Choose Your Own Adventure: Making Purposeful Parenting and Schooling Decisions
I was homeschooled for half a day for half a year in third grade — one mortifying semester of going home on the kindergarten bus. I’d made a deal with my mother, a pitbull of a negotiator, to try out homeschool to see if it was a good fit for us.
It wasn’t.
“I’m never going to be a stay at home mom and absolutely will NOT homeschool my kids,” I determined. I went on to become a substitute teacher and then a Spanish teacher. I loved the students, loved Spanish, and gritted my teeth through the classroom management.
Then one day, wham! It hit me. I wanted kids, and I had no idea how to be a biblical mom. All the intensity of my previous mantra “I’m never going to be a stay at home mom” faded as I took an honest look at my heart. I threshed my heart through God’s word, and my passionate preference was clearly the chaff. It became apparent that training children up biblically was going to be the most time consuming and sacrificial work of my and my husband’s lives up to that point. In the 14 months it took to get pregnant with our first daughter, we dreamed, brainstormed, and grew in our submission, and we knew it would be best for our family for me to stay home with our small children, even if it meant becoming a single-income household. I won’t lie and say it was easy for me to give up a job where I was valued and praised and investing daily in teens to spend all my hours doing deep knee bends, bouncing my colicky infant. But in the end, it was obvious for us that if we were going to choose to have children, stewarding their souls to the best of our ability meant me staying home.
This is very much a personal narrative, not a guidebook for what all families should do, but the process by which we got there is. “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” is a promise we all must utilize (Prov 3:6), to ask God about his views on our decisions, because some things are non-negotiable. We must raise up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph 6:4), we must teach them the word (Deut 6, 2 Tim 2:2), we must provide their physical needs (1 Tim 5:8), and we must train them with the rod to obey us so that they’ll obey the Lord right away, the right way, with a happy heart (Prov 22:15, Eph 6:1-2).
The structures of our lives and homes must follow these Biblical principles, but how we go about doing so will vary based on the needs of our children. Therefore we must know them and know them well. Are they mature enough to handle the weighty responsibility and temptation of a cell phone? Can they pick their own library books? Can they toddle around well enough to maneuver the stairs? Their whole lives, we adjust life around them and coach them to grow, develop a more godly character, take a first step, ride a bike, or share the gospel with a friend. Why should schooling be any different? Knowing the state of our children can guide our schooling decision for that year.
As of right now, our four kids don’t have the virtue to say “no” to worldly influence, so we aren’t going to figuratively let them play in the street with the lion that is seeking to devour them. Practically, for this year, we do a hybrid homeschool program: two days a week in person with other homeschool kids and three days at home with me. We sit at my kitchen table from nine until noon, with a couple little breaks. I teach some content directly to them and scaffold them to do some on their own, then we take a break for lunch. If my oldest still has work to do, she finishes it afterwards while the others have a rest time.
It’s awesome and also agonizing. Sometimes teaching my children exasperates me like nothing else as I’m doing math with one kid, phonics with another, learning the alphabet with the third, and wiping up the fourth’s third potty training oops of the day. But what did I think I was signing up for when I birthed a disciple that would take 15-20 years to establish in the four goals of discipleship — one that lives with us — and then we went ahead and made three more? This is the most joyous, hilarious, and weighty job I’ve ever had: to raise four wildly different humans who have various learning styles, social needs, physical needs, and spiritual states. But if we are willing to go to the mission field, to drop anything and everything for Christ, who am I to put my finances or my “wasted” college degree or my accolades above staying at home when my husband and I both see that’s what our personal sheep need?
You may be in a place where your kids are oblivious enough about things going on around them that they’re safe right now from nasty influence, or they may be stubborn enough that they’re already dedicated to doing things God’s way, which would lead you to choose public school — praise God! You may see that private school is the best fit for your kids — fantastic! You may see the need to homeschool — awesome! If it’s a deliberate choice based on truth, that’s wonderful. On the other side of the coin, you may desperately want to homeschool your kids or stay at home, but various circumstances have prohibited that right now — that’s ok. Your kids aren’t doomed. Most of the delightful people I know attended public school all the way through. You just have the responsibility to fulfill all the instructions that scripture has for you in the moments you’re not working. We can’t drop our kids off at school all day, at gym childcare while we work out, in front of the tv while we make dinner, and then in bed while we zombie our brains out, exhausted at night, and expect them to grow up in God’s nurture and admonition. If our kids are at school for eight hours a day, we realistically get maybe four hours with them if we’re lucky during the week, and out of those, how many are hours of direct investment?
One size of schooling doesn’t fit all, but one size of parenting does: the Biblical kind. When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, we’ll answer for the way we stewarded our children’s souls, not the specific school we chose. Homeschooling is just a means to an end. It’s what we are doing right now. It’s not my life or my identity or my purpose. It’s a tool with which we are training our kids to be diligent, to try hard things, and to apply the Bible to all aspects of their lives. But there may come a day when my kids’ hearts long to share the gospel with others, when they are ready to get pushback about their faith, morals, clothes, and entertainment choices. Every year we will re-evaluate our decision to homeschool, and when the time comes to change things up, we will. We will acknowledge God in all our ways, and He will direct our paths.
Kylie Grasher is a leader in the women’s ministry and student ministry at Midtown Baptist Temple in Kansas City, MO.
