read.  But will your child forget their addition or multiplication facts?  Will they forget how to multiply fractions or do long division?  In a heartbeat!  Math is the one subject that, more than any other, you must stick with come heck or high water.

So when life goes crazy and you need to prioritize, make sure your kid is getting in their math – whether that involves you sitting down with them, or an older sibling teaching them, or they work on a computer math program or watch DVD’s – whatever you do, keep up with their math.  And if you’re smart you’ll do like I do – once my kids are in sixth or seventh grade they are responsible for completing about 75% of their work independently.  Tell them to do math first.  Every day.  No excuses.

Reading: How you deal with reading in your “prioritizing” depends on the ages of your children.  For young children learning to read, the world will not end if you put their reading program away for a little while.  On the other hand, the two keys I recommend you use when teaching your child to read involve little to no help from you at all.  I discuss this in depth in my post “How to: Teach Your Child to Read” but, in a nutshell, if you use Leapfrog
materials (particularly their phonics DVD’s) and the “Explode the Code” phonics workbooks, your kids are almost guaranteed to learn to read – and with little involvement on your part.  Frankly, many of the phonics programs I have looked at make learning to read way more complicated than it needs to be.  And granted, all kids are different – but the “Explode the Code” workbooks are so solid that I believe few kids would have trouble learning to read if they are used consistently.  And fortunately, they don’t require much time at all.  Spend 15 minutes a day, at most, and you will see results.

Now if your children are older and already reading – well that just makes things even easier!  Forget the grammar, vocabulary, spelling, etc. for a while.  If your kids know how to read, give them things to read.  Have them carry a book everywhere they go.  Have them read to you, if you feel like it.  Or have them read to their younger siblings.  I especially recommend you assign them a series of books.  For kids in 2^nd to 4^th grade, say – assign them the Boxcar Children series.  For kids in 5^th to 7^th grade, for example, you could assign the Ralph Moody series that starts with Little Britches (fantastic series by the way – based on Moody’s life these stories show kids that are resourceful, responsible and respectful).  For even older kids, get them into Charles Dickens or G. A. Henty or Jane Austen.  Reading several books by the same author can help your children with their own writing skills as well.  They learn to recognize an author’s voice and can better understand how to find their own voice when writing.  Which brings me to:

Writing: There are two components to writing: the mechanics of handwriting, and the creativity of composition.  When life gets complicated, you can certainly scrap the handwriting program for a time.  Penmanship is something you’ll work on with your kids for years – and all the work you do doesn’t guarantee your kids will end up with good penmanship as I know only too well.  My daughter has nice handwriting as does my middle son but my oldest son’s handwriting is atrocious.  But so what?  He spends most of his time on the computer anyway!  So yes, I do work on handwriting as part of our curriculum (I use “A Reason for Handwriting”) but it’s very hit-and-miss around here.  It’s certainly not a huge priority and can be put aside for quite a while if necessary.

Composition is another thing.  Now first of all, if you have kids under the age of 11 or 12, don’t even bother!  You see how much work I just saved you!  I realize there are some homeschooling philosophies that involve a LOT of writing on the part of your little students.  I think it’s a waste of time.  Just my opinion!

For one thing, narration bores me to death.  I know it’s an integral part of the Charlotte Mason school of thought.  I tried it…and it put me to sleep.  I don’t think we even lasted a week.  And the other school of thought that you should have your child tell you a story while you write it down – another snooze-fest as far as I’m concerned.

And frankly, I believe that composing written work is far too abstract a concept to be assigning to your kids while they’re still mastering fractions and long division.  Now I want you to understand me here: if you have a child that likes making up stories, by all means let them!  And be sure to throw that in your lesson plan schedule when they come to you with something they’ve created (whether by hand or on the computer).  My youngest loves to create stories and cartoons.  So I let him.  But I don’t assign stories or essays.

Once your child is somewhere between 5^th and 7^th grades, then it’s time to think about a composition program.  And the only one I ever found, after years of searching, that’s worth its salt is “Write With the Best.”  WWTB comes in two volumes and you can easily get three to four years worth of composition instruction out of these two volumes if you take your time.  “Write With the Best” also includes lessons in grammar so you can throw away that extra grammar curriculum.

Another thing I like to do with WWTB is to use the literature assignments as a basis for reading assignments.  For instance, WWTB uses passages from famous literature to teach a specific concept, such as writing a descriptive paragraph or an expository essay.  Rather than just have my child read that one excerpt, I have them read the whole book.  So, for example, as part of using WWTB my middle son read Treasure Island, The Wind in the Willows, and Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  “Write With the Best” is simply a fabulous program and if you have kids ages 12 and up, you should be using it!

So to sum up:  How do you tackle tough times as a homeschooler?  Well, first of all you need to decide that you are going to be flexible and you are going to prioritize your studies based on what your kids really need, which I believe would be, in this order: mathematics, reading and writing.

Now depending on the legal situation in your state you may need to insert more studies into your schedule BUT, if that is the case, I encourage you to be creative.  If you’re a relative “newbie” to the homeschooling scene, get some advice from veteran homeschoolers.  I’m sure one of two of them have been through tough times and have figured out ways to satisfy the government’s requirements while staying sane.  (And for the record, I think it is deplorable what some states require from homeschoolers…as if the public schools are producing 100% academic stars???)

When I say “be creative” I am suggesting, for example, that some of your everyday activities be counted as schoolwork – whether those activities are cooking meals, helping out with a relative in a crisis situation, or even just spending time reading good books or watching some nature DVD’s.  Everything “homeschooling” doesn’t have to mean sitting at a desk with a textbook!

Finally, I want to encourage you to look at the “big picture.”  Whatever hell you might be going through, you will get through it.  I know that isn’t very comforting when you’re in the middle of a tragedy.  I lost my brother in 1997 when he was killed by a drunk driver – he was 37 years old.  I lost my niece in 2007 when she was killed in a traffic accident – she was 19.  I’ve been through tragedy.  The kind that makes you almost wish you would lose your mind because the pain hurts so bad.  Through it all, by the grace of God, I continued to homeschool.  And I’m so thankful I did.

And you can too.  It doesn’t require Supermom powers.  It just requires some determination and, as I learned in my own life, a decision to be flexible and prioritize your child’s studies.

If you have any questions or just need a little encouragement you can leave a comment below or, if you’d rather keep it private, fill out my contact form and I will get back to you personally.

And if you have any tips related to how you homeschooled through tough times, please share them in the comments.  We all need some encouragement from time to time.

If you’ve read my post titled “Why Homeschooling911?” you know that this website originally started as a book idea.  The idea I had in mind was to share the experiences in my life that had been at times extremely stressful, and at other times utterly tragic, and to share the truth that it is more than possible to continue homeschooling through, as I called them, “life’s big and little emergencies.”

Where did this book idea come from?  Well, there’s something I have found out about life: it happens.  Just because you homeschool doesn’t mean you are going to be exempt from: the death of a loved one, sickness, a job loss, or some other upheaval that affects your life in a profound way.  Homeschoolers always seem to be surprised that situations come along that throw their well-laid plans into disarray.  I even recently read in one forum a question about dealing with these kinds of disruptions, as if there is a secret formula for continuing to breeze along with your homeschool objectives when the kids are sick or you’re sick or you need to attend a funeral or you suddenly have to up-and-move because your husband’s company transferred him…but the bottom line is that life happens to all of us and there is no “secret formula.”  However, there are coping mechanisms you can put into place so that you can not only continue to homeschool, but you can do so in a way that can provide teaching moments for your children that come no other way.

When life happens, as a homeschooler, you need to learn to adjust and adapt.  You need to do what I discussed in a guest post titled “Homeschool Survival: How to Get Through Tough Times” at The Survival Mom website.  What I recommended in that post was a two-pronged approach to getting through tough times: prioritize and be flexible.

Prioritize: When life sends you a curveball you need to learn to do more than duck.  And one of the best things you can do in terms of your homeschool is to realize it is YOUR homeschool.  You have the right to do or not do any certain subject today or tomorrow or the next day.  Granted, I realize that some states are more demanding than the state of Florida in regards to what you have to teach and how many days you have to teach, etc.  But I guarantee you there are ways to be creative in terms of fulfilling your obligations in regards to your state government and local school board and I strongly encourage you to make the most of all the resources available to you including, and especially, the resources which your state homeschool organization can provide to help you when you are facing a turbulent time in your life.

That being said, I learned a long time ago that when, say, a hurricane came through and flattened my city, that it was okay to scale back on what I was teaching.  That it was perfectly fine to say, “Hey, this year we’re just going to pass on history.  We’ll get to that next year.”  Believe it or not, IT WORKS.  Every time I have gone through a disastrous and/or traumatic situation in my life, whether it was Hurricane Andrew or a move across-state or the sudden death of my brother in 1997 – when I got back to the basics – the “three R’s” if you will – it worked every time.  There was less stress on me, which benefitted me and my kids, and my children’s education did not suffer.  In Part Two of this little “series” I am going to discuss in detail what I mean by scaling back and how that might look for you.  I hope you’ll come back and read that post because I believe it will help you and – if you share it – who knows, you just might help someone else who is struggling to homeschool while going through a tough time.

Flexibility: The second key to surviving tough times as a homeschooler is to learn flexibility.  In reality, flexibility and prioritizing go together.  It’s hard to prioritize and eliminate some of the extraneous elements of homeschooling if you can’t be flexible.  Being flexible may even mean taking a month off, or handing the homeschooling reins over to an older child who can supervise their younger siblings.  What works for you and your family will be an individual decision.  But flexibility in homeschooling is key – and at the risk of offending someone – being flexible doesn’t have to mean putting your kids in school.  In fact, I am a strong believer that continuing to homeschool through the hard times is actually a win for your kids.  What do I mean by that?  When you continue to homeschool through hard times your children learn some valuable lessons that they will likely learn no other way.

Think about it: your children will learn how to deal with difficulty.  Yes, they may see you grieve – but that’s okay.  They will learn that grieving is part of life.  They will see how being flexible can serve them well when they encounter tough times in their own adult life.  They will learn how a family can pull together to help one another and to be a blessing to one another and maybe even to other family members who are a part of this challenging time in your life.

During the very difficult times in my life, such as after Hurricane Andrew blew through our community in 1992, homeschooling actually provided stability to my children.  While other families were scrambling to figure out when their kids would go to school and where their kids would go to school – considering that many schools had been blown away – our family, though we spent the next six weeks living with various family members, kept right on going…we just took school along with us!

In 1997 when my brother was killed by a drunk driver and I had to take a flight out immediately to be with my parents, I found out that the training I had provided my daughter – who was 13 at the time – had indeed paid off.  My husband was to drive down with my kids the day after I flew to my parents but he had to tie up loose ends at work since he would be out-of-town for several days.  During that time my daughter did all the laundry and all the packing for herself, her two brothers, and my husband!  I was actually astounded at the way she stepped up and took over the duties that normally I would have taken care of.  And in the months ahead, when I made several trips to my parents’ home to help them with various issues (such as meeting with the state attorney to discuss the case against the man who had killed my brother) my daughter again took over the reins including planning and cooking all the meals.  The only thing she couldn’t do was the shopping as she was too young to have a driver’s license!  She cared for her brothers, the house, everything.  This is one of those hidden benefits of homeschooling that I talked about.  And if my kids had been in school during that time, it would have been very difficult for me to get away as often as I did.  Too many don’t realize the tremendous blessing homeschooling can be not just in the good times, but in the tough times as well.

I would encourage you to take a new look at the way you approach your homeschool.  I don’t believe it should be compartmentalized into something you do “X” hours a day.  One of the false claims by those who oppose homeschooling is that it doesn’t prepare children for “life.”  On the contrary, I believe school attendance creates a completely artificial view of life (and often leads to the entitlement mentality too many young people exhibit these days).  In fact, homeschooling is the only school option that actually exposes children to real life, with all its complications, stresses, and trials.  And only homeschooling can provide the teaching platform to help your children learn how to deal with “real life” before they are out on their own managing their own lives and confronting their own challenges.

So I encourage you: don’t be afraid to homeschool through the tough times.  It is not only manageable, it will provide benefits to your children that will last a lifetime.  Stay tuned for Part Two of “Tackling Tough Times,” where I will discuss further some ways to put prioritizing and flexibility into practice.

And don’t forget to share this post with your network.  The “share” button below offers many options for doing just that!

If you are a regular reader of my blog you may have noticed that I have been somewhat MIA this month.  I did spend the first part of the month studying for the final exam in my history class (I’m working on finishing an English Lit degree at Florida State University).  That class was a beast.  One of the worst I’ve ever had.  I did end up with a B+ in the class in part due to the excellent job my 18-year old son did quizzing me!  By the way, I had a brainstorm a week or so before the exam to put together a timeline of all the events that I might be tested on.  Got out a roll of brown Kraft paper and cut about five feet of it, then taped it to my family room floor!  I wrote down all the dates (in order) for the dozens of events that had been covered the second half of the semester – this professor was VERY big on dates – and then my son quizzed me from that.  So…might be an idea for you to use for your homeschool some time!

Once I got my exam out of the way, I thought I’d have a few relaxing weeks for “Christmas break” but alas, I have been quite sick.  So sick I ended up in the ER last week on IV fluids.  I will spare you the details of how long it took the nurse(s) to get needles into my little veins but suffice it to say that my daughter, who was with me, told me later she thought she was going to pass out.  I’m still on meds and supposed to be following up with my doctor and I would certainly appreciate your prayers!

In any case, last year around this time I offered a “wrap-up” that linked to the most popular posts on my blog for that year.  So in the interest of consistency, and also for the benefit of my newer readers, I have compiled a list of the most popular posts of 2011.  I based my decision of what posts to include primarily on the number of readers who commented (for better or for worse!) but in the case of the last two posts listed, they were also two of the most “visited” posts of the year.

The Myth of Socialization
My Definition of an Adult
Homeschooling Your High Schooler
A Christian Marriage Reality Check
A Comment About Rascal Flatts
Making the Most of a Home School Conference
How To: Teach Math Concepts
How To: Teach Math Drills
How To: Teach Your Child To Read
How To: Teach Language Arts

Finally, if you don’t want to miss any of my posts in 2012 be sure to sign up to be notified of new posts either via RSS feed or my e-mail newsletter.  Just go to the top of this page and fill out the e-mail form or click on the feed.  And to all those who have read and/or shared my blog this year: Thank You!