Another one Bites The Dust

A fellow homeschooler approached me the other day with news that they had decided to send their daughter to public school next year. The daughter and mother are struggling in their relationship and there are many tears and angry words between the two. Mom is tired.

I can relate. My middle daughter has always been home schooled and is now 13. The past year has had plenty of tears and attitude. (Not just her, but me as well!) School is harder and more time consuming. Hormones are entering into the picture. She wants control, I want control. Some days, I am banging my head on the floor. I have already raised one daughter who is now a junior in college and almost 20 years old. I have survived these young adult years once already. I understand that now at the tender age of 13 md needs me just as much, if not more than she did as a toddler. Toddlers and young adults are very similar. Both are exploring boundaries and learning for the first time where the lines are drawn. They are exploring new worlds, some safe and some uncharted and frightening. They NEED their parents to be the hedge of protection, to guard them until the time where they can safely navigate on their own. A two year old can not judge for themselves if it is safe to cross the road. A 13 year old can not navigate the deep and treacherous waters of public education and the hedonistic culture that we live in without there be some consequences. Ray Comfort in his book Humanism: A New Religion said, "Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school's meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five day program of humanistic teaching?" If your child goes to public school they most likely leave your home around 7:30 in the morning. Depending on activities and clubs, they may not return home until 5 or 6. You can feed them supper and then expect at least two hours of homework. Your total time spent in meaningful conversation is under a half an hour. What is your half an hour in comparison to 8 hours a day, five days a week of humanistic teaching.

The same reasons that we started homeschooling are the same reasons to continue homeschooling. The primary reason that we are sacrificing so many things in order to home school is that we want our children to understand the world from God's perspective and to know that God is the one who created all that we are learning and exploring. Through our education we are learning and growing closer to the creator. There is no way for this goal to be accomplished in public school. In fact public school will do everything it can to undermine those very ideas. Even if the school does not out right attack those beliefs the absence of acknowledgement of God make him irrelevant to education. I know many people that claim to home school on a year to year basis. I have heard people say that they felt called to home school for a season but that God released them from that calling. How can that be? Scripture is always true. If God's calling to us as parents is to home school than that calling is not dependent on our children's ages. It does not end when we get tired, when there is conflict, or when we don't think we can take it anymore. If home schooling was Gods plan for your family, God is not the one who changed.