A Quiet Simple Life

Sallie Schaaf Borrink

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Homeschooling - Discipleship Homeschooling

My Life as a One-and-Done Teacher and Homeschooler

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentMy Life as a One-and-Done Teacher and Homeschooler

We start our homeschool year tomorrow so I have been organizing materials and preparing. This is the first year I’ve purchased multiple curriculum selections that include a printed student textbook and a teacher’s manual. The manuals, in particular, caused me to reflect briefly on my teaching career.

Every year I was a teacher, I was in the position for one year and then done. Too many stories to go into, but I was a “new” teacher in a new school every year I taught. I never had the opportunity to teach something a second time. I was always starting over.

Now as the homeschooling mom of an only child, it’s the same thing. All the time, money, and preparation I’m putting into this and then it’s just done. I’ll never teach these subjects again. Any valuable experience I learn along the way won’t be applied to another child.

I’m not sure why my life has unfolded in this way, but that’s what has happened.

All that said, we have some great curriculum choices made for this year. I suspect it will be by far the most demanding year I’ve had a homeschool mom, but the subjects are all interesting so I’m sure Caroline and I will have a good time together. ♥

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INFJ Mom Homeschooling an INFP Daughter

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentINFJ Mom Homeschooling an INFP Daughter

In the not-too-distant past, I decided to stop discussing personality types on here for various reasons mostly related to faith. I had already thoroughly rejected even the idea of the Enneagram (Should Christians Use The Enneagram?), but still referred to the Myers-Briggs types from time to time. So I pulled the posts and started removing that content from my website.

In the end, I still find the general idea of Myers-Briggs typing helpful. It’s been very helpful in parenting a gifted/2e child who is wired the way she is.

So I’ve been using it as a parenting tool from time to time. I’ve made it very clear to Caroline that it’s just a tool to help people understand why different people respond to life and situations differently. It’s not always accurate and no one is bound to a type, especially Christians who have the Holy Spirit. Watching some of the Frank James videos on CensorTube has provided us with numerous helpful conversation starting points.

The other day Caroline saw this meme on Pinterest and sent it to me.

So true.

I’m an INFJ who can lean toward INTJ. Caroline is an INFP who can lean toward INTP. It’s interesting how much we are alike in some ways even though we are different in others.

The combination can make for some great conversations.

I put the types in the post title because I want INFJ moms to find me if they are looking for someone who “gets” them. I also want moms of INFPs to find me if I can be of help to them. I don’t have all the answers, but I have figured out quite a few things over the past seventeen years. I don’t want all that to go to waste if it can help others.

So that’s why I’m opting to use a bit of the Myers-Briggs again.

I recently shared this video on my other website in I’m An INFJ Trying To Save You From Destruction. I thought I would share it here just for laughs. David, Caroline, and I burst out laughing watching this, especially mine. It’s so accurate. (If you’ve never seen Frank James before, he’s pretty quirky.)

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Discipleship Homeschooling – Our Homeschool Philosophy

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentDiscipleship Homeschooling – Our Homeschool Philosophy

We’re approaching the end of our homeschooling journey with just two more years to go after this one. I’ve done a lot of reflecting on what we’ve done to get to this point. Like most homeschoolers, we’ve done many things very well. We made some excellent choices that have paid off. There are also things I would do differently if I could do them over. We’ve had our struggles at times.

Because of our family’s particular life situations, we’ve never fit neatly into any homeschooling framework or fit any of the traditional labels. The only description I found that fit us fairly well was relaxed homeschooling and so that is the terminology I used whenever I wrote about homeschooling. Eclectic and delight-directed felt too curriculum-focused and never appealed to me as accurate for us. We were close to unschooling at times, but we’re not unschoolers. Relaxed homeschooling was the best way for me to describe it using a term that was already circulating in the homeschool world.

But I still think it fails to address the fullness of what we’ve done. The word “relaxed” feels like it carries a bit of a negative connotation in our culture. I don’t think younger homeschoolers know or understand the label since it is not widely used except by long-time homeschoolers and someone who set up a website with that name for selling printable curriculum. If I tell someone I’m a relaxed homeschooler, it isn’t self-evident what it means which has always been a bit frustrating..

So last October as I reflected back on our homeschooling experience and discussed it with others, I realized something else better describes what we’ve done (and even bought the domain name for it at that time when the name clicked for me). It might seem a bit odd to adopt a new description for what we do this late in our homeschooling journey, but that’s where we are and doing so is also intentional.

I would describe our homeschooling philosophy as Discipleship Homeschooling.

What are the key characteristics?

  • Christ-centered
  • Intentional
  • Parent-led
  • Focused on growth of whole child
  • Family relationships focused

I’ve often remarked over the years that I’m making it up as I go and that’s the truth. I’ve never attended a homeschool convention. I’ve read very few homeschooling books. I’ve relied on God, prayer, the Scriptures, David, some experienced homeschoolers I trust, and my own intuition. I don’t mean this in a prideful way as if there was nothing I could learn from others. It was because nothing else resonated with me for our particular situation other than some relaxed homeschooling articles and blog posts I read here and there at the right time. Otherwise I felt very alone in what I was trying to do.

Why is that? Part of it was due to the particular needs of my creative, gifted/2e child that were quite different from the mainstream. It’s also because my thinking about life completely integrates all of it and I find most people don’t experience and think about life in that way. Most people operate with many segments that overlap (and interfere) with each other. They can think exclusively about one or two segments of their life and keep them completely separate from others. I’m not wired that way.

In our experience, discipleship homeschooling is about assessing the child’s interconnected needs each step of the way and making intentional choices to meet those needs and facilitate growth. The needs include:

  • spiritual
  • emotional
  • educational
  • social
  • physical

All of the choices we’ve made have been impacted at various times and to varying degrees by the above. Sometimes one need overrode the rest. The primary need changed from time to time. All five were always in play, but to varying degrees based on life.

Homeschooling for us has never been only about what we would traditionally call the academics. In many ways, academics was not even the primary focus at times if you think of academics in the traditional book learning kind of way. I see a child’s education as far more than academic subjects as organized by a bureaucrat or textbook writer. When you add in the additional blessings and challenges of gifted/2e (both parenting and homeschooling), you are compelled to create a totally different kind of educational experience for your child.

So we’re Discipleship Homeschoolers. Yes, I coined the term. I would imagine, however, there are many of us who fit this description and have felt a bit adrift at times in the sea of homeschool labels. Hopefully we can find each other.

So why adopt a new name and not just continue to work with the acceptable label of relaxed homeschoolers? Because as I write about our experiences, I want a more precise term. As newer and younger homeschoolers read what I’ve written in the coming years, I want them to understand the fullness of what we set out to do and accomplished. Our homeschool journey will not resonate with everyone. But our homeschool journey will resonate loudly with some and those are the people for whom I’m writing.

Perhaps in doing so I can help future homeschoolers feel less alone and a bit more understood as they take their own unique journey of discipleship homeschooling.

So I will be going into my older posts and tweaking them to reflect this change. I’m doing this to avoid the confusion of having relaxed homeschooling posts on the site while I’m writing about discipleship homeschooling moving forward. I don’t plan to change the posts in any significant ways because I’m not out to rewrite history. Far from it. I want an accurate record of what we did – both the successes and the struggles. But I think the change will be helpful and this post will serve as a record as to why we made the adjustments we did.

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What Do Quiet and Simple Mean To Me Today?

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentWhat Do Quiet and Simple Mean To Me Today?

Many years ago I started using “A Quiet Simple Life’ as a part of my blogging. Over the weekend I had an epiphany of sorts as I realized the way I think about this phrase has changed. In particular, the way I think about the term simple has changed. What simple, simple living, and simplicity meant all those years ago has changed both in the culture and in my own life.

I sat down with my microphone and spent a few minutes discussing what it meant then and what it means now. I also discussed how this ties in with changing my focus from relaxed homeschooling to discipleship homeschooling moving forward.

You will find this chat in the playlist below under “What Do Quiet and Simple Mean To Me Today?”

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What Is Worthy Of My Child’s Time?

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentWhat Is Worthy Of My Child’s Time?

When homeschooling was new and the homeschool pioneers were fighting for the opportunity to legally teach their children in the home, they put together a course of study however they could. There was no internet shopping or websites devoted to homeschooling. Huge homeschool conventions with featured speakers flown in from around the country were literally decades away. Parents used real books, worked with small Christian school publishers, and otherwise made what they needed. Although academics were certainly important, the early pioneers focused a great deal on family and relationships.

Over the past few decades the homeschool market has exploded both in terms of curriculum and ideologies. Homeschoolers face an overwhelming number of options at this point. To be totally honest, I’m not sure it’s a good thing. I believe being faced with too many options is perhaps just as bad as having only a few limited options. (You could even make an argument it might be worse but that would be a post for another day.)

The homeschool community has experienced many trends and even some fads. They continue to this day. I will refrain from mentioning what I observe to be some of the current ones since my goal with this post isn’t to bring wrath down on my head. (I did that once with my milquetoast post about why we didn’t do Classical Conversations and several years later the comments still bubble up anew from time to time.) But there are definitely ideas and curriculum that explode into the homeschool world and become “the thing” for a number of years. The pressure to participate can be significant because people are sure “this is it.”

Recognizing all of this reality does raise the question of what a mother should choose for her child. How does she make those decisions regarding which ideology to embrace and what to buy? Practically everything is promoted as being necessary to provide a child with a “great education.” Every ideology’s adherents believe they do it the best way and the pressure to do it “right” (as they promote it) can be intense. No homeschool mom wants to deny her child the “best education” possible.

But I think there is something to consider that can lessen the burden.

In a recent discussion with a fellow homeschool mom, I made the observation that just because something is worthy of study it doesn’t mean it’s worthy of my child’s time. I think I have instinctively known this and that’s why we became relaxed homeschoolers when so many other people I knew were embracing classical education, Charlotte Mason, etc. They didn’t fit my child and I knew it.

But I hadn’t worded it in that way and so I immediately wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget what I said.

Just because something is worthy of study it doesn’t mean it’s worthy of my child’s time.

There is precious little time available for homeschooling. This becomes all the more apparent when you reach the high school years when parents are tempted to believe the idea that every choice is virtually a matter of life and death. Courses, schedules, grades, credit hours, etc. can all become your master rather than homeschooling continuing to serve your child.

I have dealt with this first-hand in recent years. We’ve always homeschooled and we did so because we believed it was the best option for our child. Period. I’ve written at length about how we came to see that it’s really the only option for our child. So homeschooling has always been in my mind something to serve our family and not the other way around.

Maybe some of the current must-haves and must-do priorities have value and maybe they don’t. Certainly there are many worthy things to potentially study. Think about all that we continue to learn as adults. But many of those worthy subjects, ideas, philosophies, and goals may not be worth your child’s time. Just because an expert in an ivory tower or a mom in your homeschool group insists that something is critical to being truly “educated” doesn’t make it so for your child.

The wisdom comes from knowing your child in a significant way, trying to discern what the Lord might have for your individual child in the future, and making the best choices you can with the information you currently have available.

The bottom line is that something an expert deems worthy might have no relevance to what God has created my child or yours to do in the future. While we will come across much in our lives that has great worth and value, it does not follow that it is worthy of your child’s valuable time.

So to the dear homeschool moms reading this who feel overwhelmed by the pressure both from without and within, I want you to know this. You will never be able to do it all, read it all, visit it all, or learn it all with your child. In fact, trying to do so could be a real waste of your child’s time and yours. Instead, ask God to guide you each day to make the most prudent decisions for your child – even if it is completely different from what your friends and family members are doing. He will answer that sincere prayer. He will guide you in ways you won’t even realize until perhaps weeks or months later. I’ve seen Him do it time and again in my own homeschool planning.

The Lord will lead you to what is worthy of your child’s time if you ask Him.

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Children Are Not Machines Or Robots

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentChildren Are Not Machines Or Robots

We’re relaxed homeschoolers for a number of reasons. One of the chief reasons is because we see ourselves primarily as a family. We’re a family who learns together while putting a high priority on developing healthy relationships.

I realized something about myself that has shaped the way I think about learning and homeschooling. Maybe you’ve had this experience as well?

There are some days I put an incredible amount of focused energy into my work. I get in a zone and accomplish a great deal.

However, if I put in a day of heavy focus like that I know I will be getting almost nothing done of any depth the next day. I can be as motivated as I want, but it’s like my brain and body simply refuse to cooperate. Sorry! Not happening today! It’s not even one of those things where I can push through.

I can work on piddly things that don’t take much effort and that’s what I’ll do. There are always small mindless tasks to be done that help me move forward, but there is zero chance of any creativity or significant problem solving. So I’ve learned to compensate for it and now keep a list of mindless tasks to do.

Why would I expect my child to be any different? Why would I expect her to focus and do a lot of mentally demanding work every day, five or six days in a row when that is something I couldn’t sustain as an adult?

When children aren’t able to do this, we will often get after them and automatically assume they just aren’t trying. Or they are lazy. If we are really peevish, we think they are defying us or trying to ruin our well-laid plans.

Part of being a gracious Christian parent in our home means that we recognize that Caroline is not a robot. She’s not a machine. We cannot expect her to simply work on demand at whatever level we think should be accomplished that day. I wrote about this more at length in Raising a Dreamer Child and Ignoring Conventional Wisdom.

The idea that children should be able to focus and work for four to six hours a day, every day, has much more to do with the public school assembly line philosophy than it does solid Christian parenting. Someone decided somewhere that for a child to apply to college, they have to be able to do X, Y, and Z. So every grade level (now starting in preschool) works to support that end goal, even if it is developmentally inappropriate. Another blogger recently wrote that her third grader is now required to write opinion essays with multiple paragraphs including a hook and a controlling idea. In third grade? Are you kidding me? Why?

Even as we try to break out of the mindset of public school education methods, they still creep in from so many directions. Instead of loving our children for who they are and developing strong family relationships while learning, we put checking off the homeschool boxes on the schedule someone else has determined for us first.

I’ve learned that there are days we simply are not going to get much done of any depth. On those days we’ll do more read alouds, watch a video, etc. There is always something we can do to move forward in a meaningful way. Sometimes we simply take the day off. I realized a long time ago when I learned about age disequilibrium that there are stretches to focus on learning and there are stretches where it’s simply best to bide my time until the way clears.

So I’ve learned that being a gracious parent in my home means working with the child I have and reminding myself she’s a person. She’s not a robot or a machine that can do whatever I program her to do. She’s a unique individual which makes her special both to me and the Lord who created her.

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Choosing Our Relaxed Homeschooling High School Path

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentChoosing Our Relaxed Homeschooling High School Path

To say I’ve been in a little bit of an existential crisis regarding our homeschooling choices for high school would be somewhat accurate. A reader wrote and asked if I had written about our high school choices because she couldn’t find anything.

That’s because there isn’t anything yet about our plans.

We are “officially” wrapping up what most people would call “last year” during this month of August. We will start “this year” after Labor Day. That is three weeks away. I’ve been praying and reading, asking God to show me clearly what to do with Caroline’s high school education. (If you are a newer reader, I’ve written extensively about the fact that she’s artistic and creative. She’s 2e meaning she is both gifted and has a few learning differences. Just check the blog categories and resource pages. You’ll find lots of back story.) We live in Michigan so the guidelines are very generous. There are no set requirements other than providing a well-rounded education.

At this point, Caroline is not interested in going the four year college route. She talks about perhaps trying community college or online college, but has zero desire to go away from home and live in a dorm. Dorm life, to her, sounds a lot like hell on earth. She is a homebody who enjoys brief excursions into the outside world and then is happy to be home, doing her own thing again in peace and quiet. She would like her own home and family. She has ZERO interest in a 9-5 cubicle job, something she has said many times in recent years. Of all the things she’s expressed about her future, this one has been loud and clear. LOL!

Choosing a Homeschool High School Approach

So I picked up Curious Unschoolers again because even though we are Relaxed Homeschoolers, I find Sue’s thoughts helpful. (See here for first time.) I’ve been re-reading bloggers who have most inspired me in the past. And praying. A lot of praying. I’ve been waiting for those aha! moments that God usually brings when everything finally comes together in my head. (Even this post is a bit of thinking out loud while I’m writing it.)

I ended up back on Heather’s blog and re-read the last few posts she wrote about her homeschooling experience with her only child (a daughter). I remember reading This May Take Awhile in real time when she wrote it and it has always stuck with me. This time, however, different things jumped out at me (bolded below) because I’m in a very different place on this journey than I was five years ago when she originally wrote it.

One of the greatest benefits to homeschooling is the time it affords a young person to go deep with an area of study or skill. Our days are spacious and parameters are loose. To the average onlooker this can appear imbalanced, that perhaps the student is lacking in certain areas while greater emphasis is placed on another. To the fortunate student, it is clear that balance is an impossible achievement no matter what model of education you follow, and that to do anything one way means you must give up doing something another way. What is discovered however, is that learning without boundaries actually brings entire diverse bodies of knowledge and skill closer because “learning” and “education” do not lose their beauty or luster under the guise of something we must get through. Learning is coveted and continuously sought after, usually without us even realizing it. Humans are curious beings and when a new idea or topic enters the psyche, we naturally want to explore it. When intrinsically motivated, learning is not an obligation or an item on our to do list, instead it feels worthy of our attention, even if  challenges and hard work present themselves along the way.

Competitive debate has been Emily’s “thing” over the last four years. With a healthy degree of confidence I can say that debate has influenced the trajectory of her life, thus far, more than anything else she has done or been exposed to. No, she has probably not dissected the number of animals the average public high schooler has dissected, but is that really necessary? Is the average public high schooler able to skillfully stand before a full auditorium and argue the ethics of assisted suicide, or, whether it is in Iran’s interest to develop a nuclear bomb, and is it really necessary for them to do so?

Sometimes I think people view our homeschool story as an example of “success” because Emily has naturally gravitated toward academics and that feels safe to many of us. To me, that is a limiting mindset and one that I would discourage. Because believe me, standing here on the cusp of our final homeschool days, I do wonder if there was some way I could have convinced her to fall in love with preparing meals… or growing  food… or sewing clothes… or… or… or. She can do all of those things, and she will help whenever needed, but these are not areas of interest that she initiates or takes ownership in. Don’t we all have things we’re just not into? I know my list is pretty long.

The Two Options I’m Contemplating

I’ve gone back and forth on the two main options before me.

  • Go the “something we must get through” route by ordering textbooks, video courses, and workbooks. Do the work and check the box each day on the subjects we “must” or “should” do.
  • Spend the next four years investing my time in crafting an individualized education that fits who we are as a family and who God created Caroline to be as a person.

There are benefits to both. Truly.

  • If we go the box-checking route, we can pull out the book (or video course) each day and read it out loud (or watch it) together. Do the exercises. Done. We’ve completed our obligation and can spend our time doing the other stuff we want to do. Almost no preparation time for me. We can discuss rabbit trails and such, but this is by far the easiest route for both of us. There is no prep for me and everything is organized for me. And easy is not necessarily wrong or the lesser choice if it meets our needs.
  • Or I can invest a lot of time the next four years crafting a really lovely education for her that integrates the things we are most interested in. It will be a significant time investment because we “do” our homeschooling work together. Due to her processing issues and such, we read aloud to each other, watch videos, etc.

No matter which path I choose, I will be spending hours every day doing school with Caroline on top of whatever it takes me to prepare each day. If I go with choice two, homeschool will become close to a full-time job for me for a few different reasons.

One of the things Daniel Franklin talks about in Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities is that you will need to be supporting and working alongside your child through high school and even into college in many cases. (See my post: Homeschooling a Child with Language Based Learning Disabilities.) He also discusses the importance of parent proximity to facilitate student concentration, something I’d like to address in another post. But, yes, homeschooling high school is going to be very hands-on and active involvement for me no matter what we do because I have to literally be there most of the time. While most homeschoolers find in high school they can give their child more and more independent work, that will not be our experience. Think about how much independent reading a typical high schooler does and imagine doing almost all of that aloud. We’re going to have to carefully choose what we do to make sure it counts for more than one subject at a time. My voice won’t last for hours a day. (Before someone asks, audio books seem to be a no-go for her.)

Some might say there is the option of trying to do a bit of both and I’ll address that as well.

Creating an Individualized High School Education

When I think about hand-crafting her education, these are the core subjects that shape my thoughts:

  • Bible & Theology
  • History
  • Literature
  • Music
  • Art
  • Government
  • Economics & Financial
  • Home Economics

It is very natural to integrate these and we do that basically as a way of life. Our family conversations revolve around these topics all the time. I would simply need to organize it and make sure I can justify giving her a high school diploma at the end. I also struggle with the idea of making sure we do enough so if she changes her mind in a year or two (or three) and wants to go to college, we aren’t scrambling at the last minute to make sure she can go.

To be honest, if I knew college was completely off the table this would all be so much easier. If you know college is the goal, then you do the college prep thing. But if college isn’t the goal, then I definitely would not waste her time on demanding soul-sucking subjects (for her) that will have no real purpose for her in life.

You’ll notice writing is not on there. A foreign language is not on there. The writing will be integrated with other subjects. The foreign language? I’m not sure. I really do not want to overwhelm her. We’ve started and stopped French a few times. It seems it was never the right time yet.

Our approach to science is going to be more of a understanding of science, the history of science, and how science impacts our world as opposed to lots of labs and math (due to the dyscalculia). I do not care if my child dissects anything (and she does not want to). I don’t even really care if she doesn’t do chemistry experiments. We can watch videos of them and that’s good enough for me. Neither one of us is interested in investing significant time on the hard sciences in the way you would experience them in a typical college prep high school environment.

That isn’t to say we don’t like science. We all love it and talk about science things all the time. Last night in the car Caroline was telling us about the colors of sunsets on the various planets. I have no idea where she learned this, but she’s always teaching herself something in the realm of science. She’s naturally curious. But I’d like our science to fit in with the rest of our subjects rather than being an intensive, stand-alone subject.

One option I’m considering is doing a science class like this one at Compass Classroom.

We wouldn’t do that until next year, but that would be the kind of video and textbook class I would be inclined to use if we go with a combination of the two approaches. I also have the materials I received for the post I wrote Physics & Chemistry for Learners Who Struggle with Math. Those materials could also work.

Math is going to be intensely practical due to the dyscalculia.

Then we have electives to figure out. She’s very interested in doing a Psychology class. Whatever the electives are, I need to try to weave them in with the other class topics.

See? This is where I will need to be investing a lot of time if we go the personalized route.  Whatever we do, I have to get a lot of bang for our buck for every minute we do our learning together. I’d like most things to count twice (literature and history, history and English, etc.) because there aren’t enough stretches of concentration throughout the day to spend an hour on every subject and elective. We already have to break up our learning into at least four different sessions spread apart during the afternoon and evening.

So that’s what I’m thinking about right now regarding high school. Once I pull together what we are going to do, I’ll probably share more details at some point.

Read more: My posts in Homeschooling High School include many curriculum reviews and introductions.

Photo is of books from my recent book binge at Barnes & Noble. They will all be used for high school or fun. 

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