Homeschooling’s Dirty Little Secret

Things had gotten bad in our support group. The battle lines had been drawn. Two of our homeschooling membership had gotten into a competition of sorts. They came to each meeting with a quiet smile plastered on their faces, but there was a squint-eyed gleam in their eyes. And it was getting worse with each meeting.

Barbara Ann arrived just a tad early every third Wednesday practically bursting to share her son’s latest feats.

“Why yes, this past month my son Reginald was accepted to the NASA Jr. Space internship program (pause for effect), his essay got 1st place in the Miles Standish Brains-of-America contest, and with the sheer power of his mind, he rid himself of the measles. Praise be to God.”

The room held its breath and waited, for they knew that now…it was Wilhelmina’s turn.

“We’ve got a praise report, too!” Wilhelmina popped up. “Our little Desmond’s building design has been chosen for the new Presidential library, the book he wrote last year is in its third printing, and he touched us all with finding a little orphan boy in Croatia and giving him his spleen.”

Wilhelmina triumphantly sat down, but Barbara Ann now looked menacingly at her son Reginald’s abdomen, presumably searching for spare parts.

I will admit to you that this is a slight exaggeration. The Barbara Ann/Wilhelmina exchange is only an example of how some praise reports make me feel not what they actually report. In fact, most of the time the comments are perfectly reasonable, and the women doing the reporting are actually…well, lovely. But there definitely are two camps in homeschooling circles.

Camp 1– Those whose kids are on an upward spiral to be more and more impressive with each passing month, and

Camp 2– Those whose parents are working harder and harder to hide the fact that their kids’ best accomplishments include falling out of their chairs and burping through the names of the apostles.

So what’s a homeschooling parent to do? How can we handle that constant push to add more and more to the list of things we feel must happen? As this year is drawing to a close and your goals for next year are being considered, how do you keep from over doing it?

It’s really an issue of trusting yourself. Make your plans. Make them reasonable. Determine your objectives for your child, and then. . .stick to your guns. Oh sure, you’ll hear of this and that and think you should run off in a new direction. But hold fast to your plan.

Then, when the Barbara Anns and Wilhelminas of the world amaze and astound us all with their superhuman achieving children, just smile, nod, rejoice with them in their good fortune…and then pray that Reginald gets to keep his spleen.