This post was written by Danika Cooley of Thinking Kids
“Mom! Sharks lay the largest eggs in the world! And they have rows of teeth, and they have no bones! Don’t you have a fossilized tooth somewhere? Can’t we see it right now?”
“Um, what was wrong with Jephthah? Why would God make him a judge? Why didn’t his daughter just run away?”
“Was what Abraham Lincoln did really constitutional? Why would anyone want to keep slaves? Why did this war last so long? I would have been a soldier for the North and I wouldn’t ever have defected! Why were people defecting anyway?”
When I started homeschooling, I was so excited about the opportunity to provide my children with an individualized, thinking education. I wanted them to learn to reason, to consider all of the information presented, and to be able to make logical connections. I wanted history, science and the Bible to come alive — to be relevant. I wanted my kids to engage with the world around them, rather than shrugging it off.
That was then, this is now.
Now, I want to actually make it all the way through our schedule for the day. I would like to cover our Bible lesson without stopping every paragraph to discuss theology. I really want to go through our historical lessons, have them read their related literature, and move on. I want them to take it all in and process it on their own.
My children keep interrupting my teaching with their learning.
It’s messing with my schedule and frankly, it’s exhausting. Every moment of every day is spent processing with them, learning with them, and reaching conclusions with them.
It’s almost like I am discipling them or something.
That, friends, is where I must check myself during my inner dialogue. We started homeschooling because we wanted the opportunity to pour into our children’s lives. We wanted to disciple our little people for Christ. We wanted the opportunity to help them process the information they were taking in. We wanted them to think. And now that they’re doing it — well, it’s just inconvenient.
They’re messing with my checklist.
I am embarrassed to admit that I’ve truly struggled with these feelings over the past year. I’ve waited impatiently for them to finish speaking, and I’ve even shushed them when their questions have been poorly timed. It’s an issue I’ve taken to the Lord in prayer, and that I’ve taken to my husband. I know the problem isn’t theirs.
I’m the problem.
I have resumed my daily prayers for patience. (I wrote about that in The Reason I Could Never Homeschool.) I’ve also remembered to give my anger and frustrations to the Lord on a daily basis. (For more on anger, see The Ghost of Childhood Past ~ Anatomy of an Angry Parent.) I find the Lord pointing out some areas I could look for engagement with my kids. You see, it’s my expectations that lie in wait for me like a stalking lion.
I need some new expectations.
In a nutshell, here are the new expectations I’ve been building into our day:
1) Leave Time for Questions – I’ve started scheduling extra time for conversation into our day. That way, I’m not stressed. It’s on our list of things to do.
2) Engage – Not only do I leave time for questions, I make an effort to lead the discussion. I want always to point my kids toward Jesus.
3) Take Advantage of Valuable Moments – Previously, I approached lunch and car rides as though they were my own personal teacher’s lounge. They were a great time to unwind, read a magazine (at the table) or think (in the car). Yet, these times are important moments for hearing about what really matters to my kids.
I have a long way to go, but I think I’m on the path to quit interrupting all their learning with my teaching.
How do you make time for discipleship and all that teaching?
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Oh wow, Danika. I have a post scheduled for next week so similar to your thoughts here! Thank you for sharing.
Me too sister, me too. Especially in the past school year, the Lord has seriously challenged me…and I’m slowly growing and changing my ways.
I’ll be thinking of you, praying for your teaching & homeschooling (and discipleship!). Grace, grace…
So true. I think we frequently need to realign our expectations and make sure they truly line up with our long-term goals. I’ve found myself in the same boat at times.
Thank you for the reminder. I’m getting ready to plan out our next year and this was a trap for me last year. We got a lot accomplished, but how much learning was actually missed by me scheduling learning opposed to welcoming and fostering natural curiosity?
Daniele, I look forward to reading your post! This is an ongoing struggle for me. Thank you for the prayers. I’ll pray for you as well. 🙂
~ Danika
Heather, it’s so important to keep our eyes on the goal! I sometimes get lost in the details of the journey.
~ Danika
I totally get this. As a matter of fact when talking with another homeschooling mom this last year, we chatted about how patient we can be with almost anyone except our own family. So as the Holy Spirit was taking part in our conversation, He gave me this… “Keep your expectations realistic, keep your confessions holy”. The power of life and death being in the tongue, it has been a constant reminder to speak life over EACH situation especially the ones where our patience is tested.
Thanks for sharing. It is encouraging to know that on those tough days that there is another mom out there somewhere dealing with the same thing. Praying for your year and ours! 🙂
I LOVE this! My boys are always interrupting me with questions. Thank you for putting things in perspective for me.
Christina, I hope this year we’ll get a lot of scheduled learning accomplished *and* that I’ll remember to embrace the teachable moments and occasional rabbit trails. 🙂 ~ Danika
LaToya, sometimes I wonder if the *way* I answer the questions is the most important part of the learning process for the kids. 🙂
~ Danika
I had to giggle, because my children prefer to be the teacher over the student and I just happen to write about it tonight. http://hecticpeace.com/2013/07/26/little-red-school-house/
Sometimes I think these amazing creations we call OUR kids, were actually sent to us specifically to teach US something. 😉
So you add time for questions and add time for actual LISTENING to children and use the lunch time for them and the car ride for them… can you see where I am going? I struggle with time to THINK… for me! How do you devote your every moment to your children (and husband) and still have them understand they are part of a world that might NOT stop to listen to their every thought or comment? I want them to feel loved and cherished and still… take turns! Does Teacher Mommy get a turn?
I so much appreciate this reminder! Love the idea about scheduling time for questions–I am going to try and implement this!
I’m not sure how old your kids are, or how you educate in your home, but I can tell you how my days go. My youngest children are 9 and 10. We school from 8am to 330pm with one 1/2 hour break at 10am and one hour break at 12pm. Usually, I get up early to spend time reading, writing and working out before I wake them up. That gives me a good chunk of time to myself, and to spend talking to my husband off and on. They do most of their independent work in the morning. They read about 6 chapters a day, so that takes them about an hour. We use Life of Fred for math. Dr. Stanley’s philosophy is that the children should learn to educate themselves by reading. Sometimes I need to help with difficult concepts, but for the most part, they are able to work through the reading and questions themselves. They also work on typing and handwriting quietly. They know the drill, and they get it done. So, I get about an hour and a half to two hours of silence. I clean, read, write, etc. Their 10am break is usually spent outside playing football or building LEGOs. The rest of the day, we work on school together, so I am very active with read-alouds, helping with their writing, guiding science notebooking, etc. After school they often go play before dinner.
I don’t know how much “me” time you’re looking for. I know when kids are little, life is very busy. However, as your children age, they should be working more independently.
Our primary goal in homeschooling our children is to disciple them. That is, by nature, a sacrificial act. It takes time and effort. I can’t live life backward, but I find myself wishing that when our adult children were young, I had spent less time on me and more time intentionally discipling them. In retrospect, it was such a short period of time. Sure, we all need to recharge. But we’re called to pour into the little people God has given us to steward.
~Danika
Hi there-
The fact that your kids are excited, curious and asking lots of questions means that you’re doing a great job as a teacher! I think you’ve already got the right idea for a solution to your frustration– adding more structure. One thing that works really well in addition to making time for questions and discussion is to write everybody’s question on a big sheet of paper with a marker, like one of those huge post-it pads. It validates their question as one worthy of attention, and you get to make sure you get to them all sooner or later. They can also jot it down on a piece of paper at their table and then add it to the big list themselves when getting up to do so won’t interrupt you. Sometimes that list might end up being a couple of yards long!
Lily, I love it! Thanks for the great idea!
Yes! I realized one day that if I keep snapping at my children they’ll stop coming to me for answers. Not at all what I want.
Thank you so much for this post, I am truly struggling right now, I have no support or help and I am not doing well right now. I’m cranky and impatient and just mean. I want to be better and I don’t want to repeat my mother’s mistakes. My children are 5.5, 2.5 and 5 months, I want to have a schedule I know that would greatly help because I need to have some order back in my life but I also want them to have freedom and learn and explore but I’m not sure how to set this up. I know I’m messing up big time but I’m not sure how to fix it. Any tips?
Thank you!
Oh, friend, your kids are so young! This is a wonderful time to explore God’s world with them, to introduce them to the stories of the Bible and to Jesus. It’s a great time to read together, go to the park, and be silly. Everything else comes with time. For your 5 year old, slip some informal letter and number recognition in throughout the day, practice cutting with scissors and writing great big words.
One day, you can worry about schedules and formal learning, but you’re not there yet. 🙂 (This is coming from a totally scheduled classical homeschooler!)
As far as repeating your mom’s mistakes, I feel your pain. Just look to Christ. Pray, repent, apologize to your kids and move on. Changing can be a slow process, but the fact that you don’t want to be mean, impatient, or cranky — and that you recognize it in yourself — is huge. I ask forgiveness from my children constantly. Amazingly, they still love me.
Give your kids grace, but give yourself grace, too.