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Three Essentials For Every Homeschool

When parents decide to homeschool, the first aspects they generally think about are curriculum and schedules. While these are a significant part of a successful homeschool experience, there are other factors that will make a much bigger difference. Here are three key elements your homeschool absolutely needs to function well.

#1 – Love With Like

Many parents make the decision to homeschool out of a deep love for their child. They realize that for whatever reason, a traditional school setting is not the best choice for their child. Because of this, homeschooling is often motivated by tremendous sacrificial love.

Love is certainly the foundation of a successful homeschool. But while every parent naturally loves his or her children, it’s not enough to simply love our children when we homeschool them. We must also like them and make them aware of it. We must like being with them. We must like them as individual people with their own set of quirks, gifts, needs, and personality. We must cultivate friendship with them. It isn’t enough to love them in a deep and somewhat abstract way. Our children must experience daily that we truly like them and enjoy being with them.

#2 – Patience

Homeschooling will try the patience of even the most loving parent. There are going to be days when absolutely everything goes wrong. There are going to be weeks that feel like the most discouraging, unproductive period of time you’ve ever experienced. Children are going to wake up on the wrong side of the bed, science experiments are going to fail, and learning materials will be lost for hours on end.

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Patience will allow you to look at the big picture of what you are doing. Instead of focusing on the failures of that day or week, it will help you to focus on what you are trying to accomplish overall. Patience will allow you to see your children as little people in process who need your help to accomplish the work of growing up. Patience will help you focus on the real message behind what your children are saying as you study them and learn to understand what makes them tick as individuals.

#3 – Flexibility

Closely related to patience is flexibility. Families are constantly in flux because people are constantly changing. If you add in job changes, moving, and relationship challenges outside the home, you start to realize that homeschooling does not take place in a peaceful vacuum. It takes place in the midst of real life.

Children go through growth spurts and disequilibrium at various ages. These times when their bodies and minds are going through tremendous changes can make them very challenging to parent and teach. Disruption to family routines can make children uneasy and unsettled. Unlike a teacher in a traditional school, you don’t get to send them home at the end of the day and forget about it.

Flexibility is what flows out of love and patience. Flexibility is what makes it possible to go on when everything seems to be going wrong. Flexibility looks at the big picture with love and patience and makes adjustments where necessary. Flexibility looks at the real needs of the individual in that moment, day, or week and adapts as necessary.

So while buying curriculum and organizing schedules often take up much of a homeschooling parent’s time, don’t forget about the three true essentials of homeschooling  – love with like, patience, and flexibility.

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About Sallie Borrink

Sallie enjoys homeschooling her only child, Caroline, in beautiful West Michigan. As relaxed homeschoolers, they enjoy learning from all of life. Sallie creates learning materials and writes about homeschooling, parenting, faith and simple living at Sallie Borrink.

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