Trusting Your Instincts When No One Understands

If there is one concept that has driven my parenting and homeschooling, it is this – trust your instincts even when no one understands. Fully embracing this idea early on changed the course of my parenting and made me a much more effective parent to my daughter.

As a Christian, I believe that sometimes it is hard to tell where our gut instinct ends and the leading of the Holy Spirit begins. (How the Holy Spirit works is a discussion beyond the scope of this post!) But in either case, learning to listen and trust your intuition is vitally important.

And the more your child falls outside of the “norm” the more important it is. If you are trying to parent a child who is an outlier in any way, trying to act on traditional parenting and homeschooling advice will erode your confidence and threaten to slowly drive you mad. Believe me, I know this firsthand.

This post is part of my “10 Days of Homeschool Encouragement” series and today I’m going to mostly point you to so many other things I’ve already written about this topic. I’ve been fairly open about my own parenting and homeschool journey. Depending on where you are in your journey and what kind of child you have, there is probably something here to encourage and help you.

Look at the drop down menus in the header for many topics. There are literally dozens and dozens of encouraging posts to help you sort out whatever issue you are facing. If you want to know if I’ve written about some specific topic and can’t find it, feel free to ask in a comment and I’d be glad to point you to something that might be relevant.

So what is my advice?

Take in the relevant information you can find in books or online. Listen to what people say. Listen carefully to people you trust. Ask the Lord for guidance. But I can guarantee you will find yourself in situations where no one understands and you need to trust your mother gut. Acknowledge the truth of what you are hearing, but at the same time if you simply know that it isn’t the right choice for you, your child and/or your family then have the courage to trust your instincts – even if no one else understands.

This is part of my 10 Days of Homeschool Encouragement series.