meandering

barefoot

a walk in the park

Kathy Jo DeVore

baref

ragamuff n

www.barefootmeandering.com
veritas gnaritas libertas

This booklet is available for free to subscribers of the Barefoot

Meandering Newsletter. Subscribe at:
www.barefootmeandering.com/site/subscriber-freebie/
Copyright 2015 by Kathy Jo DeVore. The eBook version may be
printed for the use of one household and may not be resold or shared.
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible,
Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995
by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Cover image is from Carl Larssons Crayfish Season Is Open and is in
the public domain.

A Walk in the Park

This essay is about an ideology, and as such, the first thing I should
point out is that we dont live out these pages perfectly in our own
household. But we like to say that if youre living up to your ideals
perfectly, your standards are too low. Well keep our standards high and
continue to strive to reach them rather than settle for mediocrity perfectly
achieved.
As for the ideology itself, theres nothing new here. The philosophy
Im expressing is based on the idea that homeschooling is just not that
hard, that less is more, and that a good foundation is the key to success.
Do a little math, do a little grammar, do a little writing, and read, read,
read. Some people will consider that a bit simplistic, and they will begin
to mentally add all the many things that one should add to that. Im
asking you to consider instead what you take away from your children
every time you add something to their days.
Children learn and develop cognitively through creative play, a fact
which has been long recognized. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes:
Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is
to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why
childrens games are so important. They are always
pretending to be grown-upsplaying soldiers, playing
shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles
and sharpening their wits so that the pretence of being
grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.
And in Quintilians Institutio Oratoria, he states:
Still, all our pupils will require some relaxation, not
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merely because there is nothing in this world that

can stand continued strain and even unthinking and
inanimate objects are unable to maintain their strength,
unless given intervals of rest, but because study
depends on the good will of the student, a quality
that cannot be secured by compulsion. Consequently
if restored and refreshed by a holiday they will bring
greater energy to their learning and approach their
work with greater spirit of a kind that will not submit
to being driven. I approve of play in the young; it is a
sign of a lively disposition; nor will you ever lead me
to believe that a boy who is gloomy and in a continual
state of depression is ever likely to show alertness of
mind in his work, lacking as he does the impulse most
natural to boys of his age.
And yet today, when we have scientific studies to back up the
assertion that play is important, respect for this aspect of a childs
development wanes. Parents and educators often choose other activities
as more important. Of course Susie should playafter she does just a
little more grammar. After all, play wont improve her standardized test
scores or get her into a good college.
When we recognize the value of childrens play, when we
acknowledge the benefits of it, we can let go of these attitudes. We can
begin to understand that yes, play may indeed help Susie with test scores
and college. Play may also help her develop in ways that her studies could
never touch. Instead of using her studies to attempt to make her welleducated, we can include her play and her interests to help her become
well-rounded.
But a disturbing trend exists among homeschoolers who are striving
for a rigorous academic education for their children. The name of the
game seems to be more, more, more. Its no longer enough to have a
good curriculum to follow. Instead, many suggest that everything needs
to be supplemented, that no one program can truly teach everything a
child needs to know to be prepared for college and life.
I find Im philosophically opposed to this attitude. Its not that Im
opposed to supplementing a program. I think presenting material in
different ways can be beneficial for understanding. But I am opposed
to this fear based supplementing, where parents feel like they have to
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do multiple programs in several different subjects just to make sure the

basics are covered. More and more subjects have to be included to make
sure the child is not missing out on anything. In many cases, this attitude
leads to burned-out mothers and children who are missing out on
nothing but childhood itself.
It seems that this attitude is one that homeschoolers adopt from
the world of government funded public education, where the solution
to every educational problem must be spending more money, spending
more time each day, and starting younger. And yet, children used to start
school older, leave younger, and come out better educated. The focus on
younger, longer, and more expensive has not actually produced results
that any sensible person would want to emulate.
Those who do not see the value of children having plenty of free
time for creative play and exploring their own interests take away these
activities, which develop cognitive abilities naturally, and replace them
with workbooks and exercises. A great irony is present in this trend
which professes to teach children critical thinking skills, to think outside
the box, by having them all complete the exact same activities and come
up with the exact same answers. Theyve taken a concrete subject
logicand watered it down into something softer, less useful, and more
nebulous in definition.
We must remember that those things that we can actively teach are
not the sum of education. Indeed, even when subjects do need to be
actively taught, we can do so at developmentally appropriate times and
with the understanding that what we are giving must be of higher value
than what we are taking away. As 19th century educators Charlotte
Mason and Dr. Maria Montessori both pointed out, the child is a person.
There has to be room for the person to grow, to explore areas of interest,
to develop according to his own inner needs. The lessons we present
should be stepping stones for this development, not a means to an end
on their own. If we can teach skills and give fuel to the imagination
through quality reading, we have done far more than just provide a
college track education.
It is sad indeed when the sole purpose of education for young
people is to get them into college for even more education, in the hopes
that this will lead to a good job and economic stability. This is a myth
predicated on the belief that money does indeed buy happiness in the
form of security, and its a lie because education does not necessarily lead
to economic stability for anyone. When our goals are such, we pursue
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education for our children as part of our own aspirations for the child
instead of pursuing it with regards to what he needs for his personal
growth and development. But when we remember that he is a person, an
individual in his own right, we can better focus on his needs. We should
tailor the education to the development of the person instead of using
education as a way to force every child into the same mold.
This does not mean that we should leave the child unprepared for
college. Yes, prepare the child for college! We do children no favors by
allowing them to be intellectually lazy.
In the end, we have two questions which we need to answer in order
to determine how to approach educating our children.
1. What do educated adults need to know?
2. What is the most efficient way to teach these things?
My answer to the first question is that the child needs to have a
firm foundation in the three Rs of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
These are skill areas, and its important that children spend time on these
skills each school year. I would include grammar as another important
component to the language arts skill areas, and a firm foundation of
logicnot critical thinking skillsis essential for writing persuasively. To
these skill areas, I would add several content areas. Children should have
a good grasp of history, geography, and science, and those of us who are
Christians would certainly include the Bible. They need to be exposed to
great art, music, and literature.
My short answer to the second question is to find curricula to cover
each of the skill areas unless youre comfortable teaching the skill areas
without a curriculum. If possible, find curricula that you and your child
enjoy. Enjoyment is not necessary for education, but neither is misery. It
makes me sad when I hear people say that they hate a program, but they
use it because it works. Plenty of enjoyable programs work, too.
For the content areas, have them go read a book, look at some prints,
and listen to some classical music. To some, this may sound facetious
and simplistic, but trust me, its not intended that way in the least.
Homeschooling is truly just not that hard. We teach what needs to be
taught, we provide an environment that supports education, and we
support our children in their intellectual development. Simplistic? No.
In practice, its not even always simple. But we also dont need to make
this process more complicated than it actually is.
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Challenging Education
In covering skill areas, many wish to start as soon as they believe
the child is ready. The idea is that the child needs to be challenged, as if
children somehow learn more when they are challenged. Here again, I
disagree with this established notion, and I wonder how it ever came to
be prevalent in education.
Consider, please, the meanings of the verb to challenge: to invite
another to participate in a contest, to enter into a competition, to
threaten someones position, to invite another to perform a task believed
to be difficult or impossible, to test the abilities of someone, to dispute
the truth or validity of something.
The last meaning is how I want to challenge my children. I want my
children challenged by ideas. I want them to think deeply and to consider
the implications of the events, inventions, and ideas that they encounter
in their reading. I want them to argue the claims made by others, and
more than anything else, I want them to seek truth.
But I do not want my children challenged by learning basic skills.
What part can those other meanings possibly play in education? If we
view educationif we make educationa contest, a competition, a
difficult task, how can this possibly help the student? And if we are not
helping the child, what is the point?
Since what is challenging one year will often be easier to learn the
following year, it is evident that the real issue here is developmental
readiness. By delaying skill subjects for a year, children bring an
additional year of maturity to their work, and they are more likely to
be developmentally ready to do the work. Remember that the standard
schedule is written for the average child. This means that some children
will consider the work easy, some will consider it a bit of a challenge, and
some children will be so challenged that they will fail. The children in the
first group are not necessarily smarter; they may have simply reached a
developmental milestone sooner than their peers, or they may be months
older. And the children in the last group are not dumb or slow; they
have simply been challenged. A challenge is quite literally an obstacle to
overcome, and I have no desire to place obstacles on the paths of my
children.
Ive seen more learning and love of learning happen on a delayed
schedule than I ever did by following the standard modern schedule. The
work is not easy; learning new skills rarely is. But its also not a struggle
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like a more challenging schedule is. And since theyre not struggling,
they are more likely to become engaged with the material and to enjoy
learning it.
Understand that Im not arguing that homeschoolers should never
accelerate education. There are students who need to be accelerated
in one or more subjects, but these students will generally accelerate
themselves.

Lifestyle Should Support Education

Charlotte Mason said that Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a
Life. If we want to pursue education, we must first acknowledge that this
pursuit consists of more than buying a stack of curricula and textbooks.
We use textbooks to teachsimply and explicitlyskill areas which
should be taught systematically. We may also use a book or a living
textbook, one which is written by a single author who is passionate about
his subject, as a spinethe backboneof content studies. In this way,
these books support our study of a subject through quality literature
instead of replacing the literature. The focus of the education we
promote is the literature itself.
But the temptation is always there to cover just a little more, purchase
just one more curriculum, include just one more program. The reality
is that adding curricula and programs to an already overloaded schedule
is actually the easy answer. Buying a new curriculum only costs a little
money, takes a little time, and adds a little work to the day. What it doesnt
do is force parents to change their lifestyle in ways that will support
education instead. If the lifestyle doesnt support education, I dont
believe that any amount of supplementing will help. And if the lifestyle
does support education, supplementing shouldnt be necessary.
If parents want to do one single thing to most positively affect every
aspect of the home education experience, they should turn off the
screen. Some parents are really resistant to this. I was once such a parent,
so I sympathize. But I do believe that its the best thing for children. By
screen, I mean television shows, video games, and computer time.
We have a limited amount of time each day. Every minute that were
spending on one thing is a minute that we cant spend on another. We
have to ask ourselves, and answer honestly: Is the screen time worth what
were giving up? We can argue about whether or not the passive nature
of television viewing is harmful to the child, about whether or not games
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can become literally addictive in the admitted quest of the programmers

to tap into the pleasure centers of the brain. But realistically, the one
question is enough. Is the screen time worth what were giving up?
So what do we give up by keeping the screen time? What weve
noticed over the years is that when our children get a lot of screen time,
they also get a lot of attitude. Theyre angry, they fight, theyre unhappy
with their selection of toys and games. But when they have limited screen
time, theyre happier, they fight less, they play with one another more.
And they read more. This is a big one in producing an educational
lifestyle. Children love stories, and they are far more likely to go read
a book to enjoy a good story when that easy, passive show is not
beckoning. They get out the art supplies and draw, or they bring out the
modeling clay. They create their own games and write their own stories.
They might even read Shakespeare for fun, as our oldest son has
been known to do. Years ago, in a coffee shop my husband frequented, a
mother was complaining about how her child would not read. The owner
of the shop turned to my husband and asked how we got our son to
read. My husband said that we didnt watch much television. The mother
was surprised and asked what kind of activities our son pursued instead,
and my husband explained how our son enjoyed playing board games
with his brothers, drawing, and reading, including Shakespeare. The
mother asked how we got our son to do these things, and my husband
reiterated that we didnt watch much television. She said her son would
never accept that.
The mother in the coffee shop that day professed a desire for a
certain behavior from her son, but she was unwilling to make a lifestyle
change that would encourage that behavior. We have to acknowledge that
in order to reach our goals, we may have to make what seems at first to
be radical lifestyle changes. If we are unwilling to make these changes, we
may find that our goals remain out of reach.

Atmosphere for Learning

Creating an atmosphere for learning opportunities is not the same
thing as having an adult create activities and force said activities on
children who may or may not have any interest in the activity. Every
fun learning activity that an adult forces on a child takes time away
that the child could have better spent in creative play and pursuing his
own interests.
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Children do not need an adult to facilitate the sort of fun learning

opportunities they need to thrive. Children who have never had these
sorts of opportunities forced upon them do just fine without them.
My boys often write stories, and they create comic books, board games,
speculative alien life forms, etc. I could assign any of these things. Many
programs incorporate activities like this. But there is a huge difference
between them choosing to do these things and me forcing them to do
them. When I assign something, I need to set clear guidelines, give clear
instructions for how it should be done, give clear indications on when the
project will be complete. Its not a very fair assignment otherwise. With
each item in that list, I lessen the benefits of the activity. I teach instead of
them exploring. But when they choose to do that type of activity, they will
spend weeks on a project, making it far more elaborate than I would have
ever required, far more complex than it would have been fair to require.
Their projects may not look the way a project based on an assignment
would have looked, but their projects are wholly theirs in a way that an
assignment could never be.
And I can still be involved. They bring me projects to look at. I say,
Awesome job! Did you consider... Sometimes they thank me for the
idea, and sometimes they explain why my idea wouldnt work.
Bottom line: My boys have gravitated towards the types of creative
expression that benefit each of them. They dont all have the same
interests or the same ways of expressing their interests. Classroom
activities, by necessity, force all children into the same mold.
What we dont use, we lose. When the majority of a childs time is
spent doing adult directed study, play, activities, and games, children are at
risk of losing the ability to play creatively, to entertain themselves, and to
explore subjects just because theyre interesting.
This can make for a difficult transition period as children relearn how
to entertain themselves, and its easy to fall into the Summertime Lament
well known to public school mothers everywhere: How can we entertain
these children who have so much free time?
The good news is that this is a temporary situation. Children will
regain the ability to entertain themselves without screen time and adultsponsored activities, and they will develop an interest in other subjects
when the ease of passive entertainment and busy-ness is gone.
Get outside when you can to take walks and do nature studies. Even
if you dont have much outdoor room, you can still pay attention to
the plants in your area and how they change over time. You can look at
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the birds, the ones who land nearby as well as the ones flying overhead.
Get a bird book and learn to identify the ones in your area. Listen to
YouTube videos to learn the sounds they make. Once you start paying
attention, youll find that you can observe birds almost anywhere, even
the supermarket parking lot.
Learn some handicrafts and work on them regularly. There is no
end to the handicraft ideas to be found online. Handicrafts can range
from simple to advanced and can include paper crafts and scrapbooking,
sewing and quilting, yarn crafts such as weaving, crocheting, and knitting,
and even beading projects such as making jewelry and prayer beads.
Some handicrafts create new items while others are intended to beautify
what you already have.
Go to the library every week or two. This is an inexpensive way for
children to encounter new subjects, and it keeps new books constantly
rotating in and out of the household.
Have board games and decks of cards available for playing games.
Invest in some open-ended toys, like building bricks and construction
toys, and imaginative play toys, like playsilks and costumes.
Keep art supplies, modeling clay, and composition books available for
drawing, sculpting, and writing.
Have a daily quiet time when everyone reads, naps, or works on a
silent activity.
Use the screen time you do allow for good. Your children can use
YouTube videos to learn new art techniques and online tutorials to learn
to code HTML or JavaScript. They can start a blog to write about their
thoughts and about what theyre learning about their various interests.
Involve your children in the household chores and cooking. This
teaches them the practical life skills they need to know, and it takes some
of the pressure off of mom to do all the work herself. I usually read
aloud in the afternoon while children do dishes, and some of the children
hang and fold laundry after Ive washed it.
It has definitely been worth the effort to change our lifestyle to
support active learning instead of passive watching. Were all going to
err; that probably goes without saying. When I err, Id rather it be on the
side of giving my kids too much free time to play and explore their own
interests than too little.

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T he Child is a Person
Both Charlotte Mason and Dr. Maria Montessori stressed that each
child is a person, a unique individual. Montessori specifically wrote
about how children are constructing themselves. In The Absorbent Mind,
she wrote, Recognising the merits of the child does not diminish the
authority of the father and the mother for when they come to realize that
they are not the constructors, but merely the helpers of this construction,
then they will be able to do their duty better; they will help the child with
a greater vision.
This understanding is freeing. While we can help children in
their formation, we are not forming them. They are going through
natural processes, and part of our job is to not hinder them in their
development. It is when we step in their way that we can cause the most
damage.
And yet, many modern curricula treat the child not as a person but
as an empty vessel in need of filling. There is such a focus on discussion
and comprehension questions that it seems that the prevailing belief
is that children will not understand the books they read or learn to
think deeply about topics unless we ask the right questions. But just as
a child learns to talk as long as he is exposed to speech, so too will he
understand language and think deeply as long as he is exposed to ideas
in his reading and in his discussions with family, peers, and others in his
environment.
Instead of wondering how were to do without comprehension and
discussion questions, we must consider how they can hinder a child in
the exact skills theyre intended to facilitate. Questions of this sort train
the mind to look for certain types of information to the exclusion of
other types of information. Each question tells the child, This is the
information that was important in this passage. Instead of allowing the
childs intellect to develop as a natural process, children are trained to
answer questions on a test. That children often cannot think critically
is partially because of comprehension and discussion questions, not
because of their lack.
If children do not need the standard questions, the question
becomes: How can we help instead of hinder children in their
development?
Charlotte Mason would remind us of the benefits of reading quality,
living books and narrating them. With the books come the ideas. We are
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not the interpreters for the greatest writers the world has known. When
we try to become so, we offer children nothing more than predigested
pap, unsuitable for nourishing the minds of developing children. It is not
for us to determine for the child which bits of writing are the important
ones, the ones he should ponder.
If we acknowledge that great literature is great because it is the
fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life, as
Mason said in Parents and Children, should we not also acknowledge that
we do not need to step between our children and these authors?

Slow Reading and Imitation

Many of the methods used in the type of education we strive to
provide are deceptively simple.
We believe in slow reading. While classical education can include
reading a lot of books in a short amount of time, we are more in line
with Charlotte Mason and Latin-Centered philosophies, believing that
its best to read books slowly. Im a big fan of slow reading. Each book is
read for weeks, one chapter at a time, just a few times a week. This type
of reading takes some people time to get used to, but the benefit is great:
You gain time. Great literature is great because it is filled with ideas,
many of which are lost through fast reading. Slow reading allows time
for the student to think deeply about what hes read. It allows time for an
education to become narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow.
We also believe in teaching through literature and imitation. This
means that we employ methods such as copywork, prepared dictation,
and imitation to teach grammar and writing. Lessons are both more
meaningful and more fun when the examples and the exercises come
from quality literature, and we insist on the whole story; were not
satisfied with a few excerpts or summaries which tell the child what the
story is about.
Through narration, children begin to organize their thoughts and
communicate them in complete sentences. But as important as these
things are, thats not the only function narrations serve. When a child
gives a narration, he is working with what he has read, processing it,
and putting it into his own words. In this way, narrations easily replace
worksheets, quizzes, and tests because they let the instructor know what
the student retained from his reading. The classroom teacher may have to
rely on such methods since she does not have time to speak individually
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with each student every day, but the homeschool mother does. Even
more importantly, because the student must fully process the information
in order to give a narration, he remembers the information better than
when hes following the textbook read-test-forget method.
Narrations also prepare the child to speak intelligently about what he
knows, something worksheets have never accomplished. And discussions
can naturally come from narrations as parent and child discuss some
aspect of the story. Many parents worry that they dont know enough to
come up with their own questions, but many parents are wrong. Nothing
is simpler because we focus on those things which are important to us
and that we want to be important to our children. In our household,
the discussions usually begin with the student, and they do not happen
with every narration. But sometimes, my children will express incredulity
over the actions of a character in a story during a narration, and from
this place, a discussion naturally occurs. Why did the character do that?
Should he have done that, or would it have been better for him to act in
another way? How did prior events affect what happened next? In this
way, were not merely asking discussion questions which do little more
than test to make sure the child read the story, or worse, actually tell him
what he should think about it. Instead, were merely exploring the story at
a deeper level, one the child has indicated that hes ready to explore by his
reaction to the literature.
As our children get older, we do include beginning literary analysis
questions to help our children begin first speaking and then writing about
literature. Narrations provide the foundation for these exercises, and
the questions are very general, intended to encourage children to think
more deeply about literature, rather than more specific questions about a
particular book to lead him to conclusions others have drawn. Children
do need to learn to consider who the main character is and what the
central conflict of the book is, but they dont need to answer questions
about who ate Turkish delight in one of the chapters. Instead, they need
to be able to discuss how early events in a story affect the outcome.
Through copywork, children passively study the rhythm of wellwritten prose and poetry, discover wisdom from Bible verses and
maxims, and absorb the rules of spelling, grammar, and mechanics,
all while practicing penmanship. Through prepared dictation, children
actively study spelling and punctuation, increase their concentration skills,
and practice retaining what theyve heard. Through picture study, they
practice describing, and they begin to appreciate fine art. Through all of
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these methods, and a little formal word study with the dictionary and
thesaurus, they expand their vocabularies. And they do it all using models
worthy of emulating.
Using narrations, copywork, and prepared dictation also provides a
multi-sensory experience. The student sees the information as he reads,
he hears it as he says it out loud, he uses touch and movement as he
writes it down.
Oral narrations do not produce written work, but if you need to
have a written record of learning, this need not keep you from using
narrations in your homeschool. Young children can narrate orally while
you play scribe and type up the narration. You can print out these pages
and allow the child to illustrate his work. You can also use notebooking
pages as a way to keep a record of learning. Notebooking pages can use
narrations, copywork, and prepared dictation along with the childs own
illustrations to produce a visually appealing record of what the child has
been studying, with nary a worksheet in sight.
Writing begins with oral narrations, continues with written narrations,
and expands from there with more advanced imitation exercises, giving
children both writing practice and instruction without forcing them to
come up with their own content, which is difficult for many children.
Children practice changing sentences grammatically to learn to say the
same thing in multiple ways. They learn to diagram sentences, enabling
them to analyze their own work for problems. They learn to write an
outline and to write an essay from that outline.
These skills, taught systematically and practiced regularly, provide a
complete foundation in language arts.
On the other hand, we do not explicitly teach things like how to write
personal and business letters, book reports, or the five paragraph essay.
I know some of those are common in most LA programs, but honestly,
I dont think they should be. The point of writing through imitation is
to focus purely on writing. Those types of lessonspracticing types
of writing that a person might do sometime in his lifeusually require
students to come up with their own content, and even worse, they dont
actually teach anything about how to write. They only teach students a
basic format for a particular type of writing, but learning the format is
worthless if the student hasnt been taught how to write.
Imitation allows students to learn to write without having to come
up with original content, keeping the focus entirely on the writing itself.
Writing is writing, so a student who has learned how to organize his
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thoughts and form sentences which people actually want to read can
easily learn to follow a particular format, whether its a business letter or a
five-paragraph essay. But the reverse is not true.

An Argument for Gentle Parenting

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Matthew 5:7
This section is not intended to be a complete system for parenting
gently. Entire books have been written on that topic. And its certainly
not intended to indicate that we are perfect examples of gentle parenting.
Instead, its just a plea for gentle parenting for all of our children.
It may seem that this topic has no place in a homeschooling
discussion. However, this is where modeling and imitation begin.
When we model correct behavior, our children begin to imitate it. They
imitate poor behavior, too, acting as little mirrors to show us where we
need work ourselves.
We model proper behavior not by telling toddlers to clean up, but
by joining them. Toddlers like to work with us, so they usually hop up
and help. So we get up and help, not sit back and command. The latter
actually takes more work, and it creates an unhappy environment as well.
This continues as our children grow. If we want to let our children
know that reading is important, we read. If we want them to understand
that a commonplace book is special, we keep one. If we want them to
see the value in writing, we write. If its not worth my time, why would
it be worth theirs? This is not to say that parents need to spend as much
time on these areas as we expect our children to spend. However, these
exercises have tangible benefits for the parent as well as the child.
Homeschooled children are more likely than their public and private
schooled counterparts to look to their parents rather than to their peers
for approval. Because parental influence is greater, so is our responsibility
to model instead of punish.
The purpose of discipline is to teach. The purpose of punishment
is to inflict a penalty for an offense. If our goal is to change behavior,
we can do this by teaching and helping children to understand why
some behaviors are unacceptable, even if the reason is because it drives
mummy nuts. Or we can make children fear our retribution and hope
that they figure out why at some other time in some other way.
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Parents should teach, by word and by deed, that we should treat

others with grace and courtesy, the way we want to be treated, and
that we should take care of our home and environment. And so it
may help if we first consider how we want to be corrected when we
do something wrong.
Parents should understand that a child who asks, Why? is not
necessarily displaying defiance. Often, hes asking for understanding.
Only blind obedience can come from refusing to explain our decisions to
our children. Parents should also understand that when we ask children
to do something, weve given them a choice. We should not be surprised
when they do not want to do it. Instead, we should simply tell them what
they are to do, politely and with a please, and give them a choice when
they actually have one.
The greatest condemnation that I can lay at the feet of many modern
Christian movements is the focus on what is due to one, rather than
focusing on how we should treat others.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is
right.Honor your father and mother (which is the
first commandment with a promise),so that it may be
well with you, and that you may live long on the
earth. Ephesians 6:1-3
The Bible commands children to obey their parents and to honor
them, and this is often the first Bible verse that children memorize. So it
seems only fair to me that as parents, we memorize the next one.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,
butbring them up in the discipline and instruction of
the Lord. Ephesians 6:4
A responsibility exists here. As parents, we should not provoke our
children to anger as we disciplineteachthem.
From a Christian standpoint, it is right and proper that children
be obedient in the Lord. Even from a worldly standpoint, there are
legitimate reasons that our young children need to be in the habit of
obedience. A childs safety is too often dependent upon it. I do not argue
that children should be allowed to do whatever they want.
I do argue that correction can, and should, be gentle. The Bible is
clear that we should treat others the way we want to be treated (Matt
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7:12, Luke 6:31), that we should love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt
22:39, Mark 12:31). We are to teach and correct our brothers with
gentleness and patience (Gal 6:1, 2 Tim 4:2).
Why would we give less to our children?
Some of the harshest punishments offered to children are for no
more than misplaced pride on the part of the parent. The child did not
show proper respect, did not obey fast enough, embarrassed the parent
in public. These are attitudes that the parent needs to control. We should
parent from a position of humility, not one of pride.
Toddlers and young children need firm limits. If we give in to the
childs temper, if we are inconsistent, how is the child to learn what rules
govern his environment? So when the parent says, No, the answer
must remain No, no matter the resulting attitude of the child. Yes, this
can be frustrating for the parent, too. But if youve set limits and stick
to them, there is no need for anger on the part of the parent, no need to
punish the child. A young child has little to no control over his emotions.
When hes already upset and angry, adding harsh treatment from the
parent is certainly not the best method for restoring equilibrium. Ive
seen the idea of offering the child a hug at such moments mocked. But
I ask you, when you are upset over what you perceive as the injustice
of the world, would you rather be comforted or swatted on the butt?
Offering comfort is not the same as giving into the childs demands or
rewarding his behavior. Its merely showing love to a little person who
obviously needs it at that moment.
Older children mostly need limits and reminders. Yes, you just told him
that five minutes ago. Prepare yourself, because youre going to be saying
the same things over and over again for a number of years. Our children
are going to forget and do it again. Its not the rules that they forget. Rather,
theyre so busy, so caught up in being a child, that they forget themselves,
forget that there are rules. We remind them, and they stop againfor a
little while. If we punish them, they will also stop againfor a little while.
Punishment does not create discipline within the child. The self-discipline
necessary to control oneself will come with time and practice; punishment
and fear of punishment are unnecessary in this process.

W hy are you running?

A frequent reminder among homeschoolers is that were running a
marathon, not a sprint. Its meant as encouragement, to tell us that we
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dont have to cover everything this year because we have many years to
teach. And yet, its still couched in a running metaphor, implying speed,
trial, and difficulty.
I invite you to join me in looking at education a bit differently.
Instead of a race, let us look at homeschooling as a walk in the park.
Clear the obstacles from the path so you can move along without
stumbling. We can stroll along, enjoying Gods world as we learn about
it. We can read and talk at a relaxed pace, taking time to think about what
were reading instead of always rushing towards the next thing. It is in
this way that we make learning a life-long desire, when we allow the joy to
outweigh the toil. Because which would you rather dorun a marathon
or take a walk in the park?

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