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mom3bme
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| Posted: Nov 12 2006 at 10:23pm | IP Logged
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Ladies,
I enjoyed reading the teen years section. My oldest (of 3 children) is only 9 years old. One of the main reasons I want to start homeschooling is the realization that in 5 short years he is going to be a teenager!
When I look at my neighbors' kids who are only a few years older than him I realize how the journey seems to speed up as the kids get older. I think these middle years are my prime time to make a lasting impression that hopefully will carry him through the turbulent teens.
As moms we worry so much. We have to exercise prudence and turn to prayer. When my son was only 2, I remember praying that his life be filled with joy and little pain. It occurred to me what a silly prayer. All life is full of pain and struggle...that's growth. Since that time, I pray that he (and my girls) will know Jesus in their hearts and that this love will protect and guide them wherever life may take them.
If only this view from the passenger seat of their life journey wasn't so harrowing!! God Bless all of us, mothers.
--kelly
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Mary G
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| Posted: Nov 13 2006 at 7:00am | IP Logged
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Kelly,
I'm with you on this one. Having taught in schools, and my dh is a school teacher too, the problem is so many parents STOP when their kids are teenagers. That's the traditional time for "mom to go back to work", the kids get cars or have friends who drive "so I don't have to schlep them around", etc.
The teen years are the most critical -- so much is going on with kids -- mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually -- that parents HAVE to be there and know what's going on and what their children are doing.
Many of the pros on this list can probably tell you more -- it's just that I agree so much that I thought I'd add my $.02!
__________________
MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)
my website that combines my schooling, hand-knits work, writing and everything else in one spot!
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Lisbet
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| Posted: Nov 13 2006 at 7:11am | IP Logged
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I don't have teens just yet (just a year away!) but I have a question about this. I agree with so many of your points Kelly and Mary, but in 'real' life, I know of so many homeschoolers that quit homeschooling for high school, saying that they get 'tired' and can't give their children everything they need. Oftentimes I'm told I have my 'head in the clouds' when I think about homeschooling teens and I'm in for some real 'culture shock'. Many of these teens are really awesome kids still, and I wonder if these moms are right. I've been living in the land of the littles for so long, am I in for an awakening?
__________________
Lisa, wife to Tony,
Mama to:
Nick, 17
Abby, 15
Gabe, 13
Isaac, 11
Mary, 10
Sam, 9
Henry, 7
Molly, 6
Mark, 5
Greta, 3
Cecilia born 10.29.10
Josephine born 6.11.12
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ALmom
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| Posted: Nov 13 2006 at 3:27pm | IP Logged
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Lisbet:
It is not necessary to have major confrontational issues with our teens - so much depends on the personalities and the dynamics of the personalities. We had a rough few years with our oldest teen - and smooth sailing so far with our 2nd high schooler.
Now, we aren't experts, nor have we done this for lots of high schoolers yet, so take whatever with a grain of salt. However, I have been homeschooling a long, long time - and yes, it does sometimes get old. I feel inadequate. I sometimes play games with myself and second guess what things my children might have if they went to school. They might actually meet deadlines for someone else  , etc., etc.
I would second the point that high school is the very time not to give in to frustration and burnout or the seeming unhappiness of the teen. It does call on the parents to step back and look at true needs and creative ways to meet them. You learn a new art of letting go which is a continuation of everything that has come before - but in larger ways, but without dropping our role as parent. It is a fine art in finding how to communicate in a way that respects the greater maturity, etc. while the child always is a child in the mother's heart. So, yes there are growing pains for both parent and child.
Once you weather the storm or sail through reasonably calm waters in those years (depending on the child), and look back you begin to realize how much your children benefit from the home those last 4 years and how you needed it too for the peace of mind. It is also a growing time to work out the bugs in the balance of trust, responsibility and guidance while you still have the home safety net and not an over intensity of peer pressure. We are able to guide them through some of that aloneness that happens when you are not of the world while being in it and in the end they come out a lot less peer dependent and more dependent on God to guide their path.
I am in no way saying that folks aren't able to do this with their own teens in a school setting as there are certainly plenty to prove that it is done and done well. However, I don't see this when it is chosen as a desperate choice because the teen is miserable at home (that just makes them more vulnerable at school) or when mom is just so tired out she feels like giving up. I look at it sort of like natural birth - right at the moment that you think you wont' make it naturally and you really need the drugs, that is the moment to stay the course for just a little longer - it is the transition and about as soon as you just hunker down and do what you have to do, the baby is here. Well, some of my birth transitions have been much tougher than others and a few were so smooth they hardly registered as a blip - but, at least in our case, I know it would have been the wrong thing to have turned from the course right at the home stretch.
We found it a time of growth for both the teen and parent as we are both learning different things at the same time. As I said one of ours has, so far, been easier for me than another, but even the child who spent a couple of years telling us we ruined her life by homeschooling her - and probably, most especially with her - the worst thing we could have done was to turn from the homeschooling course right at the end.
Even if we were (and we definitely were) far from ideal as far as our homeschooling went, those years of high school at home were some of the most productive and valuable in all 17 years of homeschooling.
Janet
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Willa
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ALmom wrote:
We found it a time of growth for both the teen and parent as we are both learning different things at the same time. ....
Even if we were (and we definitely were) far from ideal as far as our homeschooling went, those years of high school at home were some of the most productive and valuable in all 17 years of homeschooling. Janet |
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I ditto what Janet said. I think my anxieties have made homeschooling high school more difficult than it needed to be. Moving to the passenger seat -- yes! it's not an easy task -- especially discerning when? how? to what extent?
Cindy on this board has used the word "real" and to me, homeschooling high school particularly has allowed us to be "real" with our teens. Yes, they are acute enough to pick up on our flaws -- scary and purifying, both. Yes, they are old enough to make bigger mistakes -- but homeschooling allows us more input than we might have if they were going to school. Yes, there are many times when I feel inadequate to the task of juggling character formation, academics, developing talents and personalities, all the rest. But as Janet said, homeschooling gives me a chance to confront those challenges creatively; and also prioritize -- what really IS important and what less so.
So it has been SO worth it. In my case the teenage challenges haven't been so much "worldly" ones as other ones -- logistical ones to do with getting the kids the kind of experiences that teenagers increasingly need to feel like part of the larger community. We live in a rural area and my kids are on the introverted side, which means that peer pressure is less of an issue, but encouraging and facilitating their transition into the larger world is more of an ongoing concern. I often tell myself what Kim F told me once -- fear comes from the devil, not from God. God says "Be not afraid; I am with you always, until the end of time."
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AMDG
Willa
hsing boys ages 11, 14, almost 18 (+ 4 homeschool grads ages 20 to 27)
Take Up and Read
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Leonie
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My teens, for the most part, have been my joys.
I used to worry that I knew how to be a mother to young ones but not to teens. Or - not to teens and young opnes at the same time. Well, experience has shown me that its just more of the same - being with them, having boundaries, sharing joys, picking ourselves up and starting over.
Every age has its challenges and its joys. In my experience so far.
__________________
Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: teen years is why i want to hs
