Latest / Homeschool Insights - Biblical Home Education Inspiration in Under 10 Minutes! / You Don’t Have to Be a Perfect Homeschool Mom - Rachael Carman
Transcript
- speaker-0: really struggled with perfectionism. Yeah. And I would hear somebody say this and I would say, bless your heart. I'm so sorry that you can't get it right. And homeschooling pretty completely cured me of any perfectionist tendencies or desires that I had. speaker-1: jump into our conversation because I know this is gonna hit home for so many moms. Because even when we love homeschooling and feel called to do it, you know, we still have this lingering fear that we're somehow going to ruin our kids and get it all wrong. And so I think that's what I kind of want to honker down on for us today is ⁓ so why do you think that especially for so many homeschooling moms that we walk around with this this quiet fear that we're messing everything up. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I I love this question because I don't think it gets enough conversation. And I think we're all dealing with it quietly. And I think it's about time we had the conversation. And like you're saying, I I want it to be gracious and generous and loving, but ⁓ it's gotta be honest and raw at the same time. So I'm hoping we can strike that that beautiful middle, not painful part, right? I I think it's because we have dared to take on The education of our children. It's a whole nother thing. And so I think I want to start the answer by saying you don't have to homeschool your kids to think you're screwing them up. And I think that that's an important thing to say because I think moms have a lot of friends that never homeschooled their kids and they still have mom guilt. So mom guilt is kind of just a universal I gave birth to this person or I raised this person. And if they do anything that I didn't want them to do or they shouldn't do, then I feel guilty for it. I think it's just universal. Yeah. But I think especially among homeschool moms, it can be especially weighty. because if if you're like me, you were criticized for doing it, right? Like you shouldn't do this, you can't do this, you're not qualified to do this. And you did it anyway because you thought you were obeying God, which was the right thing to do, is the right thing to do, but it's never perfect. So it's it's the imperfection. But even though if we're mindful of it, and I would suggest, you know, I think we're gonna have some suggestions, some ideas, some recommendations, and don't list all of them. Maybe I'll pray that the Holy Spirit puts one on your heart today, not like 15, right? But one of the things would be to do stay humble and mindful of your imperfection full stop. Yes. You're not perfect. It doesn't matter what. curriculum you use, it doesn't matter what daily schedule you adopt. It doesn't matter if you're classical or if you're you're literature based, it doesn't you're imperfect. And it's an imperfect process. And by virtue of those imperfections, you're going to have an imperfect result. And so for somebody out there, I'm the bearer of really bad news. I I want to confess that when I started, I I w I really struggled with perfectionism. Yeah. And I would hear somebody say this and I would say, Pff, bless your heart. I'm so sorry that you can't get it right. I mean, I mean, this is full confession. I was just like, I feel so bad for you. That's just unfortunate that you can't do it. And I yeah what I d which was just so arrogant and so so wrong on a speaker-1: You can't do what I do. Yeah. How of us have been there? No, I get it. I totally get it. speaker-0: But but it's one of the myriad of things that are not even remotely academic that God used homeschool to to do something in my life and in the lives of my children. And homeschooling pretty completely cured me of any perfectionist tendencies or desires that I had. I had to come face to face with my family. fallenness and my ineptitude and my failures, you know, and all of it. And I'm just gonna say that was really good for me. And it was really good for my marriage, really good for my kids. I think it's a lifelong thing. I think I happen to believe, and since it sounds like you suffer from the same malady, I I happen to believe it's kind of a lifelong process to get that out of your system. But I am so grateful for how powerfully homeschooling worked in my life to bring me face to face with my own inability to do this perfectly because it reinforced how much I needed a perfect savior and a perfect God. And and and this is something else that I think is really powerful. So get this, moms. Our kids need more than us. They need God. And if we're perfect, which we're not, if we were, let's just play along for a minute, then then we're obscuring God, their need for God, because we're everything. But the good news is that we're not and we can't be. And that is an opportunity just to point them to Him and His perfection and His completeness and His enoughness. And I think that's really powerful. speaker-2: This episode of Homeschool Insights is brought to you by Liberty HealthShare. Choosing to homeschool is about making intentional decisions for your family. Liberty HealthShare is another way families across the country are choosing a different path, one that offers a community-centered approach to health care cost sharing that can help you keep more of your hard-earned dollars while getting the medical care your family needs. Learn more at LibertyHealthShare.org. That's LibertyHealthShare.org.