Should you buy a phonics book and teach your child to read, or should you hand the task over to your computer?
Read MoreHomeschool Your Child to Think Like a Leader→
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There are many advantages to homeschooling, and one of them is leadership.
When done right, homeschooling your kids should lead them to a state of personal sovereignty, a word John Taylor Gatto used often. In other words, raise your kids to march to their own beat, or, as John liked to advise us, to be the writer of their own script.
“You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else’s script.”
There are a few strategies to know if you want to reach this goal which I’ll share with you. These strategies will assist you in giving your child a serious education, not a public-school education
#1 Know your objective
Assuming your long-term objective is to provide your child with an excellent education and the tools to think independently, you want to be clear about his educational goals.
For each school year, you will need to know what you want your child to accomplish for that year. For each subject, you will need to decide what your child should learn about that subject.
Don’t cut any corners here as planning is everything.
A lot of thought should go into you homeschool plan. If we are going to reach any goals in life, we must be intentional and have a map of how we will get there. Intentional homeschoolers plan out the school year and know their end-year objectives.
#2. Be Flexible
Your child will become interested in subjects you may not have anticipated. Even though you have prepared a homeschool plan, you've got to be flexible enough to shift when the winds change direction.
Any time your child becomes interested in something, that's when you want to teach it. We learn best when we are motivated to learn. A desire to know something motivates us.
There are things your child must know, such as how to read. There is no way around it, but there are things you will not have on the schedule that he may show an interest in. Usually you can be more flexible with subjects, such as science, history, and literature.
Adjust your schedule to your child’s interests when it makes sense to do so. This should not interfere with your goals, but enhance them.
#3 Have High Expectations
Don't expect mediocrity from your child. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this: I met two brothers in a hotel in Gocek, Turkey; a yachting town on the Mediterranean. They were from Israel, and they were somewhere in their 70's.
Gocek, Turkey, 2020
I was having breakfast when they sat down at the table next to me. We got to chatting about how the Jewish people are known for being very intelligent. They said it was because they had superior genes! I asked them to tell me about their childhoods.
I explained that I worked in children's education and, contrary to what they thought, I didn’t believe that they possessed superior genes! Jewish children must be raised in a way that nurtured their intelligence.
Both of their faces lit up, and they said passionately, "Our mothers drill it into us from an early age that we are going to grow up to be an engineer or a doctor or something of importance. We are raised to understand that anything short of this isn’t an option!"
They were laughing as they said it, but it was obviously an impressionable part of their childhood. They were raised to reach the top. Mediocre expectations were not a part of their upbringing.
With all due respect to natural ability, people who excel often do so because it was expected of them or someone inspired them to excel when they were young.
“I’ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. ”
#4 Know what to teach
Most of us went through the public school system. Consequently, our standards for an education are naturally low. Without knowing what a serious education looks like, it's natural to adopt a public-school-at-home model of homeschooling.
Warning: you do not want to recreate public school at home!
“That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”
You want to understand the subjects a child should learn and the books a child should learn from. This is a whole other topic, but let me say that a thorough knowledge of grammar would be a good place to start, something that is no longer taught in public school.
Which means that if you want to give your child an excellent education at home, you have to opt-out of any public-school-related programs and do it yourself.
#5 Enjoy homeschooling
As the teacher to your child, you want to enjoy teaching your child. If you don't, your child will sense this, and it will put a damper on his experience of learning. You want to nurture your child's love of learning instead by being passionate about learning yourself.
If you aren't enjoying teaching your child, it's probably because you haven't found the sweet-spot in homeschooling. It's there, you just need to discover it.
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
Start by recognizing the magnitude of what you are doing: you are educating your child. What more noble task is there?
Acknowledge your courage and your dedication to your family. Focus on the positive aspects of homeschooling and avoid harboring thoughts of all that you have to do today. Our “to-do” lists are always too long. Set realistic daily goals and check them off as you complete them for a quick boost of happiness.
Keep in mind that even if you weren't homeschooling, you'd still have a lot to do. You may have more free time when you kids are in school, but you'd quickly fill it up with other things.
When you’re homeschooling, you’re filling your time up with a service that will pay you back 100-fold for the rest of your life.
#6. Be content
Homeschooling is a service we provide to our children. It takes up our time and it takes up our energy. It's important to structure our days and weeks so we don't get burned out and lose our motivation.
It's important to build some fun time into your life that does't involve your children. What is it that you enjoyed doing before you had children? What is is that relaxes you and boosts your mood?
Whatever it is, make sure you schedule it into your week.
There is nothing worse than a cranky homeschooler, and you'll become cranky if you don't fill your own reserves at least once, if not twice a week.
A friend once said to me, "Life is difficult, but it should be enjoyed." There will be difficult days when you homeschool.
There are always difficult days no matter what we do.
But overall, you want to enjoy it. If you enjoy homeschooling, your children will enjoy it, too.
And they will learn to write their own script in life.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
My Favorite Science Curriculum for Homeschoolers
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Apologia offers a creation-based science program that even the most die-hard secularists will enjoy.
Read MoreWhy Grading Your Kids Causes More Harm than Good→
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While grading students on a bell curve may make some sense in a college setting, it's a harmful system for measuring the comprehension and knowledge of younger students. The Bell curve was designed to determine where each student ranked in relation to the rest of the group, but each child has a unique mind that is developing at its own rate and understands things in its own time, and, therefore, to compare a child's ability to those of his peers defies common sense.
Read MoreAre Critical Thinking Lessons in Elementary Schools Necessary?
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Do workbooks and critical thinking classes teach children to think critically?
Read More10 Resources to Convince Your Spouse (or anyone) About the Merits of Homeschooling →
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All hope is not lost. There are things you can do, and I’m going to share those with you shortly. But first, it’s important to understand why a spouse (or anyone) might resist the idea of homeschooling.
Usually, a spouse doesn't agree with homeschooling because they don’t understand what John Taylor Gatto would refer to as "the dangers of public school."
“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children.”
If your husband’s mind is already set against homeschooling, you have to approach the situation very gingerly. You cannot push your views on someone, least of all your husband.
But you can start the conversation by asking him this question: "Tell me what your goals are when you think of the education of our children?" And then follow up with this question: "What would it take for you to feel comfortable about homeschooling our children?"
You have now opened the channels for him to let you know his goals and concerns in a non-threatening way. Listen carefully and understand that he wants what is best for his children as you do.
He is not coming from a place of belligerence but of genuine concern.
Your husband will probably bring up objections such as he's concerned they won't get what they need academically, which will hurt their chances of getting into a good college.
He may say that he's worried about the socialization factor and that he doesn't want his kids to grow up to be social misfits. He might say that you aren't an accredited teacher and therefore not qualified to teach your own children.
Maybe he doesn't know any homeschoolers, and the idea sounds too fantastic to him?
He also might express concern for character development and key qualities he wants his kids to have such as creativity, integrity, moral values, resilience, and discipline (all of which the kids will most likely not get in school).
“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”
Whatever his objections are, you want to take note and ask him if he would be open to watching some videos on the subject, looking at some research, or even reading some books together?
If you keep the conversation non-threatening and show a genuine interest in his views and concerns, most reasonable husbands will oblige their wives.
Now, this is the tricky part because you will need to provide him with information that is sound and to the point. I'm going to share some resources that should help you educate your husband (or anyone) about the unparalleled benefits of homeschooling and the many problems with public school.
Grab your free resource here: 10 Resources to Convince Anyone About the Merits of Homeschooling.
This resource is also helpful if you have family members or friends who are strongly opposed to homeschooling.
Some points to remember:
Be careful about taking the attitude of proving your spouse wrong. No one likes to be proven wrong, and trying to show your spouse that you were right will not help your cause. Instead, you want to humble yourself and be gentle in the way you handle the situation.
Go slowly.
When someone has a fixed opinion, it’s prudent to allow time for that person to shift into a new mindset. Start early by educating your spouse when your children are young, and by the time they are ready to go to school, hopefully, you'll both be excited about homeschooling!
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Send Your Kids Outside and Lock the Doors!
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Children staying indoors and not knowing what to do with themselves is a new phenomenon. It's new because parents no longer establish expectations of their children based on what children and adults need.
What do adults need? They need peace and quiet and time away from their children, so they can get their daily tasks done and take a break now and then.
It's a perfectly reasonable need.
What do children need? Children need to learn how to entertain themselves outdoors, rain or shine, without adult supervision. They need fresh air and sunshine too.
“Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? ”
If your children are inside giving you a hard time, why don't you send them outside? They'll survive. Tell them to get dressed and go outside until you call them back indoors.
If they insist on coming back in without permission, then lock the doors so they can't return until you say they can.
The first week will be hellish. Your children may whine, cry, wail, and God knows what else. But soon they'll start to play. They'll invent games on their own, they'll climb trees, they'll make mud pies, and they'll do all sorts of things they wouldn't do if you let them stay indoors.
You'll call them in at the regular hour, and they'll want to continue playing.
It sounds divine, doesn't it?
It's called having a normal childhood. Living outdoors in their free time is what children have always done. The indoor obsession with technology and the lazy behavior that follows is unhealthy and abnormal.
It's against everything that childhood stands for: adventure, joy, laughter, exploration, fun, learning, socializing, and so forth.
As your children use their imaginations to figure out what to do with their time, they're learning how to become resourceful too.
One of my favorite things is to go into my kitchen, find absolutely nothing to cook and invent a new meal that I've never made before. It's not my favorite thing to do, really. But I do love it when my children think they will have nothing good to eat for dinner, and then they come to the table with disbelief.
"Where did you get this?" said they.
"In the cupboard, said I."
"But there was nothing to eat," said they.
"You didn't look hard enough, said I."
I learned how to be a resourceful cook when I was a young woman, because there was a time whenI was living overseas and money wasn't plentiful. The cupboards often seemed bare, so I had to learn how to make something out of nothing.
Your children need to learn how to be resourceful because there will be times in life when all the doors shut for them. It happens to all of us and some of us more than others.
If they don't know how to figure a way out of a difficult situation, they'll be lost and do less well in life than your children would had they known how.
Learning to become resourceful happens when you have nothing, or you think you have nothing. You have to wrack your brains to figure out how to make something out of nothing.
“There’s nothing to do; I’m so bored.”
Like when you put your children outdoors with nothing but some water and a snack. At first, they won't know what to do with themselves. That's when the moaning and groaning will set in. They'll call you a mean mother and all sorts of awful things.
You'll be inside warm and cozy, and you'll feel guilty as can be. But don't. What you're doing for them is in their best interest.
Once they realize you mean business, they'll begin to find things to do outdoors. And this is one way they will learn how to become resourceful and to engage in life.
Another option would be to set a kitchen timer outdoors. You can give your children a trial run by setting the timer for 20 minutes. When it goes off, they can come inside. You will slowly work your way up to two hours per day.
At some point, you won't even need it anymore because they'll be having so much fun.
This plan of ours will work much better if you get rid of the technology in the home. By the way, it's a given they are not allowed to take any technology outdoors, right?!
“The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.”
Unplug them inside, and they'll play a lot better outside. Keep them plugged in, and you'll have whiney kids forever. Technology interferes with your child's ability to learn how to entertain himself, which is why you want to get it out of your children's sight.
Again, the first two weeks will be difficult for everyone. The children are going to be angry and fed-up. You have to maintain your cool. Act like you don't notice.
Don't engage in conversations about it, or you'll end up arguing with them. It undermines your authority when you engage in arguments with your children; you don't want to go there.
Lastly, once you get past the two-week point, you should find life has suddenly become very blissful. Your children will know how to occupy themselves indoors and outdoors, and you'll have some peace and quiet in your home.
Grab a cup of tea and enjoy it. No guilt allowed.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Increase Your Child's Intelligence by Doing This One Thing
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The more your child actively uses his mind when he's young, and the more he continues to use his mind as he matures, the smarter he'll become.
We know that the brain is an ever-changing organ. It can weaken from misuse or neglect, but it can also grow stronger from the right kind of use.
You want your children to stay into the habit of using their minds as they enter the school years. One of the ways you can help your child strengthen his mind, and thereby increase his intelligence, is by providing him with good literature to read.
“John Taylor Gatto had his sixth-grade class read and discuss Moby Dick by Herman Melville. ”
As John Taylor Gatto once said, "Teach your children to grow up to be readers of more than the daily newspaper."
You will hear parents say things like, "Well, my child only reads comic books but at least he's reading!"
Comic books are fine for comic relief on occasion. If your family is on a road trip or flying cross-country, this might be a fair time to occupy your child with a few comic books.
It’s probably prudent though to NOT let comic books work their way into your home.
Comic books, as well as substandard literature, will make your child’s mind lazy because the dialogues are simple and too many pictures tell the story. When reading is made so easy for a child, he isn’t able to improve his skill of reading.
When it becomes time to read challenging literature with few or no pictures, he won't be able to tackle the vocabulary or follow the longer and more complicated sentence patterns. Nor will he have any pictures to help him along.
And then he'll complain to you that the book is "boring."
The book is not the problem; your child has not developed the skill required to read more difficult and challenging books.
Great books expand the mind and help us to understand the complexities of life and of ourselves.
If we replaced the department of psychology with a department of Shakespeare, we’d be less medicated and probably much happier too, because we’d have a better understanding of how to live our lives.
The inner workings of the mind and heart are there in his plays as is the secret to a life well-lived.
Once you get used to the language, Shakespeare is no more difficult to read than authors such as Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
The ability to read great literature is what you want for your children. If you are raising children in the West, you want them to be exposed to the great ideas of Western thought upon which our civilization is built.
John Taylor Gatto was very in support of reading the great books. It's where he got the seeds for many of his own ideas.
I said there was one thing you need to do to increase your child's intelligence, but as I am writing this, another occurred to me, so let me share it with you now.
Homeschool your children because your children won't get the kind of education they need in public or private schools.
“Dumbing us down,” as John Taylor Gatto put it.
A lousy education system produces people who lack the kind of mind it takes to read the great books; people who are content to be frivolously entertained while going through the precious journey of life without meaning or purpose.
Emily Dickinson summed up the joy of reading in one of her poems:
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
Have your children memorize Emily Dickinson's poem, and supply them with the kind of books that take them lands away.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
5 Reasons Why You Should Seriously Consider Homeschooling
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For many of us, taking on the job of homeschooling requires a lot of sacrifice. Some of us give up jobs and careers we love, and all of us give up much of our free time.
However, if we realized the impact of homeschooling on our family, our society, and potentially the world, would it seem like a sacrifice?
Not at all.
What might seem like a sacrifice at first will become the door to a better, happier life for your family and will ultimately impact society and the world for all the reasons that parents choose to homeschool.
Let’s consider five of these reasons:
Quality of Education
Homeschoolers are usually in agreement that we want our children to have an excellent education, and we know it's not going to happen in public school.
Not the kind of education we envision anyhow.
Reading competently, writing skillfully, and speaking eloquently are skills competent homeschoolers want to make sure their children develop because these skills are the cornerstone of a sound education.
With them, the child will grow up to have powerful a voice in a world where few read, few write, and few speak eloquently.
“Who can take the measure of a child? The Genie of the Arabian tale is nothing to him. He, too, may be let out of his bottle and fill the world. But woe to us if we keep him corked up.”
Enjoy Reading
We want our children to not only read well, but to enjoy reading. To choose a book to read over a movie to watch is our ideal. Not that our children never watch movies, but lying in bed with a good book is something they look forward to.
We want our children to be well read and to read books that are worth reading. In 21st century schools, children are required to read books that kids should not have to read such as the Andy Griffith series and books with immoral themes; books that 60 years ago no publisher in their right mind would have ever published.
Curious Until the End
That our children remain curious and become life-long learners in pursuit of knowledge is a concern most homeschoolers share. With studies showing that by first grade a child's innate thirst for knowledge of his world begins to wane, homeschoolers want to fiercely protect their child's curiosity.
Curiosity is inherent to man. Babies come into the world curious but we need environments for our children that nurture their curiosity. Homeschooling provides this environment; public and most private schools do not.
Not a single famous writer, inventor, philosopher, mathematician, scientist, or historian would have become famous had they not been curious. Curiosity is what propels us to keep learning and discovering which makes our lives exciting and colorful and challenging.
A curiosity without which true greatness is difficult to achieve.
Homeschoolers want their children to enjoy learning for the sake of learning, not for rewards or test scores.
The Sorting Factor
Homeschoolers don't want their children subjected to arbitrary tests that serve to sort and rank them amongst their peers.
“The lesson of report cards, grades and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.”
Instead, they want their children to know that with hard work and perseverance most things are possible, and that test scores are no indication of a person's ultimate worth.
Integrity Means “Whole”
With the loss of a good environment and character training in schools, homeschoolers want to protect the integrity of their children. We want to raise them in an environment that elevates our children to be their best version of themselves, not an environment that chips away at their dignity.
When I was in school, the negative influences were outside the classroom, but that's not true anymore. Children are being taught some grossly inappropriate things inside those four walls that make up the school classroom.
It's time.
“It is time we squarely face the fact that institutionalized schoolteaching is destructive to children. ”
Family Loyalty
Another thing you'll find is that homeschooling preserves the natural loyalty of a family and homeschooling families tend to be more closely-knit. On the contrary, in public school, children learn to be loyal to their peers, not their family, and certainly not their parents.
Once you develop the loyalty to your peers that public school is notorious for fostering, it's hard to undo. Most of us aren't even aware it's there. It wasn’t until my parents passed away that I realized how deep the parent / child bond was and how dishonored the family bond is in Western society.
Our bond with our parents is the next strongest bond we have in life. The only bond that is stronger than the parent / child bond it is the bond we have with our Creator. The family bond is a powerful bond that’s worth protecting.
“The curriculum of “family” is at the heart of any good life. We’ve gotten away from that curriculum – it’s time to return to it.”
We don't need studies to tell us why homeschooled families are closer-knit. We become close to the people we have shared positive experiences with, and homeschooled families spend a lot of time together, and they have a lot of great experiences together.
In contrast, public-schooled children spend time with peers, and they go home where they have to do hours of homework. There isn't much time left for family bonding.
With the family back at the center of a child’s life, and with family as the basis for a wholesome society, by the mere fact of homeschooling, we will change the world.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
How to Get a Morning Ritual in Place to Reach Your Daily Goals
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The morning can swallow your time if you don't have a ritual in place especially when you’re homeschooling.
Read More4 Strategies to Raise Children of Good Character→
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Societal influences can make it easier or more difficult to raise a decent child who is well-mannered, respectful, and obedient.
In today’s social and political climate it’s not always that easy, but there are some things you can do to ensure a better outcome for your family.
When our children are young, we want to train them to do the right thing, so they develop the right habits in childhood and learn to make the right choices.
“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”
It begins with little things such as learning to pick up after themselves, doing chores before they play, being considerate of other people's needs, and having good manners.
Role Models
Good role models in a child’s life are essential. If the parents treat each other courteously, if they are respectful to their family and friends, if they are honest and helpful with others, their children are more likely to follow suit.
Discipline
There is also a training through discipline that has to occur, too, as no child is born perfect no matter how good his or her role models may be.
Good parents can produce bad children; there are no guarantees that children turn out well.
You have a higher chance of having them grow up to be good people, however, if you understand how to train them in the ways of respect and obedience.
Public School
Public school can undo your hard work, though, because rudeness and crudeness are now the norms, and the teachers have very little authority when it comes to correcting a child's behavior.
Children sent to school for eight hours a day where the teachers are not allowed to discipline them are at a disadvantage.
On the contrary, children who spend their days in a homeschooled environment are with adults who are able to put the time and effort into guiding the kids in the right ways.
In a home or private schools, adults have authority over the children and can discipline them as needed. The right training in childhood is essential to raising a well-mannered, happy child.
Spare the rod, spoil the child, was an old adage that adults used to repeat before the 60's cultural revolution when sound parenting principles were abandoned in favor of unproven, untested theories about how to raise a kid.
Modern Inconveniences
Today, we can add to the problem modern inconveniences such as vulgar films, ribald music, video games, social media, and inappropriate television programs.
Negative influences will unravel any good work you've done to raise your children well, which is why we need to be diligent with the environments we let influence our children.
The Ancient Greeks knew that negative influences in a child's life would help mold their character, and any educator since who has studied the classics or has an ounce of common sense will understand this too.
The rest of society has forgotten it, though, making us negligent in our duty to raise our children according to time-tested principles that work.
A Dishonest Trend
Ninety-seven percent of schoolchildren are dishonest according to statistics gathered by Vickie Abeles, who produced the documentary, Race to Nowhere.
Even without the statistics, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that we are no longer an honest society.
My son took a statistics exam online only to receive an email from the teacher the following day, announcing that some of the students had cheated on the exam.
My son said the exam was easy, too, making it an even more pathetic situation. College students cheating on an easy exam?
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
What happened to the concept of hard work and honesty?
Cheating is a habit for many children today.
When the lines between honesty and dishonesty become so blurred that cheating on exams becomes all too common, we have a serious problem. Cheaters are cheaters. Liars are liars. School doesn't end and real life begin to find these students suddenly turn honest again.
They have become dishonest people. Their characters have formed this way because they are raised in a system that doesn't uphold the values of truth, goodness, and beauty; once so honored in the West.
In a Nutshell
Raise your children well, keep them out of public school, screen multi-media use when they are young (or eliminate it!), avoid inappropriate music, and surround them with natural beauty and good people.
If you do, you'll have accomplished something that is becoming more and more uncommon today; you’ll have raised a decent child.
A child who grows up with the ability to discern truth from falsehood, beauty from ugliness, and good from bad is a child you can be proud to call your own.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler to raise smart, ethical, and critically-thinking children. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Ten Strategies to Stay Calm, Cool, and Relatively Sane When Homeschooling
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Anyone who says homeschooling is easy is stretching the truth. I know, a lot of you are shouting out, "But I've heard you say it's easy many times!"
Read More7 Things Every Successful Homeschooler Understands→
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Here are a few maxims that you need to understand to homeschool successfully.
Read MoreHow to Choose a Good Teacher for a Schoolhouse or Homeschool→
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What is a parent to do who is unable to homeschool their children? My suggestion is to start a small school, as many people are now, but establish them on sound principles, which many people are not doing.
Read MoreIs the Concept of Multiple Learning Styles Overrated?→
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Have we taken the idea of multiple intelligences and learning styles too far?
Read MoreCan You Raise Kids Without Technology in 2022?→
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Do you think it’s possible to raise a 2022 child without technology? Let's look at a few facts…
Read MoreA “Head-Start” in Early Education May Do More Harm Than Good→
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Is expecting our children to leave home at earlier and earlier ages, so they can get a head start with reading, writing, and arithmetic, actually giving them a head start?
Read MoreWhy I never Reached My Potential and How to Spare Your Kids the Same Fate→
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John Taylor Gatto, a renowned educator and best-selling author, said that "schools were dangerous places for children."
Having been educated through the public school system, I can say with certainty, as I’m sure you can too, that my best years of learning were wasted.
Not only were they wasted, but as a public-school student, I was exposed to all sorts of immoral behaviors and mediocre influences in my life.
It wasn't a great beginning.
My Twelve-Year Jail Sentence
In my "twelve-year jail sentence," as Gatto likes to call it, I certainly never learned that a "preposition is a word which governs a noun or pronoun and connects it to anything else in the sentence or clause" (definition according to Mr. Gwynne, author of Gwynne's Grammar).
I memorized not a single piece of poetry, nor did I ever learn my own country’s history with any coherency, let alone other histories of the world.
(I did read a lot of classic books, but not in school. My father supplied me with those, and they were my saving grace.)
It would have been helpful to have learned the above subjects during those 12 wasted years and learned other subjects too, which are essential to living a good life.
For example, learning Aristotelean logic when I was young would have given me the ability to see through the kind of propaganda that flies in our faces every day and deceives us to believe in and do things we would not otherwise believe in or do.
“Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.”
Having a better understanding of world history would have taught me that history repeats itself. I would have known back then to look to the past to understand where we have been, where we were then, and where we were headed.
The Six Purposes of Schooling
Fast forward many years later to my discovery of the six purposes of government schooling that John Taylor Gatto uncovers for us and guess who was livid?
I wasn’t alone.
Like many of us, I realized that I had been cheated of a real education, and there is nothing more infuriating than discovering that you have lost the best years for training your mind to a dumbed-down, nefarious government school program.
I should also tell you of something else that happened to me when I was in public school which has been an impediment throughout my life. As a young kindergarten enrollee, I had developed a false belief that I was not very smart!
This may sound strange, but it happens to be fairly common for children who are almost a year younger than the oldest child in the classroom but expected to do the same level of work.
Unfortunately, beliefs we form from childhood experiences become like deep grooves in our minds, and it can take a lifetime to polish them out, which is why we need to consider carefully the way we are raising our children.
“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”
5 Reasons for Homeschooling
In this brief summary of my unfortunate government school years, did you notice that I just gave you five reasons why concerned parents elect to homeschool their children? If not, let me summarize them for you as it’s important to reflect on them:
Concerned parents want to give their children a real education where their children learn, at the very least, how to read well, write well, and speak well.
They want to give their children proper training in morality and what it means to be an ethical and civilized human being.
They want their children to understand that mediocrity is not good enough; they must learn to strive for excellence.
They don't want their children exposed to early sexual influences, drugs, and perverse ideologies.
They want their children to have self-confidence and as much self-knowledge as they can acquire during a well-spent youth.
These are the five most common reasons for homeschooling, but there are two more that are gaining momentum. Crime is a big problem in schools today, and many parents are not putting their kids into public school or are taking their children out of public school because of safety issues.
I mentioned this to a group of parents about 15 years ago, and one parent thought I was being extreme. But I wasn't. I was just on top of the statistics earlier than they were; now, I believe it is common knowledge that schools are not safe places for kids.
We also have health concerns with the government schools now mandating a new drug for children that many parents feel is unsafe, despite the propaganda, because the ten or twelve years it takes to safely test a new drug is still in the future.
We have many new homeschoolers now because of the mandates which I find interesting.
Now I’ve given you seven reasons why concerned parents choose to homeschool. Here’s one more that seldom gets mentioned, but that I believe is the most important because it encompasses all the rest:
Your children were born with a God-given potential that they will realize throughout the course of their lives if, and only if, they’re given a fair chance.
If you want your children to reach their potentials, the best chance you have to help them is to intelligently homeschool your kids. Don’t let them waste their best years of learning in public school.
Educate your children well by doing it yourself or hiring competent tutors to teach your kids. One-on-one instruction is superior to class instruction which is why the aristocracy were always tutored.
What’s vital to remember is that an education tailored to one is the education of people who lead themselves, and may even lead others, as opposed to being led.
Let me conclude by saying this: living in a dumbed-down world is frightening. Dumbed-down people are easy to manipulate, and Americans may be the most manipulated people on this planet today.
Keep your kids out of public school and homeschool them so they can grow up to be leaders who are intelligent, ethical, critically thinking people.
Mediocrity will not do.
*****
To learn about John Taylor Gatto’s Six Purposes of Government Schooling, use this link.
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life.
Become a Smart Homeschooler and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home using the Smart Homeschooler Academy Curriculum and teaching methods taught in the program. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course and feel secure knowing that you have what you need to homeschool successfully as well as live ongoing support from Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed her own comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Are You Raising Ethical Children?→
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You may be, it can be difficult to tell. Sometimes it requires an honest look into our own behavior. How ethical of a person are we?
“Ethics, also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong.”
And sometimes, it requires an honest look at how we are raising our children. Are we holding them accountable for their actions?
Regardless, each of us has an innate moral nature. At very early ages, children will begin to make judgment calls about what is right and what is wrong. Consider how young a child is when he begins to say things like, "But that's not fair!"
As children mature, we want to teach them how to govern their emotions and act with the intention to do the right thing. Conducting ourselves with integrity is a choice.
“Integrity, from the Latin word: integritas meaning purity; morally, uprightness”
Yet, given the state of affairs today, there appears to be a grave breakdown in our sense of right and wrong, making it challenging to model ethical behavior for our children.
Learning how to determine ethical boundaries begins in the home, but learned behaviors in school also play a role. As Vicky Abeles points out in her iconic film, The Race to Nowhere, 97% of high school students lie and cheat on exams throughout their high school years to be able to graduate at the end of their four-year term.
Now, upon first hearing this, you might think this kind of behavior is restricted to high school, but this isn't the case.
Children who learn to make exceptions for ethical behavior when the exceptions lead to acquiring something important, such as a high school diploma, are at risk of adopting habits contrary to good character.
“It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.”
We can all sympathize with their plight as the demands made on schoolchildren are impossible, but something is wrong when they are part of an educational system that they cannot succeed at unless they lie and cheat. And we have to ask ourselves, "Do we really want to enroll them in such a system?"
Regardless, once bad habits such as these are established, it is unlikely they will be limited to the classroom. On the contrary, a habit is a habit, and to correct a bad one requires an intention to break the habit. But first, a person needs to see that there is a problem.
It's difficult, however, to see that you have a problem when your problem has become the norm. Between the school environment plus the unclear boundaries in the home, one can expect that the child's ability to accurately distinguish between right and wrong will be blurry, at best.
And this is what we are dealing with today. Lying and cheating are the norms to such a degree that even people who think they are ethical are not.
However, each individual is responsible for his own actions. We cannot shift the responsibility of our behavior to anyone or anything else. Science is good at blaming our behavior on mythical chemical imbalances or brain configurations that deviate from the norm.
We are very good at blaming our parents or anything we can reasonably point our fingers at, but the reality is that the only direction we can honestly point our fingers is at ourselves.
We all have the ability to choose and evading responsibility for our choices will get us nowhere. While the blame game may make us feel better momentarily, it will not make us a better person, and it will not help us raise better children.
Before we can assume responsibility for our actions, we have first to understand what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. Once we can make this distinction, we must choose to correct our less-than-admirable behavior, so we act in harmony with our values.
It is of paramount importance that we teach this kind of mindfulness to our children. We must avoid putting them in situations that will undermine this teaching, and we must set a good example for them with our own behavior.
The latter means that we have to be honest with ourselves about the state of our characters. We learn to understand our character by diligently questioning our intentions and actions and correcting them when we find them not aligning with our values.
We all have a conscience and know in our heart of hearts when we are doing something wrong. As my father once said, "The road to Hell is a long series of negotiations with the devil." In other words, it isn't one big thing we do that determines who we are, but the little things we do over and over again that will eventually decide the state of our characters.
The majority of us often compromise our integrity in mindless ways. Sometimes we compromise it in simple acts like withholding information from a friend to produce an outcome that benefits us or maybe the grocery checker forgot to check something in our basket and we walked off without telling her.
But sometimes, we compromise our integrity in more significant ways.
“Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act...”
We might do egregious things like damage someone's bumper and drive off without leaving a note. Maybe we plant the seeds of doubt about another person's character to mutual friends because we are envious of them? Maybe we charge for a high-quality service that we aren't competent to provide.
To correct these kind of behaviors, we have to stop and ask ourselves this question: for how much am I willing to compromise my integrity?
Will I compromise it for the 50 cents I didn't have to pay because the teller missed the apple in my cart? Will I compromise it for the 100 dollars I saved because I didn't fix the bumper that I damaged? Will I compromise it for the benefit I received for withholding information from my friend or lessening people's opinion of someone? Will I compromise my integrity for the extra money I earned for fraudulently advertising something I couldn't fully provide?
When we reflect on especially the minor injustices we commit, we realize for how little we will compromise our own integrity.
If you can understand that the little things add up to the big things, and the big things make up your character, somehow saving the cost of an apple or a bumper repair hardly seem worth it.
“What a piece of work is a man! How Noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In Action, how like an Angel in apprehension, how like a God!
The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—”
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life.
Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with her unique combination of mentors, Elizabeth has developed her own comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
Why You Shouldn't Focus on Your Child's Happiness
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I believe it was Isocrates who said that the healthy child wants to become an adult. In raising our children well, we must teach them how to act and think like mature people.
Yet, the phrase we hear most often repeated is this:
"I just want him to be happy."
But if you think about it, it isn't what you most want. What you most want is that he grows up to be a decent, hard-working, mature adult. If you raise him to become these things, then happiness will follow.
As the ancients understood and current research now proves, happiness is found in living a virtuous life. The modern pursuit of pleasure and good times, it turns out, is just a myth being thrust upon us by very sophisticated and manipulative marketing techniques.
Contrary to this empty rhetoric, a good life does not come from the pursuit and acquisition of pleasure, in whatever form you desire, but it comes from being a virtuous person. As the concept of "virtue" seems to be an idea that’s gone out of fashion, let me share with you some of the qualities that a virtuous person might possess:
Humility, courage, mercy, patience, tolerance, diligence, and generosity. These are some of the qualities a truly “happy” person might embody.
To inculcate these kind of qualities in your child, you must begin when he is very young.
You must train him in the way of good habits, and then, and only then, will you be able to raise a happy child who later becomes a happy adult. One state naturally follows the other.
What is the key to raising a child with good habits?
Raise a child who is obedient and does the right thing, not from fear of you, but from a deep love and respect for you.
We don't need behavioral studies to prove this; we need to pay attention. A child who is always complaining and throwing tantrums and always asking for this and that is not a happy child, is he? Nor is the child who is always doing what he is told not to do.
However, the kind of training that protects from these unhappy states must start when your child is very young. You should begin training your child in the ways of good behavior as soon as he or she turns two years of age.
If you wait until much later to begin, the training process becomes increasingly more difficult. Waiting too long means you will need to correct bad habits first and then work on instilling the good habits in your child.
It’s a much more tedious and frustrating experience to correct bad habits than it is to avoid them from forming in the first place.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”
If you fail to raise your child well, then he will be destined to spend the rest of his life working to correct deeply ingrained negative traits (a lifetime pursuit and not for the easily discouraged). Even worse, he will perpetuate and suffer the ills in life (as will everyone he encounters) that arise from not being a good person.
You see, the opposite of the virtuous person would be the wretched one who will never know any real happiness. We've all known wretched people, especially as they get older and nature carves their wretched states into their faces. We certainly don't want this for our children!
In a nutshell, if you focus on the happiness factor when your child is young, you will fail to raise a happy child. Focus on raising a decent child first, and his happiness will follow.
If you don't know where to begin, do this: throw out all of your parenting books and stop asking your friends for advice (the latter is the equivalent of the blind leading the blind). Moving forward, begin to think about the consequences of your actions as a parent.
Start asking yourself questions such as, "If I do this, then what is the message I am giving my child?" If I let him do this, then what am I teaching him about his behavior and the journey of life?"
For example, this may surprise you to know that many parents look to their children's desires to decide how they should educate them. I know this for a fact (no studies done, yet) because the parents say things to me like, "I thought about homeschooling, but he wanted to go to school with his neighborhood friends," or "I thought about homeschooling, but he's so social, and I think he'd be happier in school."
How you educate your child is a huge decision that will alter the course of his life, but he is too young to make such a life-changing decision. You are the adult; this is your decision to make for your child.
It doesn't matter if he prefers to go to school with friends or that you think he would be happier in school because he has friends to socialize with every day. What matters is whether or not a school is the best place for your child or whether another option might be such as homeschooling.
You have to weigh the pros and cons accurately and objectively before you make this kind of a decision.
Base your decision upon your values and what you want for your children. If you want to raise decent children, you have to consider the moral environment of the child.
If you're going to raise highly intelligent children, you have to evaluate the level of academic training a school offers. If you want both, then you have to look for an educational model that provides both,
If you only care about your child's immediate happiness, then you can let him make this decision.
I used the example of educational decisions because I hear about them a lot, but the truth is that there are many decisions we let our children make every day, such as when they can finish playing; when they need to do their chores; when they need to get ready for bed.
Instead of training them to understand that these are non-negotiable commands we make of our children, we go to the negotiating table with them and let them argue their case for an extension of time for whatever it is they want to do.
We also exhaust ourselves in the process, which is one reason parents find raising children so challenging today. It's always tiring to have to argue with someone and then give in to them when they should have done what you asked them to do in the first place.
Children need most, and what they don't have enough of are adults who guide them on their way to maturity by concerning themselves less with whether or not their children are happy and more with whether or not the parents are training their children well.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
The point to childhood is to prepare for adulthood; you should be less concerned about making a child happy and more concerned about raising a child who grows up to be a responsible, honorable, and mature adult.
It's not uncommon today to see grown children well into their 30's, or 40's still living at home because they can't make it on their own. The other day, my 30-something chiropractor told me that half of his friends still live at home.
I know of many situations where the parents still have aging children at home. An offspring well into adulthood and living at home out of necessity was unheard of when I was young.
Literally.
Make your priority for your children less about their happiness and more about behaving well and doing the right thing.
If you do, the chances are strong that you'll be able to enjoy your golden years knowing your kids are doing well and on the way to acquiring the kind of happiness that comes from living a good life.
*****
Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.
Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.
For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.
Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.
☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.
