By: Val Harrison, The Practically Speaking MOM
As homeschool parents, it’s so easy to get overly focused on the academic success of our children and neglect other key areas of life, such as the relationships we have with them, their relationship with God, or their physical health (mind and body). While all of these areas matter, often it is the academic achievement pressure that seems to overshadow our homeschool days.
*How can we foster growth in all the important areas of our child’s life while reducing education stress without throwing away their academic success altogether?
*Won’t our child’s education decline if we don’t make it the top priority?
*Is there a simple way to reach academic excellence AND grow a well-balanced child who becomes a well-balanced adult? What does this look like?
I hear you, parents, and I’ve asked all of those questions myself. Keeping the growth areas of our children in appropriate balance can be tough.
There is always fallout or ripple effects when we neglect key areas of life. For example, if we neglect the parent/child relationship they likely won’t want to listen to us when they’re dealing with big decisions or won’t come to us with private pressures in life. How well we have maintained the parent/child relationship will determine the strength of our influence in those difficult or secret moments in adolescence and beyond.
What about when we’ve focused only on academics and then they don’t perform well? We, unintentionally, then, assign a big FAILURE label on ourselves and our child because our main measuring stick was their high scores in education. Is that what brings significance to their life? Is their academic success what brings significance to our life?
Most homeschool parents feel so much pressure to “perform” well by producing an academic over-achiever in your child. After all, we feel like the whole world is evaluating our every move and our child’s every ounce of knowledge. The stress is especially heavy when it comes to preparing them for college and career.
I totally get it! I’ve been raising seven kids for the last 26 years and we’ve homeschooled all the way through. Sometimes that pressure has been brought on by others’ intrusive questioning of my kids, and other times it has been self-imposed, fearing that I wasn’t doing a good enough job with my kids’ education.
Yet, I also have wanted my kids to do well in life after our family’s homeschool in many more ways than just knowing that they had high marks academically. As adults, we don’t walk around with name tags saying, “I got all A’s in school” or “I used to have all the physics formulas memorized.” These academic markers are merely a small part of their overall future, so let’s not allow the wrong markers to define our children’s daily life growing up.
The culture’s lie is that focusing on academics is the road map to success and a good future. However, I believe it is best if we take a different path to success for our children.
Here’s what I want to you to know, my intentional parent-friend: There is more than one path to academic success; We can take the Education-centric Approach which is filled with stress and pressure, or we can take the Character Road which is guided by God using His manual for effective growth in children and allowing Him alone to be our measuring stick.
I can zero in on high performance academic results as our top priority. That’s one way to get excellence in education. OR, I can focus on developing character qualities in my kids such as integrity (doing the right thing no matter who is watching), wisdom (applying knowledge in the best way possible), hard work and follow-through, trouble-shooting, problem-solving, team work, and people skills such as honesty, articulating ideas, presenting reasoning to support my ideas, etc. If I focus on these skills, I am preparing them for much more than just academics, but it is, at the same time, creating a very exceptional student. Two roads to the same end point. I choose the Character Road. It is not EASY and is TIME-CONSUMING, but honestly, I’d say the other road is also not easy and is time-consuming. The Character Road reaps much more benefits than the Academic Road. On the Character Road, academic success is just one stop on the path. There’s lots of other great intersections on this trail – such as quality relationships, a better understanding of self and God, and a healthier body and mind.
One of those stops along the Character Road is healthy relationships. I’ve never met a person with poor character that has healthy relationships. Thriving relationships are one of the blessings along the character trail. You know what is one of the greatest benefits to having a good relationship with your growing, older child? This strong relationship means that we MAINTAIN THE RIGHT TO INFLUENCE their life. This is critical as they move into the middle and teen years when the parent/child relationship can really be tested.
If I have focused on character strengths and if I have remained vigilant about the health of our relationship, then my child has two very strong chords keeping them aligned with quality academics. They are performing well because it is in their character to do so, and they’re performing well because they desire to bless me, their parent, knowing that I want them to do their best.
What if there’s another chord that keeps them tethered to excelling in academics when they take the Character Road? There is! It’s knowing God, His character qualities, and knowing who we are because we’re made in His image. This is the best way to travel the Character Road – teaching the character of God, our Creator, whose image we reflect. If we seek a lifestyle that daily brings our attention to the attributes of God and allowing Him to develop these qualities in us, His children, then we’ve got yet another strand holding our children to quality effort and behavior in education because they are seeking excellence in all of their life.
Now I bet you’re thinking that a Character Road sounds kind of abstract, confusing, and difficult to manage. Well, I’ve got two tools that are both very simple that I’ve used for over twenty years to aid my kids in the right kind of growth. I call them Raising a Luke 2:52 Kid and a Hierarchy of Needs to God’s Will for My Child’s Life -Daily and Long Term.
Luke 2:52 says, “Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, favor with God, and favor with man.” This verse has served as a great guide for me to keep a clear focus on all four areas of my children’s growth, not just laser-focused only on academics. I need to seek their growth in their physical ability and health, their academics and wisdom, in their relationships with others (including me!), and their relationship with God, including their understanding of their own worth because He created them. We see this same concept that people are four parts in Matt 22:37, Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30, Deut 6:5, which all reference that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart (relationships), soul (relationship with God), mind (academics and wisdom), and strength (physical health).
I’ve been monitoring and goal-setting these four areas of my kids’ lives for over twenty years and it has been a compass for me rather than getting lopsided in one area. I haven’t always been successful at remaining equally balanced in those areas, but since it has been my goal, that has helped tremendously. This is one of the three things that I’ll be talking about in my workshop titled, “Balancing Academics and Relationships” at the upcoming convention. I’ll also be talking about how to find God’s will for your child’s life – daily and long term – and I’ll share some academic strategies for excellence without harming relationship. I hope to see you in my workshop!
You can also hear more from me on the topic of Raising a Luke 2:52 kid –
Click here to listen to my podcast on Raising a Luke 2:52 Kid: https://www.practicallyspeakingmom.com/podcast/episode/4ad128b9/14-helping-your-kids-grow-in-character-wisdom-relationships-and-health-raising-a-luke-252-kid
Click here to read my blog post on Raising a Luke 2:52 Kid: https://www.practicallyspeakingmom.com/post/podcast-blog-post-raising-a-luke-2-52-kid-character-mental-physical-and-relationships-too
My other workshops at the KSHE conference will be: “Emotional Health in the Middle and Teen Years” and “Start Here.”
Mother of seven, Val Harrison, knows how you feel as a dedicated yet overwhelmed mom! Speaking at conventions, moms’ groups, and in parenting classes for many years, Val encourages and equips parents with practical solutions in all stages of parenthood. She’s been homeschooling for 22 years and has graduated five, so far, from their homeschool, Heritage Academy.
Her books include:
- When Littles Are Loud: Maximizing the Moments without Drowning in Chaos
- Wearing All Your Hats without Wearing Out: Finding Focus for Your Family to be the Masterpiece God Intended it to be
- Clash in Your Home: A Game Plan for Cleaning Up the Conflict
- Gaining Momentum: Preparing Your Student for a Career with or without College
To contact Val for speaking at your moms’ event or to have Val and her husband Rich speak at your marriage event, she can be reached at val@practicallyspeakingmom.com.
Through her website, her podcast, “Practically Speaking MOM — Intentional MOM, Strong FAMILY,” Instagram and Facebook @PracticallySpeakingMOM, or her private Facebook community “Intentional Mom, Strong Family,” Val wants you to remember that your family, even with all of its unique personalities, imperfections, and scars, is God’s masterpiece in the making!
Kansas Home Educators 