[On Schooling]

We take it year-by-year, but these last few years we’ve schooled our kids at home. It’s not some big principled, reject-the-system, religious-exemption sort of thing, we just decide with each child, each Fall, in each place, where we think we should put them based on their needs and our abilities.

Partially due to two years of moving, even when abilities and bandwidth were low my third kid is one who has never had report cards or textbooks or bus stops. But she’s played and experienced and learned naturally. It’s what I kinda had wanted for all of my kids. Because I truly believe that it’s hard to make a child love to learn once you’ve killed their awe and wonder, and it’s difficult to nurture that when you remove playing and exploring and discovering too soon. And boy, does this girl love to learn. In a way that I’m not entirely sure she would have discovered if she’d been sitting in a desk instead of out in the world.

But there have been moments of fear. I recently went to bed a few weeks ago in tears and panic and exasperation because this spirited, recently-turned-7-year-old is not independently reading. I mean, I was reading The Chronicles of Narnia and Nancy Drew when I was seven, and this girl could care less about barely being able to read a cereal box. She has big brothers to read her words, parents to read her stories, and she simply has never felt the need. While I thought I was maybe okay with this, the system we still have to peripherally navigate, isn’t really. A (self-imposed) 30-minute evaluation resulted in words like “delayed,” and “potential learning disabilities,” and “totally not ready for second grade,” kinda shook me and made me second guess all sorts of things.

Just know, I LOVE teachers. I so appreciate schools. They’ve provided structure at times for my children who needed it. They’ve provided support at times for my children who struggled with things I didn’t feel equipped to navigate. Systems are needed when you have to educate millions of children in a nationally standardized way. I could never do what they do, day in and day out.

Systems can be hard though. I think they catch some big and important things and I think they overlook some big and important things. I’ve had a child who struggled with the system because he learned, and processed, and read much slower than others. I’ve had a child who struggled with the system because he learned, and processed, and read much faster than others. But for the most part I’ve agreed, and understood, and felt as if they were hurdles that were beneficial to learn how to navigate as a part of life. Hard work, patience, respecting authority, self-control, waiting for others…

The Things That Fear Hides

It hit me differently with this girl, this time around though. It was unexpected in that they were words and descriptors that were so utterly different from the ones I’ve gathered while observing her vivacious, bright, quick-witted mind for the last 7 years.

This child I birthed and know so deeply in ways others don’t have the privilege to. I hear her stories, I watch her play, I experience her thoughts and ideas. She’s quite possibly the most confident (yet realistic) child I’ve ever met, and for the first time ever I caught a little glimpse of her confidence faltering. And it killed me.

I’m not one for false confidence. It’s shaky ground that will not age well, but it’s so important to me that they understand the gifts that God truly formed them with. That they see them, develop them, use them, and understand that much will be required of them in those areas in exchange.

I want her and others to see those precious gifts in ways that a thirty-minute evaluation or a standardized test will not show.

I went to bed so conflicted and worried, and woke up like God was gently shaking me and reminding me of who she really was. Who he made her to be. Who I’ve always known her to be, yet was forgetting in my worries.

Who IS My Child?

She’s like my very own Anne of Green Gables. Some of my kids are smart, some are funny, but she’s that brilliantly witty combination of both. She quotes Shakespeare (“All’s fair in love and war,” she’ll say to her big brother complaining of unfairness). Her vocabulary and ability to communicate deep things takes my breath away. Not just remembering words, but hearing them, understanding them, and using them ages later in perfect context.

She loves every place we’ve ever lived or visited. She adores the beauty of the mountains, the excitement of the city, the peacefulness of the country, the newness and sociableness of hotels, the coziness of a 350 square foot travel trailer….

She loves interacting with people, yet she can play by herself for hours upon hours. She’s never been bored. She taught herself how to ride a bike in about 17 seconds.

She’s fascinated by how things work, how things are made, how things came to be. Her theological questions and connections blow me away. She loves documentaries, she loves creating things and describing things, she loves stories.

Her imagination is intense, her excitement is intense, her anger is intense, her frustration is intense, her love is intense. I’m not sure she’s ever felt anything partially or halfway in her life. She says what she means and she means what she says.

She will talk to anyone. Not like a child meaninglessly chattering away to any person who will pretend to listen… but wherever I take her, she almost always manages to locate and plant herself next to some other soul, whether 3-years-old or 93-years-old, to effortlessly connect with them and draw them out. Eventually I’ll find her, passionately, yet matter-of-factedly discussing family relationships, hopes and dreams, personality characteristics of grandchildren, favorite places traveled, shared frustrations of life, or how they like their job, or being married, or getting old, or starting kindergarten…

Give her 5 minutes on a playground, and she’ll have a “pack of boys” (in her words) following her around, fighting her battles, and playing her games. Not because she needs to dominate or control, but because she’s insanely confident and her excitement is contagious.

She sees people and gets people and figures out how to love them practically. When I have a migraine she holds my hand and brings me ice packs. She lectured my husband before leaving on a recent trip with the grandparents, that he better take good care of me and make my coffee just like she does, until her return.

She is a gift and she has a gift.

Learning My Child

I say all this, not because it’s important to me that people understand home-schooling, or question public-schooling, or tell me comforting things like I’ve done the very best I could with her (I haven’t). And honestly, her summer reading tutor is absolutely wonderful and knowledgeable and much-appreciated, and knowing my daughter, she’ll probably be reading The Iliad and War and Peace by next week. But my point is, that even if she isn’t, that’s really okay too.

Ever since she was born, my verse for her has always been Luke 1:45. “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord had said to her will be accomplished.” Because it will. Not because she will accomplish it herself, or I will, or anyone else will, but because HE will.

If their God-given strengths aren’t diminished by their God-given weaknesses, then they certainly aren’t going to be by their world-given “weaknesses.” Even if we’re going about this all wrong it’s not going to change who they are and who they were created to be. No parent, or school, or system, or curriculum could ever take away what was given to them by the hand of God. We need to look at our children and learn them. See their struggles and help them, watch for their gifts and value them, not because they are our child, but because they are a person made in the image of God.

Originally published HERE on www.desiringgod.com

On a recent vacation, I sat on the beach enjoying a sliver of one of those exquisitely designed days: clear sunny sky, warm breeze, the Atlantic Ocean that stunning mix of clear and steel blue.

My four kids were content and un-requiring (for once), so I sunk into my chair to take it all in. Almost immediately, a child walked into the expanse of sand between me and the sea. I watched as he aimlessly wandered up and down the beach, cell phone in hand, eyes squinting at his little screen, completely oblivious to everything around him.

It made me think about parenting — not this particular kid or his particular parents — but my own parenting.

Oblivious to Beauty

Vacations tend to provoke all kinds of ideas about life, work, balance, and everything you want to do differently when you get back. The quietness and loveliness contrasts real life so much it begs for some recalibration. You realize, at some point along the way, you may have started heading the wrong direction.

It hit me as I watched this wandering, distracted kid, mesmerized by a tiny handheld device, oblivious to the glorious beauty stretching in every direction. Are the things I am consistently putting in front of my children helping them see and enjoy God, or are they blocking the view of him? It’s easy to simply focus on what not to put before them, but forget to show them beauty, or forget to teach them about beauty when they’re exposed to it.

Children Learn to See

My one-year-old was new to the beach this year. It wasn’t enough for me to plop her down in the hot sand, and tell her to have fun. I had to teach her how to experience and enjoy the beach — carry her to the water and help her begin to dip her toes in the waves. I had to point out the shells, and show her how to rinse the scratchy sand off her hands.

My five-year-old is a bit further along. She knows how to dig for sand crabs, and points out how the ocean changes shades of blue from day to day. My older boys can now swim out to the sand bar and catch waves. The oldest notices cloud formations, warning me there will likely be an evening storm. They’re each learning to see and savor the beach. Just like I am.

Five Ways to Teach Them Beauty

As I watched this all unfold, I realized how badly I want them to be able to experience and enjoy God. I want them to see him in ways I was oblivious to for such a huge portion of my life. My eyes were glued to lesser things that seemed so big and wonderful at the time, until I finally exchanged the poor shadows and reflections for the true and full source of all beauty.

And yet so easily with my parenting, I slip into rules and lecturing that (in the words of my 10-year-old) “make God sound like a grumpy old man.” I hide the beauty and the wonder.

How do I avoid this? Here are some resolutions I’m working through as a mother.

1. Put before my children what is true and lovely and excellent.

Saturate their lives with God’s word and God’s creation. What I put before them is often more important than what I am not. It’s so easy to surround them with what’s mediocre, flashy, and dumbed-down, and then wonder why they don’t respond to excellence when finally confronted with it.

2. Parent them like God parents me.

Am I parenting from God’s strength and grace, or from my emotions? My ultimate goal should be that my children desire to do what is good and right and excellent because that’s who God is, not just because I say so. Yes, children need to learn obedience and boundaries before they can enjoy freedom, but they are never too young to learn beauty.

3. Teach them and show them how everything points to God.

Teach them about beauty that makes our soul soar, and about ugliness that makes our soul ache. It could be the sunset, or an artistic masterpiece, or Greek mythology with its capricious and temperamental gods, or a musician singing about sorrow or longing, or a movie that make us laugh, or well-written literature about the triumph of good over evil. It all points to God.

And don’t waste the ugliness that ends up before them, because it can make the beauty that much clearer. Point it out if needed, and talk about it with them. The goal isn’t developing cynicism, but identifying truth and valuing beauty. If we’re regularly showing them beauty and excellence, it quickly becomes easier to identify a counterfeit.

We might talk about why an overheard word is wrong, or why acts of violence in our world are so contrary to God’s character, or what that TV commercial is trying to sell us and how. The light shines through far brighter in the darkness. Use discretion, but make sure they understand that it’s the gates of hell that shall not prevail against Christ and his church — not the other way around.

4. Stop relying on someone else to do the majority of this for me.

God has not given this particular job first to teachers, or Christian radio, or even our church. God entrusted these sons and daughters to my husband and me. Teaching them should be a constant, intentional, organic process in our home and outside of it — at times, requiring surprisingly few words.

Point out God’s handiwork in how plants grow and in the beauty of nature. Pray together and often, and about lots of things. Read God’s word, and memorize it together. Lead them to the source. Resist the urge to lecture or package it up into entertaining little child-friendly snippets, while underestimating the power that simply God’s word and his creation can have on a child over time. Let the Holy Spirit work. Allow them to experience the wonder and joy of God as he wants them to see it, not the weariness that can so easily come when I hit them over the head with God’s truth as I want them to see it.

5. Enjoy God in my own life and allow them to witness it.

Don’t focus so much on my children’s souls that I neglect my own. How can I point out beauty to them if I can’t see it myself? Why would they yearn for the joy of knowing God if that joy is not evident in me? My life needs to revolve around Christ, not my children. I can parent far better when my heart is set on him first.

I’m slowly learning this in my own life. I’m learning how to see and savor God in the peaceful moments, as well as in the chaos. But knowing God isn’t a journey we begin once we’ve hit adulthood; it’s one we embark on the second we can see, and hear, and smell, and taste, and touch.

My children belong to God, not to me, and they were created to know and enjoy their Maker in the same way I do. We are on that journey together. My job as their parent is to point them to their Father, teach them to truly see him, and help them grasp their need for a Savior. That is why we teach them “beautiful” — because there is nothing more beautiful than the cross and the One it purchased for us — the One whom every other beautiful thing reflects.

On Learning Our Children

Let’s Teach Our Kids ‘Beautiful’