Q: To circumcise or not to circumcise? I’m anxious about the subject and my husband and I disagree. What do you guys do? And what were your reasons? Thanks!
First, don’t be anxious (this is a biblical command for believers!) and stop reading nonsense anxiety-giving mom stuff on the Internet.
Trust your husband. Lean in to him more than what other voices say. It doesn’t even matter what I say really. Lean in to the Lord and to your husband. Let those two voices drown out all the others. Billions of little boys have lived just fine both ways over the course of history. It’s nothing to be anxious about. Listen to the Lord and to your husband.
I’m serious about the mom stuff online. Leave it alone. They will give you new things to be anxious about every minute of your child’s life.
God will lead you through your husband, again and again through your life. I’ve worked through this particular decision, too (we’ve faced it six times!), and God has always been faithful to lead us through Doug & continued prayer. He’ll lead y’all too.
Hey, I bet you haven’t read my book. Go right now and sign up to get it for free and I’ll send it out. It’s short and sweet but deals with how to face decisions like this. Now is a time to lean into the Lord, and pursue oneness with your husband, and not let a million other moms cause you anxiety and drive a wedge between you and your husband for the next twenty years.
God will lead you. Try to ignore what other women say; take all the fever-pitch opinions with a grain of salt. Pray and talk pray and talk pray and talk and God will lead you. Not saying it’s not important; just that it’s not worth anxiety. It’s not worth frustration at your hubs. Talk it through, yes. Think it through together. But ditch the anxiety. Let your mind and heart be at rest.
HOW TO HANDLE “MOM, I’M BORED!”
Q: I have a question for you Jess Connell, how do you handle children honestly telling you that they are bored. My almost 7 year old says this often at quiet time and I think because she’s so social (and has all younger brothers) she wants to interact during this time that I need to nap and rest and so I don’t know what to tell her often. She does school and chores in the morning as well as some chores in the afternoon. Just wondering if you had any strategy esp. for this age range and issue. Thanks and take your time.
A: Well, first, “bored” is kind of like a curse word in our house. When one of our kids says that, I tell them “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. There is absolutely no reason for you to ever be bored in our home. We have spent your daddy’s hard-earned money on hundreds of things that you can choose to do. You have an incredible array of options and you could go the rest of your life with only the items that exist in this home and never have a reason to be bored.”
Then I’ll usually prompt them at that point: “I want you to list out 5 (or 10, or more, depending on how despairing their attitude is… the more despairing/dramatic they are, the more I ask them to list) things you could do right now that would be interesting and that you could do cheerfully.”
If they struggle, I would ask them to sit for however long is necessary to come up with the list. Affirm any options they come up with. After a while, once they’ve started the list (and perhaps finished the # you gave them to list out), you add even more options to it… “or you could jump on the trampoline, sit and draw with markers, build animals with Legos, pull out your Bible and read about the amazing life of Joseph, make a domino design and then knock it down, go to your room and play your harmonica, ask your little brother if he wants to play “Guess Who?”, grab the bag of books and read about all sorts of amazing things, listen to books on tape, build towers for your baby brother to knock down, pull out one of the how-to-draw books and learn to draw something better than you used to be able to do.” Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Then restate: “See? You never have a reason to be bored in this house. There are always things to discover and think about… you have a wonderful mind and God has given you a desire to discover things. Now, which of these neat things are you going to do quietly and cheerfully this afternoon while mommy rests?”
This is my basic approach to this, and it typically only takes a few times of this (and the very occasional reminder) for them to be self-starters who make their own adventures and fun during quiet time, and never say “bored.” 
By the way– if they persist in this, or act as if the things we listed are terrible options, then I simply assign chores. And they keep doing them until I see genuine attitude change and a willingness to go about normal life, doing options like the ones listed above, with a cheerful demeanor.
Hope this helps!!
HOW WE HANDLE BATHTIME FOR OPPOSITE-GENDER SIBLINGS
I actually got TWO questions about this same topic this month. Here’s one of them:
Q: My daughter has recently started asking lots of questions about anatomy, why she is different than her brother, etc. At what point do you start separate bath times for different gendered siblings, enforcing closed doors during potty breaks, etc? Any thoughts?
You know, I can tell you the way we’ve handled it, but more than that, I want to give you some big-picture things to think about as you consider what’s best for your family.
As far as questions about anatomy, I handle those pretty matter-of-factly, according to the questions they’re asking. Consider if the question was, “why are my hands different shapes from my feet?” Or, “why are your hands so much bigger than my hands?” how you would answer that question? I give factual physical information according to what they need to know, and their curiosity level.
So I would tell any child (boy or girl) something like the following: “God gave us all privates so that we can go to the bathroom– everyone has a way to go pee-pee and a way to go poo-poo. Everyone goes poo-poo out of their bottoms. Boys and girls go pee-pee in different ways though. Boys have privates, called a penis, that stick out from their body, and they go to the bathroom that way. Girls have a vagina, and go pee-pee through a hole in their body. God made us different so that we can get married and make families.”
That’s very simple, factual, and –very likely– gives them the information they were wanting to know. ARE we different? HOW? And WHY? If they say, “can I see?” We say, “no. One day if you’re married you can see your husband/wife’s privates and they can see yours. Until then, you need to keep them to yourself and ask mom/dad/a doctor if you have a question, need help, or have a problem like if something itches or hurts.”
For bathtime, we separate genders after/around 4 years old. That seems to be the time when our kids have really noticed “wow, we’re different.” Is this a hard and fast RULE? No. But for us it has worked. It preserves modesty and allows for awareness of differences without encouraging foolish play based on curiosity. Same thing for closing the door while changing clothes and/or going potty.
If there is ever any touching, we address it directly, according to the seriousness of the action.
(Ex: For a 4 year old who reaches out to touch his younger brother’s bottom: “No-no. You are never to touch another person’s private/bottom/chest, etc. Do you understand me? Who is allowed to touch privates, and why? — they answer some variation of: mommy/daddy/doctor sometimes, for going potty or having a bath. — You must never do that again, and no one is to do that to you. Do you understand?”)
And then we move on. (By the way, this means that you need to be present with your children to watch and correct them, and not leave your children alone in the bath together.)
Now, there are times where someone is sick but someone else is getting a bath, so in a family, sometimes you say, “turn your eyes away but go ahead and run in and go potty,” or whatever. Real life happens, and we want to teach our kids to be flexible and protective toward one another amidst real life, not just robotically “follow the rules” but not actually learn to think and care for one another.
We occasionally allow older siblings (say, 5-9 years old) to take a bath with the toddler because they think the little one is so cute and fun. When that happens, I’m in the room the entire time just to make sure there’s no foolish play. I’ve also heard of other families keeping on bathing suits to let opposite-gendered kids bathe together longer.
I’m not saying what I’ve written here is “the way.” This is simply our way.
Big picture things we think about:
- Are they (or is one of them) aware of differences?
- Do they seem (or have they ever seemed) drawn to/bothered by/nervous about it?
- How is what we’re doing teaching them to preserve privacy and that the two genders are distinct?
BREASTFEEDING IN PUBLIC?
Q: Jess, can you write your thoughts about the big trend to breastfeed in public or the trend of posting pictures on social media of your child breastfeeding. I hear a lot of people say things along the lines of “God made my breasts for this” but His word says “Let her breasts satisfy you always” so he clearly made them as sexual objects too. People also use other cultures as an excuse. I thought you would have good insight on that since you’ve lived overseas. Thanks so much!
Yes, I do have some thoughts about this.
Human cultures see this issue differently, in all kinds of ways. Some cultures breastfeed for much longer than others. Many purportedly view breasts as not sexual at all. Some cultures, also, are now post-breastfeeding cultures and prefer formula. American culture views breasts as sexual… that is clear and unequivocal, and we all know it, even if women in “nurse-ins” pretend not to see that aspect.
So we have to evaluate the human culture we live in. (This is the same overarching idea, by the way, that has governed my views and approach to choosing my clothing in various cultures that we lived in… human cultures have varying standards on what is “respectable” but I love the standard in 1 Tim. 2:9-10 (“respectable attire”), because it helped me determine in each culture we lived in and visited: what do “respectable” women in this culture wear?) What the culture we live in believes to be right and respectable is one, human-level determiner of whether or not we are doing what is loving toward our fellow man.
But as Christians we have to go beyond the mere cultural evaluation. What human cultures do can be helpful for us as we draw our baseline MINIMUM standard as believers… but where we draw our ultimate boundaries as Christian women ought to come from Scripture. We do not only live in a human culture, so how a given culture views it is only one part of the story. As Christians, we are to view life according to the lens of the Bible.
Here are the things the Bible says about breasts:
- THE BIBLE PRESENTS BREASTFEEDING AS NORMATIVE, HEALTHY, AND RIGHT. (Genesis 21:8, 1 Samuel 1:21-24, Psalm 22:9, Psalm 131:1-2, Isaiah 49:15, Isaiah 66:10-13, Luke 11:27, 1 Thessalonians 2:7, 1 Peter 2:2)
- THE BIBLE ALSO PRESENTS THE SEXUALITY AND UNCOVERING OF BREASTS AS NORMATIVE, HEALTHY, AND RIGHT WITHIN MARRIAGE. (Gen. 2:25, Prov. 5:18-19, Song of Solomon 7:7-9, 1 Cor 7:1-16, Heb 13:4)
Breasts are functional. Breasts are sexual. Both/and.
So, then, my simple practical answer is this: I cover while I nurse in public, and it seems wise and loving for Christian women to do so. I’ve covered (in public) while nursing our 7 different babies (with various “issues”/difficulty levels of breastfeeding), and nursed them all to a minimum of one year (my little one is currently only 6 months old but still nursing). Covering does not inordinately hamper nursing (although certainly– like anything else– one must be committed to it and practice with it at home in order to be adept at it in public) in any way that is not already present without the cover (i.e., a baby with a poor latch is more difficult to nurse than a baby with a good latch, no matter whether there is a cover or not).
The argument that “breastfeeding is natural! Why should I have to cover my poor baby while he eats?” falls flat with me. In Eden, even when Adam and Eve covered themselves, they evidently did not do so enough, and so he made skins for them that covered more than their piddly leaves. I think we are apt to not be discreet enough, and apt to think that our covering is adequate when it is not, and in general, we need to watch for those tendencies in ourselves.
I’m not advocating for a burqa, but I am advocating for a simple cover that maintains privacy.
While I can not point to one black and white chapter and verse, I do believe these basic principles should govern our thinking in this area.
Breasts are for breastfeeding, yes. That is good and healthy and right and not dirty, shameful, or bad. Breasts are also for a husband to “lay hold of” and “delight in.” This, too, is good and healthy and right and not dirty, shameful, or bad. But both involve an area that is private and (at least partially) sexual.
Therefore, regardless of what our surrounding culture says, we cover those things that are sexual, intimate, and private, out of respect for our husbands, out of respect for our Lord, and out of respect for the people around us.
HOW TO TEACH WRITING?
Q: Hey Jess, I wanted to pick your brain for a minute… trying to plan our homeschool year– I’m looking at doing IEW for a language program. Have you done this before? What are your thoughts on doing a separate grammar program? Since you are a writer, I thought I’d go straight to the source. Also how do you feel about the philosophy of Susan Wise Bauer for teaching writing? Are you familiar with that? I was thinking I’d start her book, Writing with Ease, for our 1st grader. I wish I had started that with the older ones.
A: We’re going to be doing Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) for the first time this year with our 8th grader, but I have heard NOTHING but good things about it for years, and I’ve been so impressed with Andrew Pudewa… so I feel really comfortable recommending it even though I haven’t done it.
I don’t know anything about SWB’s approach. I’m personally more of a better-late-than-early gal, so I don’t know where she falls, but that’s where I fall. I’m fairly suspicious of anything that starts formal learning at early levels. Charlotte Mason (18th c. educator/not sure if you’re familiar with her) said that a child who reads only excellent things will have a strong foundation needed for writing excellent things.
For us what that means is I limit their reading to quality stuff. I don’t want them reading nonsense books, poop joke books, or dumbed-down brain-wasting books… anything like what Charlotte Mason called “twaddle.” Part of making a good writer, I think, is intentional exposure to excellent writing. So I’m not trying to produce that at an early age, but rather, giving them continual interaction with excellence, so that when they begin to attempt writing, they’ll have that standard of excellence well-solidified in their mind.
So I tend to be choosey about their reading, and we wait to teach formal writing. But that’s me, and that’s my approach for now. Maybe I’ll regret that 10 years from now; we’ll see.
When I think back to writing, and how it developed for me, it was through 3-4 teachers who took me on more like a personal tutor situation. With two of them– in 7th grade, and in high school, we would sit together and refine my writing bit by bit. With two different college professors, I got specific, honest feedback — and that was often both incredibly humbling and quite helpful. But I don’t remember any writing/purposeful work on writing prior to 7th grade, and I don’t think I suffered for lack of early training.
My approach thus far has been to give focus on verbal narration, and almost never require writing– only asking for short written communication prior to this year (Ethan’s starting 8th grade). We’re diving in deep this year– he’ll be doing Lincoln-Douglas debate in a debate league, and writing cases, and then we’ll be doing IEW together for more formalized writing. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t written anything (in fact, he’s written short stories, begun several fan-fiction-style novels, and more); but rather, it’s not been anything parent-initiated until now. This year, with him, I’ll begin doing for him what was done for me… careful, thoughtful feedback and critique that will (hopefully) lead to him being a more conscientious, disciplined writer.
I think the main thing to being a good writer is being a good thinker, and knowing how to use language in a way that is precise and winsome (which comes by being exposed to tons of excellent writing), so for me, I put my effort in the early years to exposure to wonderful writing of all sorts (Roald Dahl, poetry, excellent speeches, Scripture, etc.)– I want to spark their interest in WORDS, so that playing with them and using them will become intriguing and attainable to them. Once they consistently see it done well, that will be the standard for what excellence looks like. Those are my thoughts; don’t know if that’s helpful or not. And like I said, I could be all wrong and perhaps in 10-20 years I’ll look back and see flaws and holes in what this approach has produced.
Thanks for your question & I hope you have a great year homeschooling, whatever you guys decide to do.
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Tagged breastfeeding, choices, convictions, decision-making, gender, gender & parenting, mommy wars, motherhood, newborn, oneness
For the past few years, I’ve been dissatisfied with my personal study of the Bible, and I’m trying to hash out why. My goal is to reclaim joy in my studies of God’s Word.
Here are some things I’m thinking through as I try to discover an approach to God’s Word that rightly honors Him as the truth-teller and life-giver (and the primary place He gives His Word), while also dealing truthfully with my own heart, motivations, and thirst (or lack thereof) as I approach (or ignore) His Word.
MY EXAMPLES & EXPERIENCES WITH PERSONAL BIBLE STUDY:
I grew up in a Christian home, attending (primarily) independent Baptist churches.
- I saw my dad and grandpa read their Bibles for study. They knew heaps and heaps of information about the Bible and how to study it. I learned so much– basics, eschatology, how to interpret various parts of Scripture, and more– from them both.
- In weekly Sunday school and sermons, I heard God’s Word taught primarily for two reasons: (1) salvation… or (2) for growth in knowledge.
- Because of that, I opened my Bible in church, but otherwise treated it like a textbook: generally avoided, unless one needed a particular piece of data.
- The only times I remember really reading my Bible during this period were of the open-to-a-random-page-and-read variety.
In high school, because my parents sensed a need for change (in large part due to my rebellion and sin), we switched to a doctrinally-sound church that taught more about personal spiritual growth and pursuit of relationship with God.
- There, I interacted with teens, our pastor, and youth group teachers who did two new-to-me things: (1) read God’s Word for pleasure, and desire, rather than just duty/information, and (2) held themselves accountable with others to do so regularly.
- I began studying God’s Word this way, and growing. God taught me a lot through this season, and I was challenged by His Word.
In college, I went through a variety of methods/approaches, but one is crystalized in my mind. My thought process went like this:
- God wants us to tithe money.
- But I don’t have any/much money.
- But I have time.
- So why not tithe my time?
I set a goal of working up to a 2.4 hour quiet time each day (yes, I really meant 2.4. I remember calculating out exactly how many minutes that would be. Ugh, what a robotic thing to do!). I started out at 30 minutes, and increased it by 10 minutes each day. At first it was beneficial. How could it not be? I was in God’s Word more than I ever had been. I would rise early, take my guitar, journal, and duct-tape-covered Bible to some remote part of campus, and sing songs and read and write and pray and confess. It was genuine…
But then one morning, when I was nearing two-hours-a-day, I fell asleep in the middle of it. Of course, right? I mean come on. I was exhausted. College hours are exhausting. But I was also, unwittingly, exhausted from trying to be so doggone regimented about something that is meant to give life and communicate the Father’s love.
As a young married woman, I bounced back and forth between regular and irregular Bible study.
- Sometimes I joined up with a group study in church.
- Sometimes I’d do a “Read-Through-the-Bible-in-a-Year” plan. (I did complete that a few times over, so there was some consistent, ongoing regularity in these years.)
- Sometimes I led women’s Bible studies.
Then we moved overseas, where I was (for all intents and purposes) alone in my pursuit of God through His Word. In the overseas years, I tried different things:
- Intensive study of one book a month. I did this for two and a half years and– honestly– loved it. It gave me a chance to get to know the books of the Bible so much better than the sprint-through and skip-around approaches had done.
- Studying with other women (sometimes we did books of the Bible, sometimes books on Christian living)
- Studying the Bible in Turkish with a local believer
- AudioBible playing throughout the day while I went about daily things
- Intensive study on my own… studying for understanding, for growth, for deeper insight into God’s character and His claims on me.
But since I’ve been back in America, well, just being perfectly honest, my Bible study has been dry and rare.
I’m just being straight with y’all. My personal devotions have been inconsistent, lackluster, and like driftwood– just going along with whatever else is going on in life.
- Ladies class studying Romans? OK, I’m in.
- Care group going through a Piper book? Great, let’s do it.
- When I wrote a novel about the life of Jacob’s wife, Zilpah, I spent skads of time in Genesis.
- Sunday school working through a book of the Bible? All right.
- Home fellowship in Ecclesiastes? Let’s go.
I’ve been in it… involved in the discussion, doing the reading, etc. But I’m not IN it, if you know what I mean. It’s been done out of duty, rather than in joy.
See, I’m a spontaneous, zesty-living sort of gal. I like to find something, jump all in, and do it wholeheartedly.
- In DC, I lived-ate-breathed politics, with art and museums on the side.
- When we lived in China, I was all about learning Mandarin, using kuaizi (chopsticks), and eating jiaozi (DELICIOUS little dumplings I couldn’t get enough of!).
- That time we ended up with a house that had a pool? I became our side-scrubbing, chemical-balancing pool girl (and got good at it)
- When we got a beautiful flock of chickens, well, I designed and built a coop.
- Now that we have moved to the PNW, we’re learning about camping
So while I’ve been going ALONG with the Bible studies in my life, which currently looks like:
- our family Bible study — going through Exodus
- ladies’ Sunday school — going through 2 Corinthians
- weekly home fellowship — in Ecclesiastes
I’m… honestly… not into it. 
I haven’t been zesty in diving in to these things. Something about group study does not force me to “own it,” and I end up just going through the motions or giving up. Doing studies with pre-designed questions used to feel helpful, but right now, for me, it feels like looking up answers to someone else’s questions.
And that’s no one else’s fault. It’s mine. Maybe it’s the season of life I’m in… maybe the season of spiritual life I’m in… maybe just laziness. But I’m realizing that I’ve got to name it and sort out what’s happening and why.
SO I’m currently sorting out with God:
Last week, that looked like flipping open to Psalm 32, and reading it aloud, then copying it word for word.
I don’t just want to glean information. I’m tired of answering questions that aren’t the ones my heart is asking. I don’t simply want to know more about God, I want to be joyful in my pursuit OF Him through His Word.
I want Him to change me and make not just my HEAD (with its knowledge), or my body (with its choices and behaviors)– but also my HEART– to look like it ought to look as His disciple.
Right now, I’m honing in on two basic ideas I’d like to incorporate into daily life so that I can reclaim both regularity AND joy in this:
- The book-a-month approach — one reason I loved this was because it allowed me to “park” in a particular part of God’s Word long enough to really meditate and dig in, but kept me moving along at a good-enough clip that I didn’t feel like I was interminably stuck in any one part of it (I especially can feel bogged-down if I spend too long in OT history and the minor prophets). So this may be my basic method.
- This read-aloud-then-copy-it approach — I’ve done that several times now over the last week, and it helps me to savor the words and focus in on their meaning in a way that is different from mentally reading the print on the page.
This is the thing I’m currently pondering, and the way I’m currently seeking growth.
Any comments or feedback? Have you been through seasons like this in your personal Bible study? I welcome your thoughts.
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Tagged Bible study, biblical teaching, God is our Shepherd, personal growth, spiritual growth
This morning, we’re starting our 2015-16 school year. In our homeschool this year, we have 8th, 6th, 4th, and 2nd graders (and a kindergartner). Phew! Just writing that makes me tired.
But let’s talk about grade levels.
When people ask my kids what grades they’re in, my homeschooled kids (mostly) know what to tell them… yes, they’re “socialized” enough to do that. And yet, to be honest, whatever answer they give doesn’t really tell anyone anything in regard to school work.
When a 7th grader is reading a college level text about world history, it doesn’t make him a college student. If a 2nd grader is struggling with reading, but by 5th grade has caught up to, or even surpassed, his peers, it doesn’t make him “behind” or “ahead” of anything except an arbitrary standard that applies when looking at data– not human beings.
Because the truth is, each child is a unique blend of skills.
Sure, “they” have a testable skill set we’ve now been culturally trained to look for, but that doesn’t mean that each child should, or does, sit there on the “average” line. Grade levels are helpful for educating children en masse, but not always helpful in educating each individual child according to his/her abilities.
Brains often develop like the world around us does– making almost no progress at all through winter, and then suddenly, bursting into growth all at once when it is spring.
It can look like they’re just not getting it, and then all of a sudden you begin to see sprouts– “buds” of growth. You see it in your toddler who suddenly starts repeating everything you ever say, whereas just a month prior, he had no interest in talking whatsoever. You see it in the child who suddenly “gets” potty training or bike riding or jumping off of the ground with both feet.
And yes, you see it in school-aged children, with reading and math.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, reading is actually a GREAT DEAL like potty training. You can push it through at first, which becomes torturous for both mom and child and is burdensome on mom because she has to keep it going… OR you can wait for readiness, and it will happen VERY quickly.
In his book, Better Late Than Early, Dr. Raymond Moore showed that it’s actually BETTER for development of curiosity and overall, long-term academic strength for children to WAIT on academics. When academic abilities develop in partnership with a child’s natural curiosity— to WANT to know what’s written on the paper, to WANT to understand how to figure baseball averages, to WANT to understand how magnets work– there is a natural “want to” that propels REAL (rather than forced) learning.
But (perhaps more importantly for me), when academics are pushed too early, there is a natural demotivation. Reading becomes toil rather than the unraveling of mysteries. Math becomes drillwork rather than the foundation for understanding the world around us. Science becomes “boring” and “homework” rather than the answer to our curiosity and pursuits.
This has been a central idea to the philosophy of our homeschool.
I watch our children for interest and curiosity, and then jump in, and they learn so much more quickly, and it sticks.
(Note: this is not the same as “unschooling,”)
I love this bit from Understood Betsy: (In this quote, Betsy, who was accustomed to a large town school, is interacting with her teacher at her first day at a small, country school.)
“After the lesson the teacher said, smiling, “Well, Betsy, you were right about arithmetic. I guess you’d better recite with Eliza for a while. She’s doing second-grade work. I shouldn’t be surprised if, after a good review with her, you’d be able to go on with the third-grade work.”
Elizabeth Ann fell back on the bench with her mouth open. She felt really dizzy. What crazy things the teacher said! She felt as though she was being pulled limb from limb.
“What’s the matter?” asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered face.
“Why—why,” said Elizabeth Ann, “I don’t know what I am at all. If I’m second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade AM I?”
The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. “YOU aren’t any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You’re just yourself, aren’t you? What difference does it make what grade you’re in! And what’s the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don’t know your multiplication table?”
“Well, for goodness’ sakes!” ejaculated Elizabeth Ann, feeling very much as though somebody had stood her suddenly on her head.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the teacher again.
This time Elizabeth Ann didn’t answer, because she herself didn’t know what the matter was. But I do, and I’ll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn’t really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the way you do when you’re learning to skate and somebody pulls away the chair you’ve been leaning on and says, “Now, go it alone!”
So, in a large-classroom setting, while your child is in a season of “winter,” frozen solid before her brain begins letting, say, the concept of long division settle down into her brain and take root there, the rest of the class is moving on to something else, and she’s getting further and further behind. All the while, her brain is working as it’s meant to… stopping, sorting things out, and trying to cling to ideas without moving on to new ones before understanding the old ones.
In our home, the way that same scenario looks is this: we tackle long division. We park there as long as necessary for the child to really “get” it… then we move on to the next logical step/math function. We can hurry along if she retains it easily, and we can also pause and let it ruminate longer if it takes longer.
The pace we travel at is her own, rather than the fastest, slowest, or most “average” student in the class.
Our children are neither put in a position of feeling like they can zone out and still breeze through school (I’m guilty as charged on that one), nor of feeling like they will never catch up and are the dumbest person in the room. Instead, they get to progress at the pace that their skills and abilities allow.
The problem with grade levels is that they’re not really made for the child… they’re made for schools to be able to classify and assess students, but children don’t always progress in that systematic way. Nor do they all progress simultaneously, in every subject, at the same rate as their peers.
Children progress, like the rest of us, in huge leaps in some areas (in areas where God has uniquely gifted them in ability and interest), at a slower pace in others (where God has not particularly gifted them), and, perhaps, every now and then, exactly on average in some areas.
Knowing the grade level can help us, sometimes, to know in general what’s expected of our students by the surrounding world, but they don’t really tell us what *our* child should be doing this year. For that, I consider:
- the child’s strengths and weaknesses
- the way God has built this particular child… what is his/her likely path?
- what opportunities, curriculum, and resources are available to us this year?
- what Doug and I are noticing in this particular child (good? bad? ugly?– what needs correction?)
- what direction the Holy Spirit is leading us in, in regard to this particular child or season
- if there are any known deficiencies that we need to shore up
Though it’s the first question most people ask our children, the truth is, grade levels aren’t particularly relevant for us as homeschoolers, or useful for me as a homeschooling mother.
What about you? How do you assess grade levels in your home school? Do you work according to a particular scope and sequence, or pace things according to your child, or…???
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Tagged education, grade levels, home education, homeschool, homeschooling, learning, reading
Here’s 4-minutes of my off-the-cuff thoughts about training our kids’ quirkiness.
SOME HIGHLIGHTS:
- 00:25– “it’s just an annoying habit; should we train for it or not?”
- 01:00– example from my real life, yesterday, with my two-year-old
- 02:00– encouragement from Gregg Harris
- 02:45– why this is extra-important to me as a homeschooling mom
- 03:00– how I learned these lessons in my life vs. what I’m striving for now
- 03:20– what my motivations and goals are
Please share your thoughts — about both:
- (a) the topic and
- (b) the use of video (as opposed to my normal text/article format)
in the comments.
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Tagged childrearing, forward-thinking motherhood, mom, motherhood, preschoolers, project-it-forward mothering, toddlers, train up a child, training
Well, so here it is.
After Josh Duggar molested a number of girls and got caught a number of times, he went on TV, got himself a wife, and sold purity and courtship and not kissing until marriage. We all watched as his dad gave him a purity talk, which we now know, he did solely for the camera, because he knew full well that his son had a great deal more sexual knowledge and experience and sin under his belt than either of them let on.
And now– sadly– we know that while Josh was trumpeting family values, he was full-on pursuing adultery.
And with that, another idol of the Christian community bites the dust.
Though the news did not surprise me, it did sadden me. My heart did flip-flops. It’s a similar feeling to the one I got when the Bill Cosby stories began breaking… sick to my stomach… so incredibly, gut-wrenchingly sorry for his wife… saddened at the depravity our sinful hearts will lead us to… but ultimately, certain of its veracity.
But you know what else that news drives me to do? Oh, sister… fellow mom… friend… Sister/Brother in Christ… it makes me look in my own heart and see the foul wickedness right here.
The reason I was certain of the veracity of the stories is because I know the wickedness that resides here in my ugly human heart, and the ugly sins that want to take up ever-increasing real estate in my soul.
The whole thing reminds me of something the Apostle Paul said:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. ~1 Corinthians 10:13
It’s not just Josh Duggar’s problem.
It’s yours, and mine.
- We all, in our flesh, want to hide our sins.
- We all, in our flesh, want people to adore us.
- We all, in our flesh, want our strengths to be celebrated, and our weaknesses to be discreetly tucked away in some supposedly-confidential place where we can indulge.
You wanna know the most revolutionary thing we can do with our sin?
- OWN IT.
- EXPOSE IT.
- CALL IT WHAT IT IS. (which, by the way, I haven’t seen Josh do. In one confession, he “made mistakes.” In this last one, he “became unfaithful.”) Folks, we need to use God’s language about our sin.
- FIGHT IT.
[Update 8/20/15: mid-day, he released a revised statement that does call it “sin” and no longer uses the wording above.]
Today, I’m asking again… as I do every time “another one bites the dust”…
- What lies am I believing?
- Are there sins I’m willing to live with and ignore?
- Are there sins I’m minimizing with unbiblical language?
- How is Christ currently changing me? Or have I –God forbid! Help me never to do this!– used him as a formula and then gone on with “my” life?
Help us, God, not to treat your ways as a formula. Help us to submit ourselves to the painful, whole-heart renovation You seek to do in us. Help us run from externals and never ever ever be satisfied with rule-keeping.
And, P.S. Lord???… give his wife Anna huge heaps of wisdom and grace and a safe cocoon of people to minister to her deep places right this minute. Oh, what a hard road it is to walk as a follower of Jesus.
I’m sitting here, in the post-Duggar-news-gutpunch 2.0, asking the Lord to draw out my sin and help me to be a willing exposer of my own sin, rather than one who conspiratorially hides it.
I want to– continually– live in the light!
It’s so painful sometimes… because we see all the ugliness that goes so well-hidden in the dark… but honestly facing up to our sin is the only way we grow.
I’m reminded of this quote from John Owen:
“Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
As I wrote last night about this scandal,
There is nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing NOTHING our children need more than Jesus and His whole renovation of their hearts.
Not homeschooling.
Not outward conformity.
Not courtship.Not “purity” until marriage. Not a good job.
Not a single thing.
Father, give our children Your Son, Your Spirit… Your life… Your righteousness…
Not self-righteousness.
Not looking good.
Not celebrity.
Not fame.
Not money.
Not positions.Give them the sweet Lord Jesus.
He’s the only One that is without sin.
Life in Him is the only hope any of us, including Josh Duggar, have.
OTHER ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE:
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Tagged Duggar, killing sin, parenting, scandal, sex, sin
We have a family habit of taking off and dropping our shoes by the back door when we come in. Then, twice a week, one of the little boys has a chore of tidying them all. Looking back, it would have been better for me to teach them all to practice diligence from the beginning, by having everyone find a shelf for their shoes every single time.
Instead, now, we’re fighting bad habits in that area and … the worst part??!… it’s MY FAULT.
So now I’ve got to decide: am I OK with continuing to facilitate laziness in this way or do we need to completely rebuild this multiple-times-a-day habit we’ve all developed of randomly depositing our shoes in various spots near the rear exit of our home?
What sorts of habits are your children learning in your home? What sorts of attitudes are becoming habitual in their hearts? This list is by no means comprehensive, but it’s something I was thinking about today.
Our job as mothers is so critical-– we are teaching our children habits that will carry them through their days, for good or for ill. The things they learn in our house will either help them along in their lives, OR will be poor habits that they have to unlearn and fight all their lives.
Consider these questions and ask yourself–
What might need to change in your home in order to give your children the gift of good habits that will lead to their joy and health?
THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD AND HIS CHURCH:
Are you teaching your kids to:
- reverence God and prioritize His Bride, the church, in their lives, schedules, and hearts, or to
- treat their role as part of the Body of Christ as optional and occasional?
Are they seeing you:
- prize Scripture and trust what King Jesus says above your feelings, or
- treat Him like Britains do the Queen of England– something to honor from a distance, occasionally pay attention to, and not really know on a personal level?
Are they learning:
- to consider others and treat them as they want to be treated, or
- developing a bent toward self-centeredness, self-pity, and self-orientation?
Are your children being trained to:
- honor God in their choices and see everything in life as related to Him as Creator and King, or to
- compartmentalize their lives and see God as only related to spiritual things, and to see their own choices and habits as wholly unrelated to God & Scripture?
THEMSELVES, THEIR LIVING SPACE, AND APPROACH TO WORK:
Are your kids learning to:
- Greet the day cheerfully and purposefully, or
- start out each day sluggishly and with trepidation?
Are they developing a pattern of:
- Keeping their bodies and their rooms tidy, or
- living in grubbiness and squalor?
Are you purposefully instilling habits of:
- diligence in their work, or
- doing as little as possible?
Are they picking up habits of
- honoring Christ and living for others as being the central joys and purposes of their life, or
- living for the next time they get to do their video games/dolls/_________?
THEIR RELATIONAL NORMS:
Are you teaching your kids to:
- ask for forgiveness quickly, and forgive easily, keeping relational “slates” clean, or to
- dwell in bitterness, pride, and unforgiveness by “sweeping things under the rug” and leaving things simmering and unresolved?
Are your children learning to:
- respect their authorities and obey willingly, or to
- find loopholes and mischievously get out of things they’re asked to do?
Are your kids learning:
- healthy habits of affection and tender loving kindness in your home, or
- self-ward habits that will make it more difficult for them to have a happy marriage and family life when they are adults?
THEIR APPROACH TO FOOD AND APPETITES:
Are you training your children to:
- gratefully eat what they’re served, or to
- gripe about food, needing lots of modification in order to be content?
Are your children learning:
- healthy portion sizes, and to eat in connection with others, or
- to overeat, inordinately crave sweets, and/or eat in isolation, sneaking and hiding their portions and choices?
Are your children being trained to:
- seek and find balance and moderation in all their desires (movies? video games? clothing? shoes? activities? time with friends? food? pursuit of skills?), or to
- be dominated and mastered by their own appetites and desires?
Are they developing a heart for:
- reading, and a curious thirst for learning about God’s world, or
- a lazy, “I’m BORED” approach to applying their God-given intellect and learning?
And of course, there are other things too, so look around your house and notice the “ways” of your household. These are given as examples, to get your mind going, but are not the only areas, and perhaps not even the most central/important areas upon which you should focus.
And yes, many of these have multiple “middle” stops between the two options above as well. So, yes, I tried to make the above options have a “right” and “wrong” answer… but there are other “right answers.”
The main thing I’m aiming at here is getting you to soberly estimate the state of your home.
For my part, I’m rethinking the way we deal with dishwashing, our habits with Nintendo DS, and (yes) the way we deal with our shoes.
I believe it’s beneficial when we:
- crystallize what habits and norms our children have (put it in precisely worded descriptions) and then
- project those exact habits and norms forward into their adult life, marriage, and parenting.
And then consider: will the habits and norms we are instilling in them be a blessing or a curse to them?
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Tagged affection, attitudes, children, food wars, Forgiveness, glorify God, God made us, habits, health, home education, home management, homemaker, homemaking, learning, obedience, reading, respect, train up a child, training
What do our kids want from us?
Of course there are different possible answers to this question:
- time
- energy
- loving affection
Or, as my five-year-old just said when I asked him, “candy.” Good grief, I love him.
If you’ve been a parent for almost any length of time, you know that kids reveal things about you that weren’t revealed when it was just you, yourself, and you.
- They press buttons in us that show what we are in the hidden places of our heart.
- They require a level of selflessness that wouldn’t be built in us any other way than by being their mom/dad.
- They reflect who we really are in their (learned-from-us) attitudes and actions.
- They see us for what and who we really are.
More than anything else, what Doug & I are growing increasingly convinced of is this:
OUR KIDS WANT US TO BE HONEST.
They don’t need us to be perfect. But they DO crave that we be honest with them.
For us, what that looks like is:
- regular confession of our wrongs and failures (not trying to put forward or maintain an image of perfection)
- calling our sins against them by their biblical names (yelling is a “fit of anger,” not “venting” or “going off”)
- talking openly together about what’s happening in the world– what the culture calls good v. what God calls good
- truthful sharing about what sins we’re actively, currently fighting (for me now: anger and laziness)
Today a verse came to mind, and it made me think…
“huh… our kids desire the very same thing God desires from us”
“you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” ~Psalm 51:6
God’s desire for us, basically like our kids desire from us, is that we be inwardly honest.
Honest about who we are. Not just “boldly” calling that sin over there (the one we would never do) sin. No, He wants us to call this sin in here sin. He desires for us to deal honestly with the sin within us. He desires for us to rightly categorize ourselves as the sinners in need of the savior. Not as the saviors with no needs. Not as practically-perfect with no sin to fight.
Our kids crave from us the very thing God desires to produce in us: truth in the inward being. We’re finding that when we let Him– when we YIELD to His loving pressure that He’s placed in our home with these little mirrors and button-pushers– that God uses these children and their desires to work that truth about who we are (and who He is!) deeper and better into our hearts.
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READING:
- The disappearance of childhood and what we can do to get it back ~ by Jamie @ Simple Homeschool
- I appreciate this article: Is Self-Promotion Sinful?— it hits at a lot of questions that have nagged at my brain. Authors are in a different place now than in the last hundred years because publishers have all but stopped publishing unknowns, and so in order to have a book published at all, one has to be self-promoting or find others who will do so for you (which is still self-promoting, in a less direct way), and it makes for a conundrum for the Christian writer who wants to promote Christ and yet also explore the options that exist for him/her to eke out a living in print media.
A Charlotte Mason Education: A Homeschooling How-To Manual— I’ve recently picked up this book again, by Catherine Levison, as a gentle nudge toward this whole book philosophy I’m moving back toward this year. I try to self-motivate and invigorate our homeschool through reading/re-reading a book or two every year about home education.
THINKING:
- How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life — (warning: language) 14 minutes of insightful, thought-provoking TED commentary about social media, bullying, humiliation, public shame, followed by a short Q&A. What is the outcome of public jump-on-the-bandwagon shaming of private individuals? Have we created a market for constant, artificial, high-dramas where everybody’s always a magnificent hero or a sickening villain, even though we know that’s not true?
- About the relationship between education and discipline — because the lyrics to an old song came to mind: “School Days” (written in 1907) “reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, taught to the tune of the hickory stick.” I looked it up because I couldn’t remember all the lyrics, and this article with alternative lyrics for different generations came up.
The real 1907 lyrics: (about education in the first half of 20th century)
School Days, School Days Dear old golden rule days Reading, and writing and ‘rithmetic Taught to the tune of a hickory stick You were my queen in Calico I was your bashful barefoot beau You wrote on my slate I love you so
When we were a couple of kids
This guy’s proposed lyrics for education in the 2nd half of the 20th century:
School Days, Schools Days Let’s go challenge the rules days Lectures and filmstrips in monotone Taught with the threat of a note sent home You were the girl in a mini skirt I wore bells with a bright red shirt I sent you a note and tried to flirt
When we were a couple of kids
And his proposed lyrics about education in the 21st century:
School Days, School days Oh, what are the rules these days Powerpoints and Smartboards and Ebook Time Daily updates of grades on line You were the girl whose jeans would drag I was the boy whose trousers sagged I’d text on my cell, replies would lag
When we were a couple of kids
His renderings ade me laugh, but also made me think.
Discipline is out. The Golden Rule isn’t common practice, much less common knowledge. Educational standards are down. But, now, instead of innocent, heartfelt “I love yous” written on a slate, there’s sexting and social media bullying and anonymous hook-ups, arranged by smartphone apps. So many things in that first verse have been systematically wiped out: discipline in the process of education, bashfulness as a suitor, affection and joy in relationship, relationships without sexual intimacy, and more.
But hey, at least people now are advocating for your rights as a student, so that as a minor you can get an abortion and get a sex change without your parents’ knowledge. Priorities, people! It’s sad, what we’ve traded in for “feminism” and “choice,” and how very little we’ve gained as compared to all we’ve lost.
DOING:
- My husband has– since before we met– been stellar at regular, lengthy Bible memorization. He’s really great about leading me and our children to memorize passages together. That said, I still fall down on the job unless he’s prodding me along. To redeem some of my smartphone time (while nursing– when I’ve otherwise been browsing Facebook or playing a ridiculous number of SpadesPlus games) I recently downloaded this app: Verse Rain. And it’s helped me to “set my mind on things above” while nursing multiple times a day. Hoping to diminish my Spades addiction, which I can boast I’ve had since learning to play in 7th grade pre-algebra, I’ve been doing a series of verses before I let myself play Spades. The words rain down in a semi-random order, and you have to put them in the right order before the time is up. It’s simple, quick, and a great way to refocus your mind. Great for kids too!
- I went camping last week, and it was wonderful. I may write a post about some things I learned, but it really was an enjoyable time with our church family, and I’m so grateful for the gentle introduction to something I was extremely intimidated about. God, and our church family, were very gracious to us.
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Tagged Bible memorization, childhood, discipline, education, home education, homeschool, social media
There have been seven times in my life I’ve personally heard the words, “it’s a boy!”
1. In July 2002, following a painful, long delivery, after fearful words were spoken about meconium and the baby didn’t breathe for a long while, I heard, “it’s a boy!” as an afterthought before the NICU team whisked him away.
2. With our second pregnancy, I heard “it’s a boy!” while seeing him for the first time on the ultrasound screen.
3. The third time (with our fourth child), the words “it’s a boy, isn’t it?” spilled from my own mouth, after the OB took the ultrasound down to the nether regions for a quick peek, thinking I wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was a boy or girl (we’d wanted to be surprised).
4. The next time, it followed the words, “there is something unexpected between the legs.” We’d spent the 2 weeks prior thinking it was a girl after a 14-week ultrasound had left the doctor “90% sure” it was a girl. The 16-week ultrasound proved otherwise. With a nod and a smile, she confirmed, “it’s a boy!”
5. During our first ultrasound in a midwife’s office (rather than an OB), we saw her type “it’s a boy” just 5 minutes after she’d told us it looked like a girl. (Yes, this happened to us twice; thankfully this time the mistake only lasted for 5 minutes.)
6. And then about a year ago, the ultrasound technician asked, “can you tell what it is?” I tentatively spoke up: “it’s a boy?”
And then, I heard it again last week.
7. It was a throw-away comment, “it’s another boy!” said with a sickening laugh.
The woman who spoke this last confirmation of gender was sorting through a dead baby in a pie plate.
- They’d call him “fetus” at best.
- They probably told the mom he was merely “tissue” or a “few clumps of cells.”
But… apparently, even after being shredded and rinsed in a sieve, his private parts were clear enough to determine that it’s a “boy.”
And they laughed.
Do you see the sickening thing we are doing?
These words that are normally spoken with such excitement, surprise, and with such fanfare… are spoken in jest by a stone-hearted woman as she toothpicks her way through this little boy’s ripped-apart frame.
Our society has embraced wickedness and called it a “right.”
In this article, “So What If Abortion Ends Life?”, the author makes her calloused arguments, and ends by calling the aborted fetus “a life worth sacrificing.” Her words call to mind the ancient practice of child-sacrifice to the canaanite god, Molech. Indeed, it is quite similar.
In our chase for:
- money
- fame
- sexual fulfillment without responsibility
- education
- prominence in society
- lack of responsibility
- personal happiness
- no unexpected “twists and turns” of life (either through unexpected pregnancy or a developmentally disabled child)
we have become a society willing to sacrifice even our own children in pursuit of those all-consuming gods.
We have our idols, and because we love them better than our children, we will sacrifice the smallest among us in pursuit of what we value.
- We will toss our children into the fires…
- or into the pie plates for dissection…
- but we will not raise them.
We are happy to sacrifice them. We’ll march about it. Rant about it. Tweet about it. Write angry monologues about it. We’ll tell politicians to get out of our private parts (but heaven forbid anyone suggest we keep men out of our private parts until we’re ready to have a child).
We are a society that blithely says, “it’s a boy!” while denying that boy’s personhood, dignity, and life.
Our society prides itself on being well-educated and yet we turn our eyes away from the truth that, even after dissection, he was big enough to have a recognizable penis. Instead his mother, if anything, was probably told he was “just a clump of cells.”
We are a society that embraces the murder of children and calls their lives “worth sacrificing.”
Even if you are pro-choice, ask yourself:
- Could there really be 3,000 American babies a day worth sacrificing?
- Really? When there are waiting parents– waiting, loving parents who are aching to embrace a child of their own– could there really be a reason to murder a child?
- When will it be enough?
Will you have the courage to not look away from the truth?
- It’s a boy!
- It’s a twin!
- It’s a leg.
- It’s a beating heart.
It’s a human being.
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.” ~Dr. Seuss
No matter what, when there is an unexpected pregnancy, sacrifice is involved.
In a humane, decent society, shouldn’t that sacrifice be sacrifices of:
- giving regularly to crisis pregnancy centers,
- opening our arms to wayward daughters who need love and support and wisdom poured in while they raise children they didn’t think would come,
- throwing showers for unwed and disadvantaged mothers,
- volunteering at food kitchens and thrift stores?
- young women willing to endure nine months of an unexpected detour in order to shelter a child’s life until the child can be placed for adoption?
Aren’t these a better sacrifice than the child’s life?
Because, no matter which sacrifices we make, this truth remains: “it’s a boy.”
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Tagged abortion, babies, human rights, life, my life, Pregnancy, right to life
Early in our homeschooling journey, someone put the book, Better Late Than Early, by Raymond & Dorothy Moore, in my hands, and it has invaded not only our homeschooling, but every area of our parenting.
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” ~W.B. Yeats
There is a general approach to education in western society, that the more you can cram in, and the earlier you can cram it in, to a child’s brain, the better educated they will be. The Moores and their research turn this approach entirely on its head and instead, promote that there is a different, preferred order to things.
They contend that too much formal education, too soon, actually is harmful to the child. They point to both an informational disadvantage (kids educated that way actually do poorer in terms of academics) and a global/personal disadvantage (kids educated that way actually care less about education and academics and lose their original spark of creativity and curiosity). Waiting for the convergence of maturity, desire, and ability, yields a more self-disciplined child who is more personally invested in, and enthusiastic about, his/her own education.
“Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to discover the child’s natural bent.” ~Plato
[It’s actually similar to why I potty train later rather than earlier: because we can force it, work like the dickens, and have a lot of frustration and accidents by potty training early on, OR I can wait until the child is 3 or later, and we all are happier, training is more effective, and it happens with virtually no work at all.]
“Recipe for genius: More of family and less of school, more of parents and less of peers, more creative freedom and less formal lessons.” ~Raymond Moore, School Can Wait
Here are 10 reasons why, entering our tenth year of homeschooling, I affirm that it’s “Better Late Than Early:”
#1- We want to make maximum use of their creativity and curiosity while they are young.
I want to stoke their innate curiosity with (primarily) fascination-based learning while they are young rather than squelching it through (primarily) information-based learning by rote and drill. I do not care one whit if they can identify all the letters of the alphabet by a certain age (Let’s be honest: learning that “u” is called “u” is something a child has to, mostly, get over, in order to read well anyhow. Most times that we find “u” in a word, it says “uh”, not “you.”), but I do want them to be fascinated by the world around them. I want to fan the flames of their questions and zeal for learning about the world God has made.
Formal education is important in its season, but maintaining the curious and rigorous MINDS initially entrusted to me is of much greater importance. I do not want to waste their early delight and curiosity on workbooks and memorization-focused drill. When we push them to complete academic work beyond their curiosity, ability, and interest, I believe it actually harms their minds and makes them less fertile for real learning at the time when their interest catches up to their maturity and skill, because they’ll be so weary of the whole bit, thinking that education means boring labor to achieve skills beyond which they are rightly able to both master and use.
#2- We give heaps of loving affection and firm discipline before formal education.
I believe God puts children in homes and families so that they can be both well-loved and well-disciplined prior to the formalization of their education. This is of utmost importance… before they learn math, reading, or sentence diagramming, they need both the love and encouragement from and the proper respect toward their God-given authorities. We tackle emotional tantrums and fierce-willed rebellion before we tackle phonics and multiplication. It makes the latter easier, and the former virtually non-existent, by the time we enter routinized learning.
#3- The current “wisdom” in regard to the American childhood ain’t so wise.
The increases in the numbers of diagnoses, childhood prescriptions, and tantrums seen in public settings reveal the foolishness of our modern way of rearing and educating children. Boys in particular are scandalously ill-educated in our current public education system– labeled with diagnoses, riddled with prescriptions, bored to tears, and dropping out at ridiculous rates. Having 6 boys of my own, I’m convinced a large part of this is that we are forcing little boys to sit still, pay attention, and do high-focus desk work far too early. We are asking them to be like their little girl counterparts who mature more rapidly, and are (on the whole) happier and more ready to sit still and be quiet for longer periods of time, earlier.
(And yes, there are important, innate differences between the sexes, and have been for millennia! Don’t let anyone, no matter how modern and degreed and famous they are, tell you any different.)
Children by and large are also lacking in self-discipline nowadays. They rage. They whine. They are self-centered and have appalling social skills. I believe that taking children from their homes sooner, without laying a foundation of learning to respect and obey their (loving) authorities has led to this situation where teachers are put under a terrible weight of having to educate children who have neither self-mastery nor respect for authorities.
So for our children, when we start school is not an age thing at all. I focus on cultivating the right heart attitudes in our children– zestful curiosity about the world mixed with a willingness to control the self and respond rightly to authority– before I begin their formal education.
#4- Reading is a skill that can come slowly (earlier) or come quickly (later), but it will come.
The time and energy required to teach a young child to read is, I believe, a waste of curiosity and skill… it inefficiently uses up time you can never get back, whereas, when you wait for the convergence of skill, maturity, and interest, the time it takes to learn is dramatically reduced. All of our children have read at age 6 or later (usually closer to 7), and all are voracious readers. Once they start, they don’t stop. But I don’t start them until their mature understanding of the world, ability to sit still and focus, and desire to read all merge simultaneously… which sometimes has been 6, or even a late 7.
That said, I feel the need to point out– they’re not dullards… quite the opposite. They are bright, curious, fun children. Our oldest son read the Lord of the Rings trilogy before his 8th birthday, and at age 13, reads adult-level historical biographies. Our 11 year old loves Hardy Boys mysteries and how-to books. Our 9 year old daughter reads non-stop, but is particularly fixated on historical biographies and Bobbsey Twin mysteries at present.
By waiting for the convergence of ability (not just the technical ability *to read,* but the ability to sit still, ability for eyes/hands/brain to all function with ease in conjunction with one another, etc.) maturity, and interest (a desire to read and curious thirst to understand the world around them), they are best-suited for a sprint-like time of learning to read rather than a years-long marathon of phonics and boring stories dumbed-down to the level they can read at (which is far below their capacity for understanding). By waiting until they are interested, they are all lovers-of-reading rather than being bored to tears of it because it took extended, laborious effort before there was true readiness.
#5- Tons of time with mom reading aloud TO them, while they are young, gives them a larger vocabulary and broader worldview than they could manage with the same amount of time dedicated toward teaching them to read earlier.
Even *if* I’d taught some of our children to read at 3-4 (which I believe I could have forced with at least 2 of them so far), they would be reading CA-AAAA-AT and D-UUUUUUUUUUU-CK, not listening to mathematical-feats-of-adventure like A Grain of Rice, or sociological and historical tales like the Jewish orphans taken in in the WWII story, Twenty and Ten. There is a world of difference in the vocabulary, depth and degree of the stories, and curiosity-building that happens in “Dick and Jane”-like stories they can read when they are young vs. stories they are perfectly capable of understanding at 5, 6, 7 years old, but can not yet read. Tons of snuggling and reading aloud bridges that gap of time when their reading ability can not possibly match their vocabulary and worldview capabilities. (This is what I most loved about using Sonlight curriculum in the early years of our homeschool.)
#6- I’m not shooting for information transfer.
My goal is not the mere acquisition of skills or downloading of data. Rather, by the time our children leave our home, my goal is that they will be curious, joyful, lifelong learners with a keen awareness of how God has made them– their gifts, abilities, and interests– and how and where those areas intersect with the path of life God has set before them, and the opportunities that exist to earn a living in the world around them.
#7- I’ve seen it work in our home, with a wide variety of learning styles and academic strengths.
I have had precocious “naturally academic” children who spoke in clear-as-a-bell full sentences at age 2, and children who still lisp at age 6 and don’t seem to show much interest in natural “school” topics. I have auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners (and that’s just in my first 3 children!). All of them have done better when I wait for their own individual skill-readiness to merge with their own individual maturity level (self-control, ability to focus, etc.), and their own individual interest in learning. Every. Single. One. in basically every. single. subject.
#8- I’ve seen it work when I’ve done it “right” (waiting until the exact right moment), and work when I did it “wrong” by starting too soon (and had to press “pause” on learning-to-read and wait for the right moment roughly 6 months later).
Waiting until skill, interest, and maturity converge has become a great “marker” for how we approach home education, and I’m convinced- it has made for much less frustration (on both their part & mine) and much more “success” in the things we tackle and pursue.
#9- The real world has much to teach them, and I want to make the most of this time when they don’t have obligations on the horizon.
Instead of reviewing notecards or practicing the same simplified-reading book 80 gazillion times, they have time to water the peppers and notice the rapid growth of the squash. They have time to find frogs and learn what they eat and how to care for them. They have time to color and play checkers. They have time to build and do and discover principles of aeronautics, physics, and architecture in real life before they encounter them in a class. They have time to learn to work hard and exercise self-discipline over their bodies and their emotions… both being important lessons for their long-term success in life.
They have YEARS of formal learning ahead of them, but in these early years, instead of formal learning, they have informal learning time in the real world.
#10- It’s the way the vast majority of children have learned across the centuries– yes even the geniuses of history– being at home without much by way of formal education until about age 8-10.
This is how Abraham Lincoln , FDR, Aristotle, and… well, most everyone prior to 1875 or so, was raised. This is how the “greats” of the past developed curiosity, conviction, and determination… by encountering the real world and having some grasp of it and questions about it before setting out to pursue their formal, regimented education.
“The child who is a skilled thinker and adept learner can adjust to whatever the future doles out. She can spackle in those holes in her knowledge, and she knows how to acquire skills she needs to do things she wants to do. On the other hand, the child who shoveled down his prepared education but lost his curiosity, whose interests withered away and were replaced by a general malaise and desire to just be left alone — that child has a bagful of knowledge and skills with varying expiration dates and dubious ability or desire to acquire more.” ~Lori McWilliam Pickert
“The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?” ~Charlotte Mason
Further reading:
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Tagged discipline, education, home education, homeschool, homeschooling, my life, Real life, tantrums 
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