When schools closed and sent children home for months, most parents’ expectations were shattered and their daily lives turned upside down.
Yet if you’ve also been sent home from your job, you have a tremendous opportunity to make homeschooling wonderful for your children and your entire family. The keys are love and faith and adjusting your expectations. When you grasp the awesome virtues of homeschooling, you’ll appreciate how it can empower your kids’ minds, souls, and lives.
SaveCalifornia.com has found 3 excellent messages to encourage you and your friends. These wise teachers can help you to actually enjoy homeschooling!
1. We really like The Home School Mom, who recommends, in light of the virus scare closing schools and sending children home,“Have grace with yourself and your kids—this is unprecedented in modern history, and it’s hard on everyone. Keeping expectations realistic will help you to prevent feelings of frustration and failure. We are seeing lots of parents asking about how to homeschool or help their children learn at home. These resources can help with scheduling, keeping kids engaged, and staying sane during social distancing. Be sure to check out our complete household planner and unit study downloads!”
2. And don’t miss Love & Logic, which has such practical wisdom for parents with children at home right now:“…the more routines the class has, the fewer discipline problems they will have to deal with. Kids feel safer, calmer and are more focused, and as a result there is more time spent on learning and less time spent dealing with problems.Do yourself a favor during these trying times. Establish and maintain routines for the home.”
Read the full article of master teacher Jim Fay of Love & Logic
3. Most importantly, this is your big opportunity to touch your children’s hearts. Here’s profound insight from parenting expert and pediatrician Meg Meeker:
Consider this: the time you are spending at home with your child is an opportunity to positively influence their development.
Research has proven spending consistent time with parents is crucial to a child’s developing identity. Here’s why.
When a child is young, she scours her mother and father’s faces for clues about life and herself.
She reads their body language, their mannerisms, their inflections, and she listens to their tone of voice in order to find out some very important things.
She needs to know what they believe about her.
Even as young as a year old, your child watches you to see if you are in a good mood or a bad mood. If you are in a good mood, he can go play because life is good.
If you are angry or upset, he is rattled and can’t settle easily.
As he grows older, he watches you more fervently. He wonders, Do you like being with him? Do you think that he is stupid or smart? Is he good? Does he matter? Do you like to hug and kiss him?
When he receives answers, then he begins to form a mental image of himself: he is a good, smart boy who is huggable, or he is a nuisance and is never worth being seen because no one pays attention.
Children shape an image of themselves by the messages we send them and then they internalize those messages. They become part of who they are.
Over time, if they repeatedly learn that we are happy to see them, they feel higher value.
If we ignore them and talk on our phones whenever they are in the room, they wonder whether or not they are worth being with.
In addition, children mimic our behaviors to see if they like them. If snarling makes people pay attention, they will try it.
If saying “I’m sorry” makes Mom feel better, then the kids, too, will try it.
My challenge for all of you is to make your children feel seen and loved during this tough time.
Visit SaveCalifornia.com’s Rescue Your Child site
“These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, and you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 and other Bible verses about raising children
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