As I have written in my previous blog, I was out for a week because of pneumonia. I was right in the middle of making lesson plans for my children when this happened. This ‘interruption’ will definitely push back my planned schedule to start studying. While I was in the hospital, Artsy Princess and Flash Boy also got sick one after the other. I came home after six days only to find that Sunshine Girl is also starting to cough. Today, she is really down with fever while Artsy Princess and Flash Boy are recovering. I, too, am slowly recovering from my bout with pneumonia. I still cough once in a while and I find myself tiring easily.
A day before I was confined, I received a Facebook message from a pregnant homeschool mom. She was also worried about her children’s schooling because she had to stay in bed for the pregnancy. I wrote her that I will write a blog about this but because of the confinement, I wasn’t able to. Last night I checked and found out that she has lost the pregnancy. This will mean more time away from homeschooling her children because of the time it will take for her body to recover from her D&C operation. More worries for her, most likely.
Isn’t this just what life is all about? It is a life that is full of interruptions. But are these things really interruptions? We have to pause and consider Proverbs 16:9 “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps”. Looking at this verse, I believe that we can conclude that these are not interruptions. Things like these may be unplanned for us, but not for the Lord. The Lord directs our steps, He directs our days and He has a plan for us. Sometimes though, because we are mostly the ones in charge of our children’s education, we are wracked with guilt and worries that we are going to make our children late. We worry that our children will not be at par with others who go to school. We worry endlessly and fear that we are not doing a good job educating our children. But what can you do when illness strikes? When you face a death in the family? When someone in the family is undergoing a crisis and needs your help?
When I was still just a few years into homeschooling, our family went through all these things. We had two deaths in the family, we had to transfer to another house, I got pregnant and was ordered full bed rest from the third month to the seventh month of my pregnancy, we transferred again to another house, our children were confined so many times in the hospital and so many more – it was exhausting! All these in the midst of homeschooling. We had so many interruptions I was tempted to give up! I feared that my kids were getting late. All the stresses that our family went through drove my obsessive-compulsive tendencies even more so that I pushed my children to study more and more. Sadly, this has resulted in two major events: I experienced having a panic attack while teaching them. I was trembling, on the verge of tears, fearing something horrible will happen soon, and all this because of the fear that I was not doing a good job of teaching them. The other major thing that happened was that I saw in my children that they became tired of school. This was because I pushed them so hard, they did not want to study anymore. I had to really stop and search for new ways to educate them and evaluate even my own attitude towards our children’s education.
It was during this time when I sought the Lord some more and asked Him to direct my ways. I learned that “There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven” (Ecc. 3:1). This means that these things happen for just a season in our lives, illnesses, deaths, sensitive pregnancies, crises will not go on forever, it will only affect us for a season. We need to accept it gracefully and even be thankful to the Lord for all that He gives us. Good or bad, these are all from the Lord and He seeks the best for us, always.
Charlotte Mason (1842-1923),a British educator who developed her own philosophy of education while observing the students she was teaching, writes this about the Atmosphere of Education:
”When we say that "education is an atmosphere," we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a 'child-environment' especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child's level.” (More on Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education here.)
As we can see here, there is educational value in the child’s natural home atmosphere. It is not that we are overprotecting them by opting to educate them at home, instead, we are exposing them to the realities of our families’ daily lives and teaching them how to deal with all that comes to us.
So how do we apply all the “interruptions” that come in our lives and continue to educate our children in the best manner possible? Well, if mom really can’t get up due to a sensitive pregnancy, or she just gave birth, or in the case of the friend I mentioned earlier, had a D&C, then concentrate on teaching them life skills for now. Teach them to help the family out at home, serve and care for mom while she is in bed, older children can take turns caring for younger children. Young children can be taught to keep a house tidy and neat. A veteran homeschool mom that I spoke to before shared that when she had four children one after another, they totally stopped teaching academics to their two older children. Instead, they all worked at home caring for mom, caring for the babies and doing their housekeeping (they never had a helper). Now her two eldest are in college and both are doing very well.
The best part for my family is this, because my husband and I are truthful to our children when it comes to the trials that we go through, they have seen us struggle, they have witnessed our prayers but more importantly, they have seen the Lord’s hand at work in our family. Our family’s faith in the Lord is strengthened.
To conclude, let me live you with this: Wherever you are right now, wherever your child is at right now academically is exactly where the Lord plans you to be.
