This post is my plea to all Home Educators to be selfish, demanding, and overly critical! Not exactly what our mothers would want us to be is it? Seriously though, I REALLY mean it!
1. BE SELFISH! The years of our children’s youth are not worth sacrificing to any transient pleasures. Be selfish of your time with your children and help them be selfish of their time with you. Don’t answer the phone during story time! Don’t watch TV while folding laundry, instead have a sing-a-long or have a child read to you while working together. Don’t kick the kids out of the room so you can get some cleaning done, be patient with their efforts and teach them to work along side you.
2. BE DEMANDING! You have spent 9 months creating (or plenty more aching for) each of these treasures! Whether your child is home grown or heart sown, you went through a lot to get it safely in your arms and even more just to keep it alive and well! But more importantly God gave you each of your children and you hold a sacred trust to do your best by them. You deserve to be demanding of the kind of care each of your children receives! The duty of each family is to raise their children; not give birth and then pass the responsibility off to the government to raise its citizens! Unfortunately so many have been mislead into thinking that what worked fine 20 years ago will work now; that parents only need to create a loving and stable environment for about 5 years and then get back to their own lives—being available as needed on nights and weekends. Instead we need to demand more time with our children either by home schooling or speaking out against home work and not signing up for multiple activities that infringe upon time the family needs to strengthen itself.
3. BE OVERLY CRITICAL! I recently taught a group of youngsters at my church about keeping their body clean and healthy. I showed them a delicious looking brownie… it had syrup poured over the top and big chunks of white chocolate inside and every hand went up immediately hoping to get a bite… but then I told them that somewhere inside was a tiny piece of poison. It wouldn’t kill them right away but instead would slowly burn a hole inside of them. Their hands lowered as I asked if they really wanted to miss out on this really good brownie just because it had a little tiny piece of poison in it. You see the analogy don’t you? How often have you heard “It’s a really good movie, but it does have that one part” or “It was really suggestive but luckily that goes right over their heads” or “It wasn’t that good of a book but I just needed something to read” or “just push the mute button, close your eyes, or fast forward when it comes to that part”. The world needs more overly critical individuals. The future generations need more critical parents. We all need to be critical of the small poisons that erode away at our spirits just as much as we are critical of food that a tiny little fly drowned in or that sour cream that doesn’t quite smell right. Protecting our bodies should be second in line to the protection of our souls.
A few years ago I was sitting at a soccer practice talking to the other moms and watching my son play. One woman was very excited as her last child was "finally" heading off to school in just a few weeks. She was so excited to have some time to herself again! When I asked her what she was going to do all day she beamed as she said she was planning to sell Mary Kay & already had a long list of what she would buy with the extra money. I was shocked! Please believe me that I have nothing against the goal or reality of selling makeup nor of making lists of what to buy when you have extra cash. I also see no point judging or even arguing with this woman over her choices. But with how excited she was I thought for sure she must have had something bigger planed for her impending 30+ obligation free hours, each week. Instead, her long awaited wish was to use her extra time earning money to buy more stuff and I find that quite sad.
What is your long awaited wish? How will you get there? What will it give you in the end? …really?! You go girl!!
