(upbeat music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the "Everyday Educator" podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I'm excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, welcome to this episode of the "Everyday Educator" podcast. I am excited to introduce some of my friends to you today, and we are going to talk kind of like a round table discussion, or you can close your eyes and pretend like we are all friends sitting around the fire with hot cocoa or hot tea.

We are gonna talk about our homeschooling journeys together. And I have invited some friends who are at different spots on the homeschool journey so that all of our experiences can be represented. And I suspect that you will find a kindred spirit to walk along your journey with you. So you just enjoy the conversation that you can eavesdrop on with my friends.

I have with me today, D'Lise, D'Lise say hello to all our friends. - Hey, everybody. - D'Lise has an adorable little guy. Tell us about Leo. - So Leo is three years old. He is very precocious. He's a curious, fun little boy who has a lot of questions and a lot of energy like little boys at his age do.

He is so great. And we are just very thankful to have him. - Yes, and D'Lise, this is really cool. I wanted you to have the perspective of a mom who was herself homeschooled, who is looking toward the homeschool journey with her own son. So D'Lise, thank you so much for being with us today.

- Thanks for having me. - Charity Brown is also here. Charity, say hello and tell us about your family of homeschoolers. - So hello to everyone from the sunny South. I have one daughter who is in Cincinnati, Ohio finishing, well, she's midway through her sophomore year in Bible college there and enjoying the cold and the snow.

I also have a senior who is wrapping up his first semester of his senior year and is looking forward to joining his sister in Cincinnati next fall. So I am right at the very end of my active homeschool journey. - That is so cool. And so I have two daughters who have graduated through the challenge four program, have graduated college or both married.

And I have two grandchildren and one on the way, one who is about six months younger than D'Lise's Leo and then a little, a granddaughter who just turned eight months. And so we are gonna talk about the homeschool journey and what it looks like through the different lenses at different parts of the homeschool journey.

And we are glad that you're here with us. I'd like to ask both of you, D'Lise I'll get you to answer first. Your homeschool journey in an official way maybe hasn't started yet. A lot of times people, new homeschoolers say, well, we started homeschooling when our daughter was in the second grade and we came to homeschooling late and they were almost in middle school.

Or somebody will say we've homeschooled from the very beginning, so from kindergarten. And then I have some wise friends who have said, oh, we started homeschooling from the beginning at birth because we're teaching our children the whole time. So I wanna ask you as a newer mom, what's the best outcome of homeschooling so far?

So as you are walking through life with your curious questioner, what's the best part of it for you so far? - Yeah, well, I would definitely say I fall into the camp of those who believe that you homeschool from the moment that you receive your child. So I've always thought of myself as teaching him because that's what we do as parents.

And I think what's been such a reassuring part of it teaching him so far is his healthy mind. I had an early childhood background before I became a parent and had a lot of neurological research that I'd done and things like that. And so I believed a lot of things about the brain but I hadn't got to test it every day on a child.

It was just, you go in the classroom and you test it over a period of years, but you really don't have as much, I hate to use this word, but control over those environments. - Sure, sure. And so with Leo, one of the things we emphasized really early on was just reading to him, long chapter books, all kinds of interesting things, things that I wanted to hear, especially when I was early in that postpartum time.

And that has helped him to develop an extensive vocabulary, a really genuine curiosity and imagination. And it's just been fun to see the fruit of those things that are so basic, but really effective for him. We limited screen time, which I know is a very controversial thing these days, but I believe that it's really helped his brain to develop well.

And so it's been fun to see what just putting your little boy outside can do for them while they're growing. - Yes, I agree with you so very much. Is it working out like you thought it would? - Honestly, it's working out a little better than I thought it would.

I didn't, I mean, I know he's not perfect, he's a child and that's fine, but I think I underestimated the power of-- - What he could do. - Books and hanging out with sweet people and serving and playing and just those really simple things I think are more effective than we give them credit.

- Oh, Delise, that's so encouraging. Mamas out there, you are doing enough. When you are reading every day with your little person and you are going outside and exploring and answering a bajillion questions and asking a few of your own and encouraging their imaginations and giving them opportunities to serve their family and their neighbors, you are doing a great thing and you are building healthy brains and healthy souls.

Thank you, Delise, that's really good. Charity, I wanna ask you, you have a longer runway. I mean, you had a longer, you've got a longer flight to look back on. So what's the best outcome of homeschooling so far? - I was thinking about this question as Delise was talking.

I feel like the reading aloud with the kids has been a huge part of what the best outcome has been. So our best outcome has definitely been the relationship that our children have with each other and all of the shared memories. And so much of that is centered around the books we read together.

And when they get together, which we just did, our daughter was home for Thanksgiving and for a whole week, they got to be together, which is their favorite place to be. And they are big pals and all the shared jokes, the inside jokes that they share that come from a whole educational journey spent together, not separated off into other groups and other classes for all their waking hours.

- Yes, yes. - And they just shared everything. And so if we did Dickens, they both did Dickens. And if we did Austin, they both did Austin. Yes, I made my son read Austin. - That's good for you, girlfriend. - I know, so they have all the shared, oh, he's a Willoughby.

They have all that shared material. And I would say it has done wonderful things to build their relationship together. And so kudos to you, Delise, for reading with your little guy, because that is totally a huge part of building those relationships. - Oh, I love that, Charity, that the best thing or the best outcome so far for your family has been the relationships, the memories, the experiences, the inside jokes, the characterizations.

There are times, our family read a lot and continues to read a lot. When our grown kids and their spouses were home last Christmas, we read "A Christmas Carol" aloud again. And I think that their husbands had never done that really with their families, but we built some great memories.

I love the whole idea that they are sharing what they're learning. They're sharing their lives. They're sharing their childhoods. That is something special. You know, when we ask parents, what are your goals in homeschooling? A lot of times, many of us come to homeschooling with a lot of academic goals.

Even when we say, well, we want them to learn as much as they can about as much as they're interested in and all that kind of thing. But I think the longer we homeschool, the more we all see the value in building a family culture, a family culture of learning, but a family culture of care also.

That's really good. Thank you guys for bringing those things up. I wanna ask a get real question here, 'cause we try on the everyday educator to not let it be all hearts and flowers and pretty pictures that we paint, 'cause we all live in the real world. And some days we get up and like Lee Bordens herself says, we're all just little centers running around.

And so I wanna ask you, what is a hard aspect of homeschooling? And maybe this was something that you anticipated being difficult, or maybe it was an unexpected difficulty that you encountered along the way. Charity, what's a hard aspect of homeschooling? For me, the hardest aspect of homeschooling has been doing school in the same place where we relax and sleep and play.

And I know, and this is a controversial idea for sure, but I know lots of homeschoolers who the beautiful thing for them about homeschooling is getting to do school in their pajamas. And I totally understand that. But for us as a family, we have found that it has helped us immensely to put in artificial boundaries to help the children know it's time for school.

Otherwise, it always fell apart for us. And so for us it was, yes, we are fun and we do fun things and we love to go outside and all the fun parts of homeschooling. But what kept our sanity was we started at the same time approximately every year, less that be hearts and flowers and not real.

I will say, in the interest of honesty, we started at eight o'clock in the fall. By the spring, we were starting around 10. (both laughing) - There's the real, there's the real. - But we still were starting at the same time in the general context. And so we did school with clothes on, not pajamas.

And as they got older and were more mature and more responsible, that relaxed considerably. But in the early years, we found it to be very helpful to keep lots of artificial boundaries help their brains come into a learning away from drop, stepping away from free play into a more structured learning environment.

And so that has been the hardest thing to manage every year in my opinion. - Mm-hmm, and you know, you are right. It depends on the family. So every listener you're going to need to gauge your family, maybe what your family culture is, is the more free flowing school in your pajamas.

And as it happens and mingled around with life, maybe that fits your family. Maybe you as the lead learner in your home or some or all of your children really need more structure, a more routine. I think you're wise Charity to recognize that for y'all, you needed those boundaries.

I had a friend that we homeschooled our kids together and she had 10 children. And so for her, she also demanded that her kids get dressed but the getting 10 children dressed was such a nightmare that for several years, while everybody was kind of young, she instituted this school uniform and it was like t-shirts and jumpers for the girls, things that everybody could put on.

It was all the same. We don't have to worry. She has my shirt, he took my socks. Nope, you're putting on the same thing. You're putting this on when we do school. So sometimes routines are really good. So let me ask you this Delise, as a homeschool mom, as you continue along the journey that you and your husband have begun with Leo, what is your biggest fear?

- That is a great question. And I have to say, I was in the same structured household as well. And I appreciated it. I needed to get- - Yes, yes, yes. - To shake so I could learn. You know, so I think sometimes people think, oh, that's gonna feel too militant for my child.

And it really just depends on what your family needs. And speaking of, depending on what your family needs, you know, hindsight is 20/20. And so I am concerned that I'm going to emphasize the wrong things. And you mentioned at the beginning of this episode, you know, I've been in this homeschool space for a long time.

I was a child of the 90s. I'm in my 30s. I was homeschooled through high school and I'm one of four. And so I've seen a lot of different homeschool outcomes, a lot of stories. And I have a lot of peers who have varying perspectives on their homeschooling journey, just to be honest.

And so- - Right, right. - I'm a little concerned that my son might ultimately misunderstand and maybe even regret some of my reasons for homeschooling him because I do plan to homeschool him through high school. And that's not something that I can control and I understand that. - Right, yes.

- But it is a concern and something that my mom has always said about helping us to understand her thought pattern is that instead of explaining why she thinks the way she does, she always just exposed us to how she drew a conclusion. And that way, even if we disagreed with her, at least we knew she wasn't crazy.

- Yes, and I know your mom. She's a dear, dear friend of mine. Shelly is not crazy. - She is not crazy. And so I'm hopeful that that will be the same case with my son, that if I show him how I drew my conclusion, at least he'll understand that I loved him and I meant well.

But I do anticipate making a lot of mistakes along with having a lot of successes. So we'll see if I emphasize the right things over time. - It's so interesting. I think, Delise, that everybody worries about that. Like, will I leave out the one thing that my child really needed to learn?

And here's what I will tell you, Delise, 'cause I'm looking back at the journey where you are now. You will leave out something. You will, all of us here, everybody within the sound of my voice, just go ahead and accept it. You will leave out something. You will overemphasize something that was important to you that ends up not being important to your kid.

And you will underemphasize something that they would probably have benefited from having more of. And we're all going to make those kinds of mistakes. But here is the absolute beauty of a classical education. You will have equipped your child to recoup his losses. He will know how to go about learning whatever you didn't teach enough of.

Or he will know how to go about learning what he develops an interest in after he leaves your tutelage. The beauty of a classical education is that we equip them to stay learners. And that is awesome. That is awesome. Charity, did you have any big fears as a homeschooling mom?

Do you still have big fears? - Do we all, don't we all have big fears, right? - Yes. - When I was really young and just starting out, my biggest fear was that I would not be enough to quote unquote cover the subjects. At some point along the way, I realized that you can deep dive an entire lifetime in any one subject.

And so we never cover the subject. And I feel like that for me was freeing to know that no, I can't 100% cover anything with my children. And instead of making that my goal, that we must thoroughly cover the subject, it was more of a, let's not, like I turned my fear into, okay, I don't wanna turn off their wonder for a subject by being too rigid.

'Cause I am prone to rigidity in structure as by my personality. And now as I watch my children and they're finishing, Alex is finishing his senior year, Catherine is in college. I want them to understand that the education they had at home was just the beginning of education. It wasn't the end of education.

Mom didn't cover everything. Mom wasn't supposed to cover everything that you've learned for a lifetime. And so at this point, now that I'm less involved in the hands-on educating of my children, I think one of the things that we're giving them is they go downstairs and they see their dad is watching a video on quantum mechanics because it interests him.

- Yes. - He's a nerd, you know, I love him. Or they see me doing something else that I'm learning. And just to be modeling that, we learn for life. And to let go of that fear that somehow I'm gonna stunt them because I didn't cover it all. You won't, you absolutely will not cover it all.

And that's a good thing. And so-- - Yes. - Yeah, so now my fear is I just don't wanna shut them down on a subject because I got too rigid. - Yeah. - So my fears have changed. - Isn't that interesting? Your fears have changed just like a kaleidoscope changes by just you turn it and oh, there's something else.

There's another picture. Oh, I didn't notice that. Oh, there's a different color. Yeah, I think you're right. The things that I feared in the early days are not what I feared as they headed toward graduation. And we all grew, we all grew. Guys, we've talked about and I mentioned just a few minutes ago that what we strive to do in classical education is give our children the, we give them the skills to learn anything.

And that is what a classical education seeks to do. Teach our children how to learn anything that they're interested in or anything that they need to know for life. Whether or not a mentor appears. What's classical education to you, Delise? - I love this question, especially because I work here at Classical Conversations.

- Yeah, yeah. - No one ever asks me what I think about it. (laughing) And so I love pondering it from a personal perspective. Right now, at the early stage, I would say I have two perspectives of classical education or two goals for my son. The first one would be to teach him how to think methodically through a topic and to progress and to realize that he is progressing from grammar through dialectic and then to rhetoric.

So that, I think sometimes when we're learning about something, we feel a little bit disoriented. And I know that those different stages are often melded together. - Uh-huh. - Helping yourself to think in categories and say, "Hey, I need to define this. "My problem is actually a definitions issue.

"Let's go back to grammar really quickly." I think just causes a person to learn more effectively. And so I would love for him to be able to see the world through those eyes. And then secondarily, I really want him to have a framework for the integration of subjects. I think that's gonna be more important than it ever has been in the world that we have just because a lot of people don't understand how agriculture works together with something like history or geography.

And so for him to look at the world and say, "Hey, all of these different subjects "are not actually isolated. "They are interacting with each other in real time, "affecting one another. "And if I can understand math, I can understand history." Those types of perspectives, I think are really gonna help him in life.

And I hope he gains that from a classical education. - Oh, what a lucky little boy Leo is. That's beautiful. That is beautiful, Delyse. And I think that that will really help him. Charity, what would you say? What's classical education to you? - Classical education is, in my mind, at this stage, it's a natural way.

It uses God-given natural ways we learn to move from wonder to exploring and thinking well, as Delyse was talking about, thinking well and reasoning well about those things that we're wondering about, to then expressing those thoughts well enough to actually inspire wonder in others. And I think it is not only from, not only does it incorporate the natural way we learn, but it also is a beautiful way to prepare our children to share the most important thing, the gospel, to teach them the wonder of Christ, and then to think well and reason well on theology and logic and philosophy, and then to be able to spread that message to others.

I think that it is the perfect setup to building strong communicators for Christ in the world. - That's great. That is great. Building strong communicators for Christ in the world. That is a wonderful goal for us as parents. And NCC, we talk about classical Christian community and how important that is to you.

Charity, what is it that makes what you do at home with your family as you learn? What makes that a Christian education? - The Christian part is the thing that ties everything else together at our house. Having come up through public school, I didn't have the privilege of being homeschooled.

Coming through public school, religious beliefs or creeds or practices were kept in a box, and they were outside of the classroom. And I remember the first time I ever entered a Christian classroom in college, I went to a Christian college for the beginning of my education, and the professor opened the class with prayer.

And I remember thinking, even though I'm a Christian, this feels wrong. It felt- - So different, so different for you. - Yeah, it felt like someone had put a square peg into a round hole in my mind. And it took a number of years for that to kind of detox out of my system.

And now, the ability to seek Christ in the different subjects, to showcase Christ in all the subjects that we learn, to practice the two great commandments, loving God and loving others in your own built-in safe place every day, is a beautiful thing. And I think it's an opportunity that's second to none.

So yes, the integration of Christ as central to all the subjects has been the Christian part of the education for us. - That's great. What a great thing for you to be able to realize for yourself and then to promote to your children. So it's really interesting, your children probably have never seen learning apart from the Lord.

- That is true. My daughter is at a Christian college and it's such a privilege, such a privilege to view learning through the lens of scripture, through the lens of truth. And I know they recently, my son recently had to go and take the SAT for college entrance and stuff.

And that was his first time to step into a public school and be around an education environment where God was not present. And it was a very unusual experience for him. So yeah, they've never experienced an education apart from Jesus in the room. And I feel like that is a gift that we've been privileged to offer our children.

- It's beautiful. I know that for so many of us, we did not, we're not as lucky as Delise. We did not come from a homeschool environment where our parents could always put Jesus in the room and that Christ was always central and integrated into everything that we learned.

Our children are blessed with a different kind of education. And I think it's gonna take a generation or so for us to realize what a blessing that was. Delise, how do you make what you do at home with Leo Christian? - Hmm, that's a good question. Well, you know, I am at the stage of parenting where, and maybe this never goes away and I just don't know it yet, where everything is a character conversation.

You know, it's all about character. And early on in my upbringing, this was also the stage where my mom just poured in Bible verse songs like a maniac in the best way. And so all of those songs are very much flooding back to my mind, but it's helpful to give your child something good to think about while you're trying to redirect them.

And what better to give them than the truth? So while we're exploring, of course we're talking about, you know, and God made those birds. The other day we were feeding our chickens and Leo said, "You know, God made those chickens." - Yes, yes. - He made you too, you know?

So we talk about him all day, but we're also very much focusing on just learning the word of God and hiding it in our hearts. - Oh, that was beautiful. - Yeah, when I read this verse, or when I read this question, I thought of the verse Romans 11, 36.

"For from him and through him and to him "are all things and to him be the glory." And I think that's really the essence of a robust education is understanding that it's all about God, kind of like what you were just saying, Charity. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, that's so lovely.

That's so lovely. So we got the classical, we got the Christian. What kind of community are you guys looking for? What kind of community do you want or need? And is it different at every age? Now, Delise, you might not be able to answer, is it different at every age yet?

'Cause you only know this age. But what kind of community are you hoping for or building for you and Leo, for your family to learn with? - Well, I'm hoping for and pursuing two types of community. I would say probably the latter a little bit more than this first one.

So first, I really do love moms who understand my values. I do have a slightly unconventional approach and perspective on young childhood development. And especially I've mentioned screens, but physical play and even messy learning, just the fact that sometimes you need to make a mess and that's kind of the point.

And they learn as they make a mess and cover themselves and whatever it is. And you can clean that up. You can teach them that lesson or whatever that thing is without giving them a chance to interact with the material. - Oh, my word, yes. - Which is fun and the aftermath is a different story.

- Yes, but we can just always deal with that. - Yeah, we can always deal with that. And I'm not saying every day I'm excited about the mess, but it's nice to be around other moms who understand that and who are pursuing those same goals. But I will say what matters even more to me than people agreeing with me is being around people who have been there and are truly looking in the rear view.

So my friends who have children in college are the ones I'm really budding up next to right now, just because I think I'm in the crucial years, you know, the zero to five foundational years. And they have a lot of wisdom to share and I don't know what I'm doing.

And so I need somebody who's been there before who can kind of at least say, yeah, keep going in that direction or you're not crazy, that's a problem, keep addressing it. - Right, exactly. - Oh my word, I remember in those early days, and that's what, I loved practicum because I could go and I could hear moms who, like you said, were a little ahead of me on the journey and they could say, oh yeah, girl, that's fine.

That's not the problem you think it is or that's getting ready to resolve or here's what you could try or, you know, count your blessings, that's not so bad. And I could look and see that perseverance, what perseverance did in their family was to mold their children, like they kept on doing it.

And so I agree, I want people who are ahead of me on the journey who can give me some mentoring advice. Hearing you, Delisa, makes me wish that you and my daughter, Sarah, lived closer together because those are the kinds of things that she likes to do, experiences they don't watch.

They don't watch screens, he listens to a lot of music. And so he has very eclectic musical taste. When Gideon was a baby, what soothed him the most was Handel's "Messiah." - Oh, thank you, exactly. - Oh my gosh, that is so fun. And so when he comes to my house, he gets out of the car and the first thing he wants to do is dig because one day he found a trowel and that was one of his early big words, a trowel.

I need the trowel, Lolly, the trowel. And so the only way he can learn about the trowel is to really get it the dirt under his fingers and so he does it. So that's really cool. Charity, what kind of community did you seek for your kids as they were older, you know?

What kind of community did they need and was it the same thing that you needed? - So I think what you want and what you get are sometimes two different things. And for our family, that just happened to be the way it turned out. One of the things that I have focused on with the kids as communities came and went over the years, or we moved actually, and so then you have a whole different world, is that in the same way that Christostom is known for saying that a home should be a little church and the best churches are those where it's a combination of all the little churches.

And unless church is happening in the home, church as a body is stunted, right? And so what we try to teach our children, because we did have such a flux in formal community as we moved, is that what we have at home is the little community. And in the years where the larger community wasn't present or wasn't ideal, we could still have our little community.

And so the best communities out there, in my opinion, especially CC communities, are those that are combination of people doing community with their families. And if they're loving one another well in the home, then they will love and learn well together in the community. And so for our children, what we have saw as they have gotten older is more and more and more understanding the importance of the most local community, which is the home, that can spill over into the other communities that we put them into.

And so that's been our emphasis in the last number of years. - Oh, that's very wise. And probably is very encouraging to listeners who maybe find themselves without an outside-the-home community right now, or who are not sure that the outside-their-home community that they have found completely fits them. That gives us a different perspective, Charity, and I appreciate that.

That is awesome. All right, guys, I have some light-hearted questions for you, because we've been serious for a few minutes. So I feel like we need to stretch our muscles a little bit. What-- Delise, I want to ask you this. What, so far, has been your funniest homeschool moment?

- OK. I wasn't sure if I was going to share the story, but you're asking the question, so here we are. So Leo is very interested right now in learning Spanish. And you want to encourage your child's curiosity and feed that. And so we were in the very beginning stages-- still are-- of teaching him some Spanish words.

- Oh, that's cool. - We went to the grocery store, and the cashier had a Spanish accent. I have no idea where she was from. And Leo was convinced that this woman was speaking Spanish. So he starts talking to her, and he says, why is she speaking Spanish to me?

I said, well, honey, she's not speaking Spanish. She's speaking English. And he says, yeah, she is speaking Spanish. And then she starts to talk to him. She said, no, I'm speaking English. You know, she's being very sweet to him. And he starts speaking back to her, of course, because she is speaking in English.

Yes, Laura is speaking Spanish. Do you get it or not? And then he starts to try out words that he thinks are Spanish-- "tito" and things like that. And it was just-- it was one of those moments where you think to yourself, I'm so glad that I taught this child to ask questions.

And I need you to stop right now. Yes. Yes. That is so funny. You spend all these years just waiting for your child to be able to talk and communicate these thoughts that you can tell that they have. And then they begin to speak. And they sometimes don't stop.

And you think, wow, I prayed for this. And now I really got it. That's great. That's great. Let me ask you this, Charity. Are you fun mom or sergeant mom? Well, can I say I'm both? Yes, you can. I was going to say, I would-- if I were you, I'd cheat at this question.

I'm going to cheat at this question. I would say I'm both. And the reason is that I would say I'm sergeant mom in the sense that I personally-- aside from my children, I personally need lots of structure in my world. I get up at the same time every day.

I go on the walk at the same park every day. I just need structure because it helps clear my head. It helps keep me focused. And I would say that I'm-- this is kind of an irony. People have said to me, well, you're so structured and so disciplined. You must be a strong person.

I would say that I'm structured and disciplined because I'm a weak person. If you take away the structure, I may become, like, I don't know, completely chaotic. So I'm a sergeant in that way. But I'm definitely a sergeant first to myself. And then that trickled over into the structure in the homeschool.

But I'm also the mom who is going to do lots of outdoor, lots of hiking, lots of-- of course, you can take off your shoes and wade in the stream out in the middle of the park. And then, of course, you're going to walk in your nasty, gritty socks and complain all the way back to the car because your mom didn't think that through first.

Yes, yes. But, yeah, I would say I'm a combo. I'm a combo of those two things. That's cool. And your children probably are the better for you being both of those things because they now know how to keep a schedule and how to break a schedule. So that's a good thing.

Delise, what about you? Yeah, Delise, are you fun mom, sergeant mom, or a combo? Oh, yeah, I was definitely going to cheat, too. I was not going to be trapped into these boxes. Yeah, I would say I'm some of both. Again, these early years are about structure. But I agree with you, Charity.

I mean, I need the structure just to think straight. And I mean, not everything has to be structured. But I would say about 85% is going to really help me out. And then there's freedom in that. I'm a very creative person. And having constraints breeds creativity. And so I've found that to be helpful even in just saying, like, hey, we're just going to do our structured learning in the morning.

And so then I just tell myself, all right, we did what we were going to do. And everything else is a bonus. You know, then we have all these ideas of things that we want to do and structure and learn. But this is where we got the early stuff out.

And so, yeah, I'm a little bit of both right now. And we will see if that continues to be the case. Yeah. I bet that it will, Delise. I bet that it will. I think I was some of both, too. I'm also very-- I always have a plan. And I like to have a plan.

And if you don't have a plan, I probably have one for you already. And so we did, especially in the younger years, our homeschool day was more structured. Now, it wasn't rigid. We didn't do things from 11 to 1110 and from 1120 to 1145. But we did things in the same order, basically, every day.

There was a rhythm and a pattern to our days. And for little children, I will say that for young children, structure and rhythm and pattern are very comforting. They actually prefer to know what is going to happen. And they know enough about themselves to not actually want to be in charge of all their choices.

It feels safe. And it breeds security for them to have a predictable routine. But yeah, I like to be in the fun mom who could just say, yep, OK, we're going to do math upstairs. We're doing fractions. And so we're going to bake. We're going to learn fractions by baking.

Or, OK, we're going to go do our memory work by kicking the soccer ball back and forth to each other. So it is fun to be the fun mom. I also actually happen to think that you can be the fun mom more often if there's a little bit of structure in your life.

But that might just be me. Let me ask you this. This is one of the last questions that I want to ask you. But it's very profound. And it's something, I will be honest, I did not realize early on. I thought I was doing this great—I was making this great commitment to homeschool my children, to follow God, what I thought the Lord was asking us.

My husband and I both felt like the Lord is saying, do this homeschool thing. And I felt like I was doing this great thing for the Lord and this great thing for my children. And I have since seen how the Lord has blessed me personally through homeschooling and through this journey.

And He has refined me, not that He's done. He continually is refining me. But He refined me a lot in the process. There was a lot I learned about myself and about the Lord and about His goodness and faithfulness to me. I want to know how homeschooling has changed you.

Charity, how has homeschooling changed you? Homeschooling is such a sanctifying experience. And I feel like in the early years, I'm a planner, too. And I love that you said, if you don't have a plan, I will plan for you. That is me. That is completely me. I know that we had a joke in our family in the early years that if I wrote out the lesson plans-- because I actually had a planner in the old days.

I had like an actual from the teacher's store. I went and got a planner, the green book. If I wrote the lesson plans in pen, someone would get sick. It was like the curse of the pen written. And I know in Alabama, we say pen, pen, an ink pen.

The curse of the ink lesson plans, right? And if we wrote it in pencil, things went better. I know that seems like a little bit of a-- that's ridiculous. But that's how it felt to us. And I had so many more-- I held my plans much more close to my heart when the children were little.

And I was much more distressed by the way that life interrupted and all the magic and flowers and unicorns that I'd planned for that week went up in smoke when the children got the flu or whatever. And so I feel like homeschooling has allowed me to be OK with writing my plans in pencil and finding out that when all you have to offer is a couple of loaves and some fishes, that Jesus makes it enough.

They are going to be OK. They actually are. And I know that when my daughter came to me on her very last day of homeschool, we printed out her transcript on my printer. And we literally stood at the printer and cried together. Yes, yes. It wasn't a throw confetti in the air because homeschooling was hard.

It was hard for her. It was hard for me. Our personalities didn't jive perfectly. We had a lot of hard days. But Jesus wrote a different story. And his story was beautiful. And I'm just so grateful for how he's changed me through homeschooling. That's so beautiful. You have moved me to tears.

When you talked about standing at the printer, because I remember as the homeschooling mom, the homeschooling lead learner, the homeschooling school administrator, you have to generate all these documents when your children graduate. And so as I built their transcripts and as I wrote the description of the type of education they had had, I truly cried.

And I thought, I could never have envisioned this. When my little girls were second grade and fifth grade, I could never envision that the Lord would have brought us all through all the things that we learned and all the ways that we learned and all the understanding that we had gained.

And it was a moving and beautiful thing. He is very kind. He is a very kind and good father. He is a good, good father. That's what I was going to say. So Delise, how is homeschooling changing you? Well, as a person who has only ever truly known these waters, aside from going to university, I think it would be easy to think, oh, I know what I'm doing.

Which is not the case. And so even though I've only been at it for three years, it has been very humbling and also so reassuring, because I'm a very inquisitive person. And so I've always been the kind of person who had a lot of questions for God. And I'll write my questions down.

And I'm digging through my Bible asking very specific questions. And he's very kind, as you guys just said, and gracious. And he often answers my questions. He humors me, is what I like to say. He shows me himself in his word. But I've seen him do that with homeschooling, too, when I'm confused or I don't understand-- because my son is very different than I am-- the way that he thinks and what I need to say.

Because he's asking me things that I never thought about before. Or he's just a boy. And so he wants to express himself in ways that I simply don't relate. But the Lord has been kind already. And then just showing me himself and giving me wisdom as a mom, I believe, but also just showing me that my value is not in what I do.

And that's something I want to communicate to my son, that his value is not in what he does or even other people's perspective of his performance. But I think when we homeschool and we do create the grades ourselves, it's easy to want to hear other people tell us, well done.

And I just have to be honest with myself and say, you know what, Lord? I'm doing this because I feel called to do this. And at the end of the day, only you see my every day. And so only you can give me that thumbs up that I'm looking for.

And he's not going to give that to me based on my, quote, "performance." I already belong to him. Yes. Oh. That's where my mind is right now. That is awesome. I think that's a good thing. That's a great place for us to end. It's a good thought to leave us all with.

Our value is not in what we do. Our value is in the Lord. So moms and dads who are listening, who think, I'm not doing all I should. I know I'm failing. Your value is not in what you do. It is in the Lord. And so I fully believe, as I can tell Charity and Delise, believe that the Lord will give you what you need.

And He is, you know, your children might be your project, but you are God's project. You are God's to love. And He is going to do a great work in you. Ladies, thank you so much for talking to me about your homeschool experience and sharing your wisdom with all of us today.

That is awesome. I want to tell you listeners about another way for you to maybe interact with some new ideas. And of course, I guess it's not really a conversation if you're just doing the reading. But very soon, our 2025 catalog will be available. And I want you to know, the catalog is not just a way for you to find resources you need to buy for next year.

The catalog is full of great articles, like "The Need for Community" and "His Grace is Sufficient" and "Skills to Love Your Neighbor." These are great reads that feed our souls, that encourage and equip us. And life is busy. So here's the deal. You don't have to read the articles yourself.

You can actually download audio versions of these articles that are found in the catalog and listen while you're in the car or working out. You can even forward an episode to a friend that has really resonated with you. You can listen wherever you stream podcasts. You just search "Classical Conversations Catalog Podcast." Or you can go to classicalconversations/catalog-articles.com.

All right. Some great things to take with you on the road. Delese, Charity, thank you again so much for being with us today. I appreciate both of you. Thank you. This was fun. All right. Bye, guys.