When we have little ones in our home, or are homeschooling our children, it can feel like we don’t have much time to call our own. Sometimes I feel like a ship adrift, being tossed around on the waves of all the things I have to do. I can’t ever get to the end, no matter how frantically I paddle. Have you ever felt this way?
“I hear you are one who really does homeschool”, someone in my community told me in a casual conversation.
“Oh, really?”, I replied. “How do you know?”
“Because Vi told me you do it,” she returned.
“How does Vi know?” I asked.
My son is making goals. It gives him a lot of satisfaction to think and plan about the goals he wants to set. It almost makes one feel the satisfaction of accomplishing something, doesn’t it?—just to dream and plan about it.
But planning to do something is not doing it! It is just thinking about doing it!
Question:Interruptions seem to be the order of the day . . . each and every day. How do you manage homeschool when there is the phone, doorbell, visitors, dentist appointments, holidays, and more. Sometimes I feel there’s just not time to do schoolwork!
My 7 children
When my first son, Daniel, moved out on his own, I found myself looking at homeschool and mothering with a new perspective. Although he was 19 years old, I was still getting around to the things I’d put on hold while I had babies, moved, planted my garden, endured chicken pox, etc. The music lessons, the family vacations, the trips to the museums, the mountain hikes, reading classic books together—somehow they all never happened like I’d hoped they would. (We did do a lot of them, to be sure.) Truly, life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.
One day when Louisa was nearly 3 years old, I told her to shut the door and she answered, “In a minute!”. I wanted her to learn cheerful and prompt obedience. I tried to explain that to her, and I made sure she shut the door, but I wondered if she really understood that “in […]
