The Convivial Homeschool by Mystie Winckler

Author:Mystie Winckler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simplified Organization LLC
Published: 2021-11-29T09:02:31+00:00

Reflect

How is the intellectual and spiritual diet in your homeschool?

How have you seen God mature you in the journey of motherhood?

What daily actions in your homeschool are guiding your children into maturity?

Repent. Rejoice. Repeat.

16

Accountability

Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.

Multiple homeschool moms older and wiser than me

When we began homeschooling, I recognized what a help it was to be standing on the shoulders of the first-generation homeschool mothers, like my own, who stepped out into the unknown with conviction and few options.

They knew who was not going to have their kids for a majority of their waking hours, and they knew they could figure out the rest. They sacrificed material comforts for familial connections. They also made mistakes, found that homeschooling did not prevent sin, and often repented of the dogmatisms that had defined their early years.

It’s not easy to get advice out of older mothers because they’ve learned advice doesn’t matter much. When they do impart hard-won wisdom, it is often hard for younger moms to hear and understand because it sounds trite or irrelevant.

We want the secret to making it all turn out okay, and they know better than to let us think they have that formula. It’s only when young moms find themselves repeating what they rejected thirty years down the road that they realize the wisdom in what they hadn’t wanted to hear back then.

Even though I had grown up homeschooled, I was hungry for advice, and I knew who I wanted to ask. In order to get a share of the wealth, as it were, of the homeschooling moms of my mother’s generation, I started hosting homeschool mom social nights and inviting one or two moms who had finished homeschooling to each one.

When pressed for practical advice, across the board, most of them responded with some variation of, “The curriculum will work if you do” and “Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.” Why did I bristle at these pithy statements given in good humor? It’s because I wanted the magic schedule and curriculum option that would keep us all on track and in harmony every day.

I wanted the formula that would guarantee the end result of good kids without educational gaps and with gratitude for my efforts. The advice I received was wisdom won from lives of experience and sanctification: there are no formulas, no perfect curricula, no guarantees.

Yet the application of love and perseverance and humility is worth it, even when life and the “results” don’t play out as expected. The other piece of wisdom they had that I hadn’t yet grasped was that graduation isn’t really the end point. No matter our age, we’re all still works in progress.

This is not to say we’re off the hook. We are accountable to God for our stewardship of the blessings and callings He’s given us. We are to hold our children accountable for theirs. In it all, we recognize that God is in control and trust Him to do good with our meager efforts, to accomplish

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