|
A Reader’s Review
By Kelly Benedict
Whether you’ve been home schooling for 10 months
or 10 years, everyone is prone to a bad day, or even a bad
year, once in awhile. However, with home schooling where
the mother generally does most, if not all of the teaching,
life can be sometimes incredibly overwhelming. There can
be a myriad of reasons or circumstances that cause stress
in our lives; only to which adding home schooling to the
mix can often times cause us “to burn out”.
It may not even always be the fact that it is “just
school” that causes this, but an over-all combination
of “life in general.” But do you know what?
That’s okay. That’s real every day life. We’re
bringing learning to our homes; it too can be a time of
teaching that has nothing to do with textbooks and workbooks.
Authors Raymond and Dorothy Moore, often times referred
to as the “Grandparents of Home Schooling, ”
have written a book for those who want to know “What
Is It. What Causes It. And How to Overcome It.”
First you must realize that if “you can read with
understanding, write with meaning, speak clearly, and add,
subtract, multiply and divide, and if you love and can respond
to your children, you can be, (or already are), a good teacher!”
You can rest in that.
“This book was written with six major goals in mind:
(1) provide a background for home education; (2) tell how
to avoid burnout in parents, and in children; (3) suggest
the quickest and most effective ways to cure burnout when
parents and children are already sick from it; (4) give
examples – mostly in their own words – of parents
who have followed sound formulas and have become highly
successful home teachers, some of them having been badly
“burned”; (5) back up this counsel with chapters
in such needy areas as basics, organization, lesson plans,
home industries, certification, etc.; (6) repeat facts often
enough throughout the book to drive them home in the face
of standard practices that contradict them.”
I realize that sometimes it is easier to just abandon what
you feel God has shown you to do, as in home schooling,
and throw your kids back in to a public or private school
when the going gets tough. However, God promises to never
give us more than we can handle with Him, so instead of
taking the easy way out, take the time to read this book
and apply the suggestions and principles that are in it.
It will bring you back from “desperation and frustration
to sanity and realism.”
The information provided on this site does
not necessarily represent the views or opinions of any of
the members of the Home Educators Network. HEN does not
endorse the viewpoints nor recommend the products represented
by any of the links from this site. These links are offered
as points which are of interest and use to many homeschoolers.
None of the information distributed by HEN, either verbal
or written, is intended as legal advice and should not take
the place of legal counsel from a qualified, informed attorney. |
