The Small Branch

  The high school years are the years that most homeschooling parents dread.   Many just give up and put their teens into school, even if it is just an online school, because they feel very intimidated.   There really is no reason for this.   Ages 14-16 are what I would call the rhetoric stage of learning.  These are the years when students take the material they have previously learned and begin to form their own worldview, thoughts, and opinions.  These are the years in which parents must be careful to prepare their students for adulthood, possibly including college.  The difficulty we have in our culture is that we don’t really know what that means.  I’m not sure I do, but I’ll give you a few thoughts anyway. First, students need to own their own faith.  They cannot ride your coattails into heaven.  Help them to articulate what they believe and why they believe it.  You can help this by making sure they are studying the W...

  In the interest of full disclosure, if you look at 1st-12th grade, we homeschooled 1st-half of 7th, 1st-4th and 11th-12th, 1st-2nd and 9th-12th, and 7th-12th (this one is still in school with me with a couple of years left).   You may notice that these years don’t include a huge amount of middle school experience.   I will say that I also taught a middle school math class when I was teaching at a private school.   Anyway, I’ll still offer you a few thoughts about middle school. Ages 11-13 are what I would consider the logic stage, or the middle stage of classical education.  This is where you help your child to organize all the information they have been collecting so far.  This is also where you will probably veer away from the way things are being done in public schools (and most private ones).  This is because the American system of education has become more of Elementary School, Elementary School 2.0, and finally Elementary School 3.0. ...

  (I’ve covered some of this in previous posts, but thought I would expand on a few things here.)   Most people consider the elementary school years to be Kindergarten through fifth grade, about ages 5-11.  Personally, as I’ve state before, I don’t see any reason to start any kind of formal school until 8-10 years old, depending on your child.  For the kids in the “elementary years” who aren’t yet ready for formal education, you can continue as you were doing in the preschool years (see previous post).  Remember, though, that you want your children to be ready for learning.  This includes making sure they are learning to be obedient, learning to sit still, and learning to work hard even when something is a struggle for them.  In this phase of “school age but not yet school ready,” make sure they are learning these lessons well.  This is something I utterly failed at.  We were too busy playing and having fun, and I was too lazy as a mom, to...

  When I was first married I taught at a public high school.   One of the teachers there had been teaching throughout her children’s lives and they were now in middle school.   At the end of the school year, she announced that her kids needed her home now more than ever and she wasn’t coming back.   I was shocked.   She hadn’t stayed home when they were preschoolers, but now?   How naive I was . . . . When my first child was born, the decision to quit work and stay home was easy.  No way was I handing my precious boy to someone else to take care of each day!  I continued to stay home through three more kids until my youngest was ready for 1st grade.  We had homeschooled to this point, but I was burned out so we decided that everyone would go to Christian school and I would teach part time at the school the older ones were at.  Part time turned into full time, and six years later I was stressed and finally understood what my fellow t...

  I think it is kind of funny when people ask me what kind of curriculum to use for preschool.   I mean, the term is “pre” school, which means before school, right?   So why would we need workbooks and other curriculum before school?   I’m not sure.   I think much of it has more to do with parents wanting to look good because their kids are “so smart” and parents who just go along with what everyone else is doing rather than actually thinking things through.   First, I’ll just put it out there - I think every single child in the world should be homeschooled for preschool.  Of course, there are situations in a fallen world where that just isn’t possible, but it is possible much more often than it happens.  A lot of (married) moms would find that, if they really count up the costs (including a second vehicle, nicer clothes, convenience foods, more sickness and doctor visits, etc. as well as school/daycare costs), they could probably stay home w...

  Dealing with our sin is an important part of our walk with Christ.   We start the journey by repentance, because of the faith He has given us (there are many who debate which comes first, faith or repentance, and I’m not really qualified to join that debate other than to recommend, again, The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson).   We continue the journey by repenting as sin in our lives is revealed to us.   Today, though, I’m not really addressing dealing with our own sin.   Today, I have a lot of questions about dealing with other people’s sin. We all know that the sins of others can affect us, sometimes in very detrimental ways.  Sometimes, we are directly hurt by their sin, whether  physically, like with a drunk driver causing an accident, or emotionally, like with an adult child who chooses rebellion rather than obedience to the Lord.  Sin also has affected creation and means that we have natural disasters like hurricanes, floods,...

  Lately, I have been hearing my friends talk about what their children will be doing for school next year.   There are a lot of changes in the works and it got me thinking about something that they are saying and that I have said in the past.   “She decided she wants to . . .” and “he would rather . . .” are the main ways the conversation starts.   I did this with one of my kids.   I gave her a choice - she could go to school and not play sports or she could homeschool and still play sports.   She chose to homeschool, but really, should I have had her making that choice?   On the one hand, we want our kids to want what we decide is best for them.   But on the other hand, it is our job as parents to decide what that is, even when they are 16.   Now, I am a firm believer that teens should be making more and more of their own decisions, even if they choose something that will turn out to be a mistake.  I think teens should be learning...

  “The people will oppress one another, man against man, neighbor against neighbor; the young will act arrogantly toward the old, and the worthless toward the honorable.” -- Isaiah 3:5 (CSB) The young acting arrogantly toward the old.  We are definitely suffering from this problem.  Notice that, in Isaiah, this is a curse as a result of Israel’s sin.  Today, we don’t just have disrespectful teens, but disrespectful 30somethings, 40somethings, even 50somethings.  Our culture values youth and tries to hold onto it as long as possible.  We are reaping the results of this trend of “youth culture” more and more today. This trend started about a hundred years ago with the beginning of the “youth culture.”  Sometime after WWII, we started using terms like “teenager” and separating teens out from adults in all areas of life.  Teens were all in high school and activities with their peers, rather than spending these years learning to be adults by sp...

 There are a lot of things I wish I could tell my younger self.  I probably wouldn't have listened.  I mean, you are at your smartest from 15 years old  to 30 years old, right?  That's probably what I would start with (although the rest are in no particular order): 1. Listen to people.  You can always learn something  from  everyone.  You don't know nearly as much as you think you do. 2. It is almost impossible to get back to your "ideal" weight or to "get back in shape" so maintain and stay in shape.  This is especially true with flexibility. 😊 3. It is much easier to teach your kids the right way the first time rather than to go back and correct things you let them get away with because it was cute when they were tiny.  Set the standard from the beginning and do the work to teach them from the beginning.  It may seem hard, but it is harder if you put it off. 4. From the moment you are saved you should be studying Scripture, ...

 Have you ever been completely over it?  If you have toddlers and preschoolers, you know you have those days.  The days where you hide in the bathroom just for 30 seconds of "alone time" even though they are sticking their little finger under the door.  Sometimes, it just feels like people need too much from us.   Matthew 14:13-14 says " Now when Jesus heard about John, He withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by Himself; and when the people heard of this, they followed Him on foot from the cities.  When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick." What had He heard about John?  In the previous verses we are told about John's beheading.  Jesus had just heard that His cousin, the one preparing the way for Him, had been murdered.  So what does He do?  He withdraws to mourn.  Talk about needing some "alone time".  Jesus was fully human as well as fully God, so you know that...

 A few years ago, as I began dealing with teenagers in my house, I read a book called Love and Respect in the Family  by Emerson Eggerichs.  The book talks about how, while both men/boys and women/girls want to be loved and respected, men/boys focus on the respect first and women/girls focus on the love first.  This made a lot of sense to me and I have found it helpful as I deal with my teenagers, but I had an epiphany yesterday about this.  Too often, we are trying to "make" people love or respect us.  This backfires in big ways.  When we are trying to force others to respect us, we become bullies.  When we try to make someone love us, we become needy and self serving.  Behaviors that try to make others love and respect us only serve to drive them away.  Instead of insisting others respect us, we need to act respectable.  Instead of doing whatever it takes for others to love us, we need to act lovable.  When we are acting resp...

     Did your parent ever tell you that you had to do something "because I said so!"?  My parents said that to me a lot.  My dad even had a shirt with that splashed across the front.  Have you ever said that to your kids?  I have, but very rarely.  I read somewhere, when my kids were little, that using the "because I said so" reason wasn't good for them.  It was lazy of me as a parent to not explain the reason and it didn't help them a bit.  I wonder,  though . . .      As I have mentioned, we have been studying Job in our women's Bible study.  We are wrapping it up this week and talking about how we don't have to understand God's reasons, we have to obey and trust, believe and have faith.  In other words, sometimes God just says "because I said so."  It made me think, am I causing my kids problems by always trying to make sure they understand reasons, whys, and wherefores?  Yes, they are older no...

I keep meaning to post on this, but in all my abundant free time, I keep forgetting (can you feel the sarcasm?) A few weeks ago, as I was trying to deal with my down in the dumps moods of late, I was lamenting all the mistakes I make with my kids and all the horrible ways they could be messed up because of them. I am trying to learn to pray through these moods and issues, because I know these reminders are from Satan, not the Lord, so I shouldn't be dwelling on them. This time, the Lord spoke to me in a beautiful way. I had been thinking about the fact that God knew the mistakes I was going to make, the sin that was going to plague me, before He went to the cross for those very sins. This time, He twisted that a little for me to help me understand that He knew what mistakes I was going to make before He gave me the children He wanted me to have. He knew those mistakes. He knew those ways that the mistakes would affect the kids. He knew it all. But still He chose to bless me with fo...

Last night, we had a thunderstorm. Yes, we ended up with all four kids sleeping in our room (3 on the bed with me and 1 on the floor with Daddy!). It was not a very restful night. But this morning, in true 5 year old form, I get the rosy outlook - "Mommy, last night God got a lot of strikes, didn't He? And Satan didn't get any. Not even a spare!" I love kids!!

I keep meaning to post on this, but for some crazy reason, I never seem to have much time. So, here goes... I am really concerned at the state of the children in our country. Yes, there are orphans all over the world, thousands here, even, but I am not talking about true orphans. I am talking about all the pseudo-orphans. Mom's career is more important, or a bigger lifestyle, or whatever. The main thing is, Mom fails to be Mom. Not to even mention the absent fathers - whether because they choose to be workaholics or because they have truly left for good. Divorce is rampant. All parents think about is themselves and what they want. Kids are sent to school, not because that is what is best but just because Mom doesn't want to have to deal with them all day. Amazing! The most important part of survival for our nation, our faith, everything is our children. But yet we fail to anchor them to Christ. We let them float - adrift on a sea of tolerance and acceptance. God ...

I love being a mom. It is never boring, that's for sure. Honestly, I don't know how women can stand to work and be away from their kids so much - I think I would go nuts! But sometimes, I have to remind myself that things are not meant to be a bed of roses. Sometimes, most of the time, things can get really tough. Discipling (yes, I said discipling , not disciplining, as in training as a disciple of Christ) kids through life can get to be a messy business. It is definitely a hands on activity - although it gets to be more hands off as they get older, which actually is even harder, I think. Anyway, I digress as usual. One thing that God is always working on with me is the importance of people rather than "To Do" lists and stuff. I like cleanliness. I despise clutter. The trash can and I are good friends. However, with four kids running around all the time, my house gets messy and stays that way most of the time. A beautiful woman of God shared with me ...