The Four-Hour School Day: How You and Your Kids Can Thrive in the Homeschool Life

Education is never neutral. Education is discipleship. Discipleship is rooted in relationship. Relationships take time.

Since God wants to give our kids and us a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11), it stands to reason that he intends for us to raise and educate our kids not just for graduation but for life. Life is complex and unpredictable, and kids need an education that equips them to handle that. We can’t merely fill their heads with information and expect that they will be prepared to handle whatever comes their way. Therein lies the problem with ceding our kids’ education to the powers that be. They don’t know our kids like we do. They don’t love them like we do. They are not even remotely invested in their futures. And yet they determine how our children will spend the bulk of every weekday—for twelve years. We all want our kids to have a good education, but we err when we think of education as being “neutral.” Education is never neutral. Education is discipleship. Discipleship is rooted in relationship. Relationships take time.

What will our kids need to be able to do? . . . They will need to be able to nurture other healthy relationships--without us. They will need to be able to discern which resources and skills they need in a given situation--without us. They will need to be able to research and learn--without us. The will need to be able to arrange their work, make a plan, execute it, and reverse engineer it if necessary--without us. They will need to be able to fall, get up, and start again--without us. In short, they will need to be whole and independent human beings.

Love of learning is snuffed out under pressure. Research tells us that half of our brain function shuts off under stress

Homeschooling isn’t about creating an environment in which we helicopter parent. It’s about creating an environment that allows our kids to grow at their own pace, to become independent thinkers, and to live out their unique purposes unfettered.

Brittney, our firstborn, is married with three children. My husband and I are extroverts, and Brittney is an introvert. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with her. She was shy, and I wondered how much to push her socially. My instincts told me she would eventually grow out of her shyness, and I wasn’t going to make a problem out of something that really wasn’t one. I regularly engaged her in conversation, encouraged her to talk about her ideas, her interests, her feelings, and what was going on inside, but I tried not to push. We did the things that happened naturally for our family. She attended classes once a week at a homeschool co-op, we went to church, and we got together with friends. I modeled what good conversation looks like, but I never really made it a topic of conversation because I felt it might make her self-conscious. Brittney made friends along the way. She loved drama class, and one of the reasons she enrolled in it was because she wanted to challenge herself to grow. When she was fifteen, she auditioned for and got the lead role in the spring play. Suddenly, she blossomed and took on a leadership role that defied all evidence she was an introvert at heart. She’s never been the same. She continued to grow in confidence and is a strong, gracious soul who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks when the situation calls for it. As a thirty-year-old mom who is homeschooling her kids, she tells me that pushing an introvert is the worst thing a parent can do. She believes she would never have grown so naturally into her own skin if we had not given her permission to do so at her own pace. After high school, she worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office, and the patients there loved her. Not only can Brittney easily talk with people her own age, but with anyone she meets regardless of their age.

Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens, Paul Tripp