Becoming Peculiar

I just discovered this letter entitled Dear New Homeschooler From Mary McCarthy, long-time homeschooling mom on the Home Educators Magazine.

I think that she has done a wonderful job of handing out advice that is realistic. Take it from me, I was one of those people who read lots and lots of homeschooling books before I started homeschooling. I thought I had it all figured out, exactly how I was going to home school, I even had figured out how to keep my house clean, found a support group with PE classes for the kids, etc.

It's now two long years later - we are finally settling into a comfortable routine, my kids are happy and just this morning my 6 year old son said, "Mom, I need to be alone in the Toy Room/Study for 10 minutes to do my schoolwork." It's a Saturday morning and he didn't want to do schoolwork at the table with us all week. When he's ready to learn, boy is he ready and I have to pay attention to him or 5 minutes later he is no longer ready. One day I asked him to write the alphabet for me and ten minutes later all we had were tears and the first 7 letters. We finally gave up in frustration. Lo and behold, only days later he was asking me to spell words so he could write a shopping list and he's spelling things all the time now. I now firmly believe that it is no use forcing him to learn to read or write or anything before he is ready, all that will bring is frustration and not a love of learning.

We may not be SuperMom (although I did dress up as SuperMom one year for Halloween) but we are the experts on our family and we have the best support system, we only need to pray to talk to the one who knows and loves us and our children best.

Take a few minutes to read the letter by Mary McCarthy and remember you are the expert on your family.