There are many things that can trip up a homeschool mom in her journey of educating her children at home: lack of organization, no plans, standards that are too high (or too low) for her children and more.

There is however another more damaging habit that a homeschool mom can get into, and that is one of always comparing her home to another. I have done this in different seasons, Shirley has done it, and I am sure many moms reading this will also admit to comparing their children and their homes with others.

There is a time when we need to assess our homes and decide if what we are doing is sufficient, whether we need to stretch ourselves to be better homemakers or wiser stewards of our children’s lives, and then act upon that introspection.

However, when you are in a low place, when your children are acting up, or there is a lack in some area of your homeschooling, then the worst thing you can do is to visit another blog, home or follow a Facebook link to see the shining stars in other families’ homes.

Why is this so damaging? Well, besides the obvious reason of simply making you feel worse about your own home and own family at that moment, these comparisons have a tendency to do two things:

1. Push you deeper into your passivity where you feel that you are simply no good to man or beast.
2. Subconsciously force you to take on a model of what another family is doing in their home with their children.

Passivity keeps you bound up and unable to take a step in any direction. This often happens due to information overload, stress or simply a personality type that requires outward motivation.

The result of comparing to other “go-getters”  is that the comparing mom sinks into emotions that dictate her actions.
She knows she cannot do what they do, as her pace through life is different, but she feels she should. She doesn’t know where to start so sits day in and day out gathering information, reading blogs, listening to others successes and all the time she is beating herself up.

On the other hand, the mom who forces herself and her children into another family’s mould does her own damage. She stops looking at whom God has given her as a husband, father and children and wants what she sees on a blog or Youtube video or in a homeschool book. She begins to shape and mould her children into something God never wanted them to be.

As a sidebar here – I am not talking about moulding children’s characters according to the standard of kindness, obedience, self-control, excellence, purity etc. These are character traits that every well-formed future adult needs in order to impact their space and carry them through life and relationships.

Part of the process of learning to judge all the input we receive by the ton in this cyberspace of homeschool blogs and lives is to be wise and discerning. Be careful to visit blogs, read books and chat things through with friends selectively.

The other thing to remember about cyberspace is that most moms who blog or write about homeschooling only share the good stuff. Behind the lovely photos and amazing looking projects and lapbooks are real people with real struggles and sinful natures.

Every single mom, including the two of us, have struggles. We all have to face our fears and doubts at times, we all have to discipline our children, keep the boundaries in place, battle with self-control and more. Anyone who tells you they have arrived in all these areas either has lost touch with reality or has a fully formed character in the Lord.

I believe that if we could be a fly on the wall in other homeschooling homes, we would see that everyone of us is struggling with something.

Is this a hopeless situation for us all? No! For years now, Shirley and I have held onto a quote by Kylie Miller and share it with moms at expos, on our website and in our Footprints workshops:

"...God's initial goal for Christian homeschooling families is not the raising of godly children. Instead, God's wonderful, but subtly hidden agenda is that the homeschooling experience be so challenging for the parents that they feel the need and hunger for a closer walk with their heavenly Father."
(Kyle Miller)

You see, for those of us who are Christians, we can take our feelings of inadequacy or passivity or even our self-made “models” of what we think we should look like and look unto Jesus. In our weakness He is strong and in the Bible we can find the examples we need to become wise parents, mature woman, good wives and diligent homeschoolers.

So dear moms ,if you are struggling right now with comparing or feeling inadequate in your task as homeschoolers, may I encourage you to give yourself a season without reading about others’ lives, even a blog fast, so that you can learn to live in your reality and rejoice whilst seeking the Lord for His wisdom and guidance for your path forward.

Proverbs 16:3
“Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and] so shall your plans be established and succeed.”