Reaching Higher
Homeschool News
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When Life Becomes Too Much
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As long time homeschooling moms, Wendy and Shirley both know how quickly the homeschooling lifestyle can take over everything we think about, speak about and do.
The learning lifestyle is usually a continuous, fulfilling walk for any family, however there are simply times when everything can ‘pile up’. If you can picture the analogy of a child running into a room and sliding on a carpet…what does the carpet do? It bunches up at the end of the skid. Sometimes life can feel like this!
We have often had to unbundle our lives so that peace returned. It is a hard process because there are just so many good things that we can do, do, do, as home educating families. But is everything right for every season?
The best way to begin the unbundling process when you feel all knotted up is go back to the priorities that we have as wives, moms and women. For us, the Bible is the place we turn to in order to see what it is that our Father God requires of us, since we are to be His hands and feet to our households.
Titus 2:3-5 says: “So that they will wisely train the young women to be sane and sober of mind (temperate, disciplined) and to love their husbands and their children, to be self-controlled, chaste, homemakers, good-natured (kindhearted), adapting and subordinating themselves to their husbands, that the word of God may not be exposed to reproach (blasphemed or discredited).”
This clearly outlines what He desires for our lives. Some may wonder where the actual tasks involved in home educating fall into this list of godly requirements – we think that it is covered in the following words:
Love their children
Sober of mind (disciplined)
Self-controlled
Homemakers
There are many ways we love our children – through instructing them in the Word of God, building their characters through discipline and teaching and equipping them for their life’s purpose.
When you whittle life down to these essentials there can appear to be a lot of inconsequential things that can cause a homeschool mom to become overwhelmed very quickly.
We both believe we need to give our children a rich life and learning experience but when it comes at the cost of the family peace and mom’s sanity, it is time to re-evaluate what is keeping you so busy that you are losing the emotional capacity to focus on the right priorities over the good things that you can do.
When life has become too full, it’s a good time to consider what season
your family is in. In different seasons of marriage, child growth and
home educating grades there are different needs. Some of these seasons
are busier than others, and we believe that in each season God gives us
the ability to cope.
However, when we are not wise stewards of
our homes and families and we just add and add we might find ourselves
in a place where the natural rhythm of a home is lost and the mom is
simply a teacher and taxi driver, who feels she isn’t coping.
Amongst others the questions a mother could consider are:
1. Are all the activities we are doing as family that take us out of the home imperative right now?
2. Are the extra-murals our children do feeding into a greater purpose of equipping them to live a good, godly life?
3. Are you “afraid” that your children will be bored some days and you then fill their time when they could be at home rather learning how to serve their family in other ways or pursue self-directed activities?
4. Are you in the habit of saying “yes” to whatever comes up instead of carefully evaluating the value and purpose for the child and impact on the whole family?
Wherever you find yourself right now, stop and take the time to assess your season and where you find yourself and make the necessary God-led decisions so that you can be the fragrance of life to your family.
As we continue in the second school term for 2014 may we all stop and remember the great purpose we have in raising not only lifelong learners, but also a Godly generation that are sold out for His purposes.
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| Western Cape Update
In an email to a home educating mother at the end of March 2014,
Penny Vinjevold, Head of the Department of Education in the Western Cape
wrote:
“Section 36 of the Western Cape Provincial School
Education Act, 1997 (Act 12 of 1997) makes provision for the regulation
of home schooling, however such regulations have not been issued.
Instead the WCED makes provision for the registration of learners
through the process of completing a simple and easy to understand form,
which is widely used by parents in this province.”
This
constitutes a written admission by the Head of Department herself that
there are no laws issued requiring the registration of home learners.
As Leendert van Oostrum, (homeschool legal advisor) pointed out, regulations are laws but “simple and easy to understand forms” are not laws.
The
majority of home educators in the Western Cape and the rest of the
country, believe that complying with unlawful requirements is not in the
best interests of their children and they therefore choose lawfully not
to register.
More here:
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