Learning to Let Go

One reluctant learner, one exhausted mom and the lesson that changed our homeschool for good

Home education was never meant to be public school recreated around the kitchen table; no strenuous busy work with worksheets and a pencil, no routine block schedules, no monotonous desk-bound rhythm … all simply under a different roof. Home education rather is doing life TOGETHER and learning naturally through the many facets of life.

When my husband and I first began praying over the idea of pulling our oldest from the classroom and taking their education into our own hands, we held it with a “one year at a time” mentality. We weren’t concerned about high school, let alone college. We wanted to enjoy the time we had with them right now, to grow and hone in on their gifts, nurture their passions and walk alongside them through their struggles. Looking back, God clearly knew far more than we did. The vision we’d prayed over wasn’t at all what unfolded in front of us. And somewhere in that unraveling, it became less about teaching our children and more about a lesson for me — not just as a parent, but as their mom.

In a years time of praying, pondering and seeking counsel from homeschool veteran friends who’d gone before me, I felt as if this beautiful picture was being painted in my mind; once children knew how to read, grasped comprehension and gained math skills, they’d be set on a path for independent, child-lead learning. And although there’s a particular kind of beauty in child-led learning that I didn’t fully understand, I felt confident that God had our best interest at heart and we simply needed to trust the process.

I’d like to think most parents would agree that as children grow older, something remarkable happens, they stop needing us to hand them the next lesson. They start reaching for it themselves. A question turns into a thread they can’t stop pulling, that thread unravels into a full deep dive and suddenly they’re teaching themselves things I never planned to cover. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Not a mother with all the answers, rather a child who’s learned how to go looking for them, how to think for themselves.

But I’d be lying if I said this was our story from day one.

Because right in the middle of this vision — this bright, ideal picture of a home full of curious, self-directed learners, was a bright, late-elementary-aged boy who wanted absolutely nothing to do with learning.

My son.

Although this wasn’t a sudden change of heart, I felt there was more to this situation than I could comprehend. He fought me on every lesson. Refused to cooperate with anything I set in front of him. If a book landed in his lap, he’d grow dizzy, unable to focus long enough to get through a single page. His handwriting had to be perfect — a rather exhausting kind of perfectionism that wore him down before he’d even finished a sentence. He wasn’t being defiant for the sake of it. He was struggling and so was I, and neither of us could name why.

I remember sitting across from homeschool veteran friends, nearly in tears, trying to figure out what curriculum I was doing wrong. Their answer wasn’t a new program or a better method. It was simpler and harder to accept: relax! Let go — for now. No lesson is worth a relationship. No curriculum is worth the fight that leaves a mother and son more distant than they were that morning.

So, I did. I let go.

And it wasn’t until we relocated our family that everything started to shift — that the real reason behind his struggle finally had a name, and a handful of remarkable resources found their way into our life at exactly the right moment.

That part of the story, though, is for next time.

- Lindsey