Whose Values Will They Use In Decision Making?

I hope I haven't written on this topic before. In my old age, my memory fails me from time to time.

On the surface, this post has to do with teaching our children about goal setting and goal achievement. Underneath, it has to do with much more.

The example I read was this. If the goal is to read 10 books in a year, and the goal is no more specific than that, then any 10 books will do. You could read a book on history, a book or two on sports, a few biographies and even some porn and all of it would contribute to the general goal of reading 10 books in a year.

However, what intervenes between setting the goal and achieving the goal is our values. If our values hold that porn is something we avoid like the plague, then that kind of book will not be part of the goal. Determining and being guided by our values, then, plays a really important role as we set goals and strive to achieve them.

Where this comes into focus is asking the question, "Who is more influential in helping my children establish values? The home life of our children, or the school life of our children (meaning schooling outside the home)?". I find this a valid question, because of how demanding in hours and days schooling is, outside of the home. There are at least 6 hours away from home, plus or minus, just in class and the lunchroom. Then add to that time in the bus. Add to that time spent doing the mountains of homework that they often come home with, which causes them to not be able to spend social time with the family at home. Add to that, both parents working in over 50% of the cases, causing them often, to come home tired, irritable and unprepared to focus on managing and shaping home life. The result can often be, that people other than us as parents are having more influence in modeling, teaching, and presenting values, than we as parents do.

One former school teacher I recently conversed with said that in her estimation, over 40% of the children in the public system where she had worked, had parents whose general attitude was to accept whatever the school offered without any questions as to quality or options that might benefit their children. She said, "This group is just happy their children are in school at all."

Of course, not all values outside of the home are negative, and not all values inside the home are positive. Still, for home schooling parents, it is good to remind ourselves that one positive option we have, if we take advantage of it, is to thoughtfully and purposefully execute a plan of influence, that exposes our children, in powerful and meaningful ways, to positive and moral values that will inform their decision making processes as they pursue their own goals, purposefully or coincidentally.

Again, between setting the goal and achieving the goal sit the values of our children, shaping and forming decisions they are making about the details of the goals, ie, the direction of their lives. While this might not seem to be a big deal when the are young, as the good book says, "raise up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Part of our home education opportunity, an important part, is exposing our children to positive and moral values that have proven over time to lead to joy and happiness instead of the counterfeits some all to often accept and use as they make life decisions.

Any help we receive from outside the home in the positive shaping of values is always welcomed. All too often, however, upon inspection, we can find, another value set, either from instructors and/or the organizations they work for, creeping into the subtleties of influence of our children work and study under. And what they do or don't do when we are not around, can often be an issue of poor values they adopted without us even knowing it has happened.

So home schoolers! Take advantage of this positive value shaping opportunity you have in your hands, "and when they are old, they ....."

Harvest People

If businesses pay consultants to give them encouragement, guidance and remind them to keep on keeping on, when they are doing things right, where to educators go, especially home schoolers, for the same kind of a shot in the arm?

Cyndy and I have been married 33 years. June 13th actually was our 33rd anniversary. It is 32 years since we had our first child and 28 years since we decided to home school. Looking back, it is clear that the early years of our family, were like spring years, where fields were being plowed and seeds being planted. One good decision we made during that time, was not to think that we had all the answers or that our friends who were in the same age bracket had them either.

The people in our lives who had the answers were the ones in the harvest phase of their lives, the harvest people. They didn't guess about which seeds flourished and which did not. While many of our peers, who also had young children, were full of "I think" or "It's my opinion that..." or "When I was growing up...", the harvest people in our lives, spoke with an uncommon and mostly humble authority. In essence they said, "We did this, and this is what we harvested. We didn't to this and this is what we harvested." There were times when the harvest people would look you right in the eye and with a more special earnestness say "Whatever you do, don't do this..." or "Be sure that you do this...". The eyes and earnestness of their expression was riveting. I am thankful that more often than not, Cyndy and I measured the theories of the "spring and summer" people we knew by the "results" experienced and shared by the "harvest people" in our lives. Their ideas and experience helped us make our personal decisions about which seeds to plant back in the "spring and summer" days, how often to water or weed and when to leave the garden alone or when to start over.

Now we find ourselves in a most peculiar situation. Cyndy and I are "harvest people" ourselves, but because of the size of our family (11 kids) we are still cultivating our garden just like "spring and summer" people. Most acquaintances our age have long since left the fields around their own homes, to watch the far flung fields being cultivated by their children. To be sure, we are watching our older children work their own fields, make their own planting choices, weeding choices and nurturing choices. We observe the seeds they are planting with interest and sometimes concern. Because of a lifetime of sowing seeds of our own, we know for ourselves that some seeds will bear wonderful, pleasing and satisfying fruit. We also know that some seeds will most likely turn into unpleasant fruit and it concerns us.

Isn't it odd, but predictable, that many of the seeds we choose to plant, almost without thinking or considering, are the seeds handed to us by our own parents as we grew up. Sometimes the seeds bearing bitter fruit in our own lives, find themselves in our gardens and we can't figure out why or what to do about it? Likewise, how odd but predictable it is, that those around us, who are "spring and summer" people, look often to themselves and unearned wisdom, instead of the harvest people in their lives whose results and wisdom bought at a price could encourage a more pleasing harvest? Natural I guess. But sometimes unnecessary.

However, make no mistake about it. It is just as Cyndy said as we finished our walk this morning,"Honey, we are harvesting now, the seeds we have planted over a lifetime." Choices we made under the guidance of the harvest people in our lives, seeds we planted and cultivated over a lifetime of choices, eventually bear fruit. Others can talk, but the harvest people can look at the seeds and know the fruit even before the planting happens. The fruit IS the evidence of the seed. For good and for bad, the fruit is the evidence of the seeds chosen. And with this comes a warning: seeds are very small things, in comparison to the fruit they become. We were told that back then, but now I get it. A lifetime of small choices, small seeds, and the next thing you know, there are these large plants, even trees and sometimes weeds in your garden and you wonder where it all came from and what to do now? Hopefully, what you do is enjoy. And you will, by choosing over a lifetime, the right, small seeds throughout the planting and nurturing season.

We have always been thankful for the harvest people in our lives. When we were younger and only had a few plants to care for, and now even more that we are older harvest people ourselves, with many more plants to nurture, I thank God for sending to us harvest people. Reaching out and listening to them was another good, small choice we are going to continue to make.

Agency Means Nothing Until There Is A Clear Choice

Many discussions about home schooling our children cross over into discussions about child rearing. And child rearing discussions seem to lead to a discussion about interacting with and/or leading youth generally.

Building strong youth, is all about building into them the ability to make good choices. Our children are going to be faced with all kinds of them, when we aren't around to "coach" them. So practice with choosing, early in life and experiencing consequences for good and ill significantly and early in life, is necessary.

Parents, leaders of youth, especially leaders of adults, seem to reluctant to ask someone to step it up. One fear seems to be that by asking someone to do something, where a "yes" or "no" answer is required, interpersonal relationships run the risk of being damaged if the answer is not what we hope for.

However, until we give someone a choice, a clear choice, they have no opportunity to exercise their right to choose. Therefore they have little opportunity to strengthen their ability to make good and wise choices when no one is around to watch them.

I am not sure why leaders of youth and/or parents are so often reluctant to offer clear choices and administer or allow obvious consequences. I don't understand the motivation behind allowing them skate day after day, without clear choices? Yet, the results of weak youth are everywhere to be seen.

We have a unique opportunity as parents to interact with our children each and every day. By applying the principle of choice and accountability regularly, consistently and daily, we can build into our children a respect for the power of choice they have and a joy in making good choices. Teaching our children to use the power they have to choose, wisely, may be some of the best teaching we ever do in the home, even if a few wrds end up mis-spelled.

Authority with our Children

In his book, "The Servant" author and lecturer Jim Hunter makes this observation, "With the proper will, we can chose to love, the verb, which is about identifying and meeting the legitimate needs, not wants, of those we lead. When we meet the needs of others we will , by definition, be called upon to serve and even sacrifice. When we serve and sacrifice for others, we build authority or influence, the "Law of the Harvest," as Theresa said. And when we build authority with people, then we have earned the right to be called leader."

Love, the verb, is all about behaving well toward others, even when we disagree with them or are irritated or frustrated with them. Love, the feeling, as we all know, comes and goes. So it can't be the kind of trustable love spoken of by the prophets. Charity never faileth. Yet, with love the verb active in our lives, we can always choose to behave well toward others, or never fail them in how we treat them.

In many cases, this is naturally a part of the home schooling environment, because of a form of natural selection. Parents who are willing to take the responsibility upon them of nurturing at home, offer a model of service and sacrifice for their children that is invaluable. Invaluable, because children learn so much more from what they see modeled than from what they are told.

A family name, at the very least, is the legacy we leave behind for future generations to view and judge. Choosing to model and impress in the lives of our children, lasting values such as true leadership, has the potential to extend into the lives of those in our current version of human kind, but also in lives beyond. It is so worth it.