L: Lessons

"The baby is the lesson."

I tend to be a task-oriented overachiever. When I started homeschooling, I had so many things I wanted to teach my children. However, one of the first things I learned as a new homeschool mom was that I wasn't good at being gentle or kind while compelling my small children to complete lessons, particularly lessons they didn't want to do. When one of the boys, either B10 or H8, was a baby, I came upon this article, which started to change how I viewed my homeschooling task. I realized that when I was interrupted, the topic of instruction had changed from whatever I wished it were to how a grown-up handles being interrupted. When I modeled irritable frustration, that was what my children learned was appropriate. Later, if I interrupted them to do a lesson or chore that wasn't their idea, they were likely to reflect my irritable frustration right back at me. As the article said, "Homeschool is the growing and nurturing of fine, upright people. So, how we treat and value the baby really is the lesson."

Now, it's been several years since my youngest child could reasonably be called a baby. But interruptions don't stop as the children grow. My homeschooling style has become more relaxed as I realize how much my children learn by pursuing their own interests, but there are still many times a day when I am deeply in the flow of learning together with one or two of my children. We read together for hours every day, and P15 has told me she learns chemistry best when I read the textbook to her and am available to discuss the problems as she does them. I still need to focus on my attitude toward being interrupted at the climax of a storyline or central point of a line of reasoning in order to get out E5's Duplos or enter the password so B10 can access instructions from the Lego website. Children don't just learn what you think you are teaching them - there is so much more that they glean from all the details than what is immediately obvious. 

If you homeschool, what are some lessons you have learned?