Homeschooling has become quite a hot topic in the last few years. Gaining a lot of families by choice, by need, or by recent events in our world. Based on the numbers, I’d say many of those families have realized the blessings of homeschooling and stuck with it. Homeschooling will bless your family with many of its benefits. And they are not all academic; from time to relationships. Here are 6 ways homeschooling will bless your family.
Our Back Story
We began homeschooling when our oldest was in second grade. It was something we always kept in our back pocket. Even though we chose to enroll him in public school kindergarten and first grade. I had the desire to, but I also had a toddler and baby at home. And lacked in my confidence to manage it all.
Our church at the time hosted a community group for Classical Conversations. We attended a parent meeting to investigate and left feeling convicted and encouraged to begin our homeschooling journey. Long story short. Soon after, my husband took a job that moved us back across the state. We ended up enrolling in a completely different community where we live now.
Even though we are no longer homeschooling with CC, I look back on that time with much gratitude. That community of families was a great help and support for navigating our first two years of homeschooling. Over the last 5 years of being a homeschool family, we have realized many blessings of homeschooling.
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Homeschooling Will Bless Your Family With Flexibility
As a homeschooling family, you have total flexibility with your time and seasons. It is fairly common for families to do what is considered year-round homeschooling. Which basically means that they school from July 1st to June 30th of each academic year. This allows plenty of margin for travel, adventures and field trips, sick days, breaks, caring for loved ones, and any other unforeseen interruption.
If you followed a typical school calendar it would go from May to August. When life happens and your schedule is interrupted, it might throw off your whole year of learning. Homeschooling allows for you to keep learning on the fringes of whatever life throws at you. When you encounter a season that pulls you from your “normal.”
Homeschooling Will Bless Your Family With an Education Unlike Any Other
As you learn and grow in your own homeschooling journey, you learn more about what your family gravitates to. Their style of learning, interests, your teaching style, and so on. Your own philosophy of education might change as your kids get older. Did you know there is even a quiz you can take to find out your homeschooling philosophy?
You have the ability to give your children a high-end, private education that is quality. There is no worrying about the ideas presented to them before they are ready. You can gear their education more classically, traditional, or a hybrid mix.
Homeschooling Will Bless Your Family With Time
Time is a valuable thing. Especially when talking about the time we get to spend with the people we love.
Being a family that homeschools means that you have more control over how much time you spend together as a family. Parents only get their children under their roof for an average of 18 years. We didn’t have children and become a family just to spend time apart for the sake of “education”. We want to know our boys. To nurture their character. To cultivate values that are important and timeless. And to raise them to know the Lord.
Can these things be done while they attend public school? Sure. We know families who diligently aim to accomplish the same goals. But we are talking about time here, and by homeschooling a family gains the blessing of more time together.
On a personal note, this blessing became most evident while my husband worked a job that kept him scheduled on the weekends and evenings while off on weekdays. Had our boys been enrolled in public school they would hardly ever seen their father. During that season, we enjoyed family meals at breakfast and mid-week family outings or doing lessons with dad.
Homeschooling Gives the Blessing of Discipleship
As Christian parents, it is our duty and delight to disciple our children in the faith. By giving them a home education, you are able to build everything on a biblical worldview. You maintain the ability to better monitor when and what your children are exposed to. And immediately address things from a scriptural perspective.
Habits and behaviors are more quickly noticed and addressed before they settle into deep ruts that are harder to change. Homeschooling will bless your family in allowing any opportunity to be one of discipleship.
And, as Deuteronomy 6:4-9 lays out, we can freely share and teach our personal love for God when we sit in our house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise. I strongly believe that God intended for the family to BE TOGETHER. We live in a world that seeks to separate the family early and often. It has even infiltrated the church, but that is a post for another day.
Homeschooling Will Bless the Relationships in Your Home
Watching your children develop a close and unique bond as they spend time and share experiences together is a special blessing of a homeschool lifestyle. While they each have their own interests and friends, there is a sweet connection formed in those mundane moments. Like when an older sibling helps a younger with a math lesson. Or when they work together on projects.
They still squabble and argue, sure. However, they have time together where we get to tie in discipleship, flexibility, and relationship. We (parents) help them navigate their emotions, humble themselves, consider and love their brother as their neighbor, and practice being quick to forgive.
It is all so closely woven together in ways that words don’t even do it justice.
The parent/child relationships are also blessed by this lifestyle. We are their primary influences (AND SHOULD BE) until they are adults. Our relationship with one another grows as we are their mother-teacher.
I will also add that relationship takes precedence over the teaching. The relationship between child and parent are foundational to a healthy sense of identity and future relationships.
The Blessing of a Personalized Education
Another of the 6 ways homeschooling will bless your family is a personalized education. Children are born persons who are wholly made in the image of God. And God, being the Creator of all things, bestowing gifts and talents to his children to be used for his glory, didn’t make everyone the same. Not everything is measurable, nor meant to be measured.
In a home education, you have the ability and blessing to tailor your child’s education that helps THEM. Now, we still have responsibilities to adhere to the requirements our state laws have set. But there is still freedom in making it fit your child instead of trying to make your child fit the requirements.
You also are able to give them time to grow their natural gifts and talents. Equip them to pursue further knowledge. And connect them with other people and opportunities to hone their gift in unique ways.
Are families who don’t homeschool void of these blessings? Absolutely not. But they do look different and play out in different ways. They might sound ordinary in some ways. But they aren’t so ordinary from the inside. If you know, you know. If you don’t, I think you should consider looking into it further. (wink, wink!)
Are you a homeschooling family? What blessings have you experienced?
Are you considering homeschooling? What is holding you back?
Leave a comment below, or just say hello!
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