The Freedom to Fail
As a homeschool mom, I know that one of the hardest things about starting the journey into teaching your own kids is the fear that you are going to fail them. The societal expectation is that there are trained professionals available to teach our children, and that is the best option to ensure their educational success. But what about when you have a kid that just struggles in the traditional school setting? Kudos to our teachers. That is a difficult job. I know and love many teachers, but in many ways their hands are tied when it comes to the specific needs of each child. If you are like me, part of the reason you have chosen to homeschool was to make sure that your child's specific learning needs were met.
I homeschool five kids right now. When we started out, we knew that our oldest son was just too hyperactive to be able to sit and concentrate in a traditional classroom. He’s a boy! He likes running and making jokes (they’re getting better). He needed to be able to fidget around while we discussed each topic. He needed to be able to sit upside down on the couch while we talked about marine wildlife.
Alongside teaching our kids, my husband and I both work remotely. This gives us the freedom to move when we need or want to. It gives us the freedom to go on vacation when everyone else is busy at school. Homeschool was a necessary part of our life. We wanted our kids to experience a lot of things. That means that sometimes school happens in the car, on the tablet, or in a hotel room.
All of that can mean that they don’t hit all their marks 100% of the time. This was a fear of ours. We worried, like most parents, that we weren’t enough. The underlying fear in the back of our minds was telling us that they were never going to be able to read, or write, or accomplish the things they needed for basic survival in the world if we didn’t hit all those mile markers set by the school systems.
Well, we did the unthinkable. Even though we saw them slipping behind in some subjects, we stuck to our guns. What we REALLY wanted was for our kids to learn how they learn and to love it! We wanted them to be able to approach learning with enthusiasm, leaving the door open for growth throughout their life. We wanted them to understand that learning new things doesn’t stop in the classroom. Growth doesn’t end when test scores are turned in and a grade is given. So many feel like the learning process ends once we are out of school and in the work field, but we need to keep learning and keep growing.
With that goal in mind, we struggled in teaching them and counseling them on the topic of learning and why it is important to find the desire within yourself to pursue a topic, even if it isn’t your favorite. We pursued subjects like goal setting and personal growth. We talked a lot about processing emotion and relationships (sibling fighting is the worst sometimes). We talked about relationship with God and how He teaches us about who we are and what we were built to do.
A lot of it was trial and error. My husband and I learned a lot along the way. It seemed like each time we learned something, our children were right behind us, dealing with the same personal struggle.
Finally, we found a partner who had experienced first-hand what it was like for kids in public school. Kathy had watched while kids who struggled with focus or who were dealing with behind-the-scenes issues were being left behind. When we talked to her about what we were trying to accomplish with our kids she wanted to support us! That was an exciting moment. Our kids got to sit down with someone else and just hear a different perspective (sometimes they just need to hear the same words out of someone else’s mouth). Together we pushed them forward and I got to watch our years of work pay off.
Today, our oldest two are self motivated learners. They are catching up in the subjects that they had fallen behind in and pursuing their individual interests. It’s a great feeling to see your kids succeeding in the foundational areas that you know will lead to a lifetime of growth. On top of that, they have become an integral part of their younger siblings' learning. They love teaching them colors and letters and numbers.
My six year old surprised us all with his math skills a few times and we found out that it was all coming from his time with his older brother!
The rewards of giving your kids the chance to muddle through their own education can be immeasurable, but allowing room for failure is a necessary part of the process. They are people. The mess up. They still drive us crazy. But giving them a safe place to struggle and fail has also taught them the skills to get up and try again, to approach the problem differently, to learn about themselves and how they process the world around them, and so much more.
If you are on this journey, or just starting it, I want to encourage you to keep going. Let them fall and get back up. Let them struggle in this process. Let them fail and help them get back up. It’s a part of the larger learning experience. It’s a part of our learning experience.