This post is for anyone interested in the education of children. However, if you are a homeschooler (or want to be), it might be of particular interest. There are also some additional notes and links toward the bottom.
I wanted to call this article “How Not to Ruin Your Catholic Kids” but immediately realized the weakness of my position. If I’ve learned little else after 25 years of motherhood, I’ve learned that I’m still a novice. I look back at all of the “how to” parenting posts of my early blogging years with a forehead wrinkling cringe. It’s not as gentle an experience as “eating humble pie” suggests… just raw embarrassment.
Parenting is hard, not only because everyone involved struggles with sin and vice, but also because we are malformed, propagandized, and confused by familial and societal culture by degree. In other words, we don’t know what we don’t know… until we have the opportunity to be broken open, guts spilled all over the floor, and pieced back together in right order by the the truth of the Divine Physician, better formation, grace, and the school of experience.
As I enter into my 20th year of homeschooling, I have a lot to reflect on in this regard. I can’t blame anything that goes wrong on my kids’ teachers… so that’s rough on the ego. Twelve more years to go, God willing, and maybe I should start drinking coffee, eh? I have regrets. I also have two decades of joyful memories and a persistent desire to make it better each year.
Before having adult children, achievement markers in our “school” were things I could write on a calendar or in a diary. Events, sacraments, trips, academic/skill progress, personal development, relationship. Once those kids started to fly though, I learned that the heart of what we are doing goes deeper than anything that can be checked off or recorded… and I have been approaching September for the last several years with shaking hands and heart.
God help me. I don’t know what I’m doing.
I know that’s not a feeling exclusive to me. We’re all working it out that way regardless of where our kids attend school. But I bring it up because I have chosen a schooling option which doesn’t allow me to outsource the bulk of the process and so I have to face some elements more frequently; mostly that the process is outrageously messy and often looks like just hanging on, trying not to scandalize the mailman, and somehow teaching the kids math without inadvertently (or deliberately) turning off the fire hose of the Holy Spirit.
My older kids tell me that they don’t regret being homeschooled even though they lived our worst moments. They are grateful for it. They see it from the other side now. They see the world. They see themselves. They know that no system can rescue them from having to face the brutality of the guts-spilled-out moments of life. They had high expectations of Catholic community in the world (probably thinking it had to be better than home) and have come away many times discouraged, wounding, wounded.
Does homeschooling protect from that? Not inherently. Assuming that a family has a reasonable level of love and health, the greatest danger to a Christian homeschooled student is the same as it is for a Catholic school kid: that is that the faith is easily adopted as a superficial lifestyle and not as deep life-altering conversion. The latter can come with time, more easily if the comfortable safe veneer of Catholic education itself isn’t an obstacle to humility and real learning.
Many people can honestly say:
I know the faith. I can recite the Baltimore Catechism by heart. I have said thousands of rosaries and wear saint medals. I look like a Catholic, talk like one, pray like one…
I have said my prayers. I feel good about it.
We typically wouldn’t see this as a concerning statement. And yet… being consoled by a feeling of holiness is not the same thing as holiness. To be content with the consolation of our own piety is not the proper goal. Therein lies the danger of any schooling in the faith: to become an expert in the language and the look, but miss the point. To be experts in the aesthetic but miss Christ.
If Christian kids are raised with privilege unchecked by virtue and the refinement of real life load-bearing, they will grow up to hurt other people in order to satisfy desire for comfort. And they will do it using the language of faith until faith no longer suits them.
Piety can be a great good. It can also be an excuse to stay in the sitting room of small talk with God, ourselves, and others, never going deeper. Never figuring out how to turn spiritual thoughts into transformative action. This seems to be where suffering plays such an important role in the development of souls. Would we ever leave the comfort of the sitting room without it?
All that to say… if my Catholic homeschool is going to be a saint maker, I need to keep deeper things at the forefront of my academic year. Experience tells me that the particular books I choose don’t matter as much as the environment housing those books. The goal is that when they leave and go looking for something better than home (and they will) that they find it because it reminds them of the best of home and points them to Christ.
We can pass on the faith but we can’t force a child to receive it. They have to develop that relationship with Jesus and personally embrace and love His Word. Otherwise, all those hours of family adoration are just one-sided and our tallest kids might be approaching the Eucharistic table unworthily, with hardened hearts and a growing antagonism toward the things of God.
We don’t know what is going on in their hearts.
I have spent years pondering the secret to really passing on the faith; to presenting it in such a way that it is more inviting than all the attractions of the world. Personal prayer is essential but it must be accompanied by heroic actions that allow Christ to work strongly within a family and keep the lures of the world at bay. My motherhood demands sanctity. My vocation is made for it...
And as we know, the saints had to battle the world, many of them only achieving popularity in the hearts of the Catholic faithful well after their deaths. We need to reconcile ourselves to that. Even losing our reputations for the sake of souls.
It is not my job to mold my children into saints. It is my job to give them every opportunity, motivation and protection to allow them to say yes to Jesus. Then He is the one who will make them saints. More thoughts on that HERE.
School year notes and links…
The last couple years have been a bit… uh… exciting in the parenting realm for us. Bandwidth for changing things up has been low and so I’m excited to report that I’m feeling the fire again, excited to begin and to change. I do like change… within reason. One shift we’re making actually brings us around to earlier stability since we’re returning to a favorite program from years past.
Learn more about Connecting with History HERE.
I love that all students, regardless of age, can study the same period of history. The household is much more unified and engaged when this can happen. I also love that strength of this program is the golden thread of Salvation History. No more disjointed dates and places… everything is in the context of the plan of our loving Father.
Recently discovered the Foundations of Science resources from TAN Books and they are lovely. We have the Plants and Space texts and I assume the other volumes are just as attractive and useful.
Our favorite reading program is still Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I explain why (with teaching tips) here:
The Best $20 I Ever Spent for Homeschooling
Feeling overwhelmed by the desire to have your kids be exceptional (whether homeschooled or not)? There’s a book for that. I’m pretty sure that Pat Flynn did not write this book about homeschooling but it fits perfectly, freed me from some anxiety, and equipped me to better lead my kids. Here is my review of “How to Be Better at (Almost) Everything”:
How Generalism and Skill Stacking Can Free Your Homeschool from the Tyranny of Perfection
Final note…
One of the biggest obstacles to having a joyful home is being a miserable, unhappy parent. Sometimes that suffering is tied directly to our physical well-being. Our bodily health directly impacts our mental health, and both are connected to our spiritual health. Proper preparation for a good school year involves addressing those needs. That doesn’t mean driving ourselves into a state of dysfunction until we are snapping at everyone through our pain… it means recognizing that the mind and body do need tending and doing the tending. Good stewardship means addressing that obligation.
That’s all I’ll say about that for now. But those of you who know me know how strongly I feel about it.
Be the peace and joy of Jesus Christ be with you now and forever!
Melody
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