Everyday Educator - Holiday Special | Lessons From Down The Road - Academics Aren't Everything
00:00:00.000 | Every Day Educator is off this week for the holidays.
00:00:02.880 | Please enjoy listening to one of our most downloaded episodes,
00:00:05.680 | Lessons from Down the Road, Academics Aren't Everything.
00:00:08.720 | Happy New Year.
00:00:09.520 | Welcome, friends, to this Every Day Educator podcast.
00:00:16.080 | I'm your host, Lisa Bailey.
00:00:18.000 | And I am glad to spend some time today with you, my fellow educators,
00:00:23.120 | as we ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime.
00:00:29.440 | As always, I want to encourage you to check out all the great offerings
00:00:33.520 | on CC Connected and on our podcast channel.
00:00:36.720 | But don't forget, although our online community is awesome,
00:00:41.440 | you'll find even closer support in a local CC community.
00:00:46.480 | So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today.
00:00:54.160 | Well, listeners, I'm happy to welcome you to another episode of the Every Day Educator podcast.
00:01:00.800 | We are continuing with our series, Lessons from Down the Road.
00:01:05.280 | You know, as a young homeschooler, lots of times I wished that I had somebody
00:01:12.160 | to ask about my burning questions, somebody who was farther down the road than I was,
00:01:18.560 | who had a little bit of experience under their belt, somebody whose brain I could
00:01:23.200 | pick just for a minute or two. And so in this series, we are offering some wisdom
00:01:29.520 | from fellow homeschoolers who are a little farther down the road.
00:01:34.080 | Today I have with me one of my dearest friends from Classical Conversations,
00:01:39.760 | Shelly Stockton. Shelly, I'm so excited to spend a little bit of time with you this morning.
00:01:44.960 | Oh, thank you. It's good to be here, Lisa.
00:01:47.280 | I do wish, Shelly, that we were on the screen porch together with a big cup of tea,
00:01:52.400 | listening to the rain. But I guess this is the next best thing. And I know that our listeners
00:02:00.160 | are eager to hear what you have to share with us today. We want to talk today about how really
00:02:08.080 | and truly academics aren't everything, that there's a little something called life skills
00:02:13.680 | that we want to pass on to our children, too, just to set the context and to show people
00:02:20.160 | that you do have the credentials to share with them. I want to ask you, Shelly, to share with us
00:02:26.160 | how long have you and Greg homeschooled and why did you begin homeschooling?
00:02:31.440 | Well, we homeschooled for 25 years and our youngest twins graduated a couple of years ago.
00:02:40.720 | Why did we begin? Well, I think our reason for homeschooling changes, which a lot of
00:02:47.680 | people's do as they do educate. So our situation was a little strange because when our oldest
00:02:56.240 | daughter was young, we just sat and read books to her all day. So she read very early and really,
00:03:07.360 | she read so early that we just fell in love with education. And all I wanted to do is to
00:03:14.800 | read good books with her, right? So a little selfish, I just wanted to keep her home and
00:03:18.800 | read books with her all day. So we started early on and then we kept homeschooling really by the
00:03:29.360 | grace of God because we wanted to learn alongside and just keep a good eye on our children's
00:03:36.480 | character as they grew up. Oh, that's great. You know, it's so funny, Shelly,
00:03:41.760 | your experience mirrored ours a lot. Our oldest, I think her first word was book and she would go
00:03:48.640 | around all the time saying, read me this book. She was little, really little, read me this book.
00:03:53.840 | And so we did. We read a lot of books. And like you, I just was a little jealous to see
00:04:00.560 | those light bulbs come on as she learned things. And I enjoyed that experience so much. I think
00:04:08.640 | I had a friend say, oh, you and your husband are such natural teachers, you're homeschooling,
00:04:13.440 | you just don't even know it. She was a homeschooler and thought that we should consider
00:04:18.480 | that when our youngest or oldest was little. And so we were glad we did. And like you said, I think
00:04:26.720 | for a lot of us, the reasons that we keep homeschooling flex and change with time and
00:04:34.640 | sometimes don't you feel like, Shelly, it changes as we as the parents mature and as we grow and
00:04:42.320 | what we see is God's mandate for us? Absolutely. Yes. And He reveals new things to you and then
00:04:50.000 | your children change as well and they grow. So what they need and where you can direct them
00:04:56.240 | also changes. Yeah. So you said that what you loved to do with your oldest was to read and to
00:05:02.640 | share and to share the learning as you and your husband really liked learning with your children.
00:05:08.240 | Was that your goal when your family started homeschooling, that you would learn together?
00:05:14.080 | Did you have formal academic goals in the beginning?
00:05:18.720 | Well, I think our goals when we first started homeschooling was just to survive the day.
00:05:27.440 | Yes, we can probably all resonate with that. Also, I really wanted to learn to love learning
00:05:34.000 | instead of just seeing it as some undesirable task to get through. Oh, cool. I prayed a lot
00:05:42.320 | as I'm sure you did as well, Lisa, in those early years for God just to help me love what I ought to
00:05:48.960 | love and to get to a point where we would enjoy subjects that even those subjects that were
00:05:55.440 | difficult for us. So we really wanted to weave learning into our normal lives.
00:06:02.880 | So did we have formal academic goals in the beginning? Probably not really in the elementary
00:06:08.400 | years. We wanted our girls to fall in love with books and explore the woods outside of our house
00:06:17.520 | and just be curious. Yes, be curious. We valued being curious, too, as young parents. We actually
00:06:28.320 | loved it when our girls asked us questions that seemed odd or beyond their years or sometimes
00:06:38.880 | impertinent to other people. They were curious about everything. And because we liked exploring
00:06:49.360 | alongside of them, and we liked framing the explanations that would satisfy their little minds,
00:06:58.320 | we reveled in the questions. But we discovered that there were other people who were discomfited
00:07:05.680 | by our girls' questions. I can remember one time when a single—well, she wasn't single. She was
00:07:14.160 | married, but she didn't have any kids—came to a Bible study at our home. My husband's a pastor.
00:07:19.200 | This gal came to our house to Bible study. As she was leaving, our oldest daughter was following her
00:07:28.240 | down the sidewalk. She said, "Ms. Kim, what is slavery?" Kim had no context that we had been
00:07:37.440 | reading about the Underground Railroad from a library book that we had gotten. She did not
00:07:43.520 | know what to say to this little five-year-old person about slavery. I discovered that other
00:07:52.320 | people were not as welcoming of the questions stage of life as we were. But yeah, our goals
00:08:00.000 | kind of mirrored yours, that we wanted to encourage that kind of curiosity and encourage
00:08:07.360 | the natural questions. I think that you're right. A lot of us, Shelly, especially with elementary
00:08:16.240 | aged or even preschool children, we don't have academic goals that go beyond, "I want you to
00:08:22.960 | love books," or "I want you to learn how to read," or "I want you to learn your numbers and your
00:08:29.440 | shapes and your colors." I do remember thinking, "I want you to build a strong base of general
00:08:40.240 | knowledge." This is before we found Classical Conversations. I was reading the Well-Trained
00:08:46.080 | Mind and a lot of classical ed books. That whole broad foundation and memorize a lot of stuff to
00:08:53.280 | get you prepared to think deeper thoughts resonated with me. But those kind of general goals were what
00:09:04.240 | I had before we found CC. Now, once we found Classical Conversations, I had some more concrete
00:09:12.160 | goals. What about you? How did becoming part of a Classical Conversations community give some form
00:09:19.840 | or structure to your homeschooling? Yes. Well, our original plan was we were going to enter the
00:09:27.360 | girls into a Christian school when our youngest children became school-aged. I would just hopefully
00:09:33.840 | find a teaching role or something in the school. But then I met Lee early in the days of CC when
00:09:40.800 | our oldest was in fifth grade and our youngest twins were three. Lee sat down and showed me the
00:09:47.840 | Classical Conversations scope and sequence. We fell in love. Greg and I pored over that scope
00:09:54.320 | and sequence. God just began to open our eyes to really expand our vision of education. It was okay
00:10:01.840 | to have early goals to be different. Now he was growing us in our vision. It also resonated with
00:10:10.640 | us that classical home education just seemed to be the best preparation we could give our children.
00:10:17.360 | The methods really embraced the child's nature. They emphasized skills over job training
00:10:27.360 | and offered this broad perspective with this Christ-centered worldview.
00:10:31.920 | We thought it just looked very doable. Yes, those are the same things that
00:10:42.000 | drew us into Classical Conversations too. It wasn't just that the scope and sequence was
00:10:49.840 | really sound academically. I do know when we first saw the scope and sequence, my husband
00:10:56.720 | was really impressed with the junior high and high school level scope and sequence. He was like,
00:11:02.960 | "Man, this is so amazing. These kids are going to have what we had as sophomores in college
00:11:09.840 | when they're still in high school. This is an excellent education."
00:11:13.440 | But the deeper we went and the more we walked along and the more we learned about, as you said,
00:11:22.240 | the classical model and how it really takes into account the nature of the child and the skills
00:11:30.240 | that can be grown at all those different developmental stages, we were won over.
00:11:37.840 | But what really captured our hearts was the Christ-centered nature of education. The whole
00:11:47.040 | idea that the purpose of education is to know God more deeply through what He's made and what He's
00:11:55.280 | done and what He's shared with us, that really resonated. It helped us to fold our non-academic
00:12:05.920 | goals for our girls into our broader education plans. I wanted to ask you, what are the other
00:12:15.440 | goals that you had for your home school? Or did you even consider these non-academic goals that
00:12:24.480 | they even belong to the realm of school? Did you have non-academic goals that you folded in?
00:12:32.400 | Well, of course, like many parents, we wanted our children to have time together.
00:12:39.440 | We wanted them to become kind, integrous humans. We wanted them to learn to ask forgiveness
00:12:48.400 | regularly and just be able to give forgiveness regularly. And the skill for which we had many
00:12:54.240 | opportunities to practice with five daughters. We just wanted to have time for family devotions
00:13:02.880 | and to instill a dependency of God and His Word with our children. We knew the academics would
00:13:08.880 | come along as we were diligent and learned ourselves. But we really wanted to give lots
00:13:14.720 | of room and space for them to grow in the Lord. That's awesome. That's awesome.
00:13:21.600 | And you said you had five daughters. So as a mom, did you have homemaking goals or
00:13:35.360 | business goals, or what other skills did you want to grow into your daughters
00:13:42.720 | when they were little? And did you realize when they were small that there were things like
00:13:49.840 | meal planning or laundry or wise shopping that needed to be skills that you were honing while
00:13:59.920 | you were teaching them to read and do arithmetic? Well, with five kids at home, of course,
00:14:06.720 | cleaning bathrooms and doing their own laundry was really important. It was right up there.
00:14:12.240 | We tried to model the importance of attending church and just serving others outside of
00:14:22.960 | yourself. And we called it looking beyond the end of your own nose, looking beyond yourself,
00:14:29.760 | and then respectfully listening to others just who don't agree with you. Thinking orderly was
00:14:38.080 | important when you make decisions and just being content at home, being happy to be at home.
00:14:43.200 | Oh, wow. Those are good. Like you said earlier, those are good character building
00:14:51.680 | skills and practices that you want to give your children opportunities to stretch themselves in.
00:14:58.640 | You know, being content with what you have and being content with your circumstances
00:15:05.280 | is something that will take our children farther than being fluid in Spanish.
00:15:17.760 | That is a life skill that a lot of us maybe did not consider on the intentional
00:15:25.360 | list of subjects to be covered. But I know for us, as our children got older,
00:15:31.600 | we put more attention into developing their character, their godly habits.
00:15:41.760 | As we saw, how important that is for peaceful living within a family, right?
00:15:48.240 | Yes, you get lots of practice.
00:15:50.320 | Yes, you get so much practice.
00:15:52.880 | I don't think I taught any of my younger children besides the first one how to tie their own shoes,
00:15:58.000 | you know, because the oldest does that. So there's lots of organic things that happen when you're
00:16:03.840 | home together that maybe you didn't write on a list somewhere, but they're happening and children
00:16:10.240 | are learning to serve each other. And one of the things that I learned from another mom once is
00:16:16.880 | that when two children would have a little rift or a little argument, have each of the children
00:16:23.840 | go clean the other child's room. Just things like that.
00:16:29.360 | What a lovely habit. That's a great idea.
00:16:32.880 | Motivation to be nice next time.
00:16:36.720 | Right, right, right. Isn't that interesting? That's great. That's great. As you look back,
00:16:45.200 | Shelly, what would you consider your successes as a homeschool mom?
00:16:50.320 | And what do you think contributed to your success?
00:16:54.080 | Well, we certainly did not home educate perfectly, if there is such a thing.
00:17:00.000 | Right. I have given up. Yeah.
00:17:04.560 | Our daughters worked and learned and played together a lot. They often sought their siblings
00:17:12.160 | input as they completed projects and assignments alongside each other.
00:17:16.720 | That's neat.
00:17:18.160 | So, of course, it's easier for your mind to think back and think, what did I not do well, right?
00:17:22.960 | Absolutely.
00:17:24.400 | Now that they're all in their 20s, I love that they still value their sister's opinions on
00:17:31.600 | whatever they're working on, college papers or work issues. They seek each other's advice and help.
00:17:37.200 | So I guess the success is that we just did life together. And as a result, you know,
00:17:45.680 | we have those happy stories to laugh about. And we also have those stories of struggle
00:17:51.600 | and failure that humble us. And honestly, those stories are probably mean regularly told more
00:17:59.040 | often with the end in mind to keep us humble.
00:18:02.240 | Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I don't offer you guys up as farther down the road and therefore perfect.
00:18:13.120 | As much as I do to help our listeners see that, yes, we might be farther down the road,
00:18:18.400 | but we took a lot of detours and a lot of wrong turns, maybe, or we stepped in the muck at the
00:18:25.040 | edge of the past a lot of times. But we kept going. And we're still alive to tell about it.
00:18:31.920 | Yes, we're alive to tell the stories and our children are alive to tell the stories. And
00:18:36.400 | sometimes I look back and I tell people that our biggest success is that our children still
00:18:45.280 | like to be with us. Our children still like to be together. Our girls, like you said,
00:18:52.000 | seek each other out for advice and fellowship. And our kids still come home. I mean,
00:18:59.200 | my daughters are 27 and 25, and they still call home and say, "Now, when is family vacation?"
00:19:05.600 | Because that still means all of us all together. And I love the successes that we still talk about
00:19:15.520 | big ideas and we still talk about what we've read and we still talk about what's going on and where
00:19:22.560 | do we see the truth and how can we find the truth and how can we sift through all of this information
00:19:29.280 | and how can we help each other think about things. And so that, to me, is a success.
00:19:37.040 | Yeah, I think that classical homeschooling, it is simple. It's not easy, but it is simple. And
00:19:45.840 | there's a difference. I think one thing we did is we were just consistent. We didn't change
00:19:52.480 | curriculums every year and get fearful that the fruit wasn't coming soon enough. And to be honest,
00:19:59.360 | those CC parent practicums helped tremendously in that. We just simply prepared and plotted
00:20:06.000 | and prayed and just kept moving forward in God's grace. But it's hard to take credit for any
00:20:14.320 | success, because when you get to that, finished with that thing, you realize it's really the
00:20:20.480 | mercies of God that have kept you and have brought you this far. So we look back and we see so many
00:20:29.920 | times where He really just carried us when we lacked the knowledge or the patience or the
00:20:36.640 | diligence. Most weeks I would write some Bible verse or admonishment on the board, something like,
00:20:44.960 | "Do not grow weary in doing good," or "Love a patient in kind." And it was funny because the
00:20:50.800 | girls years later were talking about that, and they thought I wrote those on the board for them,
00:20:56.800 | but it was really for me. I needed as much encouragement and carrying from God as they did.
00:21:06.800 | Yes, I know. And sometimes they, you're right, they did not always realize that we were fellow
00:21:15.200 | strugglers on the homeschool journey. And I look back and I see that the Lord used the homeschooling
00:21:24.800 | of my children as a refining tool for me. It taught me to trust Him. It taught me patience.
00:21:35.920 | Not that I have arrived, but it was a continual teaching of the Spirit.
00:21:41.280 | A sanctification of sorts.
00:21:43.600 | Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So those are awesome life skills that we have been taught
00:21:54.800 | by the Spirit and that hopefully our children have been taught within the confines of our homeschool.
00:22:03.280 | What other practical life skills, Shelly, did you try to teach your girls?
00:22:09.280 | Did you teach them to cook? Did you teach them to grocery shop or to sew?
00:22:14.960 | That's true. Yeah, they did come to the grocery store with me a lot. And we did,
00:22:19.840 | at some point, I kind of gave that over to them.
00:22:24.000 | Oh, that's awesome.
00:22:25.840 | And they all did their laundry early. I would give them a budget. One thing fun we did is
00:22:31.360 | there used to be a show where you would give a budget and you would try to redo a room for
00:22:38.400 | a certain amount. So we gave our girls a budget and we said, "Okay, this room in the basement is
00:22:45.200 | yours to redo." And so they tiled, they bought the tile and actually went to tile. They painted the
00:22:53.760 | doors, added some baseboards and just made this room into like a family room downstairs on a
00:23:03.840 | budget. So that was a fun project. We still laugh about it as we look, the tile's still there.
00:23:09.040 | So we look back at it and we thought, "Oh yeah, yeah, 12-year-olds did that, we can tell."
00:23:13.760 | Right, right. How fun. That's a great learning activity. Wow, and you empowered them.
00:23:24.800 | And I can imagine that they felt really important that you guys trusted them to do that.
00:23:32.720 | What confidence building that had to be. It was pretty fun.
00:23:36.640 | Yeah. Okay, if you look back, are there any life skills that you realized as your daughters grew
00:23:46.240 | up and maybe moved on or moved out that they had not internalized as well? Were there any
00:23:56.400 | deficiencies that you discovered in your homeschool so far as practical life skills came?
00:24:04.720 | Well, when I think about the question, "What do you wish you'd had done differently?"
00:24:10.640 | The first thing that comes to mind is maybe more governing principles, I guess.
00:24:16.880 | More trust. I wish I trusted the process more and maybe played more.
00:24:24.480 | Oh, absolutely.
00:24:26.480 | I wish I had taken on less stress and less worry, not taken the whole thing so seriously as if it
00:24:32.800 | all depended on me at the end of the day. But we found, and of course we all know, wrestling with
00:24:41.360 | a subject that is difficult is sanctifying and healthy. Wrestling, being at home, being content
00:24:46.000 | at home, doing life differently than your neighbors do. It's sanctifying and it's difficult, but it's
00:24:53.920 | also healthy. It's part of growing. Ultimately, I think I came to a point, I needed to rest in
00:25:01.760 | the fact that God's yoke is easy and His burden is light. And I think that homeschooling parents
00:25:08.640 | will do well as they think about all the things they need to teach their children or should teach
00:25:14.720 | their children or maybe aren't teaching their children. We just need to take a big breath and
00:25:20.240 | remind ourselves that this whole burden of educating and keeping our children alive and
00:25:27.440 | as well as making sure they get a good job and can actually feed themselves when they leave.
00:25:34.000 | Right, right, right.
00:25:36.320 | God has created them for a purpose and He's not going to abandon that purpose just because we
00:25:41.040 | didn't drill Latin pronouns or teach them to separate, you know, colds and darks and the
00:25:46.640 | laundry correctly, right? So He's going to open the doors of opportunity for our children. But
00:25:53.200 | I was sort of resting in this fact when we went to, recently this summer, to a college visitation
00:26:00.720 | with one of our daughters. And they don't have the meal plan there. All the rooms are with full
00:26:07.840 | kitchens. And so one of the professors said, or whoever's leading the event said, "This is the
00:26:14.000 | time to teach your kids how to cook." And my daughter and I looked at each other, you know,
00:26:19.040 | she'd been cooking for six years. So if you're learning two months before college, that might
00:26:26.080 | be difficult. But so just being part of home and letting them pursue and learn what they're
00:26:33.440 | interested in as far as the life skills, I think is helpful.
00:26:42.000 | Yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom, Shelley, in what you've said about teaching your children
00:26:48.400 | to do these tasks when they're young and at home. You alluded to your daughter had been cooking for
00:26:54.960 | six years. So she, you know, you began to teach her to do her own laundry and to cook for the
00:27:00.880 | family when she was 12 or 13 years old. And so she had plenty of time to practice those skills
00:27:09.760 | so that they became good habits by the time she would have to depend on herself to do that.
00:27:17.280 | And I think that a lot of us as parents do for our children what they could do for themselves
00:27:26.640 | if we would only teach them. And sometimes I looked back as my daughters got older,
00:27:32.240 | I looked back and realized that some of the things they did not know how to do
00:27:37.600 | well was because I had done it for them, either in service to them or, frankly, because it was
00:27:46.960 | easier for me to do it. I could get it done faster than to watch them fumble through a task.
00:27:52.800 | But, you know, I came to the end of our older daughters as she was getting almost ready to
00:27:59.200 | graduate, and I realized that there were things that she was still a novice at, and it was more
00:28:08.240 | my fault than her fault. I mean, you know, she was willing to let mama do all the work that mama
00:28:14.000 | would do, but I had not shifted the responsibilities. And so, listeners, I would encourage
00:28:20.800 | you to be practical in some of the things that you teach in your homeschool, whether that is
00:28:28.640 | budgeting or cooking or home repair or, you know what, how to talk to somebody on the telephone,
00:28:39.200 | how to make an appointment on the telephone, how to handle a discrepancy in a checking
00:28:46.320 | account at a bank. So all of these are practical life skills that are easier for us as parents to
00:28:53.920 | handle on behalf of our children, unless we realize that our children are going to grow up
00:28:58.960 | and go out of our homes, maybe not confident in being able to handle that on their own.
00:29:06.080 | So that's an encouragement from me.
00:29:08.480 | MJ: Yeah, and maybe if we want to call this a life skill, I think it really is a life skill.
00:29:17.360 | And many would agree that, you know, just keeping a habit of regular Bible study and prayer.
00:29:23.040 | That is a life skill, and it cannot be overstated.
00:29:27.280 | I think that that one habit really nurtures all areas of life. I didn't learn that skill
00:29:32.720 | till college. I remember a college professor challenging, I went to a Christian college,
00:29:37.760 | challenging me to do this, and I remember how difficult it was. So just being disciplined to
00:29:43.920 | do what God puts in front of you to the best of your ability and being aware of your own failings
00:29:50.880 | without dwelling on them, asking God for mercy. These are the things that parents can model and
00:30:00.000 | allow for their children to participate in.
00:30:03.200 | GW: Yeah, that's great, Shelley. And, you know, for whatever reason, a lot of us compartmentalize
00:30:13.280 | and homeschool is supposed to be academic skills and maybe some practical skills.
00:30:19.680 | But yes, you've helped us to remember that these spiritual disciplines should also be part of our
00:30:26.320 | homeschools, because those are the strengths that will truly carry us as adults into adulthood that
00:30:35.360 | will make our lives what God intends for them to be, far more than Latin or a science research
00:30:43.200 | paper or a history timeline.
00:30:45.040 | So looking back, because your girls went through the challenge program, how did their CC studies
00:30:56.720 | help build life skills as well as academic skills? You talked about the skill of listening,
00:31:04.400 | the skill of weighing decisions. How did the CC studies help build those skills in your girls?
00:31:13.360 | CT: Well, you know, we memorize a lot in foundations, and that's a lot of skill.
00:31:18.560 | How many things do we still have to remember and hold on to as a mother and as a working adult?
00:31:25.440 | So memorizing, just paying attention, being curious, and learning alongside people of various
00:31:34.160 | ages, doing life with people of various ages, not just being comfortable around people that are like
00:31:40.800 | me, but learning to communicate with those people who are not like me. But you know,
00:31:48.400 | those challenge themes of ownership, what are they? Ownership, discipline, freedom,
00:31:52.560 | noble choices, consequences of leadership. They're woven into six years of assignments,
00:31:59.840 | and they're excellent preparation for just being a good human, a God-centric person.
00:32:06.480 | AC: Yeah, yeah. The time that our students spend in community is so valuable for practicing the
00:32:16.320 | fruits of the Spirit. Living in community, we all know that. Living in the community of our homes
00:32:22.720 | is a way to practice mercy, right, and patience, and kindness, and gentleness. But living in
00:32:30.560 | community and having our challenge students in community with one another, where the whole goal
00:32:36.720 | is to wrestle with ideas, and to take the point and the counterpoint, and to debate one another,
00:32:45.360 | and to push against one another, but to learn how to do that with kindness and with tolerance
00:32:54.800 | in the best sense. I am being quiet and respectfully listening and open-mindedly considering
00:33:04.880 | what you have to say so that we can wrestle together and perhaps learn from one another.
00:33:12.560 | That is a mind-blowingly valuable skill in the world today.
00:33:17.520 | AC: Yes. Amen. AC: I just think that's good. And you know,
00:33:22.560 | the skills that our students learn of research, of how to ask a good question and then go about
00:33:31.120 | finding respected resources to research that question and to find out the nuts and bolts,
00:33:44.080 | pieces of information that will help us make a good decision. That's a life skill.
00:33:49.360 | Those research skills really, I think, help our students.
00:33:53.120 | CM: Yes, as well as the debate skills that you mentioned earlier, just learning to listen to
00:34:00.080 | the other side, and think orderly, and then not get emotional when somebody disagrees.
00:34:07.280 | AC: Yes. CM: You know, to bring ethos into it as well,
00:34:11.520 | and just thinking about the other side. You know, teaching our kids just to seek first the Kingdom
00:34:21.520 | and develop skills that make Him known, that's so important. But God will make room for their
00:34:26.960 | giftings, because He ultimately has a plan and a purpose for them. But one thing I try to remember
00:34:33.440 | is that just to empower your children to make, when appropriate, their own decisions. We don't
00:34:40.480 | make all our children's decisions for them now that they're adults, right? We're mentors. They
00:34:46.560 | come to ask us, but we do well, really, to entrust them to the Lord because He's omniscient
00:34:55.840 | and omnipresent, right? He's omnipotent, and He's all good. And I am not.
00:35:01.120 | AC: Right, right. CM: So it really makes good logical sense to
00:35:06.080 | put all these things, put our children under His lordship, especially in the lives of our children.
00:35:13.600 | AC: Very, very true. Okay, so we're coming to the end of our time together. And I know that
00:35:22.880 | some of our listeners are saying, "Okay, so you ladies are obviously done. Your children are done."
00:35:29.520 | Okay, here's what I have to say to you. Your children are never done. You're never done with
00:35:35.520 | your children because we have nurtured a family atmosphere of learning and a family reliance on
00:35:43.840 | one another to refine us and to help us. They're always going to come back. But how do you know,
00:35:51.280 | Shelly, that some of your lessons took with your kids? How can you tell that some of these lessons
00:35:59.280 | that you tried to teach them, they really have held on to?
00:36:06.160 | SH: Yes, you just enjoy them. I just enjoy my little children so much. We can have conversations
00:36:12.960 | about things, and I see them turning into good people, people who love the Lord and who are
00:36:22.000 | growing in their virtue and just using the skills that they learned at home and in classical
00:36:29.920 | conversations to seek first the kingdom and to be good workers, to do things for all the glory of
00:36:37.200 | God. My son-in-law is working on a doctorate, and he gave me the biggest compliment this last
00:36:43.520 | weekend. He said that his wife's education, my daughter's education, really helps her to see
00:36:52.720 | things more broadly, like awareness of the past, awareness of the origins of where that thought
00:37:00.640 | came from. He said that she often integrates thoughts and ideas from many disciplines into
00:37:07.680 | conversations and decisions in a way that he felt like his education did not prepare him. He was a
00:37:15.520 | proponent now of homeschooling because of the way, just watching how she thinks. To me, that was a
00:37:24.480 | win. I'll take that, right? MJ: Absolutely. Yeah, that makes me
00:37:29.280 | want to give a big cheer. Yeah, that's awesome. SH: Just remembering that he has a plan and a
00:37:37.040 | purpose for our kids. It's not really up to us to make all of our decisions, all their decisions for
00:37:44.560 | them, because he has a plan for them. MJ: Yeah, yeah. They have been given to us
00:37:55.280 | from the Lord, but they are not our projects. I can remember thinking when my girls were little,
00:38:05.600 | and I felt so blessed that God had entrusted these little lives to me. I was so excited about
00:38:12.240 | what I could make of them, what I could help them to become, and the masterpiece that they could
00:38:19.120 | become. One day I was thinking those just ridiculous thoughts, and I felt the Lord saying,
00:38:28.400 | "Yeah, you have it wrong. You're not the artist. That child, she is a masterpiece,
00:38:38.080 | but you're not the artist. Actually, you're the tool. You're the tool that I am using many times
00:38:45.920 | to chisel away something from their lives that they don't need."
00:38:52.480 | TG: And maybe vice versa too, Lisa. MJ: Absolutely, absolutely.
00:38:57.360 | TG: Their struggles also sanctify us. I just wanted to say a word of encouragement to maybe
00:39:04.080 | the moms out there, the homeschooling parents who have a child that maybe they're wondering
00:39:11.040 | if he's going to make it or is struggling with something. Put it in the Lord's hand,
00:39:19.920 | put it under His Lordship, and then do your diligence, and then let Him do the sanctification.
00:39:27.360 | I don't know that there's a better lesson in how to trust the Lord by taking this responsibility
00:39:40.720 | of what He's given us, to love these kids and to direct them and teach them His ways,
00:39:48.000 | and then to see perhaps sometimes our own sins magnified in them, our own failings magnified in
00:39:57.120 | them. And I tell you what, it has led me to my knees so many times. Just being aware that it's
00:40:06.000 | His work and that you have a part, but it's not all on your shoulders, and just give it to Him,
00:40:11.680 | put it under His Lordship. MJ: That is actually a beautiful encouragement,
00:40:18.800 | Shelly, something that we can all remember. It is very encouraging to know that it's not
00:40:28.160 | all up to us. It's not all in our hands. What's your biggest aha? As we come to the very end of
00:40:37.360 | our podcast, Shelly, what's your biggest aha from the journey? Or what's the last word that you would
00:40:44.240 | like to share in encouragement to these parents? SH: So I guess my final word would be to trust.
00:40:52.640 | We talk about this in Challenge. Trust that the Holy Spirit is at work. Trust that there is truth
00:41:00.800 | and it can be known. Trust that your child can learn the truth. I appreciate this quote by Matthew
00:41:08.800 | Henry. Reading authors from past encourage me, and so often I'll read a quote or read theologians or
00:41:17.440 | pastors. This Matthew Henry is from the late 1600s, and he writes this, "So that we may not
00:41:24.720 | complain of what is, let us see God's hand in all events. So that we may not be afraid of what shall
00:41:34.400 | be, let us see all events in His hands." So putting all things under His Lordship and in the Lord's
00:41:43.840 | hands is a good lesson for us to remember. AP: It absolutely is. It is absolutely. Academics
00:41:54.000 | aren't everything. What does God have for us to learn on this homeschool journey? Not just our
00:42:00.240 | children, but us as well. Shelly, thank you so much for sharing these lessons from down the road.
00:42:07.680 | SHL: It was nice talking with you, Lisa. AP: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Listeners, I hope that you
00:42:13.920 | feel encouraged, that you now maybe have a broader vision of what the Lord is calling you to in your
00:42:21.920 | family's homeschool journey. Thanks for joining us this week, and we'll see you again next week.
00:42:27.200 | Bye-bye.