The Busy Homeschool Mom

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    The Busy Homeschool Mom

    By Rea Berg

    September is upon us again, and with this month comes the mix of emotions that fall

    represents. There is the excitement, mixed with some anxiety about the new schoolyear as curriculum is chosen, academic classes are scheduled, and school year

    calendars are filled up with all the necessary to-dos. If weve rested well over the

    summer and had time for recreation that has been restorative and regenerative, wecan look upon the coming school year with eager anticipation. If that hasnt been the

    case, our perspective may be dimmed somewhat by a lingering fatigue that maymake us a little late to the starting gate.

    Whether we are coming to this school year energized and eager or weary and

    fatigued, consider making time in your new school year calendar for idleness,quietness, and perhaps a bit of solitude. Idleness? Did you say idleness? Yes, andheres why.

    Tim Kreider, in a recent article in the New York Timestitled The Busy Trap,laments the American addiction to busyness. He points out how our culture equatessuccess with how jam-packed our calendars are, noting that we are so busy that we

    are continually exhausted from the relentless pursuit of whatever. He notes: Its

    almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work andobligations theyve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities theyve encouragedtheir kids to participate in. Theyre busy because of their own ambition or drive or

    anxiety, because theyre addicted to busyness and dread what they might have toface in its absence.1

    The American addiction to busyness plagues most of us, and if there is a singledemographic that is most susceptible to it, I believe it is the homeschooling mother.Consider the demands of caring for a household in the middle of the twentieth

    centurywhen mothers stayed home with their children: grocery shopping, meal

    preparation, laundry, helping Johnny with homework, cleaning, nursing babies,bathing little ones, doing dishes, providing for a social life for husband and children,carpooling, and church obligations, which were considered enough. In the mid-

    century culture of the United States, no one wondered what women did all day. It

    was self-evident that the demands of being a wife and mother to a family weresufficient to keep her productively occupied day in and day out.

    In many ways, the culture in which we live today is harder on women than ever.While feminism promised to enable women to meet their greatest potential outside

    the home, it seems its effects are felt insidethe home as well. If my homeschoolcalendar resembles the CEOs next door with back-to-back meetings, classes, and

    extracurricular activities, I can somehow validate my existence, i.e., since Im sobusy and my children are so busy and productive, we matter. In our intractable

    pursuit of significance, weve become frazzled, exhausted, and stressed-out.

    Added to this scenario is the culture of homeschooling. Though as a rule we consider

    ourselves countercultural, within that arena there are clear educational pressuresand expectations. Well-meaning homeschooling mothers can be quite hard on each

    other: You mean you havent signed Johnny up for Latin? Are you serious? How canhe be classically educated if he doesnt know Latin? Because as parents we want the

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    best for our children, it is easy to be swayed into involvement in pursuits and

    activities that in many cases may just be passing educational fads. We are easily

    swept up in a tidal wave of good opportunities and often sacrifice what is best. Webow to the pressures of our culture, albeit a counterculture at that.

    Charlotte Mason understood the temptation to equate busyness with productivity and

    advocated continually for a childs need to just be. She defined education asanatmosphere, a discipline, a life.2The educational atmosphere should be one of

    peace but with the active stimulation of great books, beautiful art, and ideas . . .always ideas. Mason was convinced that children are much brighter than we give

    them credit for and will thrive when they are presented with the worlds greatest

    thoughts, which are found in books, and living books must undergird the curriculum.

    Education, said Lord Haldane some time ago, is a matter of the spirit,no

    wiser word has been said on the subject, and yet we persist in applyingeducation from without as a bodily activity or emollient. We begin to see light.No one knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of a man which is in him;

    therefore, there is no education but self-education, and as soon as a child

    begins his education he does so as a student. Our business is to give him

    mind-stuff, and both quality and quantity are essential . . . . The best thoughtthe world possesses is stored in books; we must open books to children, the

    best books; our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving.3

    Our addiction to busyness also squeezes out the opportunity for free-play. Oh, yes,

    Johnny and Susie are on the soccer team and have had the honor of being chosen to

    do the traveling team this year! Our sports-obsessed culture will play the strings ofour parental pride and suck us into a vortex of over-committed and road-wearyparents driving around over-committed and road-weary children. Everyone loses in

    this situation. Johnny and Susie no longer have the liberty of free-playno time tobuild forts, design space stations, rescue damsels in distress, play cowboys andIndians. Creativity, imagination, and resourcefulness suffer.

    Abraham Lincoln grew up in a young United States not bound by the pressures ofmodern life. The incessant chatter of technology that overwhelms our culture did notexist for him. Life was a predictable round of farm work, simple fare, cracking jokes,

    telling tales, church meetings. Carl Sandburg in his bookAbe Lincoln Grows Updescribes how young Abe was molded by silence and solitude.

    Growing from boy to man, he was alone a good deal of the time. Days came

    often when he was by himself all the time except at breakfast and supperhours in the cabin home. In some years more of his time was spent inloneliness than in the company of other people . . . . It was wilderness

    loneliness he became acquainted with, solved, filtered through body, eye, andbrain, held communion with in his ears, in the temples of his forehead, in the

    works of his beating heart. . . . Silence found him; he met silence. In themaking of him as he was, the element of silence was immense.4

    The silence that so influenced Lincoln was a silence informed by the literature he

    read. His thoughts were not the idle thoughts of a foolish child (though he did love to

    crack jokes, pose riddles, and tell amusing anecdotes), but they were thoughtsformed by ruminating, wrestling with, and musing upon great books. The Bible,Pilgrims Progress, Robinson Crusoe,Shakespeare, theAutobiography of

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