Author: Wendy Young

The power of a successful homeschool journey cannot be over emphasized. Every parent who home schools wants to enjoy the adventure, grow close to their children and have well rounded children at the end of it. But moms hold the power to sabotage their own homeschools and often they do not even know they are doing it. Here are some warnings (and remedies) for homeschooling parents so that you are do not become one of them.

Warning #1 – You have no systems in place

How do you know this is happening? You cannot find your school books, the children cannot find their pens and pencils, your laundry is piling up and you cupboards and fridge are empty.

Solution – Take one afternoon on the weekend to plan your meals, do your grocery shopping, get your books ready for the next week and get your children to make sure their desks and pencil boxes are ready for Monday. Set up a laundry system in your home to make sure that your family has clean clothing and linens.

Warning #2 – Your children take forever to do their work

Some children are slow workers, but many are dawdlers. If your junior grade children are taking more than a 3 hours to do their work or your high schooler more than 6 hours then chances are that they are wasting time.

Solution – Make sure that you are giving your children short lessons so that dawdling is discouraged. Ensure that you alternate a hard lesson for a easier lesson. Take the time to train your children in the habit of attention so that they learn the importance of giving something their full attention and completing work in a timely fashion.

Warning #3 – Your children spend more time on school work than life

If your children are spending more than a third of their day in formal academic pursuits, it is a sure fire way of producing burnout in mom and child.

Solution – Raymond and Dorothy Moore, grandparents of the homeschooling movement, make use of a head, heart and hand principle. They said that a child’s day should be balanced equally between these three occupations. Head refers to academic pursuits; Hand refers to work in and around the home like chores and entrepreneurial activities and Heart refers to spiritual and moral training a parent should impart.

Warning #4 – Your children are allowed unlimited daily doses of TV and computer

Children should not watch TV or work on the computer everyday. It is an unhealthy situation as the stimulus that the brain receives from these two activities causes a dumbing down process where the child forgets how to entertain themselves, play out imaginary games and be productively and creatively busy – to mention just a few negatives.

Solution – Make a list of all the productive pursuits that your child can do and put to when they nag and ask for TV or their computer games. Ensure that you draw them alongside you in your day to day activities – and set the example yourself!

Warning #5 – Mom does not ensure that she is sufficiently rested

When a mom is tired, burnt out and running from play-dates to sports all afternoon and never takes a moment for a quiet cup of tea and a book, she is bound to be tense and overwrought. When mom has nothing left, she cannot give to her children and be a healing presence in her home.

Solution – Mom needs to set aside small moments in her day to take a breather. This can be a chapter of a good book, a walk around the garden, a cup of tea – on her own. It could also mean getting to bed earlier so that she can rise before her family with a small head start on her day. Mom needs to take time out monthly as well, so that she can set her hand to a craft or hobby where she can take off the “homeschooling mom hat.”

Warning #6 – The homeschooling parents talk of nothing but their children

Does it seem like whenever mom and dad go out or have a moment together, all they talk about is homeschooling and parenting? While there is time for that, it is also very important that they take time to remember that their relationship ranks right up there in importance.

Solution – Make a pact that you will do something special together, weekly or monthly, where you do not talk about homeschooling, parenting or household matters. Just enjoy being together.

Warning #7 – Parents control their children rather than build relationship with their children

This is a tough one… isn’t it? We want the best for our children; we want them to be all they were created to be and to achieve much in their lives. But often a parent will go overboard and forget that the reason they are raising children is so that they can be strong valuable members of a community.

Solution – Like a young sapling tree, protect your children as they need it. Train them in moral and spiritual guidelines as you take hold of those truths as well. As they grow and show maturity in certain areas, permit them to begin making their own decisions within the realm of what is permissible to your boundaries as a family unit.

Warning #8 – A homeschooling mom who spend too much time feeding on other lives

I left this for last because this one point can be the single most damaging thing that can happen to any homeschool. When a mom is always comparing herself and her children to what the next person is doing, what the other children have achieved, the projects that they are doing, instead of getting on and living her life with her children, she is bound to become frustrated and defeated.

Solution – Accept the season that your family is in – perhaps you have just had a baby and an in-depth unit study will sent your teetering over the edge! Perhaps your children have special needs and are not able to concentrate for long. Whatever the reason… accept the season. Also remember that each home and family is unique and your family has a specific flavor to it. When you try and bring in another family’s culture to your own, you dilute the beauty of your family.

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Wendy Young is the homeschooling mom to 4 children aged 7 – 14 years. They have always been at home. She has been married for 19 years. Wendy’s website, Homeschool-Curriculum-For-Life, is dedicated to helping moms choose curriculum, get organized, and enjoy the homeschool journey by equipping them as their roles as wives, women, and moms.

Author: Rachel Paxton
ShareBy the time your children reach their teens, there is only a limited amount of time left to influence them and get them started in life in the right direction.

The teen years are a critical time for role models in your children’s lives. Often you will find teens have a hard time talking to their parents. This isn’t always the case, but even in the closest families, teens often feel more comfortable talking to another trusted adult about some of the things going on in their lives.

Of course you would prefer your teen would go to an adult when they need to talk something important out, instead of relying on their friends who may not have the insight an older, more experienced adult would have.

Obviously you have no real control over who your teen goes to for advice, but there are a number of ways you can steer your teen in the right direction.

The best chance your teen has for interacting with other adults is in extracurricular activities. There are all kinds of activities your teen can be involved with, here are some that come to mind: church youth group, scouts, sports, music, school clubs, community service, just to name a few. Personally I don’t encourage parents to involve their teens in so many activities that it leads to burnout for both the parents and the teen, but carefully selected activities led by good and capable leaders will enrich your teen’s life in a way few things can, and will increase the likelihood that your teen will establish a relationship with one of the group leaders.

One word of caution, however. Talk to your teen about their activities and get a feel for yourself the effectiveness of the group leader. Not to say that they have to excel in every way, but just make sure that they are a good role model, and not a negative influence in your teen’s life. There is the potential of bad leaders in any activity, including in a church setting, and it is the parents’ responsibility to make sure their teen is in a positive atmosphere, influenced by mature leaders.

Involvement in group activities is especially great for teens of single parents. Teens who don’t have regular contact with mature adults of both sexes often have a hard time later in normal adult relationships. Being exposed to “normal” at this age very much increases the teen’s chances of growing into a well-adjusted adult. I have seen this often with boys who are raised by their moms with not much influence or negative influence from their dads.

Placed into group settings, with responsible adult male leaders, these teen boys have much less difficulty transitioning into adulthood. It also takes of a lot of the pressure off the often overworked mothers.

From my own experience, I have found that often other adults can help my teen in ways that I can’t, mostly due to big differences in our personalities. I am more of a quiet introspective thinker, and my daughter is very outgoing, and has a lot of potential leadership qualities that are hard for me to help her develop because I do not possess those qualities myself. Knowing how important it is to help her develop her natural abilities at this impressionable age, I make sure there are other adults in her life who can help influence her in ways I can’t. My daughter and I are very close, but there are just a lot of things that I can’t help her with, so I encourage her in developing relationships with adults who do have those abilities.

My daughter and I both respect our different abilities. It is very easy to be critical of people who are not like us, and parents and teens very easily fall into this trap. The best thing to do is be honest about your own abilities, and of the abilities of your teen, and do whatever is necessary to find outside influences for your teen. The more you can help your teen develop their abilities now, the less they will have to do on their own later (often, the hard way).

And don’t forget, you are a role model too. Get involved in the lives of your teen’s friends, or volunteer to help in a group activity in some way, even if only occasionally. There are teens out there who really need to hear what you have to say.

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Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of five. For resources for the Christian family, including parenting, toddler and preschool activities, homeschooling, family traditions, and more, visit http://www.Christian-Parent.com

Edited by Mimi Rothschild
But what can I do when my homeschooled child has a temper tantrum, or refuses to eat a meal time, or refuses to do his schoolwork? What can we do to ease this and other types of behavior that appear rebellious to parents and may have become a favorite past time for the child as a means of gaining negative attention from the parents. Children have manyways o getting what they need. They can appear at times vary at step two at pulling out and using just the one that will be the most irritating at the precise moment. The child, through these tactics, is really saying that he wants to be the center of attention for a while.

Sometimes parents take the attention-getting antics of the child too seriously. What can parents do with these trying times,? A good principle to keep in mind is that there are some things that a parent must learn to it nor. A next-door neighbor of ours used to tell us. You see too much where your child is considered quite seeing so much. Some of the behavior problems of your child which were you so much will be taken care of by time and the process of the child growing up. This neighbor was not a child psychologist and yet we have found that he was giving a sound advice.

Things will go a lot smoother if we can understand of a six-year-old will usually act like a six year old, and that when the same child gets to be 10 years of age he will usually act like a 10-year-old. To say to the child don’t be childish is about as effective as saying don’t breed. All children can vote missed the mark at times. This is because they are children and need time to learn how to conform to the requirements of their social world, time to learn how to control their emotions, time to learn how to get along with other people, time to learn how to make the most time. If parents can remember this, it will help in keeping the child’s behavior in proper perspective.

When the homeschooling child’s behavior becomes too unruly. Too frequently, it might be a good idea to look at his daily routine. Does he have enough opportunity to play with other children? Is there enough variety in his day? Does he have space and equipment for active play? Is he fenced in with too many unnecessary restrictions? There is a difference between the child’s natural exuberance and his misbehavior. The youngster is by nature adventuresome, curious, energetic cop, inclined to explore. When he has these tendencies curbed by parents who are too restrictive, the child naturally responds in some form of a bilious behavior.

In coping with the behavioral patterns which say “I want your attentio”, homeschooling parents sense of humor can be indispensable. Give the child’s attention temporarily and then channeled the incident into something amusing.

Another means of avoiding complex problems over his unacceptable behavior is by setting up a set of rules for conduct which the child clearly understands. If the child can see with these rules are not simply that are made necessary for the welfare of all concerned. And by the very nature of the situation itself, he is much more likely to go along with them. A word of caution: if the rules are too numerous to rigid and unsuited to the child’s present level of development, he is likely to thumb his nose at them, figuratively and perhaps even literally.

In all of this effort to deal with the child who is missing the mark, the parent who can retain his emotional equilibrium, is the parent who is in the best position to win. In order to keep his emotional control, it may be necessary for the parent simply to walk away from the situation and not deal with it until he has cooled off and until he can get the proper situation into proper focus. Here again a sense of humor can be a valuable tool. A smiling parent who can see, and can lead the child to see, the ridiculousness of a situation can often change and emotion packed atmosphere into a serene one and can do it much more satisfactorily than a scowling and threatening parent.

There is no more dynamic power in a child’s life than the need for his parents wholehearted approval and recognition. The child may hide the truth so that it is not easy for a parent to perceive it. He will often relinquish some of his strongest and most wholesome urges in order to adhere to parental instructions, if he knows that disobedience for the sake of independents will gain for him the disapproval of his parents. Even the child’s “I hate you” is the desperate plea of the youngster who has a worthless peeling that he is so hopelessly trapped by his extreme need for approval and acceptance that it compels him to acquiesce to the domination of his parents. Because they are children, children will fail to measure up to our expectations sometimes. How we as parents behave when our children misbehave is the real test of parenthood. If we can pass the test most of the time, we can breathe a sigh of relief by feeling that we are normal parents after all.

A mother and her son were admiring some baby chickens. The son picked up one and held it so tightly that it almost smothered. It struggled a until it succeeded in escaping. Casually, the mother said, if you hold a cheek to tightly, it wants to get away. Try holding one gently. The next little chick nestled quietly in the Sun’s open palm, while the mother injected a timeless truth: you know, son. People are the same as chicks. If we told those we love too closely to us, Bailey. They will struggle for freedom. Hold them with open hands and they won’t feel smothered.

That mother had shared a truth that valuable football parents: when are chicks, our children, missed the mark, let us deal with them with the open hand of overall love, understanding, and honesty.

By Mimi Rothschild

Lets take a look at the central objectives of an outstanding Christian homeschooling program.

The central objectives of any good homeschooling program should be:

1) to assist students in the understanding and development of their own strengths and weaknesses,

2) To perceive, respond to and participate in God’s continuing activity and revelation in the human and Christian communities. If they deal with their continual life involvements of becoming an independent adult,

3) to provide a wide range of stimulating resources and tools that will enable students and parents to fully explore the world God has created,

4) to assist members of the Christian community to learn how to become change agents in the world, and

5) to explore ways in which homeschooling students can become social activists.

It is crucial to exist within a supportive believing community for the support necessary to become a change agent in society. The central objective of a good homeschool plan starts with the assumption that believers within the Christian community can become change agent much as Jesus commands us to be salt and light in the world

One temptation when developing the Christian homeschool curriculum is to try to copy the same educational system that most of us grew up with. Many homeschoolers set up desks and blackboards in their kitchens and tried to duplicate the educational process that exists in most public and private schools. I would like to propose that homeschooling does not have to replicate the traditional learning process and can and should in many cases reinvent the process so that more appropriately adapt to the needs of the individual learners.

In a traditional school system, students are grouped together by their chronological age. Every student that was born in a specific year is put in that grade level. Your respective of their intelligence and their mastery of the material. This alone create enormous problems for the teachers. The fact that everyone in the classroom was born in the same year means that both the curriculum and the teaching processes is usually dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. In other words, the teacher is often forced to teach to the slowest child in the classroom. What happens to the rest of the children in this scenario? It has been said that a one size fits all education, it’s no one. This is where we, as homeschoolers, have tremendous freedom.

One of the central objectives in creating a reinvented homeschool program is to forgo the notion that just because children were born in a certain year. That means they should have acquired certain skills and should be learning from certain books. That’s completely rethink the idea that children need to be at a specific place at specific times. It’s learning a race? Who determines when and why might eight-year-old has to learn XYZ. Exactly when he’s eight? This basic philosophy stems from the need in an institutional setting to herd large groups of children from one task to the other at the same time. In a great homeschooling program, we can jettison this notion altogether and concentrate our efforts on meeting the individual needs of our children.