Becoming the Sunday Family
Why We Homeschool
Thanks for coming back! In our first blog post we introduced our big, crazy, Catholic, homeschooling family and promised to return with the reasons why we decided to switch to this seemingly radical lifestyle. We want to reiterate that we don’t claim that what we have chosen will be right for everyone or that it’s the only way. Far from it! Parents are given the unalienable right and duty to educate their children (CCC 2206). For some that may look like traditional public school or private school. For others that may be homeschooling or a hybrid. Everyone has a story of how they got to where they are and what works. This is ours!
The Good Stuff
Basically it comes down to this: We want the good stuff, not the leftovers. Our family has tried all the schooling options in our relatively short parenting tenure. Ultimately, whenever our children were away from home all day, they came home at the end of those days and it would go one of two ways: they were flying high on good feelings and then melt down by bedtime OR they were depressed and in tears, then melt down by bedtime. We have spent every school year that way. For months — months -they would melt down — all of them, in their own unique and difficult ways! So. Fun!
We observed that our kids were holding in tension, fear, and stress all day long, because school is stressful! Being around 20–30 other personalities all day long — positive and negative influences, navigating bullies (yes, even in a small, religious school), pre-adolescent ‘who likes who’ issues, trying to figure out how to please your teacher, pressure to ‘be good,’ or even living in an older sibling’s shadow…it’s exhausting!
Their home is their safe space. So when they would get into the familiar family car or smells of home, they could finally release all those big feelings that they had kept inside all day long. The school got the good stuff. Our family has always gotten the leftovers. We would patch them up just to send them back off for more the next day. Wash, rinse, repeat. Not everyone’s experience is like this, but we have been experiencing it for years.
Enough was enough.
A Well-Rounded Childhood
Most parents I have talked to agree that a well-rounded childhood would include family time, a solid education, faith formation, sports, music, art, friends, free-play, and time to discover and then follow their passions. However, when our children spent eight hours a day, five days a week in a highly pressurized learning environment with highly pressurized social interactions, there is little time for anything else! Especially when they have to come home from school and do more school work, because they can’t get enough of it in during those eight hours (check back in soon for another post on this fun topic!).
When we have had our children in school, any school, we have chosen to mostly eliminate sports, drama, and extra community events, for the sake of peace in our home. We barely find time to do their religious catechesis at the church once a week, let alone basketball 3–5 times per week! We were just too worn out! When we would feel the need to apologize to their teachers for why they may be in bad moods on any given day after a bad morning or evening before, we were almost always met with the response that the kids were perfectly fine and whatever may be going on isn’t affecting their school day.
Wait, what? You mean that for the most part, my children are patient, kind, attentive, and helpful at school all day long, then come home and turn into Mr. Hyde? You mean to tell me that the peace of my family is contingent on whether or not my perfectionist son got an answer wrong in front of his class that day? Or if my daughter was made to sit out of recess — again — through no fault of her own, but because of disruptive classmates? Or if another son can’t relate to his classmates because we don’t let our kids play Fortnite and that’s ALL the other kids talk about?
Give me a break.
For the longest time I thought this was normal behavior, because I’ve heard SO many parents complain about this Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde problem. And we just accept it like it is normal.
Let me be the first to tell you: It doesn’t have to be!
Now, at home, our children can be children. They can have a peaceful day that focuses on relationships and love of learning. Then, they can go off to sports, drama, piano lessons, or hang out with friends and guess what? They climb back into my car afterwards smiling, bubbly, can’t wait to share what they experienced…and they aren’t melting down anymore.
Becoming the Sunday Family
Does this sound familiar: “During the summer my kids would fight all the time!!”
For our family it usually starts out that way! There are always a few weeks in the beginning of the summer where we are all re-learning how to be around each other all. The. Time. However, typically our kids do get along for the rest of the summer and I end up never want summers to end. Those summer days are like Sundays in our house, but it takes work to get there.
We promote respect in our house, especially having a family full of boys. Lucas and I can be sarcastic and playful, but never at the expense of someone’s dignity and self-worth. Our kids trust that we won’t make them feel badly on purpose, and we don’t allow their siblings to do that either. So, ultimately, it’s better for them to get along, than deal with another lecture from mom or dad about respect, disrupting the peace of the house, losing privileges, and having to do extra chores. Summers are fairly pleasant, overall, praise God!
However, when they would go back to school in the fall, any brick-and-mortar school, they would bring home a sort of negativity toward each other that doesn’t exist naturally in our home. Then on Sunday, after a few days distance from the school environment, they would start getting along again. Woohoo! One whole day — if we were lucky — of peace out of the entire week! Then it would start all over.
We started to ask each other: What if we could just have more Sundays? What if we could be a Sunday Family who enjoys each other’s company, who speaks to each other with respect and love, who share faith everyday — not just when trying to teach a lesson or solve some problem?
It’s what our hearts were yearning for. That yearning was God’s call to homeschool.
Primary Influence
This winter, as we were discerning our decision to homeschool, we stopped to add up how our family spends the hours in our week. Our children spent 40 hours a week with other students, teachers, staff, and volunteers. After school we would have maybe two hours at home, typically doing homework, forcing them to read books they didn’t really care about, or melting down, before a quick dinner. Next we were off to 1–4 more hours of extracurriculars (when we felt brave) where they are influenced by more kids, coaches, and whomever else they are exposed to. We had to stop and ask ourselves: at what point have we relinquished the right to complain about who our kid is becoming?
For Lucas and me, we felt that we had been delegating all our parenting duties to other people, including other children. We cannot complain about our child’s behavior, attitude, or waning love of learning and reading if we are not the primary influence in his/her life.
Don’t get me wrong, kids are exhausting and parents need breaks. Lots of them! Especially stay at home parents and homeschool parents! However, I can’t tell you how many families I meet who rarely spend any time together, they are just too busy! For our family, we had to answer the question: what’s the point of having kids if you aren’t going to be around them enough to raise them and be their primary influence? And our answer was a big blank stare at each other.
Priorities
School is not the most important thing in the world. There, I said it. There are more important things in life than learning how to divide fractions and diagram sentences.
Learning how to learn is important.
Developing a solid work ethic is important.
Learning respect for oneself and others is important.
Learning how to interact with people of all ages and backgrounds is important.
Learning how to admit when you are wrong and make amends is important.
Being devoted to God and learning how to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is important.
Learning to trust God and turn to Him in times of need and times of joy is important!
The ‘work of childhood’ is learning, but it’s so much more than just checking off boxes on a state-structured set of goals and outcomes. Work is important and necessary. I firmly believe that the work my children will do in this world will change it for the better and for the greater glory of God! My prayer is that they go into whatever vocation God has planned for them. If they are meant to be married and have families, my prayer is that they know how to prioritize that family and their marriages before whatever work they are doing. We have to demonstrate that priority now, in their childhood.
For us, putting God and family first is everything. We have demonstrated that to our children by the career choices we’ve made. My husband could have been an engineer, doctor, politician or a whole slew of other higher-paying, terrible-work-hours careers. He chose to be an English teacher for community college, because the hours are spectacular for being fully present and raising a family.
It’s not all rosey though. Having children and raising a family is not for the faint of heart! We have made hard choices and many sacrifices so that I can stay home for the majority of our married life. I was working for the church again for the last year and a half when God surprised us with our beloved Matthew. We heard God’s call strongly to focus on our family and through a lot of prayer (and God kicking us in the pants more than once) we made the decision for me to stay home again, and homeschooling was a big part of that choice.
It meant leaving a job that I loved and downsizing our budget. It meant leaving a school our kids loved and a loving community of friends within. Difficult choices that put knots in our stomachs. There are lots of things to pray about and consider before making this particular big change. Too many to list here, but perhaps we can in another post.
Has it been worth it? 100% YES.
For us, family is everything and God has shown us such abundance when we have said yes to Him whenever He calls, no matter how scary it may seem! In fact the scarier it has seemed, the greater the treasure that has been found in the aftermath. We have decided to live every day as if it were Sunday. We begin with Jesus in the morning and then carry Him with us throughout the rest of our day and week. We prioritize rest and togetherness, prayer and discovery, being present and wholehearted. It has been an extraordinary adventure so far and look forward to whatever else may lay around the next bend.
A few things to pray about:
As a parent of school-aged kids, are you experiencing any of the same struggles we have? What have you done to help keep your family intact? Could He be calling you to homeschool? What might be holding you back from saying yes to God right now, in whatever way He is calling you?
Please share your thoughts with us, we would love to help you become a Sunday Family, too!
Originally published at https://thesundayfamily.com on May 24, 2019.
