It Takes Time

"There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:"-Ecclesiastes 3:1

We just began our  3rd year homeschooling.  I know so much more now than I did when I started.  One thing I have learned is that it takes time.  It takes time for so many things.  It takes time to decide that homeschooling is right for you.  It takes time to develop confidence in yourself that you can homeschool your children.  It takes time to figure out what works best for your children AND for your family.  It takes time to see progress in your children's work.

When I first set out on this path of homeschooling, I had already had in my mind for some time that I wanted to homeschool.  However, I still needed that extra push.  I got it in the form of a friend and a family member who already were homeschooling their kids.  They had both been homeschooling for a while and encouraged me that I could do it too.  If it weren't for their confidence in me, I might not have decided that homeschooling was the right thing for us.  Homeschooling is slowly becoming more of a norm, or maybe it is just the circles I am running in now.  But the general mindset in the United States is that public or private school is best.  I am not against either.  But at the moment, homeschooling is best for our family.  It took time for me to be comfortable about that.

It takes time to develop confidence in yourself that you can homeschool your children.  I have a degree in Education.  I went to school to be a teacher.  But homeschooling is a different ballgame than being a public school teacher.  There you only have to answer to your employer, your class, and their parents.  As a homeschooler, you generally feel, although it is definitely not true, that you must answer to the whole of society.  And that can cause your self-confidence to diminish.  It has taken two years for me to feel like I can really do this.  At the end of last year, I had to write my first progress report letter to submit to the school where my son would attend, if he attended school.  It is one of the state laws where we live.  Writing that was overwhelming.  It helped me see where I had fallen short.  But it also demonstrated a lot of progress on behalf of my son's work, and I was so glad. 

It takes time to figure out what works best for your children.   We just finished first grade.  I have had to go back and forth a lot to figure out what works best for my son in the area of math and handwriting.  Those are two areas he needs more help in, and I think that is partially because that is not my strong suit.  So, I have to step it up a notch and figure out what is the best way for him to learn and do in these areas, and how am I going to be the most productive in teaching him or helping him to do that.  I think every homeschool mom does this dance.  You try something-find out that it doesn't work- and then try something new.  You continue this process until you figure it out.  Until your child starts responding and then learning or producing takes place.  Then next year, you get to start over again.  You learn something new each year about how they learn and about how you teach, and you just keep building on that.  It is a process.

Finally, it takes time to see progress in your children's work.  One of our goals in math this past year for my son was to be able to count to 100.  We were well into our school year and had not even gotten close to that goal.  Then, all of a sudden, one day he was counting to 30.  Then the next day, it seemed like 40.  Now he can count to 60, and we are working towards 70.  Now, some might be thinking, "Well, you didn't reach your goal."  So what!  We made progress, which means....HE IS LEARNING!  Wahoo!  That is awesome, to see your child learn, to see them make progress.  It is a beautiful thing that blesses this mommy's heart.  (At the time that I originally wrote this post, he had not achieved this goal.  He since has made it to 100 during the 2nd week of school.  Yay!)

Be kind to yourself mom.  You will go through so many changes as you homeschool.  Your kids are not the only one who will be learning.  It takes time.