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If you HAD to eat pancakes every day and there was just ONE recipe for making pancakes and you had to follow that recipe without making any variations, there would be potential for a whole lot of problems.
What if the recipe called for milk and your child was allergic to milk? Or eggs? Maybe you wanted a ‘healthier’ pancake, but weren’t able to change it. How would you do it?
Fortunately, there are a multitude of recipes available to make pancakes and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to when it comes to making pancakes. You can add chocolate chips. Or blueberries. Go egg-free. Add some flax seed. Use coconut flour. You can make those pancakes any way you want to.
Homeschooling is like that.
Someone may claim to have the RIGHT way to homeschool. A better way. The perfect way. If only you would follow how they do it, you wouldn’t have any problems at all.
But their way may not mesh with your family or special circumstances in your family.
Maybe they have a wonderfully huge room that they can use for their school time and your family sits huddled around a small dining room table.
Maybe their kids LOVE to do school {or appear too!} and your kids fight you tooth and nail to get any bit of school-time done.
Maybe their kids create amazing dioramas out of 10 toothpicks and 3 marshmallows while your kids would be sticking the marshmallows up their nostrils and your afternoon would be spent in the ER.
You know what?
There isn’t one set way to homeschool. You can’t go out and purchase a set of plans that will work for every single homeschooling family. What works for one family, will most definitely not work for another.
That’s why we homeschool! Because as a mother or a father or a grandparent that homeschools, you ultimately know what works best in your family. Ideas are rampant around the online world, but you don’t need to measure up to how any other family is doing things in their homeschooling time. You need to do what helps your kids learn, what makes learning fun, and find the niche that is perfect for your family.
No guilt for not doing it just like someone else does it.
Revel in the JOY of knowing you have the freedom to make school unique to your family and the opportunity to be there with your kids watching them grow every step of the way.
And maybe go make some pancakes.
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Well said, I love this!
This is a great analogy, but there’s one problem … I’m bad at making pancakes, they always burn :) I guess I can go into my first year knowing I might burn a few pancakes, but I can change the recipe as needed :) Thanks so much for your blog!
Oh, Valerie…you just made me laugh out loud. :) Good thing it’s not pancakes and there is MUCH grace!!! ;)
:)
As a parent who chooses to homeschool AND taught in the public school system for 16 years, I remind everyone quite often that there are many, many phenomenal reasons why we do this for our children, which outweigh the few reasons why they believe we shouldn’t. Every child is different and not every method works for all (sometimes it doesn’t even work twice for the same child), but every achievement, both large and small, every spark of understanding, every aha moment is remarkable and is as powerful for each child. That is where they are most alike.
Thank you so much I needed this!!!
Love this! It is so true & we need a reminder from time to time. Thanks for sharing an oldie, but a goodie =-)
Wow, thanks…I was feeling beat up yesterday because I still didn’t know how I was going to measure up as a homeschool parent this school year. Just met with a couple other homeschooling moms to plan activity day, and felt SOOO inadequate because they seem to have it all together and I’m still struggling in my first year. I think I’ll make our pancakes GOD’S way!
True that!
And also, you don’t have to use the same recipe every day. Maybe it’s a blueberry kind of day today, and a chocolate chip kind of day tomorrow. =)