Training Your Child Part 3 - The Interview with Vicki Tillman, Part 1

As promised a few weeks ago, I am publishing the results of a long-distance interview with Vicki Tillman, one of the "7 Sisters" at http://7sistershomeschool.com/ and a professional life coach.

"Our Vicki" at Seven Sisters and Homeschool High School Helps

She was kind enough to agree to help me in my term-long exploration of my children's own career paths, something originally sparked by our reading Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.

So here is the first part of that interview, basically copied and pasted from our notes. They make excellent reading and Vicki is full of great advice.

Kat, this was fun! Thanks for the opportunity!- Vicki

1. Judging from the timeline on your website profile, I’m assuming you explored your own mid-life career change before helping your homeschooled children work through theirs - what advantages do you think homeschooling parents would gain from re-visiting their own career goals before nurturing their teens’ goals? How should they do this? Good question, Kat! I did actually go back to work after being a stay-at-home homeschooling mom. I homeschooled and worked. In order to do that sanely, I needed to work in a career that would be life-giving to me so that I wasn’t too drained to enjoy my time with my family. It took prayer and an honest look at what God had created me to do. At that time, I wasn’t trained in Career Exploration but that’s what I did for myself: I evaluated my God-given strengths (people have always come to me with their problems, I’m a good listener, I’m intuitive). I evaluated my weaknesses (I can’t count, I’m not great at details). I evaluated my family’s needs (homeschool schedule, support systems/activities involvement, budget). I evaluated my values (time with family/flexible schedule, time to homeschool and go to church). All these put together pointed to one career for me: Counseling (which eventually naturally added Life and Career Coaching).

2. I’m rather assuming in question 1 that career goals are first explored during the high school years, but are there things one can do with one’s children prior to that?

Oh my, yes. When children are young:

• We read biographies of great role models 
• We introduce them to leaders and good people and diverse kinds of people 
• We teach them life skills, manners, service and good character
• We teach them awareness of God, themselves, the world God made
• We give them many different experiences (like field trips and choirs and science experiments and history projects and writing assignments…)

All of these are early Career Exploration because the basis of Career Exploration is self-knowledge and experiences!

3. I’ve been watching my own children for a long time - a bit like Jesus’s mother, Mary, who treasured up things in her heart when Jesus was a boy - however, most of what I’m seeing is children with weird, whacky, and impractical career goals. One of them wants to be a frog! How do you discern the dross from the gold?

Ha! One of my kids wanted to grow up and be a lizard. He’s now working on his PhD in Comparative Literature. My advice is to hold the idea of careers lightly until they enter high school. Let them enjoy learning about themselves, God, people and the world around them. If you see a strength, give them opportunities to develop that strength without taking the joy out of it. 

In high school, I definitely suggest teens do a Career Exploration course. Every teen is different:

• Some of my kids have done this in 9th grade just to get the ideas flowing (but not making a career decision). Then they repeat the course in 11th grade. 
• Some of my kids only needed Career Exploration in 11th grade because they had some sense of direction early on (at 11th grade they simply needed to clarify and solidify their decisions).

4. You advocate a wide swathe of experiences for teens as part of their career exploration, but what about the teen who knows exactly what he or she wants to be at a young age?

Yes, every teen is different. I had one teen who wanted to be a photographer from the time she entered high school. I still had her do a Career Exploration course to help her solidify her decision (so that she would not feel regrets 1/2 way through college). I also gave her a few non-photography electives in high school that could broaden her experiences. However, the bulk of her Fine Arts and elective credits were Art and Photography related. (BTW- she is a college graduate now and a successful full-time photographer.)

5. Is there a clear step-wise approach to career exploration, or is it a more organic experience?

There’s not one right way to do Career Exploration. However, the steps I’ve done with my teens have been based on: 

• Self-knowledge (What are their God-given strengths, weaknesses and personality?)
• Knowledge of God’s leading (What are their experiences, role models, understanding of God’s working in them- through understanding God’s workings, listening to others’ input, knowing self?)
• Clarification of values (What is important to them in career/lifestyle: time, leisure, community/church involvement, family, finances?)
• Knowing what’s out there (What can they learn from career interest tests and exploration of career descriptions/outlook/education/salary?)
• Trying on hats (Can they shadow, interview or apprentice?)
• Development of job search skills (Help them create mission statements, resumes, cover letters and learn interview skills.) 

(BTW- This is exactly what I’ve done with my kids and hundreds of local homeschool high schoolers… and what is available in 7SistersHomeschool.com’s Career Exploration Bundle.

6. What happens when your child is desperate to be, say, a rock star and … ahem … they really can’t sing or play an instrument?

Yeah…I’ve run into that a few times over the years. Failure is a good learning experience. If you can allow them to have some experiences during high school in their “want-to” field, the lack of giftedness usually becomes clear to them. Then, you can lovingly help them explore something more realistic. 

However, if you give them the opportunity to fail and they still want to pursue, you can talk to them, tell them what you’re willing to help fund or not and then see how hard they are willing to pursue that dream on their own. I know one mediocre guitarist who scraped through a music major in college thinking he would be a rock star…and he did end up in the music industry in a totally different job. He planned his way but God directed his path.

7. Along the same lines, what about a child who wants to be a receptionist when they grow up, which I think of as the kind of job that teens have part-time in the summer because they’re not really careers?

That’s when you go to CareerOneStop.org (US Department of Labor) and explore that career’s training requirements and income. Then do a good Financial Literacy course with them… On the other hand, Office Managers (upscaled receptionist/admin) make some pretty decent money.

This is the end of Part 1 of Vicki's interview. Be sure to subscribe to the blog so you can get Part 2 of the interview sent straight to your inbox.

NB: Vicki and her colleagues invited me onto their Homeschool High School podcast back in June. You can still hear our discussion about the US vs the UK homeschooling scene at this link here.

Training Your Child for their Career

As my eldest is getting near the end of her homeschooling journey, I’m turning attention more and more toward supporting her to become who she is meant to be.

As teens, they are starting to spread their wings

Back in March of 2016, I wrote a blog post that sort of touched on this (see http://boyschooling.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-best-job-in-world.html). 

What I didn’t make clear is that these thoughts had started out from a place of fear - fear that cookie-cutter education was going to try to shape her into something she wasn’t created for. I’d seen glimpses of it already at nursery, where her personality was clashing with “the way things are done”, and the pressure to conform one’s behaviour to make the least possible waves was being frequently impressed upon her and the other children in her class.

So, like I said in the earlier blog post, sometimes we may begin down a path because we’re running away from something, only to discover that it’s actually the better journey.

In this case, I suppose I’m talking about purpose. Or vision. Or even career.

The first time I realised that homeschooling entailed the unearthing of a pre-designed, perfect path for each of my children was upon reading one of the greatest homeschooling books of all time: the Clarksons’ Educating the Wholehearted Child.

Some of Sally's best homeschooling books

I’m so glad this was one of the first books about homeschooling I ever stumbled upon in the book store. Chapter 1 is called “The Christian Home”, and my original edition from 2001 is simply coloured yellow because I highlighted every single sentence and verse in the margins. (I’ve since bought the 2011 edition when Sally herself was having lunch in my home, and told me the 3rd edition had new chapters in it about high school. My chapter 1 is now highlighted in blue!).

It was here that I was struck by Proverbs 22 about training your children the way they should go. The more I looked into the verse, the more I came to understand that it didn’t mean you should make sure they go to church when they’re young so they stay a Christian all their lives, but that you should nurture their natural tendencies - their God-given personalities and talents - and then see them succeed at what God has designed for them all along.

Of course, that’s more easily said than done. You know how it is when they’re 8 and want to be a police doctor who rides a motorcycle; or a daddy of 11 children who lives at home with you and calls the children AJ, BJ, CJ, DJ, etc; or they just want to be a frog.

But here’s the thing … there comes a time when your children will be 15 or 16 or 17, and something is blossoming inside them that you can see is a yearning, a burning, a passion.

Something just starts to bloom in a teen

For my eldest, this happened in September of 2015 while we were reading the opening of Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. I picked it as our “inspirational book” for the year because she was talking about going to university to study astronomy.

I did not know it would be the most life-changing book for her that we’ve ever read.

Hadfield was the first Canadian in space. The book is a thought-provoking look at the lessons he learned while being an astronaut that can be helpfully applied in our mundane lives here on earth: issues like sweating the small stuff (because being inattentive can cause havoc); or why aiming to be a zero can be a good thing; or how to carry on after “mountain top” experiences.

The fact that Hadfield ever got on the “mountain top” of space exploration is a miracle: when he first decided he wanted to be an astronaut in 1969, there was no Canadian space program, and NASA took no foreign astronauts.

Basically, the dream was nothing more than a fantasy.

Except for one thing: Hadfield wasn’t going to give up. He started to live his life as though he would one day be an astronaut: he made choices at school, university, in his job, all focused on getting him ready to be an astronaut, even with everything stacked against him.

This point about an early life focus is made in the book about page 4: “From that night [of the Apollo 11 landing], my dream provided direction to my life. I recognized even as a 9-year-old that I had a lot of choices and my decisions mattered.”

It was upon reading that sentence that my eldest burst into tears. I’ll spare you the histrionics that followed, but eventually, I got out of her that she didn’t want to be an astronaut or a scientist or a linguist or any of the choices ahead of her, but a writer. 

She always dreamed of being a writer, she was writing at the moment, she was going to keep writing and become a writer. In fact, she vowed that very day that she was going to live her life from then on as though she IS a writer, not a wannabe, not a dreamer, but despite the odds, a bona fide author.

Helping her achieve her dream is a great privilege

The way this decision has influenced her path ever since is clear. She is doing what every successful author has done - she writes and writes and writes. She studies the craft, she reads, she networks, she gets mentored and she mentors others, and slowly, the efforts are starting to pay off, even now.

I’m still waiting for the a-ha moment for my other three children (to be honest, I think I’m waiting for it for myself, too!), but just knowing and believing that these people, these human beings, are created for unique callings, I’m on the look out for clues. 

This one may be a long-time in the process!

If we have one job that we should do well as homeschooling parents, it’s exploring and trying to discern what their paths are.

In the next blog post, I’m going to share with you some ideas from Vicki Tillman of Seven Sisters Homeschool. She is a career- and life-transition coach, who will have tips and ideas for how we parents can support our children in this essential endeavour.

Boy and Computers - Our 21st-Century Dilemma

This is a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a long time - probably for four years or more — and it’s about computer use, particular when homeschooling boys.

We all recognize there’s a problem. It may not be your child, but you know that Facebook is full of moms (and it’s almost always moms) who write SOS messages about their child’s obsessive focus on some kind of screen, be it tv, computer, laptop, tablet, or gaming device.

I know all about this. I’ve been there … in spades!

When my eldest son, who is now 14, was about ten years old, we went through a period where he was exhausted all the time. We soon learned that it was because he was setting his alarm for 2 am so he could sneak down and play Minecraft all night.

Little Boys and their Games

Ever since then, I have been a loud voice on the internet for vigilance and caution when it comes to screens. I have read just about every book there is on the subject. Some titles that come to mind are Boys Adrift, Wired Child, several titles by Michael Gurian, and numerous scientific studies where changes in white and gray matter in brain scans make for some very uncomfortable reading.

Further, we had an au pair for a season when my children were younger, a Spanish student who was improving her English in order to start graduate studies in optometry (where all the reference books are written in English). She stressed to me almost daily that children need to limit their screen time for the sake of their far vision. Numerous studies backed up her assertions: myopia is on the rise because kids don’t get outside enough and flex those far-vision muscles.

Even with all my research and my vigiliance, I’m still struggling to keep my boy off screens. One reason is that he clearly is a “technopath” (a term borrowed from the delightful super-hero film called “Sky High”). Honestly, if your computer is acting up, he’ll come over and hug it, and it will work again!

He even took an MIT course about computer coding when he was 12, and received an A.

It’s tough. What to do? He’s good at this! 

Got a problem? Let me fix it!

I posed this question to Richard Freed, the psychologist who wrote Wired Child. He said to me in a private email that children need to have screens limited in their young lives for a whole host of reasons. He suggested to me that I have my son pursue a broad-ranged academic path of study rather than focus too much on technology itself, and to ensure that any computer use is productive rather than simply gaming, with an emphasis, perhaps, on coding. He added:

• “Future tech use will continue to pose risks of addiction as your son has already been there, and because it makes it harder for kids to use tech productively as they get older.” (private correspondence)

All these years of concern and suspicion came to a head this week. He was supposedly doing his homework for an online class, but he was acting especially secretive when his siblings were walking into the room, so I decided to secretly film him. The 35-minute video was very telling.

As I thought: it was 25 minutes of swapping between windows - Reddit social media threads, pop-up windows of games, notifications from his buddies on Steam, chat boards with classmates - and, mixed among these numerous and frequent distractions, he probably managed ten minutes of reading an online summary of his book and re-wording it for his assignment.

Thirty-five minutes of screen time where five, at most, was productive. (Although I would argue that even that five minutes was also unproductive because he read a summary instead of the book - since I teach this class, I can tell you that the teacher is MOST UNIMPRESSED!)

So you know what happened, don’t you? Time for confrontation.

"I'm comin' after you, Boy!"

But here’s where things go a different path than you probably expect. A fourteen-year-old is a much different animal to a ten-year-old, and he actually stated his case. 

Sure, he says — summary and not book? Bad. Sorry. Swapping back and forth between work and play? Could do better. 

However, he notes that he swims up to 2 1/2 hours every day for swim team; he contributes to jobs around the house like mowing the lawn. That day, he had cooked lunch for everyone; walked the dogs with me; wanted to go on a bike ride to the shops but I said he couldn’t (not exactly what I said, but the bottom line is the same - I talked him out of it); he had showered and played guitar and helped my younger son fix something on the computer game he was being allowed to play, and that night, he was going to his friend’s house for a night of socializing. He had even done some of his homework even though it was Spring Break.

In the course of a normal week, he went on, he had youth group one night, a leadership class every other week, a 3-hour slot for volunteering in the library, an academic co-op, Trail Life (a group like Boy Scouts), and church. He had spent the weekend camping. In the pouring rain.

"I'm really a sensible guy."

Where in there, he asked me, was his life not well-rounded?

Suddenly, I felt a bit foolish.

So I have re-evaluated what it is that I’m so concerned about, because I still have an uneasiness about the length of time he’s on the computer, especially if it’s going to be lop-sided against his academic things. 

I’ve boiled it down to this: I would like more reading from a hard copy of a book and more writing by hand. I think these are media and skills he still needs to cultivate, and I realize that to be reasonable, I’ll have to give him a check-list of exactly what and for how long. We can both measure the progress then, and I won’t have a leg to stand on after that. 

Further, I still feel he needs to limit the time he’s looking at a brightly lit screen. if we could negotiate no more than 2 hours on the screen a day, plus some time for him to do social media on his wifi-only smart phone, and no screens at all between 9 pm at night and 9 am in the morning, then I think I would be fully satisfied that his life was balanced.

Judging from our reasoned conversation this week, I have every confidence that we’ll come to this mutually acceptable arrangement, and we will have both moved forward in our relationship, especially in terms of honoring each other.

Most of all, I've learned something really important: this teen-parenting stuff isn't all bad.

My lovable teen!

#100WaystoHomeEd: What to do About Teens

Thank you all for joining me and home educated families like us in the #100WaystoHomeEd challenge started by Jax Blunt at the Making It Up blog.

Previous to this blog post here was Kelly Allen's about lifestyle education: pop on over to later to see what she has to say here: 

https://kellyallenwriter.com/2017/03/02/100-ways-to-home-educate-learning-through-life/

I've been allowed to blog about my favorite topic -

homeschooling teens 

(forgive my American spelling and terminology: I moved from the UK to Texas last year and am trying to "go native").

A lot of people seem to hit those secondary years with their children and just lose the plot. It's all "exams, exams, exams," or, in the US, collect those dual-credit hours (for getting the jump on university), and SATs (to nab some scholarship money), but the atmosphere is the same -- time to knuckle down and work, work, work.

All work and no play can give
teens a very dull life!

I think it's sad when I look back at all the fun we used to have: co-ops and playdates, salt-dough maps, nature walks, and Lego.

Remember when you spent
the whole day outside?

It's been one of my desires to keep some of that fun in our studies despite ramping things up for secondary school, because there's more way to learn than simply hitting the books.

We've kept this "living learning" running throughout our entire homeschooling career, making use of co-ops year-on-year. This is when you get together with others to study a subject. History seems to make a good focus, and we've been part of history co-ops since 2005. It was one of the first things we organized when we moved to Texas, and a great way to make local friends.

Co-op 2013

Co-op 2014

Co-op 2017

I also like to incorporate a variety of tools for thinking through the information, and for displaying it in a lasting way. Lapbooking has been one of my favorites in this aspect (see the menu to the right for other lapbooking blog posts). We've also taken the opportunity to act things out, assign independent projects, and even build Lego models!

Lapbooking and Lego!
Who says teens learn only through readin' and writin'?

We still take the odd field trip, too. It's important to contextualize your history if possible. When we lived in England, there were amazing opportunities within a relatively short drive (compared to Texas, anyway), but we continue to grab our chances when we can. Coming back from a recent dog show, we took a detour to visit one of Texas's most important battle sites.

San Jacinto Monument
The battle lasted only 18 minutes
and secured Texas' independence from Mexico.

Thank you for visiting us here at Boyschooling, and seeing how we continue to keep some of the magic from our early years in our secondary-level of homeschooling. This mixes amongst our Charlotte Mason-style learning, outsourcing some subjects via online courses (the English ones of which I am the tutor), dual-enrollment courses at the local community college, and preparing for the national, standardized test called the SAT.

Please browse through the blog posts I've been writing about our journey since 2011, many of the early ones of which were about how boys learn.

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Planning for History in a CM way -- Texas History for High School

Let me take you on a journey - the way that I apply the Charlotte Mason method to a subject like history. In this case, it’s Texas History, a requirement for public-school children in this state at both 4th grade and 7th grade, and again, at university.

Of course, as homeschoolers, we didn't have to do this study -- ever. However, we decided that we would because my kids have grown up in England and only just moved to my home state in June 2016. It also would be a great way to invite along some other homeschoolers in a co-op, and widen our social circle.

In Texas - time to study Texas history!

The challenge was to map a well-documented study that's normally for ages 9/10 and 12/13, onto a more rigorous expectation for high schoolers. Further, to move away from the textbooks used at these years and even at college, and find some living books that would cover the sweeping timeline of the territory.

Just a reminder of what I mean by a living book — 

• A book that engages the reader and draws him or her into learning more about a subject; it is typically narrative in style and written by an authority on the material. Living books are written by someone with a passion for the material or by someone who has experienced the story first hand. - Sassafras Science

Textbooks are not living books, in general. There are some exceptions, such as the Exploring Creation books by Jeannie Fulbright from Apologia Science.

Another criteria for choosing books was avoiding twaddle. Twaddle means probably what you think it means — books that are silly, babyish, basic, usually bitty, full of pictures without extended text. Texas History has a lot of this rubbish on offer, probably because it’s a school subject and publishers can get away with quantity over quality.

Once I established the kind of book I was looking for, it was time to scour Amazon. I love Amazon because you can input a book title - for example, even the textbooks — and check out the related titles that come up in the search bar.

In some ways, though, I got to cheat on this step. I knew a living book that we used years ago, when I touched on the history of the Alamo with my children almost ten years ago. The book was called Journey to the Alamo by Melodie A Cuate. It’s one of those stories where modern-day children get whisked back in time by a magical trunk, and find themselves in the midst of the battle. Not especially strong for the high schoolers I was teaching, but a favorite for the middle-grade kids, and helpful for the search threads on offer when looking on Amazon.

I also googled Texas History and homeschooling, to get the way that other parents have navigated this subject before. No reason to reinvent the wheel, right?

Finally, I went to my library to expose myself to the bigger picture of Texas history than I remember from my own 7th grade education. I’m lucky that my local library has a very creditable collection, its shelves fairly full of Texas-related living books in the adult section. It was here that I hit on the best find: my spine book of the year.

“Good-bye to a River” is a memoir by John Graves. He wrote it in the 1950s after taking a canoeing trip down the Brazos, stopping by many of the homesteads of people whose family traced roots back to the 19th century. He picked up lore and legend, myth and hearsay, and as he floated down the river, camped on the shores, fished and hunted and tried to keep his puppy warm and dry, he took the experience and turned it into a repository of some of the last memories of people who had been there in Texas’s early days of settlement.

That is, settlement in the northwestern part of the state, a place that remained wild and dangerous until almost 1880, and rarely included much in the narratives of the southeastern portion and its famous six flags.

The only problem with the book is that it has its moments of gruesome raids and scalpings, so it’s in need of some editing and generous warnings about certain chapters that one should probably skip entirely.

My second book of choice was Sam Houston’s Republic. It came highly recommended on homeschooling sites, and the first pages seemed promising. Definitely a living book, but ever since buying it and trying to push through it, I’m backtracking. It’s not very well written, extremely digressive, and the kids literally groan whenever I open it.

Not a good sign.

These two books are working as our spine - the books that I use to take information from and discuss in our meetings. We also lapbook/scrapbook our sessions, building up a picture of regime change as we journey from Indian ranges, to Spanish and, to a lesser extent, French territory, Mexican colony, independent Republic, and the difficult years of unity and war. The overall idea is to vist the six flags of Texas while acknowledging the ever-present danger of the Comanche peoples to the north.

Six flags of Texas - with a Seventh!

We also have a bank of books that we’re reading and enjoying as bedtime reading or independent reading.

These include the remaining titles of Cuate’s Mr Barrington’s Trunk series, of which Journey to the Alamo was first. She followed this by San Jacinto, Goliad, Gonzales, Galveston, Plum Creek and La Salle’s Settlement. If you have middle schoolers, you could do your whole year of Texas history by reading this series. The only problem is that it’s expensive to buy, so make your library do it for you!

Another series that we’re using is written by Janice Shefelman. Titles include Comanche Song, Spirit of Iron, and Willow Creek Home. She also writes a book about German immigrants who arrived in Galveston (A Paradise Called Texas), one of the most important eras of Texas history when it comes to my own family! 

The Cuate and Shefelman books are great for 5th-7th grade, but not really great for high schoolers. We read them anyway as a family for fun, but sometimes the way to push the older students is to turn them loose and make them discover their own info. We’ve completed one sub-section of our study when, over Christmas, they had a bird-watching project to complete.

Big Boys do Scrapbooks

Next, because we’re entering the era of the Republic, we’ll be exploring origins of our Republic luminaries like Travis, Crockett, Bowie, Houston, and Fannin, each high schooler responsible for researching one of them. We’ll also be combining the middle schoolers and high schoolers for a salt dough recreation of the Alamo.

A trip to San Antonio is de rigueur as the weather improves, too!

I hope this blog post has accomplished two things: first, given you insight and perhaps encouragement that you can choose your own era of history and make it part of a Charlotte Mason education, particularly with its emphasis on living books. I should say here that I’m not saying that this alone is “the Charlotte Mason method”, but part of a whole philosophy that includes all the other subjects and various hallmarks like copywork, dictation, nature study, etc.

However, people often ask on social media about how to design their own CM-style history curriculum, so this post will probably give you an idea of the process.

Second, if you need ideas for Texas History, this should give you, at worst, a head start!

Bicycling with Teens -- Why is Homeschooling Them so Hard?

When it comes to homeschooling teens, I’ve come to think it’s the same as riding a bicycle. However, I don’t mean that in terms of never forgetting how to do it. 

Instead, it’s like those pivotal moments in a child’s life at 6 or 7 or 8 when the training wheels come off but the rider is still unsteady.  Do you hold on? Do you let go?

Sometimes, I just don’t know.

What should I do???

I’ve been homeschooling four children for nearly thirteen years, but it’s just now that I realize that homeschooling teenagers is hard.

I don’t mean hard because the level of work is hard. After all, I’m an experienced secondary teacher, so I’ve educated teenagers before. I’ve run more than four different youth groups in the past twenty years, so I’ve mentored teens before.

I mean, for goodness’ sake, I even WAS a teenager, once upon a time! I know they can be hormonal and fickle, over-tired and grumpy.

So why am I finding it so hard as my own daughter creeps toward 16 1/2 years old? Because it has just hit me: 

SHE … IS … NEARLY … GROWN … UP.

Arghghgh! 

Blooming before my eyes!

Yes, yes, yes … I know that we never stop learning, we never stop growing, and that even when she leaves home for college or work or whatever, we’ll still be connected. My own mom and I are closer than we’ve ever been, so I’m not afraid of losing her once she packs that bag and heads out the door.

But it is hard. The time frame, for example.  In just a few years, she will be DONE with homeschool. My chance to guide her and share her studies and explore what she explores is nearly over.

It is hard. The choices — OH, the choices!!! Whether SATs, or AP classes, CLEP or honors courses, online MOOCs or dual-enrollment, or bog-standard curriculum and our beloved Charlotte Mason approach to our studies. I’m sure I haven’t even touched on all the options, so I’m trying to stay true to our family mission: love to learn and learn to love.

Our Motto: Love to Learn and Learn to Love

But you know what makes it hardest? She is starting down the path of being dogged and determined about the vision she has for her own life. She is wanting to put her stamp on things - create her own narrative - and it’s causing friction between us that’s never been there before.

It’s not altogether a bad place to be. Standing back and watching her, I know that it’s the start of a really good phase. Like riding a bike, she has told me to take off the training wheels and give her a push. But if I let go and she falls, then I’ll be blamed for letting go, even if she asked me to do so.

So homeschooling teens is like riding a bike. I provided her with the best one I can afford in terms of time and money, and now I have to let her ride away on it under her own power, on her own path, steering her own course.

A Path of Her Choosing

And I’ll watch her from the side lines, with tears of pride in my eyes.