Unlocking the Power of Homeschooling: Research Insights from Dr. Brian Ray

“I don’t think there’s any way for anybody to make an argument that institutionalizing children in these places we call school, where most of us went, is improving their psychological health.” – Dr. Brian Ray

In a world where traditional schooling can sometimes leave children feeling lost in the crowd, many parents are turning to an alternative education option that provides a personalized and values-driven learning experience for their children – the homeschool revolution! In a recent interview on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, premier homeschooling researcher, and founder of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI.org), Dr. Brian Ray shared his groundbreaking research and powerful insights on the effectiveness and benefits of homeschooling.

The Blessing of Homeschooling:

According to Dr. Brian Ray, children are a blessing from God, and being actively involved in their education is a profound privilege. Drawing from Biblical principles, Dr. Ray notes, “The Bible is sufficient, and it gives us everything we need to know about how to live and educate our children.” He challenges the notion that the Bible does not address education, pointing out that it contains abundant wisdom on raising and educating children.

“The Bible is sufficient; it has everything we need to know about how to live and how to educate and disciple our children.”

Parent-Directed Home-Based Education Discipleship:

Dr. Ray advocates for “parent-directed, home-based education discipleship,” which he asserts is distinct from traditional homeschooling. This type of education places parents at the forefront, recognizing their duty and responsibility as the primary educators of their children, as outlined in the Bible. Dr. Ray believes that this model empowers parents to create a customized curriculum that aligns with their family’s values, ensuring an education that is truly comprehensive and tailored to meet the needs of each child.

In addition to his research career, as a former public school teacher-turned-homeschool-dad himself, Dr. Ray got to apply the principles he had learned and see the effects of homeschooling in his own family.

“Whether it was easier or harder, whatever, whether children were fussing with us or happy with us as parents, it was the philosophy and the theology and the desire to be together as a family that really drove us.”

Insights from Research:

Dr. Ray’s extensive research has consistently demonstrated the merits of homeschooling. His doctoral dissertation focused on examining the academic achievements of homeschool children in comparison to their public and private school counterparts. The study showcased the efficacy of parent-directed education. Dr. Ray explains, “Homeschooling aligns more with effective teaching and learning conditions, such as smaller groups, increased conversation with adults, and customized curriculum,” which all lead to positive outcomes for students.

One significant finding is that homeschool children exhibit greater engagement and interest in subjects like science. Dr. Ray shares, “The study showed that homeschool children were more engaged and interested in science than their counterparts in institutional schools.” This finding highlights the ability of homeschooling to cultivate a love for learning and curiosity in children, allowing them to explore subjects at their own pace and in a hands-on manner.

Addressing Misconceptions:

Dr. Ray addresses common misconceptions surrounding homeschooling, particularly concerns about child abuse and neglect. Although acknowledging heartbreaking cases within homeschooling families, he emphasizes that abuse and neglect occur in institutional schools as well. Dr. Ray explains that when specific research has compared child abuse and neglect rates between institutionally schooled children and homeschool children the results show much lower rates of abuse among homeschool families.

Watch the video.

He argues that homeschooling, when executed correctly, aligns more effectively with research on effective teaching and learning. Smaller class sizes, increased interaction with adults, personalized curriculum, and the absence of negative peer pressure contribute to a positive learning environment. Dr. Ray wonders, “If we know all this about effective teaching and learning, why would we expect homeschool kids not to perform better on average?”

“On average, homeschoolers perform well academically. They outperform the national average by 15 to 25 percentile points.”

The Impact of Homeschooling:

Dr. Ray’s research has not only debunked negative claims about homeschooling but also demonstrated the extensive outcomes. Quantitative data from adult participants raised in homeschooling families revealed that, in spite of factors such as parent education level and income, homeschooled students outperform their public schooled peers in nearly every measure.

According to Dr. Ray, studies indicate that home-educated individuals generally experience higher levels of achievement, exhibit fewer behavioral problems, and demonstrate lower rates of addiction and depression. While he acknowledges that not all home-educated individuals achieve success and happiness, the overall benefits of homeschooling as a collective group are significant.

Watch or listen here.

Beyond Academics:

Dr. Ray advocates for a holistic approach to education that goes beyond academic achievements. He urges parents to prioritize the well-being of their children by limiting screen time, engaging in outdoor activities, and fostering open communication. He highlights the detrimental impact of excessive screen time on mental health and urges parents to reclaim their role as primary influencers in their children’s lives.

Conclusion:

Dr. Brian Ray’s extensive research and insights shed light on the power of homeschooling as a viable and impactful educational option. By placing parents at the core of their children’s education and providing a Bible-centered, personalized, values-driven approach, homeschooling offers numerous advantages for academic achievement and overall well-being.

As the acceptance and celebration of homeschooling continue to grow, parents are becoming increasingly empowered to provide their children with an education that aligns with their family’s beliefs and values and can be assured that their children will not suffer as a result of “missing out” on traditional schooling. Additionally, Dr. Ray’s research not only indicates positive outcomes for individual students, but also demonstrates the homeschooling movement’s abilty to positively impact communities and nations.

To delve deeper into Dr. Brian Ray’s research and gain a comprehensive understanding of the benefits of homeschooling, Listen to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast or subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch the full interview.

Recommended Resources:

The Gen2 Survey, by NHERI (National Home Education Research Institute) – This study examines adults who attended church growing up and seeks to understand the key influences which either encouraged or deterred them from believing and practicing the faith of their parents.

Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask, by Israel Wayne

Education: Does God Have an Opinion?, by Israel Wayne

Israel Wayne, Christian Education: A Manifesto 

Education: The Key to Saving Our Nation – Alex Newman on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Getting Started in Homeschooling – Israel Wayne on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast 

Discussion Questions:

1. How does Dr. Brian Ray’s research challenge the perception that homeschooling is inferior to traditional schooling?

2. What are some key factors that contribute to the academic success of homeschooled children, according to Dr. Ray’s research?

3. How does Dr. Ray address concerns about child abuse and neglect in homeschooling families, and what data does he present to support his arguments?

4. How does Dr. Ray’s personal background and experiences influence his perspective on homeschooling?

5. What are some potential drawbacks or challenges of homeschooling that Dr. Ray acknowledges, and how does he address them?

6. How has the acceptance and perception of homeschooling changed over the years, according to Dr. Ray?

7. How does homeschooling impact the overall well-being and mental health of children, as discussed by Dr. Ray?

8. How does Dr. Ray argue that homeschooling can contribute to the improvement of local communities and nations?

9. What are some practical strategies and suggestions for parents to prioritize their children’s well-being in the midst of societal and technological challenges, according to Dr. Ray?

10. In your opinion, based on the information presented by Dr. Ray, what are the major advantages and disadvantages of homeschooling compared to traditional schooling?

Full Transcript:

Yvette Hampton:

Hey, everyone, this is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so glad that you are with me this week. I have a guest on this week that is truly an honor to have him with us. I cannot believe, actually, that it’s taken this long to have Dr. Brian Ray with us. We met years ago at a it was an HSLDA conference. And I’ve always been so just impressed with his work. I feel like I should have a stronger word than impressed, but that’s the word that comes to me right now. He has done so many things for the homeschool community, and if you are not yet familiar with him, you are going to be so encouraged this week. I know that many of you have probably heard him speak at homeschool conventions in the past, and he’s been in the homeschool world for a long, long time. And so I’m so grateful to have him on with us today. So we’re going to talk a lot about just the history of homeschooling and some research on what’s going on with homeschooling, what’s happened in the past, what the future might look like for homeschooling. We’re going to talk just a lot about his study of the homeschool world. Well, Dr. Brian Ray. Welcome to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so glad to have you with us. Introduce yourself to our audience. And when I say, like, you know, just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you and your family do. And I would really love for you to give a pretty good overview of NHERI, which is your organization, which we’ll talk about, but also your credentials, your qualifications, because that really matters in our talk this week and the things that we’re going to be discussing.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yep. Thank you so much, Yvette, for having me here. It’s great. Thank you for your work. I was just telling Yvette before we started talking how my wife said this morning, I’m so happy about all these young people who are doing the things we don’t even know about in the homeschool movement. And years ago, I don’t know, maybe ten years ago, we started hearing older people. Like I am saying, woe is us, woe is me. That we’re all the young people, the pioneers like we are. Well, you know what? God has raised you up. Here you are. He always has whomever he needs to do the things right. I mean, he’s just done it. And so I’m very thankful. I’m very thankful that there are younger folks who are so excited about God’s principles and raising children. But what happened was, okay, so I was institutionalized a vet, right? So I was raised in a Roman Catholic environment. Roman Catholic. Went to Roman Catholic schools. But from a very young age, god designs people a certain way. And I think a lot of us know early on what it might be. I’ve always loved animals I’ve always just wanted to watch them and play with them and study them and all those things. So I went after high school, went on to get a bachelor’s degree, bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Puget Sound. From there, I went off and traveled all over the United States with my brother before many people watching this were even born. I’m sure this is back during the bicentennial of America, United States of America 1976. Traveled all over the US. For 100 days and 15,000 miles, came back and I taught, ended up teaching. I got a carpentry job, and then I ended up teaching at an outdoor school, 6th grade, public school students. I’ve always liked being around children and teaching children. Even in high school, I went down to a local grade school and tutored children in that elementary school. So that was just something I did there. And from there then I went on and got a Master of science degree in zoology at Ohio University. And therefore my research. I studied pack rats neatoma Florida. So I was really into mammology and learned all the mammals of North America and all that kind of thing. Now I finished that and want to do I want to be in a lab all my life, or would I like to maybe get out a little more and be with people or something? So from there now, in all that, Betsy and I got married in graduate school. Graduate school is when I got saved, when the Lord got me and brought me into his kingdom. And right after that, Betsy and I got married, came back to Oregon, and she was finishing a degree in teaching. And I decided, hey, why not? So I got a teaching degree in Oregon. So I taught for a few years, middle school and high school. So now you can see kind of the science and then the education formally, right? So I did that. And after three years of that, I got kind of I’m tired of know, teaching the same class over and over and over, and I need a challenge. I need a real challenge. So I decided to go and work on a PhD in science education at Oregon State University. So while there, I was teaching in biology, and I became a teaching assistant for the dean of education and all kinds of things, all kinds of experiences while there, Yvette, we were starting to have babies. And while we were there, I was very interested in alternatives. And Betsy and I have always kind of been interested in alternatives. Maybe you could say we are right wing Christian hippies. So we were interested in organic farming, and we were interested in drip irrigation on gardens. And while at Oregon State, I met some people who wanted somebody to teach their children part time. It turns out they were basically kind of left wing hippie homeschoolers, but nobody called it that yet. And from there I started looking into homeschooling and almost no research was done. So I pulled together a paper all about homeschooling and research on homeschooling and presented it as actually it was an exam for my doctoral studies. It was not my dissertation. And all of a sudden after I wrote that paper, I was an expert on homeschooling. So one way to be an expert is do something almost nobody else is doing and then you’re an expert. That’s basically what happened. During all of that, Betsy and I heard about homeschooling and I started studying homeschooling and one thing led to another. I did home research on homeschooling and bingo, as soon as I got my PhD, the NBC Today show called me and flew me from Oregon to New York City, picked me up in a limousine and put me on the NBC Today show with the president of the National Education Association, the big teachers union. That was amazing. I’d never done anything like that in my life. That was my introduction to the media and interviews with the media. Just two years after that, some other guys and I started the nonprofit National Home Education Research Institute. NHERI. Nheri.org. So that’s kind of the preliminary before what happened, how we got there, god just led me from one thing to another. I went off to teach at Seattle Pacific well, I’ll just say a university in Seattle, and then started the Research Institute during that. And I went and taught at another college and kept the research institute going and about 25 years ago full time with the Research Institute.

Yvette Hampton:

That is an incredible story that you talked about before. And I don’t know that you would call it a story, but just your qualifications and what you did before even getting into the world of homeschooling. You are well educated. And the reason I wanted you to share all of that stuff is because I didn’t want people we’re going to talk a lot this week about your study of homeschooling. And I don’t want people to think that you’re just some guy off the street who maybe talked to ten different people. And now all of a sudden, you’re the expert on homeschooling. Your bio says that you are a leading international expert in research on homeschooling. And I would argue that you are the leading international expert in research on homeschooling. I don’t know anyone else who has done as much research as you in the past years. And we’re not just talking about the past ten years. We’re talking about you said, I think 33 years ago that you started researching homeschooling, is that right?

Dr. Brian Ray:

I said that the institute was started 33 years ago, but I actually started studying homeschooling more like 39 years ago. So before I left out a step event you got it right, though about the research. I left out that in 1985 I started the journal Home School Researcher. And keep in mind it was three words, home school research. So that tells you something that was before it evolved in America to a one word. We used to have discussions and debates about whether it should be one word or two.

Yvette Hampton:

Well, we’ve seen that debate as well, even as recently as when we chose the name for the movie schoolhouse Rocked the Homeschool Revolution. I remember us talking about that. Like, dude, we put home school or homeschool and we did our own little bit of research and we thought, okay, most people are saying it as one word, and so we’re going to just go with homeschooling instead of homeschooling. Yes, you have been in this world for such a long time, and you have really put your whole, I would say most of your adult life’s work into researching homeschooling and not just the history of it. I mean, you talk about the history of it, but really you have a really deep understanding. And so talk for a little bit about your research that you’ve done. And I would love for you to take us not through every step, but kind of what it was like from the beginning, 39 years ago when you started researching it. And I know this is a big question, this could take a long time. We have about, what, 1012 minutes here. So we can continue this on, if we need to on Wednesday. But talk about your research on homeschooling and where you’ve seen it go.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Okay. Way back in that time machine around 1989 ish, I can’t say the exact date, but I was already into it. I was already into it. In fact, I wanted to do a study on homeschooling for my doctoral dissertation. But it’s a story we won’t get into, and I can never prove it. But they did not want me studying and having a dissertation coming out of Oregon State University on homeschooling. So I did my work just on public school kids, but on my own. On the side, I was collecting data on private school children and homeschool children with the same questions as my doctoral dissertation. So as soon as they handed me the dissertation, boom, I went out and started publishing on homeschooling. And it was kind of an off thing that almost nobody would look into. It was called the Theory of Reason to Action, and it was comparing home school, public school, and private school students in terms of their interest in doing science, in their interest in doing studying science, and their interest in doing laboratory science, and then what would motivate them. And as it turns out, and this is going to start to sound like a broken record, the homeschool children were more engaged and more interested in science than most of the others. I mean, that’s what I found. That was way back in around, like I said, 1988. Now, around that same time, just after that, Mike Farris, who was one of the founders of the home school legal defense association was making a speech somewhere or writing an article or something. He said, you know what we’re not we need in the home school movement? We need parents with their children to go down to their state legislatures and visit with legislators and so that they can see their children, they’re real, they’re not weirdos, all that kind of stuff. And he said, number two, we need good, solid, sound, empirical research evidence. Well, HSLDA was the main sponsor of one of my first big studies, and it was a nationwide study of homeschooling. And we got into all kinds of things like parents demographics, their income level, their ethnicity, education level, children reasons for homeschooling, and standardized academic achievement tests. Though even though those test scores are not the most important thing in the world. And I know you know that, Yvette it is something that the public and the courts and the legislatures want to know about, right? A lot of parents want to know too. Can my child I’m not a government certified teacher, I don’t even have a college degree can my children possibly learn from me to do basic math and reading and writing? So it was a big study. It was a first of its kind, and it got a lot of publicity. We went into the news, we made booklets, we did all those kinds of things. And we found out that on average, homeschool children do very well academically. We mailed out thousands and thousands of paper envelopes with stuffed with a family survey, and then probably three copies of each child’s survey with self addressed stamped envelopes. And then those got mailed in from all over the country to our little place in Seattle, Washington. We lived up there for three years, and then we had to open all those and then we had to hand enter all of that into probably an excel oh my goodness spreadsheet. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of hand entries. That’s how it happened.

Yvette Hampton:

I can’t even imagine because you look at how easy it is. I mean, now you just can create a simple forum on Google, shoot it out, know thousands of people, and have answers within hours if you need them. I mean, it’s just amazing to see how technology has really helped in that way. I’m assuming this was back and I don’t remember when the date was, but this is probably around the same time that Dr. Dobson did his famous interview with Dr. Ray Moore, right where they started talking about homeschooling.

Dr. Brian Ray:

I would say that was more like probably closer to 1985. Ish around in there okay, maybe. Okay, yeah, close. So people started hearing about homeschooling from different angles, just alternative education discussions, ministries like focus on the Family, all that was bubbling and simmering and coming about at the same time. I met people who had never heard of homeschooling, and they started homeschooling they hadn’t heard about it on a radio nowhere. And they just said, God wanted us to do this. He did not want us to put them, especially in public schools. I met people all over the country who were doing that. Yes, it was around that time.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah. That’s incredible. I know that there have been so many hands who God has used to bring homeschooling to where it is today. And we take it for granted. We forget about those homeschool pioneers like yourself who really did pave the way before us so that we have our homeschool freedoms and so that we have what we need to homeschool successfully so that we can have those. Test scores so that we can have all of the things that we can take to our legislators and say, hey, look, this is what’s going on with us. Oftentimes you will hear of kids who were homeschooled back in the even I would say that the early two thousand s. And they’ll say, oh, my mom didn’t do a good job of homeschooling. I didn’t have a good education. I was deprived of my education. And so people will look at those kids and they will say, oh well, look at those homeschoolers, none of them are educated. Well, look at the public schoolers, many of them aren’t educated. Look at the private schoolers, many of them aren’t educated either. Sometimes I think it really just depends on the parents and on the child. And so I love your research because you really do show and prove that home education really does work in most cases. Not in all cases, but in most cases academically, it really does work for students. And so I want to kind of hang on that right now and I want to pull that into Wednesday. I want to kind of kick off Wednesday’s episode with that and talk about why Homeschooling does work according to the research that you’ve done. Homeschooled kids, like we talked about on Monday, across the board, overall, homeschool kids do really well. So talk about what your research really has taught you, what it tells us as the world of homeschooling.

Dr. Brian Ray:

The first thing that happened in my research and I want to mention and I mentioned this event earlier that I’m going to talk a lot about my research, but there are a lot of other people studying homeschooling now. There was a time when there were very few of us and I knew all their names, basically. But now there are dozens, if not hundreds of people around the world studying homeschooling. So in the early days of the modern homeschool movement, put that in context because homeschooling is thousands of years old, people just wanted to know, well, who are they? What do they quote look like? What are their demographics? We were just asking questions like, well, how old are you parent? How many children do you have? What’s your ethnicity background? What’s your education level? What’s your family income, just all those basic statistics. Everybody kind of wants to know about a group of people so we can generalize and so we can pigeonhole you, so we can have a measure of central tendency. So that was the first phase of research. And way back in 25, 30 years ago, it looked pretty like in America, I’m talking about United States, okay? It looked pretty much, I call it overall middle classy, overall disproportionately, white, Anglo, overall, maybe just a little bit more education level the parents than the general public. Kind of like that. Now, remember, whenever we say generalizations, there’s always a variety. Because to get an average, you have to have one end and the other end. So people just always have to remember that. Okay, way back then, also, we wanted to know, well, all right, this is what they kind of quote, look like. But how is it possible that people who are not government certified teachers could possibly teach their children anything like academics? So we wanted to ask that question, how are they doing academically? And even though we can have all kinds of debates about achievement tests, let’s face it, people still use achievement tests in the public schools, in the private schools. And in some states, it’s actually by law, you’re supposed to do that. So we started looking at academic achievement test scores. And right from the very get go, we were finding that homeschool children on average were 15 to 25 percentile percentile points above the public school average, which is 50. And if you’re not familiar with test scores, go study it. But 50th percentile is the average. That doesn’t mean 50% correct on a test. It just means if you’re at the 50th, you did better than 50% of the kids and you did worse than 50% of the kids, roughly.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Dr. Brian Ray:

So that’s what we found. And others started finding the same thing. Now, as the research world kind of progressed, we wanted to have more sophisticated studies. But also then people asked, as you know, Yvette, everybody kind of knows the s question. What about socialization? Socialization? Everybody knows it. It’s a big inside joke in the home school world. What about that? Okay, for the last, whatever, 100. Now, 20 years, most kids have been institutionalized to be with same age peers, plus or minus eleven months their age. So what’s going to happen to them if they’re not doing that all day? So a lot of researchers, I did much less of that kind of research. So I might have asked quantitative things like, what are the activities your children are involved in? How many per week, whatever. I asked kind of quantitative approaches to that.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Others did other research like, well, what about self concepts, self esteem? What about actual behaviors acting out too aggressively or not assertively enough? And all these different studies. Fascinating studies. Fascinating studies. But when I did a review of research a few years back, 87% of the studies, peer reviewed studies, found that home school students were better in terms of social and emotional development than their institutional school peers. And if we have time, maybe you could ask me why. Okay, if we get to that, I.

Yvette Hampton:

Do want to know why. But my question also is, as you’re doing this research, obviously you’re researching homeschool families. Are you also at the same time researching public school, private school families with the exact same questions?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Okay, so the way most of this research works is if you do a standardized achievement test and you put that in your studies, already, you have the norm for public school students because that is the norm for that test. So the average is 50. So then you would just mainly collect data on home school kids. Now, a few researchers, this takes more time, and it usually takes more money if you could get fresh, brand new test data scores from both home school and institutional school at the same time. A few studies have done that, but that’s a lot more intensive. And like I said, it takes money to spend all the time getting all that together. Let’s say there’s an inventory, or most people call them a test. All right, let’s just call it a test. A test that deals with self concept, right? Well, already researchers have developed these tests, and they do what’s called studies of validity and reliability on these tests. So they exist out there. And already, mainly it’s being used on public school children. So you have the scores and the norming group for those children. So now you pull in, let’s say it’s been normed for nine to twelve year olds. So now some researcher goes and gets a bunch of nine to twelve year old homeschool kids and gives them the same inventory and compares them to that norm group. That’s one way. And the other way, just like an achievement, you could have live, brand new, fresh subjects in the study. It could be a group of 25 homeschool children and 25 public school children and watch them, see how they interact, behave, play, don’t play, fight, all those things. It’s kind of fun to be research because you get to do all of that. So it’s both preset scores from tests that have been developed already, and sometimes it’s fresh, brand new data comparing the two groups live on the spot.

Yvette Hampton:

Well, that’s really cool. So sometimes it’s not just a check a box kind of survey. You actually get to observe people in real life and how they’re responding to other people, how they’re responding to their peers, and maybe to their parents and to their teachers if they’re in school. Things like that.

Dr. Brian Ray:

One that I got to do was kind of fun. The Montana homeschool. So I’ve done several big nationwide studies, but I’ve done several state specific studies, and some homeschool leaders in Montana are very forward thinking. Many years ago, they asked me to do this study where I actually brought in because some people would say, well, these homeschool kids do well just because only the smart, brilliant parents or the parents who cheat would be in your study. So we got a group of students that were just sort of like a convenient sample, and then we had another group, and they were tested under a watchful eye, making sure nobody was doing anything unseemly or cheating and all that kind of stuff. And we found out they scored almost identically to one another. So that was kind of fun to have. A new group of data, new group of students, a new group of data. So studies come in all shapes and forms and sizes and approaches.

Yvette Hampton:

In your research, you have found that overall, homeschool kids do really well, and oftentimes they do better than their peers in public school or private school. Why do you think that is?

Dr. Brian Ray:

I think it’s one of the most fascinating things and it’s the hardest thing to answer in research. We could say what? We can have descriptive statistics. The question is why? Why does it come out that way? Because when you look back 35, 40 years ago, there were a lot of negative people toward homeschooling, a lot of skeptics.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure.

Dr. Brian Ray:

I mean, even some people start homeschooling were skeptical of themselves. But I kind of look at it this way. Many years ago, I started going into the body of research on what makes for effective teaching and learning in institutional schools. Okay? So it’s not necessarily going to be the same, but that’s all we had, right? For a long time, we mainly had institutional schools in America and especially during the era of research. And I just want to just say leave out the H word, leave out homeschooling and just say, ask any public school teacher, private school teacher, government certified teacher, principal of a school, superintendent of a school district, whatever. Just start asking a bunch of questions. When do children usually learn more? When they’re in a group of 28 or when they’re in a group of three or four or five. When do children usually learn more? When they have more turns of conversation between adult and student or less. They all know the answer. When do children usually learn more? When they can master a subject or a skill? Before they move on? Or when they have to move on. Just because it’s a new day or a new semester. It doesn’t matter whether they learned it or not. When do children usually learn more? When there are fewer distractions or more distractions in their environment. We all know the answer. When do children usually learn more? When the curriculum or the pedagogical approach is customized for that child’s learning style, strengths, weaknesses, dreams and desires or not customized? We all know the answer. When do children learn more? When they’re being bullied or they’re not being bullied. We all know the answer. When do children learn more? When they’re being psychologically stressed out by teachers in a school system or not? And we all know the answer. So when do children learn more? When they’re being pressured to get into drugs and alcohol or not? When do children usually learn more? When they’re being pressured to get into premarital sex or not? We all know the answer. So you just start going down through this whole list of questions and say, well, which side of those answers does institute schooling lie on more? And which one does parent led home based education lie on more? And systemically by its very nature, parent directed home based education fits the bill more. So really, Yvette, the question is, why would homeschool children not do better?

Yvette Hampton:

Right? That’s fantastic. And I would know as the big, pretty bow on the end of that, who learns more? The kid whose parent loves them more than anyone else and knows them better than anyone else? Yes. There are some excellent teachers out there. There really are. We have a lot of friends who are teachers. We have a lot of friends who are administrators, and they have such a heart for the children that are in their classrooms, but they cannot it’s impossible for them to love your child the way that you love them and to cater to their needs the way that you do as their parent. I’m glad you brought that up.

Dr. Brian Ray:

The list I went through is not an attack on certified teachers.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure.

Dr. Brian Ray:

It just shows us that no matter how hard we try in institutional schools, we cannot replicate what I just went through. I mean, I’ve been a classroom teacher. You can’t do it. You just can’t do it. It’s impossible. And if you tried to make the classrooms that small, then they’d have to raise your property taxes fivefold.

Yvette Hampton:

So let’s park there as a parent for a minute, because you were a homeschool parent, right? You have eight kids, is that correct?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton:

You homeschooled your eight children. What was it that kept you homeschooling? Was it all of your research? What kept you and Betsy in this world of home education? And talk a little bit about your experience as a homeschool dad, especially back in the day when it know, as mainstream as it is now?

Dr. Brian Ray:

There were, I would say, a few core things to answer your question. First, no, it was not my mean, Yvette, I’ve told so many people from the speaker’s podium over and over and over and over. High test scores are not the main reason for homeschooling. It’s not. I mean, I’m a Christian, so what’s driven Betsy and me has been theology and philosophy, really? And actually just enjoying our yeah, we want to be with our children. Okay. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, right?

Yvette Hampton:

That’s why you had them.

Dr. Brian Ray:

They’re a blessing from God. They’re a blessing to be. Around. I don’t mean they’re always wonderful to be around, I just mean it’s a blessing to be with our children. Yeah, it’s good to be with them. So when I first got saved, when God brought me into his kingdom, I knew immediately that the Bible, the Word of God, is what is sufficient for everything we need to know and how to live and how to enjoy God and let Him change us and sanctify us. I knew that. So if you’re a Christian, there’s no choice. You must be a scripturalist. You have to go to God’s word to answer questions about everything in life. And so way back, I asked myself, what does the Word of God say about the education of children? And education is a very holistic, broad term that has to do with things like academics, reading, writing, arithmetic, math, whatever. And it has to do with values, morals, ways of thinking, how to do things, how to treat your neighbor. All of that is a part of education. And I will challenge any Christian who’s thinking, I don’t want to home school or I shouldn’t have to homeschool, or there’s nothing in the Bible about education. There’s a lot in the Bible about education all through the Proverbs, in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy, in the Psalms, in the New Testament. There’s a lot about the education of children. And over and over and over again I ask people, who does God say, has the let’s quit using the word right? Who has the duty and the responsibility responsibility to be the main educators of children? And I present this, and you’re going to have to say it’s the parents. And then you say in the Bible, does God give you the choice to just delegate it to anybody you want? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So whether it was easier or harder, whatever, whether children were fussing with us or happy with us as parents, it was the philosophy and the theology and the desire to be together as a family that really drove us. And I like to call it parent directed home based education. Discipleship. Now, that’s just a clunky mouthful, but homeschooling, the word homeschooling does not capture it at all because it’s not institutional school at home.

Yvette Hampton:

Right? It’s not called home academics.

Dr. Brian Ray:

No.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, no, you’re right. One of my favorite lines in the movie is where Heidi says where she got to the point where she realized that homeschooling was discipleship. And I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about. And so many parents, and I’ve talked to many of them parents who will say, I don’t think I’m called to homeschool. And we’ll say, you are called to homeschool if you love and I don’t say that if you love Jesus and you don’t homeschool, clearly you’re not a Christian. I don’t mean it like that. I’m just saying if you are a professing Christian and you are committed to discipling the hearts of your children, it’s impossible to do that all of the time when they’re away from you, most of the time. And God really does give us the responsibility, like you said, and the duty to home educate, to disciple our kids, to teach them His Word day in and day out, when they walk, when they sit, when they wake up. Psalm One says to not walk in the counsel of the wicked. Yes, it is so important.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yeah, there’s a lot on this event. I used to teach a philosophy of education course at a Christian college for five years. And every year I got two sections of people who are planning to be teachers. So I got to kind of teach and indoctrinate ten groups of teachers. And when we would go through the Bible on education, on children, many, many of them, and they were raised in mostly Christian homes, and a lot of them went to Christian schools and we would just be reading the Bible and studying. And I would not mention homeschooling, but most of them by the end of it said, you’re just talking about homeschooling. I said, I never used the word. You just came to that conclusion on your own because you’re studying the word of God. And I’d like to challenge people gently but firmly. Parents who have, whether their oldest child is three years old or their oldest child is twelve year olds, they might say something like, well, I just don’t know. Why would home school I want to flip the question around. Why would you send your child away from home, away from you to be taught, trained and indoctrinated in a system that is not designed and never was designed to lift up the name of the King of the universe, Jesus Christ, and has never been and never will be designed to preach the gospel to your child? Why would you send your child away to know that’s really the question. And right now in that question, I’m leaving out Christian schools for now, because that’s a little more complicated conversation. But that’s the real question for parents who profess Christ, what does God say in the Bible? Not what does somebody else say? And why would you send your child away to be taught, trained and indoctrinated by mainly people who hate Jesus?

Yvette Hampton:

And we talked about why you and your wife Betsy chose to homeschool. And then we talked a little bit about the philosophy of home education. That’s kind of what we ended on yesterday, on Wednesday. Do you have any more to add to the philosophy of homeschool?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yes, I said something at the end that I wanted to flip the question around for parents, especially those who profess to be Christians, when they say, well, I’m not sure I should homeschool, or why would I home school? And I asked them, let’s flip it around and say, why would you send your child away from you and away from home for 6 hours per day, maybe more on a bus ride and all that to be taught, trained and indoctrinated by people who do not like the gospel. They do not like the good news of Jesus Christ. I even said something like hate Jesus. Well, remember Jesus said you’re either with me or you’re against me. Right? So I’m not making up stuff here. But I also wanted to say that it’s important for everybody I don’t care whether right now listening is a new Ager or a secular humanist or a pagan, or a Wiccan, or a Christian or a Muslim or a Mormon or a Jew, it doesn’t matter. All education, whether it’s being done at a thing we call public school or at a thing we call private school or by homeschooling, is the teaching, training and indoctrination of children. That is the truth. And I know it really bothers people when I use the word indoctrination, but all that means go look it up. There are different definitions of indoctrination. I’m not talking about under a bright white light. You haven’t been able to eat for 39 hours and they’re keeping 120 degrees in your cell, your isolation. So that’s not what there’s. Indoctrination just means putting in doctrine, putting in propositions, putting in concepts, putting in principles into a child’s heart and mind. We all know that’s what’s being done in private schools. We all know that’s what’s being done in public schools. We all know that’s what’s being done in homeschooling. So if you’re a professing Christian, you are supposed to be doing that the biblical worldview with your children. And regardless of whether you’re a Christian, I’m glad that you’re considering homeschooling. Because you see, parent directed home based education is a design by God. It’s not something that people in the last 35 years in America made up. It’s not just this fabricated idea. And actually a parent directed home based education improves our local communities. It doesn’t matter what your worldview is, it improves our nations all over the country. So I wanted to say that about it, that it is a good thing for communities and societies regardless of the test scores. I’m glad what you said about the test scores. Yvette, I mean, on average, statistically speaking, let’s say your child is below average on a test, he or she would do even worse probably if in public school. So just keep that in mind, right?

Yvette Hampton:

So you’re talking about indoctrination and you gave a fantastic definition of it. I want to actually read out of Webster’s Dictionary the definition of indoctrination is this it’s teaching a doctrine, principle or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view. And so you hit it right on the nail. I mean, that’s exactly what our kids are being indoctrinated by somebody. It doesn’t matter whether they’re being indoctrinated by the public school, private school, social media, or their parents. Every child is being indoctrinated somewhere by someone. And so as their parents. We have to take that role on and say, okay, this is where indoctrination is going to happen in our kids lives. It’s going to happen in our home under the umbrella of God’s Word, and we are going to indoctrinate our kids, and really, we’re just training them up right as God has called us to do so. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can do this. I know it’s a scary thing. It’s scary for me. It’s scary for pretty much every homeschool mom I’ve ever met. But by God’s grace, we can continue doing this. All right, so we’ve talked about, again, the academic achievement. Let’s talk you touched just a little bit on this, but I want to dig into this a little more about the social and emotional development of homeschool kids. What have you found with your research on that?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Something you just said made me I was ready. You gave me a segue of it. You said it can be scary for parents to think about doing this homeschooling thing. I don’t think you meant this, but it could imply in people’s head, I’m doing it all alone. No, you’re not. You’re not doing it all alone. If you’re a human being, you are a social creature, right? And if you are a Christian, you’re engaged in what we call a local church. And when you home school and you don’t quit homeschooling, that means you never send them away to be indoctrinated by somebody else, or you decide to stop them being indoctrinated by somebody else, and you bring them back home. You have all kinds of possibilities. You have what everybody knows now we call home school co ops. And I don’t even know if people know what that means. Cooperative. That’s what it means. It’s a cooperative. So you do things together. You have colleagues, you collaborate, you have fun know, you help each other, cry on each other’s shoulders. You give each other ideas. You maybe say, I hate math, and I don’t even want to learn math, so I’m going to have Susie Q in my co op. She’s going to teach the math class in our group, and then you have fun doing it together. So that is my segue to the research on homeschooling. The implication by the negative critics and the naysayers from 39 years ago till now is homeschool people hide in Sellers in northern Idaho, and they never interact with anybody. It is so absolutely false. It’s a tiny, tiny minority of homeschoolers who might do something like that. I’m not saying there are none, but it’s a tiny minority. And even then, hey, look it go back 180 years in American history. There were people who lived basically alone, a mom and a dad and maybe 23456 children, and they maybe got look.

Yvette Hampton:

At the Ingalls family.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yeah. And they maybe got to see somebody once a week or once a month or whatever. They were law abiding. Citizens. They learned how to read. They knew how to work hard. They knew how to be more. What more do you want? I mean, what more do we get than that? Or do we even get that from half the graduates of public schools? Maybe not. Okay, so we have the fact that homeschooling interact with other people, and they have a mom and a dad. And I think a really key important thing for people to keep in mind here is that most of the time when children go to institutional schooling, they model much of the time after peers. So seven year olds are looking at seven year olds as their models. Twelve year olds are looking at twelve year olds as their models. But what would we all say? Do you want your child to model after a mature, kind, hardworking adult or after a seven year old? You want them to model after the adult. So we’re all kind of messed up in our heads about what this whole peer interaction thing is about. There’s no research. I’ve looked and looked and looked and looked. There’s no research anywhere that shows children need to be with 25 other kids plus or minus eleven months their age turn out to be how to read, knowing how to read, knowing how to do basic math, knowing how to be law abiding, knowing how to keep the golden rule. There’s no research like that. And now we have the opposite. We have almost 40 years of research saying that when you look at homeschool kids, they’re doing better in terms of social and emotional development. They model after adults. They know how to interact with adults, they know how to interact with babies. They’re respectful, they’re kind. I’m not saying they’re all perfect. Nobody’s saying that. But on average, they’re doing better.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, I agree. And I see that in a lot of ways. I’m going to kind of twist this question a little bit for you because I’m curious to know if you’ve done any research on this specifically. I feel like kids in general, and I may be opening up a huge can of worms here, and if I am, just say we’ll talk about that on another episode, and then we’ll have to come back. Kids today, I think as I’m watching my girls who are both in the teen ish years, one’s closer to being an adult, one’s just entering into her teen years. There are two things that I see that have really impacted them socially and emotionally. And I don’t this is not just home school related. This is kids related, is COVID and social media. Those two things, I think, have had a great impact on kids emotions and their social anxiety, ability to socialize with other kids. Have you done any research on that end at all? And if so, what are you seeing?

Dr. Brian Ray:

I’ve only reviewed research, not personally done research. But it’s fascinating to ask that I just read today another set of statistics from the CDC, the federal government. Not that I necessarily trust them, but anyway, depression rates are completely gone out of off the charts. It’s like at least 20 some percent of adults are depressed or more depressed. There’s research that’s very clear from the past year that researchers have been doing about teens. The suicidal ideation is up statistically in the last few years, and it was already going up, it looks like. I don’t think there’s any way for anybody to make an argument that institutionalizing children in these places we call school, where most of us went, is improving their psychological health. I don’t know where there’s an argument for that. When you look at the government lockdowns and mask mandates and injection mandates and all that, and scaring the children and adults half to death, that to even interact with people would make them sick. And I’m going to be careful here, too. But it has had a very negative effect and many research are now admitting that the same things that they once called conspiracy theory are true. And so it’s not good at all. There’s been a lot of that. And the social media Yvette, we know from research that there’s addiction, it’s not health, it’s negative to their social skills. So I really would pray that parents here’s the problem even parents who profess to be Christians and who homeschool their children have to admit that they have been slowly boiled in the water like that frog we all know about. And I’m guessing a large portion of people listening right now are way more on screen time and social media than they ever should be. They need to get off of it and get outside with their children, do things with their children. Not only we have all that. I mean, you’ve got me on a roll, NHERI Vet. Not only do we have that, we have skyrocketing obesity rates. The majority of American young adults cannot even get into the military now because they’re obese. All of this is tied together. It’s all tied together. And it’s also tied into the fact that many parents, including some watching, are more worried about what their children think than what they know is good for their children. So when they say, hey, Billy and Susie, get outside and you’re going to go play for 15 minutes, I don’t want you, then the parents buckle to that, but they’ve got to say you’re going out. And then even better would be if the parents would go outside with them. But you’ve got me on a topic and there’s a lot of negative impact, especially over the last few years from both government controls on those things we were just talking about and children and parents spending way too much time sitting and looking at the screen.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, and social media is you’re right on all of that. When I think about kids being in school, public or private, social media is one of the reasons now that we can add to the list of not having our kids in school because they are exposed to everything. There are no limits. Teachers can try to take phones away. Administration can try to put lockdowns on them, whatever. It’s never going to happen.

Dr. Brian Ray:

It doesn’t work.

Yvette Hampton:

As long as kids have phones in their pockets and in their backpacks, all it takes is sneaking into the bathroom and pulling up some websites, even if they’re not looking at anything inappropriate. It’s just the addiction of all the kids standing around on their phones all Ray long. And so all the kids feel like they have to do that because it’s what all their friends are doing. And you don’t want to be the odd, weird one out who’s not on your phone. And so, I mean, it just is so destructive. And so you talk about weird.

Dr. Brian Ray:

There’s research on it, home school research on it. It’s harming them. It’s harming them all the way through. So homeschoolers, you have the option to not do that. And mom and dad, you have the option to be disciplined yourself. So when you all get home at night and you say, hey, there’s the basket over there. And if your children do have cell phones and mom and dad, your cell phone goes in the basket for a couple of hours together as a family.

Yvette Hampton:

I want to talk about the success of the homeschooled kids now who are into their adulthood, because we’ve heard, of course, that there are adults who are like, oh, I hated being homeschooled. It was a terrible thing for me. And then you’ve got adults who are like, I was homeschooled my whole life, and it’s been amazing. And you have definitely both ends of the spectrum. And then, of course, as homeschooled parents today, we worry about whether or not our kids will make it into adulthood successfully and what that will look like. And when I say successfully, I know Dr. Ray’s heart is the same. I don’t mean being able to get the best education with the best job so that they can make the most money and have the biggest house and the best vacations. I mean, success according to what God has called them to do. So talk a little bit about success of the homeschool in adulthood now that.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Has been studied in many different ways. I’ve got to do a few of those studies, and some others have done it. And so they range all the way from, okay, now you’re an adult. How often are you depressed? Okay, how much are you into alcohol abuse? If you went to college, what’s your GPA? And did you finish college? Do you vote? Do you trust the government? I mean, there’s so many fascinating studies about adults, but here’s all of those together, when you put them all in one big pot, stirred up, get this 169 percent of peer reviewed studies on adults who are home educated show that they are doing better statistically than those who went to institutional schools. So in other words, the large majority of the studies say they’re doing better. So what about the other 31% of the studies? Most of those say, hey, no difference in what we measured. So in other words, they’re doing as well or better less addiction to drugs, less depression, less problems acting out toward other people doing better in college, if they go to college. So that’s just what we know so far. I mean, again, Yvette, everybody has to remember this does not mean all people who are homeschooled are rocket scientists who love life and never get depressed. It doesn’t mean that. But it does mean, as a group, there’s something about home education that is helping people more than other people. And you kind of mentioned something there for a minute about we have all these stories of, well, I was home educated. I hated it. Well, I was home educated. The best thing since sliced bread. Remember, those are just anecdotes and now this is my experience. I’m going to tell you my experience. Most of the ones who say it was bad, they were raised by Christian parents, and they themselves now, these adults are not Christians, okay? They’re making complaints about the philosophy under which they were raised. Remember all the schools we said, whether they’re public schooling, private school, or homeschooling, teach a philosophy to their children. And you know what? Home of them, when they get older, reject that philosophy. Some people who are raised in public schools who are taught a secular humanistic, evolutionistic status, Marxist LGBTQ philosophy, they reject that and they become Christians. Right?

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Dr. Brian Ray:

So you have the same thing with homeschooling. But overall, if you look at it kind of from a research, quantitative, qualitative perspective, the home educated are doing better in adulthood.

Yvette Hampton:

That’s exciting news. It brings hope, I think. I know for myself as a homeschool mom, that gives me a lot of hope. Let’s talk really quickly about the changing demographics of the homeschool community because you have seen it change drastically in 39 years. I mean, we’ve seen the public school system change drastically, but homeschooling, I think, has really changed drastically. Talk about that for a minute.

Dr. Brian Ray:

At the beginning of the modern homeschool movement, there was a stereotype, and there’s always a little bit of truth to a stereotype.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Homeschoolers were either kind of like left wing, hippie wear birkenstocks, move to the country, blow up your TV, and raise a know that was one stereotype. Or they were more like right wing, white, Christian fundamentalist Bible thumpers. All right? So those stereotypes are not exactly true, but there was some truth to it. There was always the variety. But keep in mind, there was always the variety. So what we’ve seen over the last 35 to 40 years, the variety is there, and it’s just increasing, whereas maybe I’m just going to make up numbers here. Maybe 20 years ago, you would not have found online well, there wasn’t so much online, but anyway, you would not have found a Wiccan home school group, or you would not have found a Naturist home school group. Now you can find almost everything online. You can find almost everything online. In terms of philosophy. Why do I mention philosophy? Because the philosophy drives almost everything. Right. So philosophy drives what kind of curriculum you choose and how you sure.

Yvette Hampton:

It goes back to indoctrination.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Sure. And remember, we’ve had john Holtz was one of the first people promoting what we call homeschooling today, and he talked about unschooling. We’ve had that for 40 years. Right. I mean, that’s a big difference from structured school at home. So we’ve had all these varieties. Another significant change we’ve seen is that many more people from different ethnicities are homeschooling or different skin colors, whatever you want to call it. Way more of that than we saw before. Yes, it did look very white Anglo before, and now it does. Not anymore. I mean, homeschooling has grown tremendously, especially in the last five. Very diverse amongst black families. African Americans and Hispanics are coming. Most people don’t even talk about down. When you go to the Southwest and you speak at a homeschool conference in the Southwest, people don’t even specify Hispanic or not. They’re just NHERI. It’s interesting. That tells you something about our culture. But anyway, so we’ve seen changes in that. We’ve seen a big variety in what’s available to people online. So that kind of alters what people do and how they do it. There’s just a lot of changes. Many changes.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, many good changes. Some not so exciting, not so good. But I think overall the changes have been really good. And I think from personally, the change that I think is the most exciting is the acceptance of homeschooling is that people no longer look at homeschoolers and are like, what you’re doing? What you’re teaching your kids at home? I mean, I’m out with my kids all the time, and this is our 13th year of homeschooling, and we lived in Southern California. And always, I mean, since my girls were in kindergarten, we always have made our way out into the grocery store, into the library, wherever. We just have done life. And we’ve had a couple of people give us funny looks, oh, are you girls out of school today? And they’ll say, no, we’re homeschooling. Oh, okay. But not so much anymore. I mean, it is just so widely accepted, and not even just accepted, it’s celebrated. I think more and more parents, more and more people, I should say, are opening up their eyes to what’s happening in the public schools. And they’re going, oh. And almost always they say, oh, I have a neighborhood home schools, or my niece home school or my daughter home school. And it’s like they’re excited to know someone else who’s part of this club. So that’s really cool. All right, I want to end with one question. This is kind of a tough topic, and I don’t want to park too long NHERI. But I think that it needs to be addressed. And I think in your research, you have tackled this a little bit, and people will talk about child abuse and neglect in homeschool families, and of course, you’ll hear stories about these kids, which it’s so heartbreaking. They have been terribly abused, and the parents will state, oh, well, we homeschool them because people always ask the question, well, why weren’t they in school? Why didn’t anybody notice that these kids were being chained up or rocked up or neglected, malnourished, whatever? And they put that homeschool label on them. And of course, kids who are in institutional school, there’s lots of child abuse that goes on there too. Have you done specific research when it comes to the area of child abuse and neglect of institutionally schooled kids versus homeschool kids?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yes, it’s a study that I had been thinking about doing for probably at least ten years of it. And finally okay, wow. A couple of years ago, we got on it, and people like people watching right now gave us money to support the study. Before I get into that, because I know we got to go fast. First of all yes. In public school families, home school families, and private school families, sometimes parents do evil things, and it’s evil and it’s bad. So let’s just get that off on the table and off the table. So no one’s excusing that ever, right?

Yvette Hampton:

No justification for it, ever.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yeah. We wanted to know from a quantitative perspective and to help an honest discussion for policy and law. Okay, so is there any difference? Because we’ve had people, including professors, just throw out wild claims that homeschooling either disproportionately abuse their children or it’s a way to really hide it, that kind of thing. So we really want to know about so my colleague and I, Dr. Denise Shaquille, worked on this, and we started collecting data, and we finally got it done and published it in a peer reviewed journal last fall. You can find it, and it’s posted online, and it’s open access, which means anybody can read it, and you don’t have to pay $40 to read the article, which is wonderful. This is what we found, two big, major findings. Our subjects are adults, okay? And they’re looking back at growing up. There are a lot of reasons for doing it that way. It’s extremely difficult to query minors about this kind of thing. So we worked with adults and told us they told us what happened to them growing up. First major finding when you statistically put into the model demographics, like parent education level, family income, how many years children had been or not been in foster care, ethnicity. Race, all those things when you put those in like you should do in most any study, no significant difference between those who were institutionally schooled and those who were homeschool in terms of abuse and neglect growing up. No significant difference. Now we’ll come back to that second major finding for the no significantly different amount of abuse that had been perpetrated on those who were homeschooled. So remember, no significant difference home school versus schooled for those who were homeschooled, it was not being done the evil things by their parents in the home. It was being done to them outside the home at places like schools or museums or sports or those kinds of things. So that’s the second major of two major findings of the study. So what does that mean? People who wanted homeschooling to look good were a little disappointed and people who wanted institutional schooling to look good were kind of disappointed. No significant difference. And then for that which was happening to those who were homeschool, that was actually a positive finding that it was not happening at home, it was happening outside the home. So that’s really a big deal. It doesn’t sound like the end of the world kind of study, but it’s a big deal because it’s the opposite of what a lot of negative critics were claiming without, you know, first of know, we presume in America that people are innocent until they’re found guilty. And the biblical role of government is to punish evildoers. It’s not to try to catch somebody who might do something wrong. We just don’t work that way. So the people who want to control homeschooling thinking maybe it’ll do better for life, I mean, they’re wrong in terms of constitutional philosophy and they’re wrong in terms of biblical philosophy. Secondly, now we have concrete evidence that there’s no problem. There’s no problem to try to solve.

Discipline / Discipleship / Heart Training

I recently received an email from a parent asking if we had any podcast episodes on discipline. The answer is a complicated one, because so much of our content is focused on the nuts and bolts of training the hearts of our children – on discipling them to have a Biblical worldview and Christ-like character. But I don’t think we have ever focused on specific methods of discipline. Quite honestly, I don’t think we ever will.

Our objective is always to point you to God’s Word as the perfect standard for parenting, discipline, marriage, and every area of life. And God’s Word has a lot to say on the subject. But even more, we know that focusing on discipline methods misses the much of the point. If we aren’t laying a Biblical foundation of Godly thinking and behavior, we are treating the symptoms without curing the disease.

Further, when we focus on discipline methods, we open ourselves and our guests up to misinterpretation and misapplication, which can be extraordinarily harmful.

It is also important to remember that the discipline process often reveals areas in our own lives where we need to grow as parents. For this purposed, discipline, discipleship, heart training are a life-long endeavor that benefit our whole families, not just our children. May we endeavor to ALL follow Christ more closely and to grow together toward Christ-likeness.

That said, as I was searching the archives to answer this mother’s email, I found a wealth of excellent episodes that cover the core of discipline, which is heart training and discipleship, from a variety of helpful perspectives.

I pray these episodes are a blessing to your family, and even more, I pray that they result in ETERNAL fruit in your children! To God be all the glory!

Matthew McDill – From Discipline to Discipleship

Ginger Hubbard – Parenting for Eternity

Mindy Dunn – Using the Bible to Train our Children

Rachael Carman – Parenting “That Child”

Ginger Hubbard – Parenting Rebellious Teens

Matthew McDill – Sibling Relationships

Connie Albers – Getting to the Hearts of our Children

Connie Albers – Parenting Teenagers

Durenda Wilson – Nurturing Sibling Relationships

Israel Wayne – Raising Them Up: Biblical Parenting

Israel Wayne- Establishing a Biblical Home/Avoiding Common Parenting Mistakes

For more on this topic, please check out the full Family Series on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

Embracing Distractions: Finding Purpose in Homeschooling

“God oftentimes uses distractions to challenge us in what we’re prioritizing.”

Katie Waalkes

In the latest episode of the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, Yvette Hampton sits down with Katie Waalkes, a second-generation homeschooler and mother of multiple children with special needs. Together, they tackle the topic of distracted homeschooling and how to navigate the challenges it presents. As highly distracted homeschool moms themselves, Yvette and Katie share personal experiences and insights that will resonate with many parents who face similar circumstances.

Embracing Distractions:

In the interview, Katie underscores the importance of character over curriculum. She urges parents not to be overly focused on adhering strictly to a schedule, but rather to seize teachable moments and opportunities to build character in their children. Katie asserts, “Homeschooling is not just about academics; it’s about preparing our children for life.”

Katie also highlights a significant concern for parents who miss out on imparting valuable life lessons due to the physical separation that can occur when children spend prolonged periods away from them. She encourages moms and dads to remain open to identifying and seizing opportunities to teach and build character in their children. “We were put on this earth to serve others and serve God for His glory,” she emphasizes.

Anchoring the Day:

Both Yvette and Katie discuss the importance of anchoring the homeschool day with specific activities or times to refocus and overcome distractions. They suggest using meal times as anchors if no other routines are established. “Teaching children to refocus, pray, and confess mistakes can help them develop valuable skills in restarting and moving forward.”

Katie shares her practical approach to managing distractions, including the use of a whiteboard and the notes app on her iPhone. She prefers these methods to traditional pen and paper, as they help her stay organized and prevent her from misplacing important information.

The Blessings of Distractions:

While distractions in homeschooling can sometimes be challenging, Katie counters that they can also turn into blessings for children. She urges parents to focus on leading their children to Jesus, regardless of the day’s structure or organization. Distractions offer opportunities to guide children closer to Him.

Overcoming Challenges:

When discussing how to overcome distractions, both Yvette and Katie stress the importance of recognizing the problem, seeking God’s guidance, and subsequently experiencing a heart change. They highlight the need to protect specific hours for homeschooling and the benefits of blocking off “safety hours” to minimize interruptions and maintain focus.

Katie encourages highly distracted homeschooling moms to blend similar tasks together and avoid multitasking, as it often leads to unfinished projects. Additionally, she recommends creating a minimalist environment free from clutter and using noise-canceling headphones to reduce environmental distractions.

Conclusion:

By focusing on character development, anchoring the day, and embracing distractions, homeschooling can become a purpose-driven journey that leads children closer to Jesus.

As Katie wisely states, “The most important thing in parenting is leading children to Jesus.” With this perspective, distractions transform from obstacles to opportunities, reminding us that our ultimate goal is not merely academic success, but shaping the hearts and minds of our children for the glory of God.

So, if you find yourself easily distracted in your homeschooling journey, take heart and tune in to this inspiring podcast episode with Yvette Hampton and Katie Waalkes. By embracing distractions and seeking God’s guidance, you can discover a new sense of purpose and fulfillment in your homeschool experience.

Katie Waalkes is a wife of 14 years, mother to 6 kids, most of whom have special needs with a mixture of medical diagnosis & special learning needs.

She is passionate about encouraging parents in their biblical parenting and helping homeschool moms in their journey. Katie has a unique perspective on homeschooling as both she and her husband grew up homeschooled. As a second-generation homeschooler, she has been both the student and teacher and has much to offer on the topic. She hopes to be able to help you start making the most of the little moments in life as the mundane moments are often the most impactful.

Recommended Resources:

https://lifeinthemundane.com

https://www.youtube.com/lifeinthemundane

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Discussion Questions:

Want to use this interview for a co-op meeting or small group? Here are a few discussion questions to keep the conversation moving in the right direction:

1. How does Katie define distracted homeschooling? Can you relate to her experiences as a highly distracted homeschool mom?

2. How does Katie emphasize the importance of character over curriculum? In what ways can we prioritize character-building in our homeschooling journey?

3. What are some teaching moments and opportunities that parents often miss out on when their children are separated from them for long periods? How can we be more intentional in seizing those opportunities?

4. What are some strategies that Katie shares for overcoming distractions and staying focused in homeschooling? How do you anchor your day and help your children develop refocusing skills?

5. How does Katie view distractions in the journey of parenting? How can distractions actually benefit our children’s growth and our own journey towards Jesus?

6. What are some challenges that Katie identifies in her homeschooling journey, such as changing curriculums and inconsistent expectations? How can we address these challenges and ensure a more consistent homeschooling experience?

7. Katie’s children have special needs. How does she adapt her homeschooling approach to cater to each child’s individual needs and abilities? How can we accommodate our children’s unique learning styles and challenges?

8. How does Katie view multitasking? Why is it important to block off specific hours for homeschooling and protect those hours from external distractions and appointments?

9. Katie suggests creating a minimalist environment and using noise-canceling headphones to reduce distractions. How can we create a homeschooling environment that promotes focus and minimizes distractions? 

10. In what ways can we seek a heart change and rely on God’s guidance to overcome the challenges of distracted homeschooling? How can prayer and seeking the Lord’s wisdom help us in our homeschooling journey?

Keep it FREE:

We have always wanted to make the barrier to entry for homeschooling as low as possible, so we have made all but one of our resources completely free (and we’re considering how we can make that one free too). READ MORE HERE.

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Read the full interview transcript below:

Yvette Hampton [00:00:00]:

Hey, everyone. This is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. Thank you for being with me today, this week, whatever it is that you’re doing. I am always so honored to know that you are on the other side of this camera, on the other side of this microphone, and taking the time to listen to the Schoolhouse Rocked podcast. You know, before I ever pushed the record button with any guest, we always pray. And it was no different with my guest this week. Her name is Katie Walcus. And we were just talking about the podcast and what we were going to discuss and just talking about life and stuff. And then I asked her, I said, do you have any questions? And she said, can we pray? And I said, absolutely. We always do that. And our prayer always is that you, our audience, would be encouraged by what we discuss and that the Lord would speak through us and that he would be honored in our conversation and that everything we do would point you and point your kids to Jesus. And so we really do pray that that is how you view this podcast and what you get out of it. That you walk away encouraged and equipped to be able to do this parenting thing, this homeschooling thing, this life thing, and that you would be able to do it the best that you can according to God’s word and according to biblical truth. So thank you again for being with us. I am excited about my guest this week. Like I said, her name is Katie Walcus. I totally botched her name when I asked her, because if you look at it the way it’s spelled, you might try to figure out how to say it, too. And so I’m glad that I asked before I completely butchered it on the podcast. But we are going to talk this week about the highly distracted homeschool mom, and I am so excited about this topic because this is me. I am a totally distracted homeschool mom. That might be surprising to some of you and those of you who know me, you’re going to be like, oh, yeah, that’s you, yvette. Well, Katie, welcome to the podcast. Like I said, we’re talking about the highly distracted homeschool mom. And it’s so funny. As soon as I saw that you talked on this topic, I was like, oh, you got to come on the podcast because I need your help. And I know so many others need help in this area as well. I think one of those things that as homeschool moms, those of us who are easily distracted, those type B’s like myself, it’s hard for us sometimes to think that we’re doing okay. As homeschool moms, we feel like we’re just screwing this all up, because I can’t even stay focused on a single thing, much less trying to teach all of my kids and keep everything rolling smoothly throughout the day. And so I think it can cause us to become very insecure about our ability to teach. And so I would love for you to first introduce your family and then I’m assuming I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t assume this, that you, maybe yourself, are a highly distracted homeschool mom as well. Let’s just talk about this this week, but first tell us who you are.

Katie Waalkes [00:02:52]:

Yeah, so my name is Katie, and I am a second generation homeschooler married to another second generation homeschooler. We’ve been married almost 15 years. It’ll be 15 years in August. And I have kids ranging from well, they’re getting ready to have birthdays. They’re going to be 1413, 1211, six and five. I have to get a running start, if you ask me, in the middle. I can’t tell you how old the middle child is without going up or down. But our family is very unique. We have a lot of kiddos with different special needs. And it was funny. It was actually through one of my kids going to therapy, like, to a counseling therapy session, that I actually discovered that I myself have ADHD. And it was so funny because the therapist, just very lovingly, like, with no malicious intent whatsoever, was telling my daughter who has ADHD, she’s like, you know, it’s okay. She was like, I have it too, and I’m pretty sure your mom does as well. And I was like, no, I don’t have ADHD. And she was like, oh, I’m so sorry. And as we started talking, I was like, so why? Why did you say that? Like, I’m just I’m curious, what made you think that? And so she started asking me, and I ended up getting screened for it. And I am 1000% ADHD, actually more so than my husband. I knew that he had it, but I am way more. So that was a really fun thing to find out as an adult and as a mom. So I am definitely the highly distracted home school mom. I have found that most moms feel like they actually fit in this category either because of natural tendencies or because of external circumstances. Because we live in that world that’s constantly yanking us in every direction. And our kids are in all the sports and they’re social media, and we’re balancing so many things at one time that I find that so many moms find themselves there, but there’s definitely ones who are more naturally that way and more that are, like, just end up in circumstances where they feel like that. So the things that we’re going to talk about today will help and apply to all of that, hopefully.

Yvette Hampton [00:05:03]:

Yeah, that’s a great story. And I may fall into that category and I just have never had myself tested, but I could easily see that probably since I was a kid, I can look back and I can see. Even through my academic years in school, I went to a private school my whole life, and I was always just I could not focus on anything, which is why it was hard for me to learn. And I still do that even when I read my Bible in the morning, I literally have to listen to it and read it with my eyes at the same time because otherwise, even then, I sometimes have to read the same thing over and over again because my mind just is everywhere. It’s all over the place. And are you a visual learner? I’m curious to know.

Katie Waalkes [00:05:51]:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton [00:05:51]:

So not only are you distracted, but you see everything as you’re distracted with it. It’s a double curse and a blessing, I think, at the same time. Let’s talk kind of through this. And as you’ve met homeschool moms and you yourself, what are some of the distractions that you think most homeschool moms face?

Katie Waalkes [00:06:12]:

Yeah, so like I said, they’re sort of the external distractions and the internal distractions. And I actually kind of asked several people on my I have a YouTube channel and asked them, what are the things that you guys feel like are the most distracting to you? And some of the answers I got were, of course, the kids, right. And all the needs they have, the laundry or chores, the things they’re trying to keep up with in their home, the calendar, like just managing everybody’s schedules, especially if you have any kids that do have therapies or playdates or sports or whatnot. Sickness can even be an external distraction. We’ve all run into that where you just have seasons, where you just feel like you can’t get to your schoolwork because you’re constantly dealing with sickness. Of course, our phones, I think that’s probably a really common one, and just having to do list, like feeling like we’re constantly needing to do the next thing is always a distraction. But as I was thinking about it more, I was like, there’s also internal distractions, at least for people like us.

Yvette Hampton [00:07:23]:

Right.

Katie Waalkes [00:07:24]:

Because my mind in and of itself is a huge distraction. It’s constantly going, it’s constantly thinking. And I think most moms do we’re like, okay, what are we going to have for breakfast the next morning? What are we going to have for dinner? Who do I need to get where? And it can be very overwhelming, and we can be present and not actually be present at all because our minds are everywhere else. But there and there’s the sin aspect of distractions, of feeling like we just selfishly, we don’t want to do what we’re supposed to do. So we allow ourselves to get distracted and sucked into things that are more interesting to us or that we want to hyper fixate on.

Yvette Hampton [00:08:09]:

Yeah. You say being present and not present. Do you have the wonderful ability that I have to read a book and have no idea what you’re reading because you’re thinking of something else? Yes. I don’t think everyone can do that. I don’t know if I call that a gift or a curse again, but I can read a book to my kids literally perfectly, every single word, and have no idea what I’m reading to them because I’m thinking of something completely different than what I’m reading. So hopefully they don’t ask me questions about those books. I mean, I can read a book and focus on the book, and mostly I do. But sometimes if I really have something heavy on my mind, my brain, I’ll just go off into la la land and thinking about all the things and then imagining all the things because I see everything in picture. I have, like, this constant movie going on in my head all the time, which I always thought that everyone did. I always just assumed that everybody saw everything. And then I learned years ago that that’s not the case. And I was like, what do you mean you don’t see everything? You don’t have a constant movie going on in your head all the time?

Katie Waalkes [00:09:15]:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton [00:09:16]:

Yeah, it can be a tough thing, but it can be kind of fun sometimes. The distractions can be overwhelming in every way.

Katie Waalkes [00:09:24]:

Yes. And a lot of times when you find yourself distracted somebody asked me when I started to talk on this topic, and it kind of threw me off guard because I just kind of assumed you knew if you were a distracted mom. But somebody asked me, how would I know if I’m a distracted mom? And I was like, oh, okay, I guess I can break this down a little bit. If you feel like you’re constantly wasting time, if you feel like.

Yvette Hampton [00:09:53]:

You can’t.

Katie Waalkes [00:09:54]:

Get to that, if you feel like a lot of the work you’re doing is not at its best and you kind of feel like you’re a little bit of everything to everybody and not really able to accomplish anything or to do anything. Well, if you’re feeling mentally exhausted and fatigued constantly. And I know as moms there’s an aspect of that, but I think that sometimes we blow past that really easily and we just assume that, well, moms are tired, so this is okay, and I just need to push through it. And there are physical tiredness that we feel, but when there’s this mental overload, there are things we can do to kind of shift that and to take off some of that extra mental weight. And I think that’s something that we oftentimes just don’t think about.

Yvette Hampton [00:10:40]:

Yeah, and I definitely want to talk about that and just give some practical advice on what can we do, how do we navigate through this. But let’s talk first about the problem as a home school mom, because we’re talking to homeschool moms specifically, and I feel like you’ve talked about some of it, but we could just go on forever about why this is a problem. But I want to bring hope to the situation because I think so oftentimes moms don’t homeschool or they want to give up on homeschooling because they think someone else they think that the teacher in the classroom has it all together and that she is going to be able to teach their kids in a more focused way than the mom can. And I feel this too sometimes. I never have the urge to put my kids in a classroom but oftentimes I’m like, man I’m such a mess. And it’s hard for me to sometimes teach my kids to be focused because we do get things done. I don’t want to sound like we just molly gag around the house all day every day. That wouldn’t work for anybody but monkey see, monkey do. I mean, my girls very much take after me in this aspect. I know it drives my husband crazy. I don’t do it on purpose, it’s just how my personality is and he loves me through it. But let’s talk about the problem of this for homeschool moms and then let’s try to give some practical ways to overcome it.

Katie Waalkes [00:12:13]:

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the big problems with it is that we can. For me, one of the ways this kind of showed up as a problem in my home school is I was a habitual curriculum hopper for the beginning of my home school years, whether it was mid year or whether it was at the end of the year, but constantly changing up different curriculums because it was like, OOH, something new and shiny and FOMO, it’s a real thing. And all the different things. And I was constantly switching things up. And so there were some gaps and inconsistencies there that fell into that. For my kids that I know that they suffered because of that. It was also hard for them because of my distractedness. I would oftentimes have different expectations for the day and so if I was feeling unmotivated then I would be like everything can slide. Either we’re not going to do home school or we’re going to do it but the standards are not going to be as high. And then the next day I would be very motivated and I would expect my kids to match my motivation which is really not fair to them whatsoever because they had no idea. And my kids learned really fast the system to things. They learned that if mom was tired and overwhelmed they could get away with not doing school or not doing as much. And if mom was really motivated they were probably going to have to do like two or three days worth of school in one day because then I’d be feeling this panic of being behind. But there is 1000% hope in this because God completely shifted things in my life. And some of these strategies that we’re going to share are ways that this happened. But there’s also part of it that was a heart change and I want to encourage that is the most practical thing you can do about this is to recognize the problem and take it to the Lord, because if he’s called you to this, he’s going to equip you for it. And we can so often be like, well, this is just the way I am. I’m kind of doomed to this. And that’s not at all the case. Yes, God has made you uniquely how you are, and there’s strength to being a highly distracted homeschool mom, and we can talk about that, but there is also sin that’s interwoven into these things and asking God to really confront that in your heart and to change those things, and he will be faithful to do it. And so I think that’s the biggest hope that I can give is that you can do the strategies, but until you have the heart change, you’re not going to see that impact.

Yvette Hampton [00:14:41]:

Talk about that transition for you then of going from realizing and did you realize it before your daughter’s therapist revealed to you? Yes. Did you realize like, oh man, I’m just distracted and kind of scattered all over the place, but you didn’t really know why?

Katie Waalkes [00:15:00]:

Yeah, I did not know why. I did discover that beforehand. I started to see as my kids got older, the consequences of my choices on them, and I started to notice them that they would get really frazzled or that they were feeling like they didn’t know what the expectations were going to be for the day. And at first I would get frustrated and then thanks, like, God gave me that insight to be able to see maybe this is a me problem, not a them problem. And so thankfully, I started working on that several years before. Like, I actually only found out I had ADHD, I think it was back in 2020. So it’s only been in the last three years.

Yvette Hampton [00:15:41]:

Oh, wow.

Katie Waalkes [00:15:42]:

Yeah, so it’s been a much more recent thing. And since then I’m like, okay, I can learn to find the strengths and the weaknesses and what I need to work on. But yeah, for many years I had no idea why. I just was like, something’s a little off here and I’m just constantly going all the different directions. But there are many benefits to it too.

Yvette Hampton [00:16:00]:

One of the things you said on Monday, which by the way, if you guys missed Monday’s episode, go back and listen to that. But one of the things you said was that there are actually some strengths to being highly distracted. And I was like, oh, this is good to know. I always want to know the good things. So let’s talk about that for a few minutes. What are some of the things that are strengths that we can derive from being highly distracted moms?

Katie Waalkes [00:16:25]:

I think one of the big ones is that as homeschool moms, we want our kids to have a love of learning. And some of the best ways to do that, in my experience, is to follow those rabbit trails and to be willing to take a second and take a break from the curriculum and just follow that thing that’s really interesting to them. And as highly distracted homeschool moms, oftentimes we are more willing to do that and to kind of go off the beaten path and I really do think that’s a strength. I have friends who are very type A and who very much wish they could. They were like but to us, that to do list is such the driving force that we have trouble taking the opportunity to dig into something. And so I found that to be a huge strength across the board. And not that we don’t ever struggle with doing that, and obviously we can’t do that 24/7, but, you know, being able to say, you know what, guys? That’s a great question. Let’s look more into that. Maybe we’re going to watch a documentary or listen to a podcast on that or read a book on that.

Yvette Hampton [00:17:23]:

Yeah, that’s true. But sometimes what I find myself doing and I totally agree with you because we will often do that too, but then we’ll go on YouTube to look at a video on something and then, oh, look at this video.

Katie Waalkes [00:17:37]:

2 hours later.

Yvette Hampton [00:17:38]:

Like, oh, wait a minute. We were supposed to be learning about pompeii or whatever it was that we were studying. And so it can lead to more distraction. However, that also can be a learning opportunity for our kids because you never know what the Lord is going to show you. Maybe something that you didn’t even know you needed to know about or talk to your kids about.

Katie Waalkes [00:18:02]:

Another one that I found has definitely been the ability to pivot life has a lot of things that just happen and pop up and the ability to take that opportunity to make shifts and adjustments fairly quickly is something oftentimes we can do. Now with every strength there is a weakness, every weakness there is a strength. So it’s always finding that balance there but there’s more of a willingness to stop and to do ministry, moments of ministry and to take the opportunity with our kids to be willing to take a break from things, to be able to pivot over to maybe a discipline issue, heart issue that needs to be addressed. And so it’s one of those things that I really do think is a strength because God gives us very specific things for a very specific reason. And another big one has definitely been with my kids having more understanding. Because whether kids have ADHD or don’t have ADHD, kids are highly distracted as a whole, as a general rule, and as parents, sometimes we can be so far removed from that and have so many strategies that we lose empathy or we forget that there’s actual strategy that has to be learned. And so we just assume our kids should be little adults. And so I feel like by having those struggles and even though some of them are not current struggles, some are still even though some of them are not current struggles, they’re recent enough that I remember what I had to do to learn how to pivot and how to grow in those areas. And I’m able to teach my kids better and equip them better because of that.

Yvette Hampton [00:19:43]:

Yeah, it’s called flexibility.

Katie Waalkes [00:19:45]:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton [00:19:46]:

And you’re right. I think for the Type A mom, it is very hard for her sometimes to be flexible. And again. I mean, I’m not putting down type A, Moms. I aspire to be that Type A mom. I really want to have it all together. I want to be able to organize my day and live by my schedule. It’s just not me. And like you said yesterday or in Monday’s episode, it’s not that we stay there. It’s not that we say, well, this is just how I am, so I’m just going to stay here and, well, too bad for my family, right? We should always be growing and learning. And I know we’re going to talk about some methods. I’m assuming one of them will be because I know it has been the top method for me is making a to do list.

Katie Waalkes [00:20:27]:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton [00:20:27]:

If I didn’t have a to do list in a calendar to live by, oh dear. I would not be able to function. So we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But for that Type A mom, there are so many benefits to being organized and structured and focused. But it’s really hard for that Type A mom to pivot, as you said, and to be flexible when your day doesn’t go exactly as planned. And so I think it’s hard to be really heavy on one side of the coin or really heavy on the other side of the coin because there are strengths and weaknesses to both.

Katie Waalkes [00:21:03]:

Yes, absolutely.

Yvette Hampton [00:21:05]:

So, yeah, it’s learning to balance all of the things and all of the personality traits that God’s given to us. As we’re talking about distractions, let’s kind of define what a distraction is. Obviously, we know what it looks like to be distracted, but let’s actually just really kind of hone in on that word and define it.

Katie Waalkes [00:21:25]:

Yeah, absolutely. I thought a lot about this as I’ve been studying this topic, and everybody kind of has different definitions and what they assume. But really, when you look up definitions in the dictionary and when you look at other reliable sources, you see that a distraction is really anything. And I think this part is key anything, good or bad, that takes us away from what we should be prioritizing at that moment. And this is a big difference than what we tend to think of, because we just assume that everything that we don’t want to be doing right now or everything that keeps us from doing what we want to do is a distraction versus everything that is keeping us from doing what should be the priority right in that moment.

Yvette Hampton [00:22:12]:

Yeah, that’s tough because I want to have my list and this is what thing I should be doing and never deviate from that. But that’s also not reality, right? I mean, sometimes it is. Sometimes we can stay focused, but especially, I mean, you’ve got six kids and as you mentioned before, you have special needs kids, so I have two kids, neither of them are special needs. And we still get distracted so easily when we’re trying to focus on one thing. So I imagined with six, yes, and having special needs in there, it would almost seem impossible to focus, not ever, but most of the time on the thing that you’re trying to focus on. So let’s talk about just some practical ways that we can do this. What do we do about this? If we know we’re distracted, we can recognize it, we can admit it to ourselves at least. What are some things we can do about it?

Katie Waalkes [00:23:12]:

One of the first things is reducing the amount of multitasking we do. We, as moms, love to multitask, but there’s been many studies shown that we’re not really multitasking. We’re shifting from one thing to another. And so really trying to block off time, especially when we’re talking about homeschooling, blocking off specific home school hours and really protecting those hours. So our school day, I have middle schoolers, and with having kids with special needs, our school day just takes longer. And so we actually typically go somewhere around eight to two. There’s breaks in there, there’s lunch. It’s not all working the whole time, but I’m working that whole time between eight and two. But I really protect between nine and twelve, and that is my safety hours. And for that I really try to not do scheduling any doctors appointments or therapies I try not to have any playdates or field trips we might do. That’s an exception to the rule, but in general we try to protect that nine to twelve. And it’s really helped us to be able to stay a little more focused, because as a distracted mom, I can bounce around within one task, but the second that I start to blend tasks and say, I can jump from math to language arts, no problem, but jumping from math to laundry? Then all of a sudden, I get on what my husband affectionately calls if you give a mouse the cookie days where I start everything and I finish nothing. And so I’m like, oh, we’re doing math, oh, we need to do laundry. But I forgot to switch to that laundry. I’ll go upstairs and get more and then I’m like, oh, I should make my bed. And then I need to call somebody about something. It just becomes this whole thing. So if we can kind of keep like minded tasks together and give our attention to that and then give our attention afterwards to those things. Maybe errands, or phone calls, contacting people and just grouping as many like tasks together is a huge, huge help when it comes to reducing distractions.

Yvette Hampton [00:25:14]:

Yeah. So when you’re talking about staying on those like minded tasks, how do you do that with six kids? Because you’ve got all of them different. I mean, you’ve got a pretty big range of ages with your kids and abilities. So how do you focus on that nine to twelve time frame where you try to really stay focused on them? What does that look like in your home?

Katie Waalkes [00:25:39]:

Well, part of it is I’ve had to learn what works for me and my personality. So something that’s very distracting to me is environmental clutter. I am a very messy person, but mess distracts me and that’s not always the best blend. So with that, a lot of people do their chores with their kids after school and I totally understand why it makes sense. But for us, I have to start the day out with a picked up house. It does not need to be super clean, but it needs to just be picked up. So I will opt for a later start time if it means that I can have a cleared space. And so I feel like that’s one of the big things is knowing and starting to track the distractions that you’re coming across. Because if you find yourself constantly cleaning during school hours, is it maybe that these things are really bothering you and having designated times? So sometimes work will become a task for me that distracts me. I’m like, oh, I need to send this email, I need to do this or that. And I find what helps me is to know that there is going to be a designated time for that later. And if I know that between two and four I’m going to have some work hours, then I can simply jot it on a list and I know I won’t forget it. And then during those work hours I can pick that up and take that task. So it’s all about prepping the time beforehand and knowing when you’re going to be able to do other things. Having that peace of mind really helps.

Yvette Hampton [00:27:11]:

Yeah. Let’s talk about lists. I love lists. I love checklists. Like I said, I would be a complete disaster. I would not be able to function, I could not do this podcast, I couldn’t do anything without my checklist because I think of the things that I need to. And of course I’m the one who I’ll wake up at like four in the morning and I’m like, oh, I got to put this on my checklist. Maybe I’m dreaming about it, I don’t even know. But if I don’t put it on my list, I completely forget about it. I do that with grocery. Shopping. It drives my husband crazy because he’ll say, we need this at the grocery store, and if it’s not on my shopping, it could be like the most important thing. We need milk and eggs. I go to the grocery store for milk and eggs, but if it’s not on my list, I will not get it. I have to have my list. I’ll get everything else but the milk and eggs. And I function that same way in my life. I could have the most important things to do, and if it’s not on my to do list, I just get so easily distracted and I find all the other things to do that take up my time. As you make your lists, do you use something specific? Like, do you use a pad and paper? Do you use your phone? Do you use a specific app? What does that look like for you?

Katie Waalkes [00:28:33]:

So it’s looked totally different in all different phases of life. I currently use the blend, so anything work related? I use a website called Notion. They have a totally free option. It’s kind of the next step up from Trello, if people are familiar with Trello. And so it allows me to do a little bit more than I can do with Trello. But then for the home, I find pen and paper to be my best bet. And so I actually do a couple of interesting things with my list. I brain dump everything that’s in my head the night before because I can’t sleep. All those thoughts, all those movies playing in your head, like, what you’re talking about keeps me from being able to sleep. And most highly distracted moms actually struggle with some form of insomnia because our brains just won’t turn off. And so with that, I find just dumping everything on a piece of paper and writing it all down, and then in the morning, I can look back at it. So that’s not my official to do list, but that is the beginning of.

Yvette Hampton [00:29:36]:

My to do list.

Katie Waalkes [00:29:37]:

So I’ll write anything down that I think is important, and then in the morning, I’ll look over it, and 95% of it is not important. It was just what was floating around my head. And I’ll pick those important tasks, but I make sure to pick three tasks for my day, and that’s been huge because I’m like, no, I have more than I have to do. And it’s like, but if you can only get three done, what are those three tasks you’re going to do? And it has made a whole world of a difference because now I’m getting the things done that are the most important and not necessarily the most interesting or the most urgent, but those things that actually needed to get done. And it’s made a huge difference for me, for sure.

Yvette Hampton [00:30:18]:

Yeah, I love using a whiteboard at home. Yes. I don’t know. There’s something about physically writing it down on the board. And I’ll tell you why I don’t use pen and paper. Because I lose it. Yes. And actually, it’s kind of weird. We have a pretty tidy house. I like my house to be in order, and for the most part it’s pretty clean. But for some reason, I will lose a pad of paper with my notes on it. So I like to use the whiteboard that we have in our spare room. And my phone, I use just the notes app on my iPhone. And I love that it has the little I don’t think it had this when it first started, but it has the little checkboxes now. And so as you list stuff on there, you can just check it off and it moves that item down to the bottom of the list. And it’s wonderful for me because there’s so much satisfaction in checking that box and watching it just move itself down to the bottom. But yeah, I couldn’t live without that. It can be a little bit overwhelming sometimes. But you know what? I love that. Katie pointed out that there actually are some benefits to being distracted as we walk through this journey with our kids. I think what it all comes back to is that we’re just people, right? I mean, we’re just humans. We’re not perfect in any way. We’re sinful human beings, and we’re doing the very best that we can. And really what it comes down to is what’s the most important thing we’re doing with our kids are we leading them to Jesus? And we could have the most perfectly structured day, and we can have all of our curriculum perfectly laid out, and we can get through all of our tasks in the day and check every box perfectly. But if you’re not pointing your kids to Christ in the process of doing that, then none of it matters. None of it at all. Because that’s the most important thing, is pointing them to Jesus. And so it’s okay if you’re distracted. Sometimes distractions come as a benefit to our life because it allows us opportunities to point our kids to Jesus. Katie, let’s talk about kids for a few minutes. Again, I think most of us, even those type A moms who have it all together, if she’s got more than one kid, it’s likely that she probably has a child who is highly distracted and who just has a hard time focusing. So what encouragement can you give for those moms?

Katie Waalkes [00:32:51]:

Well, the first thing is just to be patient with your kids and understand that it’s a process and that there are training things that need to happen. This is not something for most kids that come supernaturally. And then the big thing is really looking at those environmental distractions. I know we talked about that on Wednesday, but those environmental distractions for kids are huge. We as homeschool moms oftentimes look at all the pinterest boards of all the pretty home school rooms, and we want to have the charts on the walls and the fun colors and all the paintings and all the things. And in reality, typically, the highly distracted homeschooler children are going to get distracted by those things, and they actually do better, typically in a more minimal environment. And that doesn’t mean you have to be a minimalist or your whole home has to be minimal. But maybe that means that child needs to work in a different atmosphere than the rest of those places. Maybe if you have a home school room, they need to do better in the living room than working with everybody else. The other thing is noise, right? Our distracting kids noises can be very distracting. So noise canceling headphones have been a lifesaver in our home. You can get them from Walmart, Amazon. They’re like $10. You don’t have to buy super fancy ones. And having my kids be able to just kind of block out the external they can still hear me, right? They can still hear my voice, but it blocks out a lot of that white noise and helps a lot with being able to focus.

Yvette Hampton [00:34:20]:

Yeah, that is such a great point. And it’s so funny as you’re talking, and it’s like, Yep, that’s me. I cannot focus if it’s something that I need to focus on, yes. If I’m reading something that I really need to concentrate on, or if I’m writing something or studying something, if I’m preparing to speak anything like that, I have to have complete, absolute silence. And so I’ll put earplugs in. Sometimes I’ll go to the library and I’ll just put earplugs in. I cannot have any distractions around me because otherwise I just can’t focus on what I’m trying to do. But my husband is the complete opposite. He and my oldest daughter, actually both of my girls, to a point, they need to have something going on in their ears in order to be able to really focus and concentrate. It’s the most interesting thing. And when Garrett was going through college, he would listen to music loud as he was writing his papers. And I was like, how in the world? And he would say, I can’t write without listening to music.

Katie Waalkes [00:35:29]:

I have kids like that as well. And oftentimes it tends to hit around middle school, at least in our home, is when they start needing that music more. So we have boundaries around that. So if you have kids who love to listen to music, at least in our home, what we have found to work is we say you can have music, but it has to be without lyrics. Because the second there’s lyrics going, your mind’s kind of getting spent in two different places, right? And so in most homeschoolers minds, they probably envision classical music being played throughout the home. Mozart, Beethoven. Instead, in my home, I gave the parameters that it had to be without lyrics, and so we end up with a ton of techno music which just.

Yvette Hampton [00:36:15]:

Kind of like, oh, that’s funny, makes me crazy.

Katie Waalkes [00:36:18]:

But my boys are actually able to listen or to work so much better when they have that going. They also enjoy like the piano guys where they do all the fun music parodies and things like that. And so there are a lot of things that they just enjoy listening to and it really does help them focus. So you have to find what works for you and your child. And don’t assume just because something doesn’t work for one that it won’t work for the other. It’s worth trying and reducing the visual distractions. So I talked about the visual distractions on the walls, but for kids, sometimes making little barriers, taking those project boards that you can get from Walmart, like for science fairs or even some manila file folders and taping them together to give your child a little bit of a private workspace. We also are a family who we’re very picky about when we work altogether. So we come together for group subjects, but when they’re working individually, they kind of scatter throughout the house so they don’t get distracted by each other. So just thinking through what works for you and your children is a huge help in that area. And then of course, like what we were talking about the other day is teaching your kids how to make lists and the importance of lists.

Yvette Hampton [00:37:32]:

One of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is that there is not a classroom in the world that I know of where a teacher can take each individual child and say, okay, here is your learning style and here are your learning abilities and oh, Johnny needs noise canceling headphones and Michael needs techno music playing in his ears. Okay, let me cater to each one of these child’s needs. You can’t do that with kids in a classroom. But as their mom, we get to focus on what their needs are, what their abilities are, what their capabilities are, and we can really help them to learn and to be able to focus on the task at hand. And it’s part of our job as their mom to teach them how to do those things right and in teaching them as their home school teacher. We have such an advantage over kids who are in a classroom, kids as we talk to moms. And still there are so many moms, especially those new homeschool moms, who think that when they sit down and read with their kids, their kids need to sit on their little carpet square with their legs crossed and their hands in their laps crisscross app sauce and be totally silent so that they can hear the book that you’re reading to them. And every seasoned homeschool mom that I know will tell all of the new homeschool moms no, your kids need to move. They need to do something with their hands. They need some kind of what a classroom teacher would think of as a distraction, right? Our kids need that. They need playdoh, they need to draw, they need to color. They need some kind of fidget in their hands. They need to be flipped upside down, standing on their head so that they can listen to what it is that you’re saying to them so that they can actually learn. And so what a classroom would see as a distraction, we get to see as homeschool moms as an advantage to teaching our kids in the home. And it is such a privilege. I love homeschooling. I love being able to know that my girls need to listen to music when they really need to concentrate on something and that’s what works for them. I’ve loved talking about this, that there’s some strange comfort in knowing I’m not the only one and I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy to be easily distracted. I think it was part one. You talk to a lot of moms who deal with this, and I do too. I mean, it’s a real thing. And sometimes you talked about how there can be strengths to it, but there can also be real blessings to distractions, right? Yeah, talk about that. How can distractions in our day sometimes turn into an actual blessing for our kids?

Katie Waalkes [00:40:17]:

Yeah, I think the big thing is like going back to that definition that we’re talking about, about how it could be something good or something bad that pulls us away from what we should be prioritizing. And we oftentimes think about those things that pull us away all the time from those things we want to accomplish. But I think God oftentimes uses distractions to challenge us in what we’re prioritizing. And that is such a big problem. I know for myself that whether it be the to do list or the chores or the homeschooling or even wanting to spend family time, how many times have we been like, we’re going to spend a quality family day together, we’re going to take a trip and we’re going to have fun, and all these things keep coming up and we get frustrated. And I feel like a lot of times it’s a reminder to be like, hey, this is actually the most important thing. Yes, your kids are fighting right now, but you get the opportunity to teach them conflict resolution skills and that opportunity to teach them that is going to impact them so much more than that trip to the park that you were hoping to take or that math lesson that you were going to teach. Having the opportunity to teach our kids that there are things that are worth setting aside, our to do list for, that when that mother is going to the hospital and she needs someone to come pick up her little kids because she’s got no one else, that is 100% worth putting this aside. And I think that’s what many of us who home school we want to teach our kids is we want to teach them to serve others. We want them to have right priorities, and we want them to learn. We want them to get the academics. But the academics are not the main thing, and this really allows us to teach them that in a really tangible way.

Yvette Hampton [00:42:05]:

Yeah. I love that. Rachel and Davis. Carmen Rachel is by far one of my greatest mentors. I love her. And one of the things that I’ve learned from them is character over curriculum and that it’s so much more important to build the character into our kids. And so, as you’re saying, as the day goes on and our kids are arguing with each other or there is an opportunity for them to maybe help the neighbor bring in her groceries, that math book is still going to be sitting on the table in 15 minutes. It’s okay if it doesn’t go perfectly by your schedule, let them go. Be a blessing to the neighbor or take the ten minutes or sometimes hour that it takes or however long it takes to teach our kids conflict resolution and being able to just pour into their character, because that’s part of life. It’s part of school. I mean, homeschooling, like you said, the academics are just the icing on the cake. We’re preparing our kids for life, and so we tend to just focus so much on the academics, and we’ve got to get this done. We’ve got to get these worksheets done. We’ve got to get this curriculum done. We’ve got to get to the end of the book. And we miss all of the things that are around us, all of the opportunities that we have to be able to teach our kids and point them to Jesus and build character in them and build their relationships with one another. And I think it’s unfortunate that we often miss out on those things because if we’re looking for them, we will see them and we will find them. But when our kids are separated from us for 40 some hours a week, we miss out on a lot of opportunities to build character, to build Godly character into them. So, yeah, that is a great advantage. I love that so much. What is one last bit of encouragement or advice that you can give to our audience?

Katie Waalkes [00:44:01]:

I think a big thing to focus on with your kids is to teach them how to come back from a distraction. And this goes for us and for our kids. So we know distractions are going to come. We can reduce them, but we can’t remove them because God didn’t create us to have our own perfect bubble for our glory.

Yvette Hampton [00:44:20]:

Right?

Katie Waalkes [00:44:21]:

It’s for his glory that we were put on this earth and to serve others and to serve Him. And so it’s one of those those distractions are going to come. So teaching our kids, those distractions are going to come. Recognizing ourselves, those distractions are going to come, and instead, really giving our kids and ourselves anchors in our day, where we can kind of refocus. So for every family, it’s different, your anchors. If you don’t have anchors in your day, you can just use meal times of, like, breakfast, lunch and dinner. So maybe the whole morning is a distracted mess and it’s overwhelming. And the phone kept ringing and the neighbors came to the door and the dog got out and the chickens were everywhere or whatever. We can go, okay, but now it’s lunchtime and we’re going to restart, and we’re going to like, this is the next part of the day, and kind of dividing your day up into those chunks. We’re so quick. Our kids, especially, are so quick to be like, It’s a bad day, and they just label it that way, and that’s just kind of how it stuck. And it’s like, no, this was a bad first quarter. We’re going to go into the second quarter stronger. And so really teaching them how to refocus, to take the opportunity to pray, to take the opportunity to confess sins, if we lost our temper, if we got upset because things didn’t go the way we wanted, take that opportunity to say, I’m sorry, will you forgive me? And be like, Guys, let’s start fresh. So I really encourage you to have those anchors in your day and to be able to refocus and restart and teach our kids that, because that’s probably one of the most valuable skills you’ll.

Yvette Hampton [00:45:54]:

Be able to teach your kids yeah. Going into adulthood. Yes. Awesome. Katie, thank you for your encouragement this week. It’s been so much fun chatting with you and just so refreshing. I feel like we need to have a club. We need to start some kind of focus club for the distracted homeschool mom. Yes. Though, of course, that would be just another distraction for us, so maybe we won’t do that. But thank you for your encouragement and just your wisdom. And thanks for being so transparent. Just about where you’ve been, where you are.

How To Homeschool – My Original Roadmap

When I was just diving into homeschooling for the first time, my good friend, Holly Lerner, gave me a simple two-page document, which became my early roadmap for success. Over the years, Holly served as a homeschooling and motherhood mentor to me, and her example has been a constant inspiration and encouragement.

I still have that original document from Holly. Simply titled: “How to Homeschool,” the guide that inspired me can now inspire thousands of new homeschooling moms.

I recently sat down with Kristi Clover to record an interview for the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast (this four-part interview will air 9/4, 9/6, 9/7, 9/8/2023), and as I was planning I realized that with so many new families beginning to homeschool it was time to go back to the basics and record a “How to Homeschool” guide. So, once again, I brought out Holly’s instructions, and these served as a guide to my interview with Kristi.

How to Homeschool, by Holly Lerner

Foundation for Parenting

Ecclesiastes 12:13 “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Why We Homeschool

  • Train our children in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), godly character
  • Teach obedience (Colossians 3:20) Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”
  • Titus 2:3-5
    • “teaching what is good
    • “love [our] children” (delight in them)
    • “workers at home”
    • “that the word of God may not be dishonored”

How to Make Decisions

  • Pray (Phil 4:6) “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
  • Focus on God: glory to God and serve God
  • Always LOVE (1 Cor 13:1-3) If I have lots of great things, “but have not love, I gain nothing.”
  • Remember the future: Learn these and teach by modeling godly character traits in our home
    • Diligence
    • Faith
    • Moral excellence
    • Knowledge
    • Self-control
    • Perseverance
    • Godliness
    • Brotherly kindness
    • Love
  • 2 Peter 1:5-7 “… make every effort to supplement your faithwith virtue, and virtuewith knowledge,and knowledge with self-control, and self-controlwith steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,and godlinesswith brotherly affection, and brotherly affectionwith love.”

Priorities in Education & Training

  • Have a mindset to guide our thinking in discouraging times (What Scripture do we need to dwell on when we are discouraged?)
  • IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT ACADEMICS!!! Academics are one aspect of one of four areas of the chart. Don’t let it take over everything else.
  • Prioritize academic subjects (don’t try to do everything every day)

How to Approach Teaching Academics

  • Academics are an opportunity to…
    • Teach character
      • Do it when they don’t like it
      • Do it diligently
      • Persevere when it’s hard
    • Learn skills to equip children for future service to God
  • Realize and Remember that…
      • We are not imitating the school system or a school setting, so don’t compare to schools or grade level skills or government standards
      • Children will learn quickly when they are ready, so don’t worry if you think they seem “behind” or if you are not accomplishing what you had hoped to accomplish
  • Pick one thing to do well and consistently
      • Aim for independence
      • Read
      • Write
      • Math
      • Choose something that you can do with all your children
    • Choose 1 subject to focus on each year (so you can build slowly and get better at all of this!)
  • Manage Age Ranges and Abilities
      • List activities that the little ones (nonreaders) can do independently
    • Limit individual instruction for the older ones to how long the youngest can be independent (or juggle with an older one working with a younger one so you can teach a 3rd one or more…)
  • Set Goals for each year – as a family and for each child
  • Use what you have!
    • You don’t have to buy curriculum or find the “perfect” thing in order to be successful/productive/teaching well.

I pray that this simple outline serves you as well as it has served our family.

Recommended Resources:

Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for free.

Free Homeschool Survival Kit

Homegrown Generation Family Expo – Online Homeschool Conference. Get instant access to all of the sessions from 2023 and 2020 (over 50 hours of content)!

The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast – Biblical homeschooling, parenting, and family discipleship encouragement and advice. Each show shares practical advice to help point our children to Christ, build a solid Biblical worldview, teach effectively, preserve our marriages, manage our homes, and approach child-rearing and discipline issues with a heart-centered focus that will result in confident, biblically-minded, wise, well-balanced adults.

The Homeschool Insights Podcast – Practical, Biblical, home education and parenting encouragement and resources in under ten minutes a day.

More on this topic:

This is Why We Homeschool

Homeschooling Multiple Ages: 20 Secrets to Simplify Teaching and Make History Come Alive

Rescuing Our Children: An Urgent Call to Take Back Education

Are They Really YOUR Children?

It takes a village to raise a child.”

Hillary Clinton

It has long been asserted that the left believes that children don’t belong to their parents, but is there any proof of this claim? The answer is a resounding “yes.” In this post I will let prominent progressive leaders and educators speak for themselves.

However, I think it is necessary before we before we begin to remind you that to a certain extent the state DOES own your children – at least when you drop them off at a public school. This is why I caution every parent to understand the legal concept of “In Loco Parentis.” “In Loco Parentis” means “in place of the parent.” It is the legal responsibility of schools to act in place of parents when students are in their care.

It is also necessary to remember that whenever the government is using “their money” to provide a service or administer a program they are going to expect oversight, accountability, and results. This is exactly why, as homeschool parents, we should be extremely cautious of “school choice” programs, which offer government money to private schools and homeschools. While the allure of “free” money is enticing, privately funded, parent-directed homeschooling is currently the only way to ensure true parental rights and autonomy from government intervention in the most private and sacred aspects of your family. 

Ready to take your children back? Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for free tonight and learn how. After you have watched the movie, download the Free Homeschool Survival Kit. This free 70+ page resource will give you the encouragement and tools you need to start strong and finish well. 

America’s Kids Belong To Communities, Not Parents – Melissa Harris Perry

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. ‘Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility.’ We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘these are our children.’ So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that ‘kids belong to their parents’ or ‘kids belong to their families’ and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility and not just the household’s we start making better investments.”

Why caring for children is not just a parent’s job, Melissa Harris-Perry

“My inbox began filling with hateful, personal attacks on Monday, apparently as a result of conservative reactions to a recent ‘Lean Forward’ advertisement now airing on msnbc, which you can view above. What I thought was an uncontroversial comment on my desire for Americans to see children as everyone’s responsibility has created a bit of a tempest in the right’s teapot. Allow me to double down.”

“One thing is for sure: I have no intention of apologizing for saying that our children, all of our children, are part of more than our households, they are part of our communities and deserve to have the care, attention, resources, respect and opportunities of those communities.”

“I believe wholeheartedly, and without apology, that we have a collective responsibility to the children of our communities even if we did not conceive and bear them.”

The Principles of Communism, by Fredrick Engles, 1847

“What will be the course of this revolution?”

Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production together.”

“What will be the influence of communist society on the family?

It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.”

Do kids belong to their parents, or their community? Peter Weber

Hillary Clinton popularized the saying “It takes a village to raise a child” in the mid-1990s, but it was hardly a new idea. Clinton was citing a traditional African proverb, but Africans don’t have a lock on the idea of collective responsibility for the welfare of children, either. ‘Your children are not your children,’ wrote the Lebanese-born poet Khalil Gibran in 1923. ‘You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.'”

Despite what you hear, parents aren’t in charge of schools. That’s a good thing. Brian Dickerson

“Parents aren’t in charge of our public schools – and they shouldn’t be.

That’s not a problem; it’s a best practice, and one that has prevailed in this country for a hundred years. It also happens to be the law.

Maybe you don’t like that law. Maybe you believe that parents alone should dictate what goes on in the classrooms their children attend. If so, you’re in luck: Dozens of private and parochial schools are in frenzied competition for your tuition check. Almost certainly you can find one whose curriculum, library catalogue and hiring practices are compatible with your own political views, religious values and cultural preferences.

But my concern here is public schools, which Merriam-Webster defines as ‘”‘free tax-supported schools controlled by a local governmental authority‘ (emphasis mine).

See? Not a word there about moms, dads or legal guardians. 

Because public means everyone – or at least, every citizen eligible to vote in the election for whatever local government authority calls the shots in the school district they reside in.”

Biden tells teachers students are ‘like your’ kids, ‘not somebody else’s’ while at school, by Ryan Foley

“Biden made remarks at the 2022 National and State Teachers of the Year Event in the East Room of the White House Wednesday.

‘And the reason you’re the Teachers of the Year is that you recognize that,’ Biden said. ‘They’re not somebody else’s children; they’re like yours when they’re in the classroom.’”

Opinion: Want true equity? I propose, modestly, forcing California parents to swap children, Joe Mathews

          “If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children.

          My solution is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can act now: The rich should give their children to the poor, and the poor should give their children to the rich. Homeowners might swap children with their homeless neighbors.

Now, I recognize that some naysayers, hopelessly attached to their privilege, will dismiss such a policy as ghastly, even totalitarian. But my proposal is quite modest, a fusion of traditional philosophy and today’s most common political obsessions.”

McAuliffe says parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach, handing Youngkin a campaign ad, by Emily Brooks

“’I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision,’”’ [Virginia Governor (D),] Terry McAuliffe said. ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.’”

Heard Enough? It’s Time to Bring Your Children Home!

Jill Biden Dismisses Parental Control of Books in School Libraries: ‘This Is America. We Don’t Ban Books.’ By Gillian Richards

“’Parents and politicians are now weighing in on what books should be in our school libraries, and what their kids are being taught,’ Jones began. ‘Where’s the line, in your opinion, with how much of a say parents have when it comes to what their kids are learning in school? Is there a balance between, you know, “This book should be in the library, this book is under review … “

Before Jones finished the question, Jill Biden jumped in: ‘All books should be in the library. All books. This is America. We don’t ban books.’”

Children do not belong to their parents, Roy Hattersley

“A common complaint – voiced most vociferously by the newspapers that also glory in the good old cliche about the nanny state – is that the authorities do too little to protect desperately vulnerable children. I agree. Perhaps Ms Hodge’s critics forget that the constant defence of social workers who fail in their jobs is the claim that they did not want to intrude into family relationships.”

Head of teachers union praises op-ed claiming parents don’t have right to shape kids’ curriculum, by Sam Dorman

“’Great piece on parents’ rights and #publicschools,’ tweeted Randi Weingarten, who serves as president of the American Federation of Teachers. Her tweet on Monday came amid an uproar over the op-ed, which was published in The Washington Post. 

The title of the article, Parents claim they have the right to shape their kids’ school curriculum. They don’t.'”

Your Kids Don’t Belong to You, and That’s Okay, by ParentCo

“There are parents who think they made their children for themselves, and parents who think they made their children for the world; those who regard their children as belonging to them, as opposed to belonging to the world.

Now, I’m really not the back-to-the-earth, Paleo-Parent, ‘It Takes a Village’ type, but in this case, I’m of the latter persuasion. My daughter is the world’s child.

Don’t be sad when she gets on that bus for her first day of kindergarten, or walks into that classroom with her tiny hand in someone’s besides yours. That’s her job. That’s why she’s here. That’s why you had her. This is what you prepared her for. This is her first step to fulfilling her ultimate destiny; becoming one with the world, which is exactly where she belongs.”

Despite what you hear, parents aren’t in charge of schools. That’s a good thing. Bruce Dickerson

“Parents aren’t in charge of our public schools – and they shouldn’t be.

That’s not a problem; it’s a best practice, and one that has prevailed in this country for a hundred years. It also happens to be the law.

…[M]y concern here is public schools, which Merriam-Webster defines as ‘free tax-supported schools controlled by a local governmental authority.’

See? Not a word there about moms, dads or legal guardians. Because public means everyone – or at least, every citizen eligible to vote in the election for whatever local government authority calls the shots in the school district they reside in.

…[T]hose with no children of their own are stakeholders, too – and they have every right to expect that the schools they subsidize with their tax dollars will prepare students to live and work in a democratic society that includes people with political and religious views different than their parents.

…[P]arents worried that any exposure to any perspective incompatible with their own views may prove noxious can opt out entirely by joining the ranks of home-schoolers,”

This is, by no means, an exhaustive compilation of examples of progressives intent on undermining the role and rights of parents. So, what should we think? Do children belong to their parents, to the village, to the schools, or to the state? God’s Word tells us “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Psalm 127:3 ESV

It turns out that the Bible has a lot to say about the relationship between parents and their children, especially when it comes to who should be teaching them and training their hearts.

“Train up a child in the way he should go;
    even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Proverbs 22:6

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:6,7

“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.” Proverbs 1:8,9

Not surprisingly, the Bible also includes instruction for children on how they should respond to the instruction of their parents.

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:1-4

The Lord is calling parents to turn their hearts back to their children. Me must face down the enemy of our families and heed the Word of the Lord. “And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” Malachi 4:6

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Grandparents, a Blessing to Homeschooling Families

One of the greatest blessings of homeschooling is that it is generational. Homeschooling builds a LEGACY. Because of this simple fact, it is critical that we take seriously the motivation, direction, methods, and values of our homeschooling, because these will do so much to determine what that legacy is. Is our desire to train spelling bee champions, professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, engineers, pastors, missionaries, mothers or fathers, leaders, or followers?

It is helpful to know WHY we are homeschooling in order to establish HOW we will homeschool. Once we have determined the “why” and “how” of homeschooling, the real challenge begins. It is at this point that we realize we must MODEL for our children what we want them to be, because we know that “The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.” – Luke 6:40 (NIV)

Want to know more about the “why” of homeschooling? Listen to “Why Homeschool”, with Aby Rinella. This is one of the most listened to episodes in the history of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

Barb and Rich Heki, of Grandparents of Homeschoolers, have seen the generational impact of homeschooling. As homeschool parents and grandparents themselves, they are committed to encouraging, inspiring and equipping grandparents to lovingly support, actively engage in and fully delight in the home-education adventure of their grandchildren – whether they live locally or long-distance. They also understand the importance of breaking down the resistance of grandparents who don’t understand homeschooling or support their children who homeschool or are considering homeschooling. As advocates of multi-generational family discipleship (because education IS discipleship), they are excited to be ministering to grandparents of homeschoolers, connecting the generations through home education.

Yvette Hampton recently had the privilege of interviewing Barb and Rich Heki for The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. In this conversation they discussed the Biblical instruction for grandparents to disciple their grandchildren, which is given in Psalm 78, and they revealed the most effective way to break down the resistance of grandparents who oppose homeschooling – to get them involved!

Whether you are a parent or grandparent, child or grandchild, we hope you will be blessed by their discussion.

Listen to Barb and Rich Heki on The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast (2/24 and 2/26/2020 episodes)

Yvette Hampton:           Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am thrilled that you’ve joined me today. I have two very special guests on with me today. Barb and Rich Heki. Some of you may have heard their names. They are also the founders of Grandparents of Homeschoolers. So today, we are going to talk about all things having to do with our own parents, and grandparents, and grandparents of your kids. Barb and Rich, welcome to the podcast.

Yvette Hampton:           I am delighted to have you on. We actually had you both as part of the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. It was just such an amazing event, and so I’m glad to have you back on talking about being grandparents of homeschoolers. There’s so much to talk about with this topic. I was actually talking to my mom, and I’ll have you introduce yourselves in just a minute, but I wanted to say I was talking to my mom last night, and I was telling her how much I appreciated the fact that when we started homeschooling, we never got any kind of resistance from her.

Watch the full interview with Barb and Rich Heki here.

Yvette Hampton:           My mom in the beginning, and actually I was talking to her, but I was talking about all of our parents. My mom, and my dad, and my husband’s mom and dad. When we first went down this road, we had said we’d never homeschool, and then all of a sudden we go to this homeschool convention and we came back, and we were so excited, and we were like, “We’re going to homeschool, and we’re going to do this forever.” We were just so excited about it.

Yvette Hampton:           None of our parents really understood it, but none of them gave us resistance about it. They just said, “Okay, if this is what you guys think is best.” I think part of that is we had been married quite a long time. By the time Brooklyn, my oldest, was going into kindergarten, we’d been married for 15 years, and so we were well-established in our adult life, and we were in our mid-30s. So I think they’ve trusted us. We had proven that, “Okay we can make logical and wise decisions for our family, and we had taken really good care of their grandchild so far.” So they trusted us to do that.

Yvette Hampton:           I know that that’s not the case with all parents. I’m grateful for our parents and their support even though they didn’t totally get it. You guys have an amazing ministry, not just to grandparents though your ministry is to grandparents, but it’s also to parents who are trying to figure out what this homeschool thing is. So, tell us a little bit about your family and how you got started in this ministry.

Rich Heki:                     Well, we have four adult children. We homeschooled them all the way through, and they’re all walking with the Lord, and that’s one thing we are so grateful for. We have been blessed so far with three grandchildren. The only bad part about that is they don’t live right near us. They live over a thousand miles away. One of the components of Grandparents of Homeschoolers is we talk about how we communicate, stay in touch with our grandchildren when they are a distance away from us, so we can still stay engaged in their lives. We can talk about that more later. Anything else you want to know?

Barb Heki:                     Lots of long distance grand-parenting out there. The ministry actually got started when we were leaders in our state organization, and we went to a different state’s convention to just get ideas, and they were having a grandparent tea, and we weren’t grandparents then, but if we asked if we could go just to observe. We saw the grandparents just connecting with each other. The ones who came and just weren’t really sure about this homeschooling thing were sold by the grandparents who were so excited, and they were involved in different ways. We just saw that, and oh my goodness, that was the seed of this ministry.

We are very grateful to have Barb and Rich Heki speaking at the 2020 Homegrown Generation Family Expo. Join us for this live, interactive online homeschool conference. Lifetime registration is just $20.

Barb Heki:                     The convention thing that you talked about, yeah how excited you were, we encourage grandparents to go to conventions whether they’re online like the one you just had, or whether they’re on site, just go to all of them. Because that’s where they capture the vision, and they get ideas, and they get excited about what they can do.

Yvette Hampton:           Right, because then they feel like they can be part of this whole homeschooling experience for their grandkids, which I think is exciting, because when you think about kids who go to traditional school, how often if grandparents are local, how often do grandparents go to the kids’ school play and their sports activities, and all the things that grandparents, their award ceremonies, things like that. I know my parents and my husband’s parents have really worked to do that with my nieces who are in traditional school.

Yvette Hampton:           It’s great to be able to help them figure out how they can play a role of encouragement without playing the role of leadership in the education of their grandkids, because obviously there’s a big difference. You’ve got every so often we hear of those grandparents who really want to be controlling and tell their kids, “This is how you should raise your kids, and this is what you should do,” instead of just trusting that, “You know what, you did a good job raising your kids.” Trust that they’re doing the best job for their family as well.

Yvette Hampton:           Wait, we’ve talked a lot in the movie about how education is discipleship. I am so blessed to hear that your four adult children are walking with the Lord, because that’s not always the case. Certainly, there are parents who love Jesus, and they’ve led their children to Jesus, and their children have chosen to walk away, but I’m encouraged to know that your kids are all walking the straight neuropath. Talk about as your children were growing up, as you were raising your kids, because you homeschooled all four of your kids all the way through, correct, from kindergarten through 12th grade?

Barb Heki:                     Yes, we did.

Yvette Hampton:           So as you did that, and you guys were back in maybe not so much the early pioneer days of homeschooling, but maybe at the tail end of that, but back in the day where maybe it wasn’t as widely accepted as it is now. Did you homeschool because you were running from something, because of discipleship? What was your reason behind it?

Rich Heki:                     Let’s see if we can synthesize this. Because of where our oldest son fell in his age where his birthday was, we had the opportunity basically to decide to put him in school a later year. The suburb we lived in at the time, they had just opened a brand new preschool, and they got a bunch of new teachers in there, because the teachers were all excited to be in this new facility, and everybody’s really excited about it. Then they had an open house, so people that didn’t have children in the school could check it out. So we went and when we left the school we had absolutely no peace.

Rich Heki:                     But because of where Sonny, our oldest son’s birthday fell, we had a whole year to make a decision. We used that time to research, and my wife, we’ll probably come to know just researches everything. She was discussing lamenting about the situation with a friend of hers. We thought of sending him to the Christian school, but it was really not possible for us to afford to do that. So she was lamenting to her friend, “We don’t know what we’re going to do.” Her friend said, “Why don’t you homeschool?” Barb says, “Homeschool? What’s that?”

Rich Heki:                     So she explained what it was, and we started learning about that. At first, I was a little reluctant. I said, “Well, all right maybe we could try this, but we’ll give it like I don’t know, six months or maybe at the most a year, but let’s see how we do for six months.” I’ll tell you, within probably a few weeks after starting the homeschool, we were fully convinced this was the way to go. Then it got to the point where it’s like, “Wow, even if we had the option, I’m sending our children to the Christian school, we would choose homeschooling even over that.”

Barb Heki:                     Right. If we got a free ride for all 12 years, we’d turn it down. There is no way.

Yvette Hampton:           Me too.

Rich Heki:                     So God really did a work in us. Once we really understood what homeschooling was about, and actually started getting involved and doing it ourselves, we were convinced this is the way that God wanted us to raise our children.

Barb Heki:                     What’s neat now that we see at conferences is we see these young married couples coming to homeschooling conferences, and registering for online conferences, and they don’t have any kids yet. They’re already researching homeschooling. We waited until our son turned five and panicked.

Rich Heki:                     Yeah, we waited till our back are against the wall basically.

Barb Heki:                     So, I love it. Just seeing the vision that they have, and they are bringing the grandparents along, and the grandparents are getting excited about it, and they’re looking at all this curriculum, and getting ideas, and it’s really neat.

Rich Heki:                     Yeah, it’s been a blessing.

Yvette Hampton:           It’s such an exciting thing, because even with parenting, I started reading parenting books, and I started talking to people about parenting, and thinking through, “Okay, when we have children, how are we going to do this, this, and this?” Of course, I was one of those moms who thought, “Well, when we have kids, our kids will never throw tantrums in the grocery store.” I was the perfect parent, but it’s the same with homeschooling and that if you know that that’s the direction that you want your family to go, you can certainly start preparing for it.

Yvette Hampton:           I love hearing from moms, and I have a couple of friends who listen to the podcast who don’t have kids yet, and they listen to this podcast, which is primarily about homeschooling. It’s such a blessing to me, because it’s so much fun to think, I love that they’re preparing their hearts in order to prepare the hearts of their children, and for a life that is honoring to the Lord.

Yvette Hampton:           We are talking about discipleship and about the importance of parents discipling their children. I want to talk about grandparents, because this is your ministry. I know you talk about how, and Psalm 78, the Bible actually exhorts grandparents to disciple the hearts of their children and grandchildren. Talk about that, about how that would work. How can grandparents come alongside their grandchildren and help disciple them?

Rich Heki:                     Since you brought that verse up, would it be all right if I read that?

Yvette Hampton:           Sure.

Rich Heki:                     So, Psalm 78:1-8, it reminds us this, “My people, hear my teaching. Listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth with a parable. I will utter hidden things, things from of all, things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants, we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.

Rich Heki:                     Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands. They would not be like their ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to him.

Barb Heki:                     It’s a worldview change or a change in mindset to try and get grandparents who maybe solid Christians, but they have always viewed school or they view homeschooling now as education, and parents view it as discipleship, because that’s what it is. So that’s the vision we’re trying to get grandparents to grasp is it’s not a separate thing. They disciple the grandkids through everything they’re doing with them. Every moment is 24/7, it’s not 9:00 to 3:00 on weekdays, and to be proactive as they’re doing things, whether they’re teaching a skill to their grandkids, or whether they’re going for a walk in the park, to just be always thinking in terms of look at what God made.

Barb Heki:                     Just bringing discipleship into everything they do with them. Because the one thing about education is it consumes a child’s life for basically from birth or at least preschool all the way through college sometimes, high school and college. If grandparents aren’t involved in the education of their grandkids, they are missing so many discipleship opportunities, because it’s just all their time.

Yvette Hampton:           Yup, I love that passage and just what it teaches to grandparents and exhorts them to take that role seriously. Because they’re leaving a legacy for their kids, and for their grandchildren, and for their grandchildren’s grandchildren and for generations to come. Garritt and I were talking about this actually the other day about what kind of legacy do we want to leave for our kids and for our grandkids. I think that as parents, we need to be intentional about that, because if we don’t have a goal in mind, if we have no idea what direction we’re heading then we’re going to lose our way.

Yvette Hampton:           We have to know what our goal is, and we have to know what direction we’re going with our kids, because we hope that they’re going to take that same direction with their kids. Our family has been studying the book of Revelation, and yeah you talked about it. It’s such just a powerful book. Garritt is doing such a great job of leading us through it, and he’s the first to say how intimidating it is to try to teach through a book that is so hard to grasp. As we’re thinking through that book, as we’re studying it, and as we’re looking at the culture around us, and we’re looking at all of the things that are happening, we’re sent back going, “Well, the end times, they might be here, and the tribulation may come in our lifetime.” I don’t know, may come in our girl’s lifetime, we don’t know, but our job is to teach our kids truth, and to teach them to stand firm, and put on the full armor of God. Because if we don’t teach it to them, then they’re not going to be very effective in teaching it to their kids.

Yvette Hampton:           No, they could be, of course, but it’s our job to do that with them. So I love that you’re so intentional about just leaving that legacy for your kids. I know one of the things that you talk about is how grandparents can make or break homeschooling. I have interviewed well, many times actually on the podcast, and she’s been part of a lot of things we’ve done is Karen Debeus. She talks about how when she very first started homeschooling, her parents were adamant about her not doing it.

Yvette Hampton:           Just like almost to the point of disowning her. They of course now, I mean, the Lord has done a great work in their hearts, but it can undo someone just where you’re just thinking of my parents. I want to still, as an adult, I’m 45 years old, and I still want to please my parents. If I made a decision about my family that my parents were just adamantly against, it would be really hard. I would love for you to talk to the two separate parts of parties in this situation.

Rich Heki:                     There are actually three.

Yvette Hampton:           Okay. So then talk to the three parties in this situation, and how to deal with that.

Rich Heki:                     So we’ve talked a little bit about the first one, which is having the grandparents onboard. They hear about and they go, “Oh yeah, that’s great.” Now, maybe they homeschooled you, and so they’re automatically going to be pro homeschooling. They will be onboard, and they’ll probably do whatever you ask them to do, and then some, just to spend time with the grandkids. That’s the easy, because they’re already there.

Rich Heki:                     Then you’re going to find that there’s some that are support of, but they’re a hands off approach. They just say, “We raised you, whatever you want to do is fine.” They’re okay with it, but they’re also not really engaged. I guess with that, the problem with that is there’s so many opportunities where they could do something with the grandkids, and that there’s going to be missed opportunities if they don’t get involved.

Rich Heki:                     What we want to see is that middle group where it’s like, “Yeah, do whatever you want to do.” That’s great, but we want to see the grandparents ramp it up and actually get involved, so that they can have some of the enjoyment that we’ve had discipling our kids, that they can share in that too, because they have so much to offer probably way more than they realize, because they have all this life of experience that they can bring to the table.

Rich Heki:                     Then there’s of course the third group is the oppositional one. Those are the ones we have to work on, because a lot of times it’s like they may have had a really good experience in their particular growing up and their history with public school or whatever. They think, “Well, it was good enough for me, so why is it good enough for my grandchildren?” Then if they know nothing about homeschooling, it’s like, “What are you doing with my grandchildren?” Because they know nothing about it, and maybe they’ve heard some negative stories about it or whatever.

Rich Heki:                     We got a bigger education process just to them to try to explain why are we doing this? Why is this really the best road for teaching our children, but this is going to be the very best education they can have.

Barb Heki:                     One of the things on the pro side is we have talked to lots of grandparents who actually have moved to the city that their grandkids are in so they can help homeschool them. We’ve talked to families who have moved and say the grandparents are in. So the grandparents can be involved. That deepening of the relationship and the discipleship opportunities are just wonderful. It takes the stress off of parents. You’re not doing it a hundred percent yourself. You’ve got help, and you’ve got support. You’ve got encouragement. You’ve got prayer, and it’s a really neat thing.

Barb Heki:                     On the other side, we had some friends for the oppositional grandparents. We always also tell grandparents and parents that, “Now, we as grandparents had a chance to raise our kids the way that we felt God was leading us to raise them.” Now, it’s our kids’ turn. It’s not our decision. They’re the directors and we’re the supporters. Grandparents, you now need to remember that. Then parents need to remember to ask them for some of the wisdom that they have from all those years of experience.

Barb Heki:                     We had some friends at a church that we went to, that they watched us homeschooling our kids, and they came up to us once and said, “We really want to homeschool our kids. We like what we see among the homeschoolers. We know, and we want to homeschool our kids, but our parents are really against it.” As it turned out, one of the parents offered them a free ride through Christian school for all, I think they had four kids, all four of their kids for 12 years if they would promise not to homeschool.

Barb Heki:                     They buckled too. They didn’t want to have trouble with the grandparents, and wanted to keep the relationship good. So they took them up on that offer, and I was just so sad, because God had given them this vision and this excitement to homeschool, and then the parents just shut it down. The grandparents are really key in how a family operates, because it can be wonderful and joyful, or it can be totally miserable. Sometimes relationships just completely broken off as well.

Yvette Hampton:           Sure. I’m certain that those grandparents meant well. They wanted what was best for their grandchildren.

Barb Heki:                     Yes. That’s a key to remember too in the relationship aspect is that they’re really on the same side, because they both want the best for the kids, but they just have different ideas of what is best, so it’s a matter of bringing them together.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah, that is a difficult thing for them.

Rich Heki:                     I was just going to add to that. We try to impress on the parents as well as grandchildren that our parents did the very best they could with the tools they had at the time. Back in the day, homeschooling wasn’t even on the radar, modern homeschooling wasn’t even on the radar at that time. The thought probably never even occurred to them that that could be done, but back in the founding of this country, all the founding fathers were homeschooled. I think all the presidents I believe on Mount Rushmore were homeschooled.

Rich Heki:                     There’s a rich heritage in homeschooling, but now that we have these tools, and in many ways it’s getting more and more easy to homeschool because of the internet and through all the resources that are now available is making the job of the parents that much more organized and easier to do for homeschooling. It’s a little bit easier now in some ways to convince the parents that, but there’s still those opposition out there, and we still have to do a lot of education on that.

Barb Heki:                     There’s two things that I think are key too in dealing with that. One is what is the missing element in all of this, especially for Christian grandparents? The missing element is Jesus Christ, because what educational situation is going to glorify Christ, teach the kids to love and honor Jesus Christ, his Lord and savior. It’s not going to be a public school, it’s not going to happen there. So, to be looking at that.

Barb Heki:                     The other thing is the most effective way to get really oppositional grandparents to come onboard in homeschooling is to get them involved, because it’s hard to oppose something that you are involved in. If you can have them teach a skill they know, that’s pretty easy. Maybe mom and dad don’t want to ask them grandparents to do that, maybe the grandkids can say, “Grandma and grandpa, will you teach me X, X, X?”

Barb Heki:                     Then after that is done, then mom and dad put it in under the proper academic category in their records and stuff and say, “Thanks grandma and grandpa for helping teach science.” We put that in our official records. You help teach them science today. So anyway, that’s a big help.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. I think one of the greatest things that any grandparent, whether grandmother or grandfather can do if they’re local is to just offer your presence, especially if you have a child … if your child has multiple children that they’re trying to homeschool, or if they’re only trying to homeschool one, and maybe they’ve got a baby underfoot, or a toddler or something like that.

Yvette Hampton:           So just having grandma come over, grandpa come over maybe once a week or twice a week or something, just for a few hours, and hold the baby, feed the baby, fold laundry, help with some dishes, just help in some way. I think that most grandparents don’t understand the desperate need that most moms feel for that support and just for someone else to come alongside them and just say, “Okay, how can I help you? What can I do? Can I just silently fold laundry? Can I just play with the baby for a little bit?” Just to give mom a little bit of a break, and to give her the opportunity to maybe catch up on lesson plans if she wants to do that, or to just sit and read with her child, or to take her older one to the park, or to get ice cream or something like that just so that mom could be more effective in her role as mom, and as homeschool mom, and all the things that she has lined up.

Yvette Hampton:           I shouldn’t even just say grandparents, and that I wish that there were more retired, if you will, homeschool moms who would seek out younger homeschool moms in their churches, in their communities, in their neighborhoods and just say, “Hey, can I come over and just help you? What can I do? How can I be a blessing to you?” Most moms would eat that at. You’ve got the introverted mom who maybe wouldn’t want that so much, but I think that it’s probably not the norm.

Yvette Hampton:           What are some ways? You had mentioned earlier about how grandparents can be involved from a distance. So if grandma and grandpa like you guys, you live a thousand miles from your grandchildren, how can you be involved? How do you find yourselves being able to do that?

Barb Heki:                     A lot of stuff over Skype you can do things. I mean, not Skype, but just online chats, video chats. We’ve written books or short stories together. We’ve done books too like picture books, but we’ll just start out and our granddaughter will maybe write a sentence or two, and then we’ll write a sentence or two, and we just keep writing the story together, or you encourage them in writing the story. You ask questions, “What happened next?” If they’re too young to write, you take down what they say, and type down what they say.

Barb Heki:                     If they’re a teenager, they can go on and type on their own, but just help them with the story writing. A lot of things that they can do online is you can do I mean, just about anything really. We’ve looked at pictures on the internet and studied animals, different things like that. The Fibonacci numbers are really fun, because anything that you can do sitting beside each other on a couch, you can also do in a video chat. You can have a copy of the same book that they have, and you can read it back and forth to each other.

Barb Heki:                     For older kids and teenagers too, that is really reading aloud, and going through a book.

Rich Heki:                     Yeah, possibly they’re learning some Bible verses either through one or just through their folks, but grandparents, it’d be a great way for the children to be learning their verses if they could recite it to grandma and grandma. Then they could coach them and help them out with that.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah, that’s so fun.

Barb Heki:                     About half of grandparents live long distance from their grandchildren. So you’ve got half of them doing long distance things, but the other statistic we ran into is that 90% of grandchildren say that their grandparents had a tremendous influence on their values and their behavior. What is that? That’s discipleship, because their values come from being discipled, and the behavior is played out from their values. So grandparents who live long distance should be really encouraged, because they have a huge influence, and they need to take as many opportunities as they can to do things by distance with the grandkids.

Barb Heki:                     Then when they go there, you can do so many more things and continue that. We always bring art projects or science projects in our suitcase and stuff. Now, our granddaughter asks so every time we come, “Grandma and grandpa, do you have something for us in your suitcase?” It’s a neat tradition and a neat memory too.

Yvette Hampton:           I love the idea of grandparents being involved through just activities like reading. How easy would it be for with the technology we have today, it’s so easy and amazing even though you’re not there in person.

Yvette Hampton:           To open up a book, and flip it around, and show them the pictures, and be able to just have them see your faces and get to know you without having to be physically present, it’s the next best thing truly.

Rich Heki:                     Right.

Barb Heki:                     Exactly.

Yvette Hampton:           What a blessing it is that in our day and age, we have the ability to do that. I know we’ve talked about so many times the whole issue of socialization and how that’s the big thing. I know that with a lot of grandparents, because they don’t quite understand homeschooling. That is the number one reason why grandparents are not supportive of homeschooling, because they simply don’t understand it. That is one of the main reasons why we re making this documentary Schoolhouse Rocked, because we really want to open up people’s eyes to, “This is what homeschooling looks like. This is why it’s beneficial. These are the great blessings of homeschooling.”

Yvette Hampton:           Talk about if you were talking to a grandparent. Let’s role play for a minute and say you come face to face with another set of grandparents who were saying to you, “My child wants to homeschool my grandkids and I’m really not comfortable with it, because I think they’re going to be unsocialized.” How do you answer that question?

Barb Heki:                     I answer it with questions. I ask them first, who is it that does the socializing in whatever environment they’re in, whether it’s the home, a public school or whatever. Then what is the content of that socialization. They need to think about what socialization in a different environment really is. Is that what they really want? Does it glorify Jesus Christ? They need to hone down to what they think socialization is. Basically, in a traditional school, it’s going to be the teachers there and their peers, and probably about 10% teachers and 90% peers.

Barb Heki:                     The teacher has a lot of influence too, because Jesus said that the goal of education is to become like your teacher. Do we want the grandkids to become like their parents, or do we want them to become like some random teacher who was assigned to them in a classroom, and students who just happened to sit next to them at a desk? Just to get them to think through that, because they really don’t think through it.

Rich Heki:                     Yeah, and another thing with socialization, most children that I’ve seen that have been homeschooled very readily can communicate with adults, and have a conversation with them. Think about it in a minute, how natural is it to be in a class of 30 children all the same age, not even a variance in the ages. They’re just all with the same age. Then you look at society, where is that replicated in the society? It’s not. It’s just that one particular situation.

Rich Heki:                     We see it as being, people like to throw around the word diversity. It’s a lot more diverse to be in a homeschool setting where you’re interacting with all sorts of different ages, and you’re interacting with parents and a lot of times as homeschoolers, we’ll go on field trips with our children. They get to interact with adults. They get to learn about maybe another occupation and what they do. They’re being exposed to a whole lot more of life than in a closed classroom.

Barb Heki:                     There are going to be kids that are shy and withdrawn in the homeschool environment and in the public school environment. The opposite is true as well. It’s just that people are different. One of the things I did, like he mentioned, I like to research. So when I was first looking in the homeschooling, I had this list of I don’t know, probably 30 questions I asked. I asked the one friend we knew who’s homeschooling for names of other homeschoolers. So I called them all.

Barb Heki:                     When I went through the list of all my questions, and then I asked them for names of people they knew, and so I called all of these people. After about the first three people, I crossed the socialization questions off my list. It wasn’t even an issue.

Yvette Hampton:           Right. Nope, it’s not an issue at all. We’ve learned that and it’s funny. I always chuckle inside when people actually bring that up. I always just want to say, “Look at most kids, not all, but look at most kids coming out of the public school and tell me which one of those characteristics you would like my children to emulate.”

Barb Heki:                     I know.

Yvette Hampton:           Not many of them. Not that every public school child is a terrible example, but many of them are. We know a lot of them. Yeah, and so and not that every homeschool kid is perfect, they’re not. We know a lot of them too, but overall, I certainly would want our kids to have Christlike character and to spend their time with other kids whose parents have the same goals in mind that we do and who are heading down the same path as us. So that’s important. Let’s talk about family tree.

Barb Heki:                     Okay. Family tree is a really fun thing that grandparents can do with their grandkids, whether they’re locally or long distance. Because they’ve got some of the personal memories too that go back further than the parents. The one thing that we tell grandparents to do is to do a twist on the family tree. So don’t just record the names and the dates. You need that to have your framework, but look at character. Talk about what that person was like. Were they a Christian? Were they not? What was their character like? How did that impact their life and what happened to them?

Barb Heki:                     You can get in this stuff, all kinds of discussions on what just the impact of a good character and bad character. That also leads into the goal that we want to get in the lots of discussions with, with grandparents and grandchildren is salvation. Because that’s the key difference. In a family tree, people don’t think about salvation, they’re just, “Who beget who?”

Barb Heki:                     What happened to these people based on their faith or lack thereof, and then that leaves right into a gospel message and a deep conversation with the grandkids about where they stand in their salvation and their faith, that sort of thing.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah, that’s fantastic. I love the idea of family trees and going back to figuring out where we came from. Because all of the grandparents have played a role in some way that has led their grandchildren to be where they are in life. Unfortunately, we are out of time for the podcast. I would love to continue going on and on, but I’m so grateful for you. I’m grateful for your ministry to grandparents and to parents alike. Where can people find out more about you?

Barb Heki:                     If they go to our website, it’s just grandparentsofhomeschoolers.org. If they can click on “join,” it’s free. They just fill in the information and then they will get resources and things that we send out. We’re going to be launching some things in the first quarter, new resources for grandparents, and they’ll get messages as to how they can get a hold of this and free resources, so yeah.

Yvette Hampton:           Okay. Fantastic. Am I correct that you actually speak at some conventions?

Rich Heki:                     Yes, we do.

Yvette Hampton:           Across the country, right?

Barb Heki:                     Yeah, and internationally as well.

Yvette Hampton:           Oh wow. Okay. Do you know yet where you’re going to be or are you not exactly sure of the schedule?

Barb Heki:                     We don’t have this everything tied down this one yet, but if they’re in an area where there’s a homeschool convention, or an online convention, they can look for us and just Google us. Yeah.

Yvette Hampton:           Okay. We’ll put a link to your website in there, grandparentsofhomeschoolers.org. Thank you both for your ministry. Thank you for the heart that you have for homeschool families and just for what the Lord is doing through you. You are a great blessing, and it’s been fun having you on the podcast. So, thank you so much.

Both:                     Thank you.

Barb Heki:                     Thank you for what you’re doing. It’s great.

Yvette Hampton:           Thank you so much. All right you guys, thank you for listening. We will see you back here again next week. Have a great day.

Photo by Mary Blackwey on Unsplash – Grandfather and Granddaughter on Beach

Photo by Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash – Grandmother, Mother, and Child on Beach

Photo by Nikoline Arns on Unsplash – Grandmother with Kids Nature

Photo by Paolo Bendandi on Unsplash – BW Great Grandmother with Baby

Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash – Grandfather Holding Baby Up

Photo by Phillip Goldsberry on Unsplash – Grandparents and Kids Gingerbread House Landscape

Photo by Phillip Goldsberry on Unsplash – Grandparents and Kids Gingerbread House Portrait

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash – Grandfather Holding Baby on White Background

Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash – Grandmother Cooking with Child

What Does The Bible Say About Homeschooling? Encouragement From A Pastor

I was invited to speak at the Annual Home Educators’ Day at the Capitol. Following are three encouragements I passed along to homeschooling families…

Homeschooling Encouragement 1: The responsibility to teach and train children is on the parents’ shoulders.

At the Capitol with former WA State Representative Jason Overstreet, who is now president of Christian Homeschool Network. I’m thankful for his ministry and heart for Christ.

It’s not on the shoulders of the government, public school, or even the church. Three verses to support this conclusion…

  1. Deuteronomy 6:7 You shall teach [the words of God] diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 

The “You” is parents, and this teaching is supposed to go on all the time, when you:
● Sit in your house…
● Walk by the way…
● Lie down…
● Rise up. 

When I taught elementary school as soon as the bell rang I sent students home for the day, but as homeschooling parents educating is never done. God wants us teaching and discipling our children around the clock, every day, all day. When I was an officer in the Army they told us, “You always have to have a hip-pocket teaching available.” Our uniforms had large pockets on our hips, and the idea is we had to have a teaching we could pull out at any moment to share with the soldiers.

The same is true with our children. We should look for teachable moments throughout the day to disciple them on forgiveness, generosity, service, joy, appreciating God’s creation, etc. As our children encounter day-to-day situations, we want to regularly say:

  • What does the Bible say about this?
  • What does God’s Word tell us about this situation?
  • How should Scripture direct our thinking regarding this decision?

With our children growing up in Christian homes and churches they learn so much Scripture, but how does this benefit them if it isn’t affecting their day-to-day lives? If it isn’t affecting their relationships and decision-making?

  1. Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go,
    And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Is this addressing the public school system, the government, or even churches? It’s clearly speaking to parents.

  1. Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

This verse is interesting because understandably with fathers working, mothers perform most of the teaching; therefore, how do we obey this verse? While mothers might deal with much of the day-to-day academics, it seems much of the [spiritual] training and admonition rests on the father’s shoulders. Fathers can never sit back and say:

  • Well, my wife has it under control.
  • Their mother will handle the teaching.
  • Whatever my kids need to learn, they can learn it from Mommy.
  • I’m too busy working to worry about teaching my children.

Whether fathers have to get up earlier or clear the table as soon as dinner is over we need to make sure we gather our families around the Word of God. Consider what God said about Abraham:

Genesis 18:19 [God said], “I have chosen him, that he may [direct] his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”

This is exactly what God could say to every father: He has chosen [us] as fathers. He wants us to direct our children and our households that we may keep them in the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice.

Homeschooling Encouragement 2: The amount of time we have with our children is limited and valuable.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics the average number of hours in a public school day is 6.64, and this doesn’t include the time spent walking, driving, or riding the bus to and from school. The average number of school days per year is 180, which adds up to a little under 1,200 hours per year. This means by the time public school students graduate high school they have spent over 15,500 hours away from their parents.

We have seven children. Our oldest is eleven and we’re recognizing just how little time we actually have with each of them. As parents, we should be selfish. We shouldn’t be willing to give up so much of this time to others. When we consider just how much time our children would be in school…

  • It’s a lot of time for them to be taught and trained by someone else when God has put that responsibility on parents’ shoulders. Some number of the teachers might not be Christians, might not have the same values we want our children to have, might teach academics that conflict with our teaching, etc.
  • It’s a lot of time for them to be surrounded by hundreds of students that could have a strong negative influence. Some number of those students aren’t Christians, don’t have the same values, exhibit behaviors or hold beliefs we wouldn’t want in our children.

Homeschooling Encouragement 3: Move beyond teaching academics and morality.

When I taught elementary school, I found the teachers I worked with to be hardworking, and genuinely concerned about their students. They taught their students important academics, and they’re moral people who also taught an amount of character. In classrooms across the nation students learn important subjects like math, reading, writing, science, etc. as well as important morals: do not lie, cheat, steal, be kind, etc.

So what homeschooling parents need to consider is if we don’t move beyond teaching our children academics and morality, we’re not moving beyond anything public schools teach. If we’re homeschooling we need to make sure – like Deuteronomy 6:7 and Ephesians 6:4 command – we’re teaching the Word of God, teaching the Gospel, teaching a biblical worldview, etc.

If we taught our children the academics that could get them into the most prestigious schools in the nation but they weren’t committed to using that education for Christ, what good have we actually accomplished? Why do we teach our children…

  • To read? So they can read Scripture.
  • To write? So they can write about the Lord.
  • Music? So they can worship the Lord and help others do the same.
  • Sciences? So they can better know the Creator of creation.
  • Art? So they can produce works that bring glory to God.
  • History? So they can learn about our Christian Heritage and the sacrifice many were willing to make to freely worship God, and learn from the mistakes of those who rejected that same God.

Paul’s son in the faith, Timothy, grew up to be a wonderful, godly young man. He was so impressive, even at a young age when Paul met him he wanted to bring him along (Acts 16:3). What made Timothy so exceptional? Paul gives the answer…

2 Timothy 3:15 From childhood you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

From a young age Timothy knew the Scriptures, which did two things for him:

  1. First, they [made him] wise; Scripture is where true wisdom comes from.
  2. Second, they provided him with salvation; they taught him how to be saved through faith in Christ Jesus.

This is a great example of what we should desire for our children: that they know the Scriptures at a young age, that they’re wise for salvation, that they know to put their faith in Christ.

And where did Timothy receive this instruction? Did he receive it from his 4thgrade teacher, wonderful coach, the government, or even the church? He received it from his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois (2 Tim 1:5). And this is where our children should receive the same wisdom and discipleship.

Discussion Questions:

  1. What has encouraged you in your homeschooling?
  2. What would you pass along to other homeschooling families?

Leave your answers in the comments section!


Scott LaPierre is the senior pastor of Woodland Christian Church, an author, and popular speaker at homeschool conventions. He and his wife, Katie, grew up together in northern California, and God has blessed them with seven children.

Pick up a copy of Scott’s excellent book, Marriage God’s Way: A Biblical Recipe for Healthy, Joyful, Christ-Centered Relationships here. It is a favorite of the Schoolhouse Rocked team!


  

Homeschool Isn’t Something You Do

Homeschooling isn't something you do, it is a lifestyle. It is so much more than just learning.

Homeschooling isn't something you do, it is a lifestyle. It is so much more than just learning.

In the wide world of homeschool articles, books, blogs, and videos you will see so many wonderful bits of information on how to do XYZ. Of course, no two are ever the same.

There are planners, methods, curriculum, and mission statements. Everything points to things you can do, checkboxes you can mark, and the goal is “productivity”. Though the result is often just more comparison.

But homeschooling isn’t a to-do list. It isn’t books, or Latin, or co-ops. It isn’t poetry tea time or map tracing.

While these things are good, full of beauty and truth, they aren’t the core of homeschool.

Homeschooling is an opportunity. A chance to make connections in your relationships with your children, to truly disciple them in the day to day living and teach them in the way they should go.

Homeschooling is a process of sanctification. A way for the Holy Spirit to speak to you through the things you say, think, and pray for your own children. The day to day teaching, correcting, and sharing of education with your children requires you to take time to be still, to quiet your heart and trust so that you can call upon the Lord’s strength to get through the hard moments with grace.

Homeschool is the creation of a family culture. Through your choice of materials, you line the hallways and bookshelves of your home creating an atmosphere of learning while these same items subtly share your ideals, priorities, and dreams with your children and all who enter your home. Your schedules and rituals set the tempo for your family, you have control over how rushed or calm the days are.

Homeschool is a choice to prioritize the creation of home as a safe place full of ideas, deepHomeschooling isn't something you do, it is a lifestyle. It is so much more than just learning. conversations, shared meals, and time together. There is grace, gratitude, and a deep appreciation for the small moments, small accomplishments, and daily victories that happens so much more freely in a home where being present together is a choice that has been made. 

There is a sweetness and delight found in homeschooling, even through the hard seasons, that the time we are given with our children is short and that through choosing to homeschool we are making the most of those precious years.

Homeschooling is celebrating Ebenezer moments and teaching our children that hard times bring forth fruit.

Homeschool is not something you do, but rather a way of living that builds up your children, that strengthens your faith, and that lays a foundation of solid family culture for future generations.

In the process, you get to checkmark that your kids get a wonderful individualized education. That’s why homeschooling is awesome.

Written by Lara Molettiere with Everyday Graces . . .Cultivating Learning, Love & Life