Sing, Dance, Grow, Talk

A Note to Home Educating Parents

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

As my youngest child prepares for his college graduation in a couple of weeks, I look back at the sum of our family activities, chores, achievements, and low points over the last 28 years since my first child was born. We celebrate that all three of my home-educated children finished their college degrees even as my middle child completes his graduate medical degree for yet another year. (That’s not a humble brag but a full-on boast, for those keeping score). All three of my adult children are hardworking, successful, lovely people that we enjoy being around every chance we can find.

I present here some things I’ve learned. Take the ones you like. Discard the rest. Find what resonates. What would I have done differently and how I could have improved matters under my control as a home educator and mom? What would I recommend to families who are still in the educational trenches?

As a professional educator, some of you might assume I will suggest families up their academic game for their offspring. Maybe more AP courses and more CLEP exams? Maybe harder classes and higher grades? Perhaps some academic summer camps mixed with year-round academics? On the contrary!

Approaches that worked for my family:

1. Provide a rich buffet of opportunities and tools in topics that interest your student (Let your musicians have instruments. Let your artists have art supplies. Let your problem solvers play games.)
2. Settle for a checkmark of completion in topics that don’t.
3. Make travel a big part of your family’s experience to expand the assortment of things that interest your student.
4. Let your child’s personal enthusiasm guide your budget of academic energies. Get requirements quickly finished and then lavish energy on topics that bring excitement.
5. If you conscientiously educate at home, be assured your child will exceed expectations at college.
6. If you foster time management skills, personal responsibility, plus the confidence to both endure and overcome challenges, your student will greatly surpass his peers at college.
7. Don’t overdue AP classes, CLEP, and dual enrollment opportunities. There’s no replacement for the friends and connections your child will make at college if they do so from the start. Too many frugal moves to skip the first few years of college will result in a failure to make social connections and then a failure to form essential professional ties with peers and professors. These connections are as important (if not more important) than the expensive diploma at the end.
8. Thinking, writing, reading, and understanding are topics taught best at the dinner table, garden, library, and barn rather than through a formal curriculum or workbook. Just talk to each other as adults, even if your adult is only 10 or 13… then see point number 4 when it comes to spending time or energy on classes.
9. Let each of your children become an expert in areas she loves and then trust her advice or let him guide the rest of the family in that topic. Respect and trust will enhance development but also it is nice to have somebody become a computer specialist, or chess master, or the best at making gnocchi or making a nice avocado toast, or maybe the go-to guide for Medieval weaponry.
10. Be firm with boundaries regarding work time for everyone. Adults and children alike need to trust that dinners will be together, Saturdays will offer some family time, Sundays are set aside for rest and ritual, etc. At the same time this becomes more difficult, it becomes more essential.

Things I wish I’d done more of:

1. Forgive each other more directly and more immediately. Shouting, “stop bickering!” might bring a short but artificial peace. Issues can fester rather than gaining resolution just because conflicts were misinterpreted as being “merely” temporary or childish and then brushed aside as bothersome noise. Talk through resolutions while issues are manageable so that calloused resentments are never formed.
2. Music (all kinds at all opportunities)
3. Dance (all kinds at all opportunities).
4. Turn off the TV
5. Grow to celebrate wins more often. Don’t let Etsy or your overly festive relative make you think you need to buy special decorations or put on massive party events before you can celebrate. Start at dinner. Focus as much as possible on thankfulness and then take joy in even small victories daily.