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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an automated transcript and misspells or grammar errors may be present.

Hey guys, we are so excited that you joined us today as we’re talking about home schooling and some myths that can actually encourage or discourage moms into wanting to throw in the towel.

So get the six myths and check yourself. Are you believing some of these? Because if you are, it could be hurting the fruitfulness of your efforts. Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom.

And Isaac from Resolute Man Together pursuing the mission to impact 10 million families and their legacies for the Kingdom of God.

We’ve been married for 23 years and are seeing the fruit from raising our nine children Biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children, as too many from Christian families are walking away from their faith by the age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

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If you want access to all the episodes, show notes and other biblically based resources, go to be courageous ministry.org.

Join us as we start another important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Well, hey, everyone. So glad you’re here. What a timely message. Talking about homeschooling, whether you homeschool or not, this is helpful to everybody who has children because they all are being educated. Well.

And can I ask you a question just to start? Do you homeschool? And if you don’t, do you know someone who homeschools? Because what we’re going to be talking about today, we’re we’re bringing up six myths, if you will, that are temptations that all people who homeschool struggle with when it comes to believing in themselves, wanting to continue these things can lead to massive discouragement and even potentially influence people to stop the journey that maybe God has called them to. So if you have a friend that’s homeschooling, they’re going to need your encouragement even if you’re not necessarily doing the same path. And so we’re going to give you a little insight into the mind and brain and the challenges of a homeschooler.

20 years homeschooling. That’s right.

I’m starting my 20th year of homeschooling this year, which is crazy to think about.

And this is helpful even if you’re not planning to homeschool, because maybe there’s one of these myths that you’ve held on to and maybe it’ll help you think about, you know, even if you are putting your kids in school, how to augment that. And, you know, it might fix some some.

Belief, some confidence, right? Because you are your the God authorized authority in your child’s life and to take ownership over what they’re learning, regardless of if you are home educating them or you’re doing something like a hybrid or you’re you have them in school, the reality is, is you are the God authorized authority. And so to take ownership over that confidently and evaluate what are the things that my child’s learning and to really just to rise up in that way as a parent and and own that, that’s something all of us should be doing for sure.

We’re going to dive into these six myths in just a second, but thanks so much for being part of the Be Courageous Ministry movement to impact 10 million legacies. You make me wait. I don’t know. Am I part of that? How am I? Well, if you’re listening, you’re part of it because it helps everything. If you share on social media, you’re part of it. If you give us a five star review or a written review reread, that encourages us, but it helps the podcast get out there on Apple or Google. Also all show notes. Everything is at be courageous ministry.org and the new workshop Biblically Biblical parenting in a changed world is also a be courageous ministry.org starting when this episodes debuts. And so I’m so excited to share that all with you. And we.

Worked really hard on it and.

All the prep, all the preparation for it and so forth. So we’re excited to do that for you. And so sign up for that completely free. And it comes with a I believe it’s a 12 page PDF download on the Biblical parenting roadmap, which is also free and you get it in the workshop. So anyways, all the resources though that you purchase, whether the Parenting Mentor program, the homeschooling blueprint, which is incredible, the postpartum Christian postpartum course, the friendship course, all of those things help us in the ministry. And if you give financially too, we really need that and rely on that too. So yes, we’re on a road in faith week in and week out and we need your help.

That’s right. So let’s dive in. Isaac, let’s talk. So we kind of narrowed it down. Obviously, there’s more lies or myths or challenges that homeschoolers have above and beyond the six things that we’re going to talk about today. But I just thought I’d kind of briefly go over them so you can know what we’re covering. And honestly, I think that the hardest one is the last one we’re going to be talking about, right? And so at the end, we’re going to be talking about loneliness. And just before that, we’re going to talk about how there’s no perfect anything. There’s no perfect home, no perfect kids, no perfect curriculum, all that kind of stuff. We’re going to talk about that challenge and that desire, that and that potential temptation for discontentment. Before that, we’re going to talk about awkwardness and then we’re going to talk about the lie that we’re not qualified. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that way. Like maybe you’re a failure. You’re going to mess your kids up, things like that. We’re going to talk about that. Before that, we’re going to talk about the temptation to compare ourselves to one another and how that can be a discouragement. And we’re going to start off right now talking about how school needs to begin and end as what we either grew up with. If we were raised in a traditional education system or what other people are doing right.

And so I would say that as right now, this is a timely message. Of course you can listen any time this is going to be timely. And I think that this is something that I have to keep reminding myself of year after year after year, because there’s always a temptation for me to feel like I’m starting out already failing if I’m behind on something or if something’s not going the way I would like it to go. I don’t know if you’ve struggled with that. Even as a mom going on vacation, maybe something slows you down and you leave two hours later and everybody in the family’s just kind of a little disappointed because you were still grabbing the last necessities. There is a temptation for us to set ourselves up for. For feeling like a failure and disappointing people when we have expectations of ourselves that are unrealistic or not needed. Can I just say that? And so, you know, as Isaac and I were talking, one of the things that hit me the most as I was first getting started is that I used to think that school, home school when I started homeschooling, that it had to look the way I experienced school. I don’t know what you as a dad were thinking when we decided to home school, but. Well, I.

Was completely against it at first because even though I didn’t have a good experience growing up, my limited, very limited experience with the home school world was just a feeling that they were awkward and different and not very social and not very confident. And I just didn’t picture my family being like what I thought I had seen. I don’t even know if I’d seen it. Maybe it’s just a stereotype by media from the past and these kinds of things. And there wasn’t.

Even like a ton of media that portrayed home schoolers.

So I’m not sure where that came from, but I think a lot of people have have had that kind of thought in their mind that don’t understand the truth about home schooling. And let’s just get this straight. No matter where kids are, they can be awkward, socially awkward, not confident.

No matter what school they’re in.

That’s true. And that’s more determined on their upbringing and their parents.

No, I 100% agree. And their life experiences definitely influence and shape them as well. So, you know, there’s this thing that I struggled with when we first got started, which was to think that home school needed to I needed to replicate my experience. So even so much so that I, I set up our bonus room. Back then, we had a three car garage that had a bonus room across the whole top of it. Yeah. And it’s huge. And, well, actually, even before that, when we first started homeschooling, when Kelsey was even littler, we had that bonus room above our other garage, right? It was maybe a two car garage. And I had like posters on the wall that taught the the cycles of seasons and the calendar days and the calendar months.

Everything was so perfect looking. You had this. I had mapboards. Yeah. Lockers. You had, you know, even desks at one point.

Yes, I did. For your pupils. Right. So funny with the little cursive ABC, by the way, at the top.

Of their desk. There is nothing there is nothing wrong with doing that. We’ve experienced both. Yes. And Angie no longer has all of those things going.

And it’s not.

It’s not impacting anything.

Well, it’s not negatively impacting our children educationally, I think is the best way to put it. But I will say that when we first started, I kind of went overboard as far as like, I’m going to be a teacher. So what does a teacher do and what does a school room look like? And what, you know, like, I went there and that’s good to own it in that kind of way that it can be a really fruitful thing. For me, it was a fruitful thing to have a place to go to where it was like I put on my school teacher hat and then I took the school teacher hat off and I shut the door to go make lunch downstairs. And that worked really good, especially when we had six little kids. But it’s not prescriptive for other people right now. Like I’ve lived in many different houses, well, 4 or 5 houses to where in the last 24 years to where I’ve realized that’s not always going to be conducive for a family. Right? That’s not always going to be something that you can do. And for us, you know, we love our home, but I don’t have an extra room to have as a school room because we work from home. Right? I would probably love to take the studio and turn it into a one room school house. That would be beautiful. But we use this for the courageous parenting ministry and for curing onions right now. But, you know, so I say that because I think that where did that all stem from? It stemmed from a myth that I think can be dangerous, that school needs to look the way it looked traditionally.

Well, what’s the what are the pressures that make it difficult for moms?

Well, I’d say the first thing would be that you have to start on the same start date that your school system, local school system is starting on and you need to end on the same date. And that’s definitely something that for the first few years it created a lot of anxiety within myself, which then was stress upon the kids and the family to be all ready to go on the first day. Now I think that it’s good to have a first day for sure, but I just want to like, maybe this is a freeing moment for you to hear someone who’s homeschooled for 20 years, who’s graduated three kids so far. It doesn’t you don’t have to start on August 21st. You don’t have to start on September 13th. You can start when it works for your family to start. And you know what? You don’t need to end on May 14th and you don’t need or June 2nd, you can actually homeschool year round. And so I just want to share that truth with you and help you to maybe take a deep breath for a moment. And and I’m I’m preaching to myself right now, if you guys know, because we’re in the heat of harvest season and we were massively sick the last like week. And so it’s like, oh wow, okay, this isn’t quite going the way I thought this last week of August was going. And so you have to lay your idols down of the perfect scenario or what you expect, and you have to do your best to just love your family and serve your family well.

And so the start and end date is a big thing. Another thing is what time of day you start and what time of day you end school or like how many hours you’re actually going. That’s another thing, right? Like to be expecting ourselves to start on the clock at 8:15 a.m. or 9:15 a.m. whenever school starts and then to finish at 3 p.m.. Right? Like for the homeschooler, the challenge is, oh, my goodness, what would you do to fill that whole time? Because the reality is, is when you’re teaching kids one on one because you have different age groups, right, that are different ages and you’re organizing your day and sometimes you’re teaching it’s three kids on 1 or 4 kids on one. They learn so much faster because they’re able to ask questions right there, get the questions asked right away, not have to wait their turn so much because there’s just not a lot of kids with their hands raised asking a question. And so the truth is, is you can get so much done in a shorter period of time. So to expect yourself to be starting early and ending late is like putting it. It can leave a new homeschooling mom feel like, well, why? Why are we done so early? Are we not doing enough? Am I am I going too? Are we not? Am I going to mess up my kids? And they start like doubting themselves. I think sometimes.

We all I think, agree. I hope that there’s a spiritual battle, that there’s spiritual warfare, that when you lean in as parents and you try and do something good for your kids that you deem is more edifying to their futures, to their most importantly, their spiritual foundation and well being and not being indoctrinated by the world and these kinds of things. There’s a lot of times, at least a part of why people decide to homeschool in these days, because there’s so much indoctrination happening in the public schools and so forth, and even other schools, too. And so I think it’s really important to be thinking about that in first. Peter five six It says Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you. So sometimes there needs to be a humbling and that in terms of not just doing it in our own strength, if we’re being teacher in our own strength, that can be daunting and feeling. And really, are we allowing room for this spirit strength to operate through us? So God is glorified through what happens in the education of your children and you’re a tool being used and God is using you to do that, but you’re yielding to His strength.

You’re humbling yourself. And then it says, I think this is pretty cool. Um, it says so humble yourselves. Therefore, under the mighty hand of God, he may exalt you casting all your anxieties on him. Wow. Because he cares for you. And then the very next scripture, we could stop there. But I think the next one is very relevant to the times we’re in. Be sober minded. So if we’re doubting ourselves, if we’re struggling with loneliness, if we’re having fear about awkward kids and all of these things, then we need to cast our anxieties on him because these are probably lies. Wouldn’t the enemy not want you to do something better for your children? Right. So just be aware of that. So casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you, be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

You are not alone. And I think that that’s part of it. Like Isaac and I, when we were planning this, I looked at him and I went, Some of these things are things that I’m struggling with even now. And over and over again. There have been certain years where or certain different times even just starting back up after the the Christmas holiday season. Right? Sometimes I’m still so tired that I’m like, oh, we have to start again. You know, it’s like you you look forward to having a little bit of a break and then getting into it. You can have apprehension to get back into the grind, if you will, again. But I have realized more than ever that it’s usually the expectations that I have imposed upon myself or that I’ve allowed culture to impose upon me, or even expectations that my kids or my husband or other people that are in communities seeing the things they’re doing, I have allowed. Those things to be imposed upon me, to make me feel like if I’m not doing them, I’m not doing a good enough job. And that just has to stop. At some point you just have to go, You know what? I’m doing my best.

God knows my heart. I’m putting him first. That’s what’s important. And you just you have to be confident in that. You have to be confident in what God has called you to to be able to withstand all these myths, all these lies, these potential temptations to feel like a failure. Because I’ll tell you something, you feel like a failure long enough and you will throw in the towel. That is just the truth, because this is a harder road compared to what other people are portraying when they drop off their kids and they have a quiet home to be able to clean their house and quiet, have worship music playing, have dinner made before their kids get home. That all sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Kind of. But at the same time, it’s like you might not have the opportunity to have the deep conversations with your kids or know really what’s happening during the day. And so you have to really like not just focus on the good aspect, but you got to look at the pros and cons of both and really know your why. Because any of these lies could push you to throw in the towel real quick.

There’s two things we’re just going to take a moment. There’s two things that will help you that free biblical parenting in a changed world workshop. Make sure you go to be courageous ministry, hit the podcast and go to the blog post for this episode and you can find it also should be on Be courageous Ministry Jack.org on the front. In addition, the Homeschooling blueprint is one of the best selling courses we’ve ever created. It’s battle tested, and regardless of how much you’ve done homeschooling or little, it was built not to tell you exactly what curriculum, but more behind the scenes thinking on how to pick curriculum for the learning styles of your children and to think about your children and focus on delight, directed study and all the motivation side of it and handling a lot of these things. So no matter where you are in your education, even if you don’t homeschool, this is really important because let’s face it, if you put kids somewhere, you still need to homeschool. There’s still part of it. There’s still some education you’re going to be needing to do. We have to educate beyond academics as well. So this this curriculum with, I think, a 40 page download and links to resources, we validate.

I mean, they’ve been time tested. I would say that for me as a homeschool mom over the years, I have always wanted to have an older mom who was willing to spend the time with me and mentor me in homeschooling. I don’t know if that’s been a desire of yours. It’s hard to find that because usually the ones that you want to learn from, they’re still doing it right. Like for me myself, I still have seven kids at home, six of them I am still home educating well, Sanders too. So I guess five of them. I’m home educating this year, preschool all the way up to senior in high school. And so talk about a range, right? And having a toddler in the home. And I just have to say, like, but my heart’s desire is that I would also be walking as that Titus two woman in people’s lives. And Isaac really has helped me to be able to. We’ve created this awesome course that really is like a mentoring of an older mom who’s home schooled for a long time, sharing about like, Hey, do you know what your teaching style is? All that kind of stuff.

So please join her for one session for for the gents too. So. That’s right. Yes. And by the way, get it out. Be courageous ministry.org. So I think we’re talking about subjects, right?

Well, yeah. So we’re going to dive into the importance of understanding that you don’t need to look the same. Right? So we talked about how school doesn’t need to begin and end at the same time, whether that’s a day that you’re starting or ending, whether it’s the within the calendar year of starting and ending, but now, like looking the same. I just want to ask you, is Instagram or social media anywhere a temptation for you to feel discontent about how you homeschool? And do you feel less than when you see like the perfect looking homeschool room with the chalkboard and the chairs and and I’m not knocking this, you guys. That is like an amazing. That’s such a huge blessing. Awesome. But can I just say, like there is a, an issue there where if you feel like you don’t have that and you’re homeschooling, there’s a temptation to feel like an imposter. The imposter syndrome or.

The outcome is not going to be the same if you had that right for your children.

And that’s just not the truth. And I think that that really is at the heart of what I have had to realize. I think, over the years of having different circumstances and situations where I could have that or I couldn’t have that, and seeing that the fruit can be the same, I think that that’s really important. I also think that there are some times and I don’t want to be throwing I’m not throwing anybody under the bus because I love all the things that I’m seeing from my fellow homeschool moms that are sharing on Instagram. Keep doing it if you’re listening. And because it is an encouragement to people and it gives people a vision and it gives them something to work towards and it can be so helpful. But for those of you who feel like an imposter, here’s another thing is when you see people who are sharing like reels where they have this perfect homeschool room and then you see another reel of their home and their home looks all put together, that and then you’re looking at your house and you’re like, How in the world are they doing that? They have more kids than me, and my house is a disaster and I’m homeschooling.

Like, Well, they could be seven days apart from each other.

Totally. So I just have to say, like, I’m going to be the one that throws myself under the bus. My house is not always perfect looking. In fact, I would say 90% of the time it doesn’t even look close. So the truth is, is that homeschooling can be messy at times, right? Especially if you have more than one kid because you’ve got multiple subjects out on the table and then you’ve got to stop everybody push your stuff to the middle of the table or because we got to continue working on it. But we have to eat lunch now because I got to get those toddlers down for a nap. Like that’s just the reality of life and that’s okay. And I don’t want you to feel like you’re an imposter if you’re not doing it all perfect and organized in that kind of fashion.

Though, some things in the home can wait, right? What is really the biggest priority is our children’s education and spiritual well-being. There’s so much discipleship that happens in homeschooling. If you approach it that way, which we hope you do, because it’s such a sweet opportunity and all those different moments, it’s like the quantity time versus the quality time, quantity, time wins because that’s where discipleship happens in moments that pop up as you’re, as you’re discussing dinosaurs or whatever the case is in six days of creation or whatever you’re working on in your schooling is such an opportunity to point them back to the Bible. And is is homemaking interfering with the homeschooling or are we getting really upset that homeschooling is interfering with their homemaking? And I think there’s a balance, right? There’s responsibilities and jurisdictions. But what’s really the bigger priority?

Well, I just want to share a scripture with you guys that has constantly come up in my head whenever I’m tempted to compare myself to anyone else, whether it’s Homestead, Homestead, homeschooled, homeschool mom to mom, wife to wife, any of the things. And this is super convicting second Corinthians chapter ten, verse 12 and 13. It says now that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, he’s saying, How dare you try to compare yourself to those who are classifying and commending themselves? So, you know, I’m just going to say something. If someone is commending themselves and they’re like, Look at my beautiful homeschool, la la la la, they’re commending themselves. That’s what this is saying. It’s saying, Do not dare to classify or compare yourselves with those who are committing themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding. Whoa. Massive warning in scripture here. It’s like a mike read Second Corinthians chapter ten. I love this entire chapter because it’s also talking about destroying. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive into the obedience of Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience. I mean, that’s where the Scripture is. You guys go read all of Chapter ten in Second Corinthians. If you are struggling with comparing your classroom or your homeschool or your methods or your Can I just say, if you’re comparing your kid’s educational success to someone else’s, that’s super dangerous because then your child’s going to be feeling like, I’m disappointing my parent, like they perceive more than we realize they do. And so we need to be very, very careful with this. Here’s the other thing. Your homeschool does not need to look the same as your best friends or even your neighbors.

And it doesn’t make you more or less qualified, which is the third myth, which is, you know, you might feel like you’re not qualified. And that is a myth because God made you their mom and dad for a reason. And if you decide to homeschool, you absolutely can do it. And I think once we realize I think one of the things that was interesting for us is once we realized how much actually happened in a day or another way to look at it is how much didn’t happen in a day of school. Yes, you know that because we put our daughter in first grade, private Christian school and.

Well, we yeah, we had homeschooled before that. And then we.

Put her in first grade once. He once there was a large group and there’s all the lines and there’s the recess and there’s the waiting and there’s the educating to the slowest person in the classroom and these kinds of things. It’s kind of hard because you’d already been homeschooling prior to first grade.

Well, I had worked so hard to help her.

She was really bright and naturally gifted, kind.

Of bored in school.

And kind of bored. And so I think one of the. Things that happened in second grade when he brought her home. Remember, is just realizing, wow, we can get done by noon what was happening all day over there? Oh, 100%.

Because we weren’t spending hours standing in line. And and and honestly, the recesses were not edifying. Like she would come home and tell me stories about like how the kids were mean to one another. And fortunately she had been under the radar because everybody seemed to really like her curly hair. They really liked her. Yeah, but but I just thought, Oh, it’s a matter of time. It’s just because she’s the new girl and you can’t protect your kids from being bullied or or anything like that. And those are experiences that everyone experiences at some point in their life. And so it’s good for them to learn how to stand up for themselves for sure. But I just realized, like in that moment, like socially, do I want her to become like these kids? Because if she’s hanging out with them for 12 years, you become like who you hang out with. And so it was less about the school and the curriculum. We love the principal, we love the teacher, all that stuff.

But but I think it was encouraging to you to realize that by noon you could accomplish what was happening over there. Yeah. And that it sometimes feels daunting until you do it and they’re still challenging things about it when you’re learning something new. But but I will say from just watching you is that I found you got really encouraged really fast once you realized actually the workload of how much your kids need to do in a day to keep up with or to excel, to excel or to even go beyond is is not daunting.

It’s not daunting at all. And I, I also think there’s a priority of what you choose to educate your kids in as well. Right? Like you want your kids to agree with you and your doctrines and your belief systems. And so, like even with science, you’re going to spend more time educating your kids on creationism than you are on evolution, but you’re going to teach them about evolution and teach them the arguments as to why you believe what you believe. Because that’s what the Bible says. To have an answer for everyone who asks you think.

You might have just said like a scary word to a lot of parents science.

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, that’s I’ve been homeschooling for a long, long time and that’s the upper grade levels. It’s not like we don’t have people who are listening who have older kids. But I’m just what I’m saying, though, is that, you know, when you take it into your own hands, you start to realize, like, I have a choice. And that should be empowering, not scary. And I think that the world makes it scary when people cast doubts and fears upon you or when you allow those fears to tempt you to think, What if I choose the wrong curriculum?

But let’s just take science for an example, since you mentioned it, okay? And so I think if I’m not incorrect, I remember a time where you’re like, science really isn’t my thing.

Yeah, I used to think, especially the labs and.

Stuff, and so how am I going to do this? And right. And these kinds of things. So how do you, when people feel not qualified in a specific subject like that was my worst subject, let’s say, when I was young and now I’m the example and teacher of that subject for my kids. Whoa. I hope they turn out okay.

Yeah. So here’s the thing. You do not need to put the pressure on yourself to be the person who has the knowledge of all the things. Amen. I just need to say that homeschooling has been extremely redemptive for me with my own education. I was a very good student and I love learning and I think that loving learning is really the only thing that that I think we all need to have. Because if we love learning, then that’s a reflection of us having a teachable heart and we always should have a teachable heart. And so the truth is, is your kids are going to excel if you equip them with the tools that are going to help them to continue learning in life. And if you leave with them a legacy of a passion of wanting to learn. Boom, done two things How do I learn and do I want to learn?

Because all the tools are available, they.

Are all available. And and it’s not just you like you don’t have to do it all. Homeschooling doesn’t mean that you are like the all sufficient god that is teaching absolutely everything. There have been many times where I’ve outsourced things, whether it’s joining a co-op and our kids being able to do the science labs, for example, with other kids that are their age and a tutor and I’m popping in and out. And that was an incredible, incredibly helpful for me, especially when I when we had seven kids and we had, you know, homeschooling high school for the first time. Doing classical conversations was a blessing to me then. But we haven’t done that for the last three years, actually. And so for me, like, that was part of the redemptive teach me how to do things also, and recognizing that sometimes science can look completely different, like for us, homesteading. Oh my goodness, the science that our kids are learning, whether it’s butchering a chicken, I mean, that’s like anatomy of a chicken. Is that more helpful than an anatomy of a frog? I’m not going to really eat frogs.

How to make chicken feed Go twice as long.

Fermenting all the plants, pests, disease, compost, all the things. So I get it. Hold on just a second. So now me just sharing that could. Potentially leave people going, okay, that’s all great that you’re doing that, Angie. But I can’t do that. I live in a neighborhood. Can I just share with you that botany has been the thing that from the beginning we have been teaching our kids because we’ve always felt that it was important that we needed to have the knowledge as to how to grow our own food, even if we weren’t doing it all 100% ourselves. We needed to start learning. We needed to have the knowledge we needed to pass that knowledge on because it’s important to know.

Remember when we first got married, we were in this very small townhouse and on the back patio, which was a little tiny cement slab where my barbecue fit and maybe one chair. And I remember you had this tower of plants.

I know. Well, I started things from seed and I put them out on the back way back then bring them in. I know I was 24 years ago, no kids yet. And I was pregnant with Kelsey. And I like. But this is the thing. Like we as humans need to understand, like there is something beautiful about learning things that we just don’t know. Right? And I wanted to pass that on to my kids. And for me it was that, what is it for you? Like, it doesn’t have to be Angie’s passion. It can be. It needs to be your passion, actually. And so understanding that like qualification and all of that, like who qualifies us anyway? Let’s just read Second Corinthians chapter three, verse five. It says, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. Listen, this this whole aspect of sufficiency or like, are you sufficient? Am I qualified or am I going to be a failure? Am I going to mess up Like we have to remember that God is the one who qualifies us If we are seeking him and we are seeking what’s best for our kids. He’s faithful. It’s really that simple. And to remember that like, yeah, you are going to make mistakes, but you’re not going to mess your kids up. You are going to make mistakes. But God’s grace is bigger than your mistakes. And if you are sober minded, which means you’re going to be looking at yourself rightly self-examining, then there should be an at least an ounce of humility that leads you to your kids to go, I screwed up. We’re not going to. We’re going to pivot. I get I’m pushing too hard on this specific subject. And this is just tough for you. And we got a lot going on in our life, which is making it stressful. So we’re going to we’re going to back burner that and come back to that and we’re going to do this instead. It’s so cool.

Like, I think the last three points I think we can do pretty quickly, but they are very important. And this one awkward. The myth of my kids. Are my kids going to be awkward if I do this or if I keep doing this? And I think that’s really just dependent on you. I think it depends on the community you build and the Are you encouraging them to speak to all ages and have confidence in that? Are you encouraging them to, you know, communicate at the dinner table with each other and articulate their thoughts and express opinions? Are you building in them now? Kids are wired very differently, even in our family, very introverted and middle introvert, extrovert, highly extroverted. We have all of that. And we have a difference in our marriage, too, in that. And so, you know, I think we need to draw out of our children confidence in communicating and social skills and so forth. That’s really regardless of where you put your kids, That’s it. But the thing is, you know, you’ve probably heard this before, but it is true. You get to choose and be have a little more influence, a lot more influence in who your children are socializing with.

And while your children are young, that makes a tremendous difference on the outcome and trajectory of the spiritual condition of your children. Yeah, and and the willingness to stand firm against worldliness or to adopt worldliness. And I was just reading in James that with the kids the other day is that, you know, the more we move towards worldliness, the more we become friends with it, friends with it, and we’re becoming enemies of God. And we don’t want that. We don’t want to be that slowly cooked frog and a lot of children become slowly cooked frogs where they don’t sense the slow progression towards desiring worldliness. That happens because of peer influences and they don’t jump out of the pot because it happens so gradually over time. And the parents also go with them and just see it gradually happening and become desensitized over time and allowing things to happen. I think this is a beautiful expression of being able to instead better cultivate who our children and our family are interacting with. So it’s edifying along a biblical road that leads to fruitfulness.

Yeah, and two things come to mind. You mentioned having confidence that you would raise kids that are going to be confident. So one thing that Isaac and I have also said a lot over the years is that awkward parents raise awkward kids. So are you awkward like and when we say awkward, there’s there’s something that.

By the way, I feel awkward sometimes myself.

So. Yes well. There is something about like know not. Isaac and I both don’t like Surfacey conversations. So if conversations are surfacy, we’re kind of like bored. I’ll just be I’m just going to say it. And that sometimes makes it hard for people. I get that. But, you know, I think that there’s an element, though, of you were talking about confidence raising kids to be confident in their communication. That is true. But I’ve seen very confident children who are awkward because they overcommunicate. They don’t have a social awareness of when to allow someone else to talk. They don’t have any emotional intelligence of I want to know what the other person thinks. So I’m going to ask a question and I’m going to listen to them. But instead they just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And then you walk away and you’re like, they literally just talked and talked and talked and talked and talked, you know? So I think that when we want our kids to be confident, but we also want to teach them a social awareness that leads them to care about other people and not just be like, look at me. I’m confident in talking and I think that that’s an important thing, that parents are in charge of teaching. Because the truth is, is there’s a pecking order within the school system, just like there is within a chicken coop. And then kids get into their own familiar way of being. And if they aren’t challenged to have an opinion, they can easily get crowded out by other people who are the overly talkative ones, you know? But then the last thing I want to say about awkwardness is this Shouldn’t we all as believers be somewhat awkward in a world that is so fallen? And when I say that, I mean I don’t I actually don’t like the word awkward for this.

I think that we shouldn’t be like the world. We shouldn’t be conformed to the world. I think of Romans 12 two that says do not be conformed to this world or the pattern of this world, and that can make people feel out of place when you are so drastically different than the world. Right? That makes you feel out of place. But that’s not a bad thing because this is not our forever home and we need to teach our kids that and we need to teach them to be confident in that, that it’s okay, that we are different than the world. It’s okay that we have more modest standards than the world. It’s okay that we have a different standard for what we’re going to watch than the world like. That doesn’t mean that your kids are awkward if they have a standard of not wanting to listen to really bad rap music. Okay. The truth is, is when we raise our kids, we want to raise them to be confident, courageous, Christian with Christian standards, kids in this world. So that’s my little $0.02 on socialization.

Okay. Last two tips is you don’t have to be perfect. And I think everybody probably agrees with that and maybe doesn’t even think they’re that way. But sometimes that feeling of needing to be different, better than you are perfect, right, can be projected and we can start to feel down about ourselves because something isn’t perfect. And while we should strive to do better and to do well, that comparison game, which I think we already talked about, is really important not to play.

Yeah, Yeah. And I think too that there’s an element as well as where maybe you’re struggling with one of your kids and you feel like you can’t focus on them as much as you did the older ones. Like I think of even just being a mom of nine, there are times where I’m like, Man, I just don’t have the time to to like thinking about just being consistent with Zander, right? When I’m like distracted with homeschooling over here, there there are times where I could literally let that make it be a decision making factor as far as like, am I going to continue to homeschool or am I not? But then I have to remind myself to look at the fruit that I have in my older kids. And that has been honestly the thing that keeps me going all of these years, because the teaching aspect of it, there are times that I love it, but majority of the time I really don’t love it. I’m just going to be honest. And what I mean by that is that I never saw myself as a teacher. I never set out to be a teacher that wasn’t what I wanted to do.

That wasn’t what I went to college for. Um, it was the last thing on my list When I was a kid. I never wanted to be a teacher, but I have learned that I do love learning. And so sitting and learning new things with my kids and watching them learn new things and be excited about the new thing they learned is fun. And so that part of it I really do enjoy. And so I’ve had to change my thinking and focus on the things that I do enjoy because it would be easy to be discouraged all the time if I was constantly focused on Am I doing a perfect job teaching? Is my home completely organized the way I would want it to be? Or even is it clean the way I would want it to be? Are you kidding me? No. I constantly am working on project after project. I go from one thing to the next, to the next to the next, and it’s never perfect, but that’s this life, it seems.

You look at the statistics an average homeschooling effort surpassed. Passes the public school outcomes. And so you just look at the statistics. And if you just take the average of everybody home schooling, this is fact. The test scores, the confidence, the the success rate of families rate, the, you know, morality, all of these things are far better than the averages over here.

So you have to remember your why you have to remember the vision as to what you’re working for. Otherwise you can get discouraged in the reality of the moment when your home doesn’t look perfect or when you feel like the curriculum is not clicking with a kid and you’re like, I just made a bad choice. See, I’m screwing up again. Or. Or you think you know, Well, you’ve.

Thrown away curriculums.

Before. Oh, yeah. I have thrown away curriculum.

We’ve wasted money. You know what? Wasting money is part of the learning process. Now, I will say that nobody wants to waste money, and we can’t afford to waste money. We certainly can’t. No. But you know what? It still happens. Sometimes you learn lessons because your kids are all different and you’re trying things.

I will say too, though, I’m not trying to. That was one reason why we did the Homeschool Blueprint course was because I did an entire video on curriculums where I pull out all my books and I show you guys things because sometimes it’s easier to see what’s inside of something and to see the pros and cons to make a better decision on, Oh, I don’t actually like that. I’m so glad she told me. Or Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve never heard of that curriculum like of Dakota or whatever. Right? And so like for us, we have tried to share with people like what are the things that were good and what were they good for and what are the things that were not good and why? To save you, to save you money, because that’s a big thing for me is I don’t like wasting money.

Time and money. Right. Save those.

Things. All right. The last thing. This is the last myth. Dun dun da dun. Loneliness. The truth is, is that life for a homeschool mom, especially a homeschool mom of many, is busy. And that busyness can leave a woman feeling lonely at times. We could do a whole podcast on this honey, haven’t you felt.

A little like FOMO before? And when you see the the post of someone dropping their kids off and able to do the things they want to do, not.

Necessarily the dropping kids off part, but the part where maybe they’re meeting a friend for coffee at a coffee shop and there’s no stress or mom guilt because they feel like they have to get home to their children. And that is that’s a legit thing. I’ve already written blog posts on how to get rid of mom guilt. Go check them out at courageous mom.com. But on loneliness I think that there’s one scripture that comes to mind and it’s not prescriptive in a sense that we can recreate this, but there’s something we can learn from it. And it’s acts chapter two, verse 42 through 47. It says, This is the fellowship of the believers. You said during Pentecost time, right? Isaac And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers and all came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together. They were together and had all things in common. Okay, I’m just going to share that part because. Because. Okay, one word comes to mind devoted. And when I think of loneliness, I think of the times where I have not been completely devoted in fellowship with people. Like maybe we’ve been in between churches or maybe we were going to a church, but that church had a lot of moms that were a lot younger than me, and no one that was like actually my season and I was craving for camaraderie, someone who could at least relate a little bit.

And I have experienced all of that. This this actual thing could could be a very emotional topic because I’ve gone in and out of loneliness in different times of my life, and it’s largely because I don’t dedicate the time for deep friendships when I am committed to things with my first jurisdictions that are a higher priority and they do consume a lot of time. And it’s sad. But I’ve also started to recognize over my life that there are seasons and there are seasons where you have a little bit more time and there are seasons when maybe you don’t. And I, I highly value friendships, but they have to friendships for me and for the homeschool mom, it’s like you kind of they have to go deep, fast to know, like, am I going to invest in this relationship? And that’s what you see in Scripture, is that they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship in the breaking of bread and the prayers. And they were together and they had all things in common. And this if you have this, if you have searched for this, if you have cultivated this, which, you know, co-ops can be good, like I said earlier, sometimes you can find the like minded friends there, but sometimes you think that you’re like minded fellowship and then years pass and you look back and you’re like, Whoa, they’re not so much like minded.

That happened for us during Covid. Maybe it happened for you. And so the real, truly like minded fellowship should be cultivated first and foremost. Within your church, within that family of God, the household of faith, if you will, like it says in Galatians, Right. Giving preference to the household of faith. And we need to teach our kids this because they are potentially going to experience even more loneliness in 20, 30 years when their moms and dads, just because of the way the world is going, it is harder to find that. And they agreed on everything that likemindedness that the Bible is talking about. Right. And so family is incredibly important. Isaac and I have talked about this. That’s one of the reasons why we have kept having another child is, oh, it would be so good for our kids to have one another. You know, they’re going to need each other. We got to really build their relationships with each other. That’s true because family is all there. And when you’re raised in the same home by the same people, there is a likemindedness. There is a camaraderie that’s there, generally speaking. And so there there’s a need for us to be really purposeful ourselves in, in being devoted to church community. But we also need to cultivate that same kind of community and, and like mindedness among our children so that they have each other because it’s going to be even harder for them when they’re older.

Well, hey, we hope this was helpful. You can get all resources at be courageous ministry.org. Thanks for joining us.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening and being a part of the 10 million Legacies movement. Go to be courageous ministry org for more biblically based resources. Ways to switch where you spend your money that support the mission and information about the incredible be courageous app community for believers.

Also we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program.

Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video session with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible self-paced program. We cover everything from tending to their hearts, handling obedience to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private group and the Be Courageous app, live webcasts and direct access to us.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting Mentor program, secure your spot now at be courageous ministry org that’s be courageous ministry.org.