The BIGGEST Mistake Homeschool Moms Make
Over my ten years of homeschooling, this is a mistake that I know that I have made, and I have watched countless homeschooling parents make - and it’s a mistake that will suck the joy and peace right out of your homeschool!
I recently had a conversation with my mom, a veteran homeschooler who graduated my younger sister after 12 years of home education (and that sister is now pursuing her PhD!), about the one area we see so many homeschool families struggling - the one big mistake that they are making that is robbing them of their confidence, joy, and peace in homeschooling their children. It has nothing to do with curriculum or co-ops or homeschooling style.
The mistake is this:
They are still trying to use the same “ruler” as the public school system to measure their child’s success and growth.
In choosing to homeschool, you are leaving the system behind - and you can leave their metrics behind, too! I understand that some families may want or need to leave the door open for a return to the public school system, and in those cases, making sure that your child is at “grade level” may make that return easier. But for many of us, for most of us, we need to pull back and look at our homeschool from the 30,o00 feet perspective - we need to take in the bigger picture, and stop getting caught up in the minutia, the metrics, and the measurements that no longer serve us.
Homeschool allows us to look at our child’s growth holistically, globally across all areas. And it allows us to follow our child’s lead, to follow their interests (and did you know that if a child is interested and finds value in what they are learning, they retain far more information than when a topic is taught simply because it’s “supposed” to be?), to curate a curriculum and learning play that plays to their strengths and helps build up their areas of weakness.
Reading levels and math facts are only one piece of how we can evaluate our children, test scores can only tell us so much. Are our children growing in character, and values, and kindness? Are they curious and engaged and learning to love learning? I believe that if we put more weight into those things, and less weight into state test scores, we will find our confidence and peace returning.
One of the gifts of homeschooling is time. More time with our children, more time in the day to develop skills outside of curriculum, more time to watch the ways our children are growing and progressing and learning. More time to recognize all the ways are kids are actually extraordinary- that have nothing to do with their intellectual abilities.
I truly believe that if we judge their success by their progress as a whole person, not just by the standardized educational model, we will find that we really are doing enough (which, not coincidentally, is one of the most common fears I hear expressed by homeschooling parents -”am I doing enough?”).
I hope you hear my heart in this. I want to encourage you, not discourage. I want you to take pride in what you are doing in your home, with your children. I want you to measure your success as a homeschooling parent holistically, and believe deep down that your child is growing and learning at their own pace, and that is enough.