Latest / The Christy-Faith Show / Ep. 7 - Raising & Homeschooling Boys // Durenda Wilson
Transcript
- What's difficult is with the day-to-day and moms particularly homeschooling because we do add extra burden to our lives by making this Choice it's extremely sacrificial managing our day-to-day the laundry the meals and then kids bouncing off the walls it's so easy to forget wow okay I'm being driven nuts right now because it's been too noisy all day yes but okay so go outside and scream welcome to the Christy Faith show where we share game-changing ideas with intentional parents like you I'm your host christe Faith experienced educational adviser and homeschool Enthusiast together we'll explore ways to enrich and transform both your life and the lives of your children I am so excited about our guest on the Christy Faith show today we have duranda Wilson with more than 30 years of home education experience durenda Wilson is a trusted voice and resource at homeschooling convention itions and on the durenda Wilson podcast durenda and her husband Daryl have eight kids seven graduated and 10 grandbabies as an author speaker and podcaster her greatest joy is reminding parents how doable and effective homeschooling is and that they are in fact qualified to do the job we're kindered Spirits girl her books include the 4-Hour school day love that one the unhurried homeschooler an unhurried Grace for a Mom's heart that's a devotional isn't it mhm she also has a new book coming out which I want to talk about today if you have a boy listen up today's show because she is gonna come out with a book on homeschooling and raising Sons I'm thrilled to have you on the show today I wanted to ask you about your book on homeschooling boys why did you write it and tell us about it okay well I get a lot of questions about boys because I have five boys and and I've done several podcasts on them I've done um I did a series uh on homeschooling Boys on my podcast and it's been super super popular and I think that because I I don't really feel like there's anything out there on homeschooling boys there's books on raising them I just really have a heart and a passion for encouraging moms who are raising Sons specifically because we are in such a need for men in our culture and so this is something that I talk about in the book in terms of just we I think that we've lost the appreciation for manhood in our culture because we're not running for our lives anymore right so for centuries it was about survival and we needed those men to protect the women and children we needed them to provide we needed them to do all those things and in our culture there's so much affluence and there's so many possibilities and so many opportunities that it looks as though we don't need them and that's absolutely not true we absolutely need them we see political overreach happening we see moral overreach happening and you know I think that men should be at the front of the charge when it comes to that so I think not that women can't participate in that but it's it's I think it's just it's such a they're so wired that way they's so so wired to conquer to build protect provide and lead and they're not encouraged to do that while they're growing up in our culture and so this is where I want to encourage moms to understand look you're you're never going to fully understand your son because you're not a boy or a man so for those of us who are homeschooling that's a big deal because we're actually educating our boys in a somewhat feminine environment unless you have a whole pel of boys like we did so you you have to make a point of getting your son um involved in things that are boy related and encouraging that and getting your your you know encouraging your husband to spend time with him and to have them do guy things and just how important all of that is and and just the different ways that they learn and how to accommodate that just kind of how to enjoy them like this it's it's wild it's wild but it's so much fun if you learn to just go this is what they do know like I don't understand it but kudos to you you know I mean when you actually see it for what it really is that all those wild things that they do are typically them attempting to lead protect provide conquer build they want to do all of those things and usually when they're doing some crazy wild thing it's because they want they're trying to do that in their own way you know and almost at the detriment of their lives and you know this is one thing I say in the book is like one of your biggest jobs is just get them to adulthood alive you know like still breathing and all of that so but they are so much fun and having you know kind of walk that out with our boys and I share so many stories that will really probably put your mind at rest when it comes to your voice and now I'm down the road and I've got these men in my life who would defend me to the death you know like I've got really good protective husband but I know that if anything happened to him these boys would take care of me these boys would step right in and I would be protected that actually brought tears to my eyes when I was sharing that with them a while back because it was like not everybody has that part of it it started back at the very beginning by respecting and honoring their differences instead of being annoyed by them or exasperated with with them just recognize that oh my goodness they're wired beautifully for what they're called to do and so just being able to encourage and nurture that we want to nurture that nature in boys and so that's what I talk a lot about how to nurture that nature and what a beautiful reframing right so often we look at our kids and there may be some character traits that maybe do need a little honing in right right of course but on the flip side of this what else can we see that is a gift that is how they're wired and that is really cool and how do we see this playing out later in their lives as an asset and I think that what's difficult is with the day-to-day and moms particularly homeschooling because we do add extra burden to our lives by making this Choice it's extremely sacrificial managing our day-to-day the laundry the meals and then kids bouncing off the walls it's so easy to forget wow okay I'm being driven nuts right now because it's been too noisy all day yes but okay so go outside and scream right exactly and you know I those boys had all of our kids had time outside every day and margin for the boys specifically between their school subjects was really important to say okay as soon as you're done with math you can go outside 15 minutes jump on the trampoline ride your bike I always just set the timer so I wouldn't forget about them right I know because yeah because yes because lunchtime rolls around you're like right you're like wait a minute house has been quiet for an hour why right oh my gosh so yeah so that margin for them that understanding their need to get that energy out and and then they can focus again you know just giving them lots of margin in the afternoons for lots of outside play and just hobbies and all that kind of stuff you know the that margin is so important in their day it's something I talk about in all of my books you can't have your kids so scheduled that there's no margin for them to be kids we've gotten so far away from what education actually is what parents don't realize is that your kids are quite capable of self-educating they really are like they need guidance and Direction boundaries that kind of thing but on the whole they are smarter than we are about what it is they're ready to learn and not learn that's one of the tricks of being a homeschooling parent is being able to let go of something set it aside and understand that you know okay this is what they interested in right now and then just work from that place you know I love that let's talk a minute about educating boys because something that I when I heard that you were coming out with a book on boys it's been that was interesting to me because one of the things when I started the center very early on in my career I just a lot of parents hired me to teach their boys how to write and how to do language arts and that was kind of my specialty my specialty is in the cities and I got a lot of success and results I could teach you know a kid who was struggling learning how to write a thesis statement I could get it done in 50 minutes and the mom's like what you know it's been three weeks in the school environment and they haven't you know this was one of the little tidbits that led to my deconstruction of the school system it's like wow you can accomplish so much one-on-one but denda let me tell you I was like I got this adolescent boy thing down it's not going to be a problem for me and you know moms would be in my office crying just take him send him back when he's a junior in high school right so because we were hired we were you know we ran a home school we tutored we did all sorts of stuff and we had a lot of boys who were bouncing off the walls a lot of them you know overdiagnosed overmedicated that whole thing but it is different I am finding the journey to be so much different when it is my own son and just because it's challenging and it's not like when I taught other people's Sons right doesn't mean I shouldn't be doing it it doesn't mean and I'm GNA figure this out we're gonna figure this out good for you you have to have that attitude I feel like it's one of those things where my husband and I have always said death before divorce like we'll kill each other first and that was our commitment to one another but now you may now kiss the bride right but see the thing is enjoying the show and don't want to miss out on future episodes hit that like And subscribe button and show us some love with your reviews those five star reviews really do help us reach more people and what I my point is that you have to go into homeschooling like that like I'm going to figure this out because if you're constantly questioning yourself and constantly looking for the possibility to opt out you're not going to be your best creative self like you're not going to be creative because you don't have the motivation if you say to yourself I I would tell myself because I knew I did not want my kids in public school I didn't even want them in a private school there wasn't anything close by anyway and we couldn't afford it you know so I was like this is it this is what we're doing and because of that that made me just go okay I have got to we've got to figure this out I would talk to my husband I talked to my husband a lot when it came to the boys because he thinks like them so the thing is men and women boys and girls they don't think the same they can be doing the same task and this has actually been proven on I think it's pet scans they 's a book called the minds of boys I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to read a really thick book but there's one chapter that I would say is worth the price of the whole book it's I think it's chapter six and he talks about the difference how boys learn and I think there's another little section that talks about the the the scans that they did and what they did was they they had the boys and the girls doing the same exact activity complet almost completely different parts of their brains were firing okay fascinating so why as homeschooling moms are we trying to teach our boys the way we learn and the way most girls learn because that's not how they learn they need a lot of handson they need a lot of like just diving in and participating you know and they certainly need to be interested I think I've become much more of an unschooler as the years went by because I would got more and more comfortable with the idea that my kids really can self-educate and real life teaches them more than anything any curriculum out there however when I started out I was like I can't quite do that but I just wasn't there and so we had a little bit of time every morning where we would do actual book workk you know workbooks or reading out loud or whatever and we did very little to nothing to start with and then we slowly increased as the years went by when I wrote the unhurried homeschooler that's the process that I talk about in that book at the first sight of it it looks like your kids are behind quote unquote if you're going to compare yourself to the scope and sequence and all that I learned to ditch that a long time ago yes but what we found found out was that our kids catch up really quickly at a certain point pressing in too much with book work to start with is counterproductive usually kids are burned out by the time they're older because we have pushed them too much but kids have a propensity to learn very much on their own and so that was something that I think I got more comfortable with over the years but I did leave a good amount of margin in the afternoons kind of looked at mornings as more directed learning and afternoons is more self-directed that's fascinating and that leads right into my next question which is in forour school day you talk about Simplicity in homeschooling we often especially if we're in our first five years of homeschooling we think we got to have all the things we got to do all the things right you know we want the composer study the music study we want to read the Poetry we got to do the read aloud we got to do this we got to and all of that but you take a different approach and I find it so refreshing and so encouraging and especially coming from a woman whose kids turned out okay they did go figure so will you speak a little bit to everybody listening about what it means to have Simplicity in your home school yeah I think I've been describing a lot of that for us just what it looked like was to get up in the morning and there were chores to be done responsibilities because we want to teach our kids responsibility we want to start that at a very young age and then there was breakfast and then usually a few more chores and then I actually had a time of inspecting chores you can't expect what you're not willing to inspect because the kids aren't going to do they're not going to do a good job or they may not do it at all so your kids know they're going to get checked every day it would look something like this I would go in their room my kids thought if the middle of the room was cleared off their room was clean all the stuff could be on the side so they had to be taught and the way that I did that was instead of just telling them them oh you need to clean all that stuff up I would walk in the room and I would say okay the middle of the floor looks great there's a praise right there and then I would say do you see anything here that isn't right that needs to be fixed to training their eyes to see where the mess is and what needs to happen and they're now they're they're having to own what they're doing and that's another really important thing and then they would tell me and I was okay get that taken care of and then you tell them one other good thing that they did so kind of like a sandwich of Praise a little bit of critique because you we do want to teach them like they need to know what a good job looks like get done with that and then we would go into our schoolwork and for the littles it was a lot of playing outside building blanket fors baking you know all the stuff that you know I have some podcast episodes on the essentials in Early Education and that's really all that's involved you know it's really them just doing stuff with us doing things with their siblings and and kids just again they love to play at that age anyway so all that imaginative play is super helpful so uh we would do that whatever amount of book work and the kids knew that they knew exactly what they needed to do every day and so they knew that when they were finished with that they were done so the sooner they got it finished the sooner they were done and the boys have told they tell me to this day and they're you know like coming up on 30 years old now they're like that's what motivated me to get through this morning stuff is do the harder thing first which is again teaching resilience and self-discipline and doing doing what's hard first and they knew that they would get that time outside every single day and they love loved that time so that was their motivator they loved it now there weren't computers when we first started parenting there was not screens to compete with my advice to parents is avoid that for that the screens for as long as you possibly can let your kid be a kid I am all about traditional childhood a traditional childhood and what that looks like is doesn't really involve screens it involves a lot of play outside baking cookies with us going to the post office going to the library we have no we just don't even realize how much our kids are learning from all of that so all the things that I needed to do as a wife and a mom and all of that the kids came with me and so that's was part of the Simplicity as well is like I have to do these adult things but I'm going to take my kids along with me alongside me and they would see how I conversed with people they watched what kind of manners I had they helped me put stuff in the cart at the grocery store we could count things there we could have conversation in the car I mean that's where the bulk of our kids education comes is doing everyday life with us and so for me being able to encourage moms that you know as you're just walking out your days just have your kids with you and engage them in conversation and so much Learning Happens through conversation at least it did in our house and and through games and playing and all of that we've made education harder than it needs to be more complicated than it needs to be and the other problem is come so disconnected from real life real learning doesn't happen apart from real life our kids are wanting to learn things that they can actually do and that's why they want to model us that's why you give them a bunch of toys and they want tools like Dad you know or kitchen utensils like Mom and that's natural and that's normal and that is what they should be doing so take our cues from them more and less from the scope and sequence chart and all the other things we're seeing on social media and all that so they're supposed to know for their grade it's funny when I when I do lives that always Pops in what is my kid supposed to know they're in fourth grade well it's become about performance instead of purpose well and you hear that and I hear the anxiety behind that and I was like oh man can I sit down and have a coffee with you let's ask ourselves this is the main question oh which I want to talk to you about too because you had one main question that that completely redefined what an education is for you and I had that as well as we were in the midst of running this successful Center here I was deconstructing it let us to sell our business actually because we felt like we were enabling A system that we no longer believed in right you wrote If there is no way to know what our kids might one day do for a living how in the world can we prepare them and you mentioned that this question became the Catalyst for change in your perspective on education and this is so vital that of course we already know we're broken records when we say education is in the filling of a bucket it's igniting fire you actually stop to think wait a minute can my kid actually learn everything they need to know before they're 18 parents just stopped for a second they would realize how absurd of a question that is right so tell me more about that deconstruction for you well for me when I asked myself that question I I realized it was it was really dominating my thinking with our oldest son the girls I can just relate to you know we we have so much in common we love language arts and writing and so the first two were girls came pretty naturally to to teach them and to kind of get into a Groove with them and he was just a completely different animal altogether and I realized wait he was going to have to have a career of some sort like he was going to be working throughout his adult life and how would I know what it is that he was going to do and at the time it was really interesting question because there was hardly any out there who were software Engineers I didn't even know what that was for years you know like it was way in the future it wasn't something that was really a thing then right but that's what he ended up being a software engineer so I couldn't guess at all and it's the same thing for us the jobs that our kids are going to have don't even exist right now right so there's no way for us to dot all our eyes and cross all of our teas so we're going to have to take a different approach and for me I thought okay what's important then if they they need to be able to Pivot and learn whatever comes their way and and I want to make it possible for them to do that there's some things that need to happen and so what formulated out of that was number one I wanted them to be lifelong Learners the main way to do that is to not burn them out on school work and forcing on them too many things that we think they should be learning instead of listening to them and their interests and you know whatever they have to contribute this is something that I learned to do a lot with my kids was talk to them about their education like what are you liking what are you loving what are you not liking and is it something you can keep doing even if you don't like it or do you think we should do this a different way or you know when you're doing your schoolwork how do you best work and some of them needed music in their ears noise going on others needed quiet some needed to be you know sitting in a tree or reading upside down on the couch whatever they needed to do but they had the freedom to do that in our house because we were homeschooling and we were open to that all that to say we want them to be lifelong Learners we want that relationship with learning to be positive so that means you know yes there's some things that they have to do that they don't like my ratio was 8020 if they're enjoying 80% of it and 20% is kind of like okay we just got to get through this that's a great ratio when that started to tip the other way we needed to make some tweaks and some changes so always being open that this is a continually evolving experience I just told myself every year is an experiment and when I started doing that it took the pressure off you know right and this is a thing I want to point out the Traditional School System tends to look at performance rather than purpose now performance we can tell is not actually getting the kids where they need to be right right but if we have purpose we understand the purpose of this math lesson that we're doing today is not just to learn addition subtraction or whatever this is also following directions this is you know being owning what we're doing it's it's a lot of things and so understanding that the purpose of what we're doing is to raise lifelong Learners so if we're going to raise lifelong Learners they have to have a good healthy positive relationship with learning and it's our job to help create that environment for them the second thing is to be resourceful so they want to learn they've got a drive to learn do they know where to find out what it is they need to know also do they know how they learn that's another part of being resourceful well guess what my kids learned how they learn during that play time and that free time that they had because they were pressing into all the things that interested them and pursuing them all the way to the end okay because they had the margin to do that we weren't running from one thing to another and so they know how they learn um and my it was funny my 21-year-old daughter she was telling me I always had my kids I had a very simple language arts thing and you know you're a language arts Queen so this might make you go you know but here's the thing I just had to keep things simple and this is another part of the question answer to the question about Simplicity yeah is the main thing that I had them do for their language arts was to read for 20 to 30 minutes sometime less if they were younger of course um and then write a summary of what they read yeah that's it and we would go over the summary every single day so we went over you know like I had them read it out loud to me because when you read it out loud you realize oh that doesn't sound right and you got fix it right so you learn to edit they learned to edit their own work and then we would go through it for punctuation and you know grammar and spelling and all of that and it didn't take very long like five minutes maybe maybe 10 and have them fix whatever if there's too many things wrong and that was it right and she said that has been the most helpful thing for her she loves to study she loves to study theology and so she now studies these things and she said the best way that I remember it is to write it out in a summary so it was just it's just interesting to see you know we listen to that Mom Instinct and I think that's so important and I like to tell people a lot of people like to oh you're a classical homeschooler oh you're a Charlotte Mason and I like to shout from the rooftops a good idea is a good idea no one owns it right that's right and quite frankly Charlotte Mason was right with the n narration piece oral narrations when they're young and then when they're older written narrations also and then going into the public speaking piece is so vital we'll get back to your question so it's raise lifelong Learners teach them to be resourceful and the last thing is work ethic this is super important because your kids can have a desire to learn know how to learn but if they don't have the persistence the resilience to carry it out they're not going to take it nearly as far so we want to instill a strong work ethic and I don't just mean bookwork wise in fact our biggest emphasis in in a strong work ethic was actually in work before we continue I want to share with you a program that has been a game Cher for our homeschool at our Learning Center we instructed and taught pretty much every math program out there on the market so we know firsthand how important a solid math Foundation is for our kids Futures finding the right homeschool math program that didn't compromise academic Excellence but also one that didn't put me and my kids through the ringer was a challenge till one day I tried CTC math you guys the rest was history first off it's a Mastery based program which means your kid gets a solid grasp of the material it's also loaded with mixed reviews ensuring kids never forget what they've learned and the questions are adaptive which keep students confident and progressing at their own pace but the best part all the teaching and Grading done for you with CTC math there is no compromise on Excellence your child gets a top-notch education and you just made your homeschool life easier visit CTC math for your free trial today their chores uh family projects things like that that and they automatically carried that persistence eventually over into their school workor I didn't even have to try to make that happen like it felt like it happened pretty organically but again that real life learning learning isn't disconnected from real life so we start that learning purposeful learning that we want for them in real life and they'll carry it over into any intellectual things you know like our son who became a software engineer he started college at age 16 when he was 12 years old I was panicking because he hated reading he was a horrible speller and he hated language arts the whole language arts thing just was not his thing he didn't like it he didn't like writing he didn't like any of it I just did the summary with him for the most part and I branched out a couple times into a couple other little things but I just felt like I was going to lose his love for learning if I forced too much of this on him so then fast forward and he is taking his interest exam at college and I am sweating bullets because I'm thinking he's gonna fail this I I do he comes back to the car I'm like how did it go and he's like oh I aced it I'm like what you know trying not to look too surprised but I think he was surprised too he goes mom you taught us to speak well at home and you had us write summaries that's actually all I needed for that entrance exam so and then he he fast forward into his first uh quarter of college got a B+ on his first paper I read it I was amazed it had footnotes I didn't teach him that he just picked up all of that stuff when he needed to like when he was motivated he wanted that degree he wanted to be a software engineer and he knew to get there he had to do this first yes and all of a sudden he was willing to do whatever it took and he did you know and so fast forward he he graduates and he works for Amazon now and he is telling me the other day like for a long time all he had to do is write emails that was it like it just have to be able to communicate and this again goes back to purpose in writing what is the purpose of writing it is to communicate clearly to the other person what we are trying to say that's what it is at its very core so if they can learn to do that and I think it starts in conversation first then eventually they'll be able to get it out on paper can I tell you the spelling story real quickly yes please do this is okay so I told you he was a horrible speller and I was like panicking okay I'm like okay I don't know I know that if I add a spelling program I just could feel it like I almost got sick to my stomach I'm thinking about it because I had seven other kids were trying to homeschool and I was like we've got a great Rhythm this is going to stress me out and he is going to hate it so I don't know what to do I personally am am a woman of faith and so I prayed I was like Lord you've got to help me you've got to intervene here because I don't know what's happening I don't know what to do so I just waited to see what would happen it wasn't long after that I noticed in every conver Sation he was having with people he was doing something with his fingers so when I got him alone I said he notice that you did you're doing something with your fingers when you're talking what is that he goes oh well I was kind of watching Britney his sister uh his sister's video she's been she was watching videos on sign language learning sign language and so he was he was just like I don't Eve's watching I don't know it wasn't it wasn't his assignment but he was still watching and he learned the alphabet in sign language and so he was picking words out of the conversation and spelling them with his fingers and his spelling after that dramatically improved and and I was like I could have never thought of that I would have never thought of that and you know years later we were talking about it and we realized you know like Jake is the kind of person who has to be doing more than one thing in order to take in and I can't understand that I like give me one thing at a time but for him his brain is just so going all the time that he's got to have something going on over here in order to get this thing done over here and so that's how it worked for him and so I've actually shared that story many times and I've had Mom send me pictures of their kids who were having trouble with spelling and started doing that and it helped them dramatically so there you go there you go it's interesting because I I assign very weird reading in my home school like how to win friends and influence people I love to especially when kids get around Junior High they're curious about themselves how their brain works and I recently assigned how am I smart to my son and oh he has been having a blast he's analyzing everyone in the home the conversations now that we are able to have about his curricula choices yes what we're doing in our home because he is involved in that our children in our school system both public and private are literally told to be quiet for 12 straight years we don't want to hear what you have to say unless it's exactly what I am expecting you to say my goodness what that can do for motivation when you simply Ask a kid what's working for you right it sounds so simple yes but BEC I think parents are scared they're scared that their kid might not be prepared for college or won't get into college or what if what if what if what if and I think that addressing our own anxiety about that first yes it's like look these are going to be adults and we set them up yes we're GNA make sure they can read you know of course yes yeah but ultimately there is going to be a point where they hopefully will take charge of their lives and achieve the goals that they want to achieve and I know it sounds very UNS schooly but it's actually brain sciencey as well right like there are great ideas in all of these different styles including unschooling and Charlotte Mason and classical do we miss anything because it's like a master class in homeschooling talking to you I jotted a couple things down because they came to mind and I was like you know what I'm going to share this okay there was a point at which you feel this pressure should we do this should we do that should we do this all these questions yeah so one of the questions that I asked myself early on that was so incredibly helpful if you took fear out of the picture and you took away whatever expectations I thought I had or other people had if you took all of that away and there was no fear and there was no worry and I wasn't concerned about the future at all I knew that they were going to be okay what would I want to do with my kids and that told me a lot right there because it tells you like what's in your mom heart to do with your kids we all love our kids we want to do right by them like it comes from a good motivation but unfortunately it's motivated by fear and so now it's like more people are running away from something and with good reason like really good reason totally understandable but we need to not let it stop stop there we need to say okay I'm running from this I know what I'm running from what am I running to like what do I want for my kids yeah what do I want to do with my kids you know because we only have them for that short amount of time and cozy time with your kids is really only like maybe the first 12 years okay and you first spend the first few just trying to keep them clean fed and Alive school time it's you're talking maybe seven years of where you're really got to have this opportunity to make those cozy memories with your kids and it's not just it's not just for us like it is something that it grounds our kids to have a happy childhood is to give our kids a gift like to be able to give our kids the gift of a childhood is huge and my adult kids have thanked me so many times for giving them space for giving them time and space to do the things that they were passionate about things that they love to be able to be creative play together unstructured time all of that we had a lot of structure in our home but we had what we call Planned structured unstructured time you know so a couple hours every afternoon they knew they were going to get that and so um so that was one question I asked myself if I could do it any way I wanted to what would that be so when you can answer that question that's going to start to give you direction as to how you want to homeschool your kids the other thing that I heard that was incredibly comforting everything your child needs to learn to uh go into higher education so into high school they can technically learn in two years yes so take your kindergarten to eth grade and cram it down into two years now take that two years and spread it out over kindergarten to 8th grade and what if you got you've got margin you've got time and you can relax and you can stop worrying about what isn't getting done you know you can take December off and just sell Christmas for a whole month exactly exactly and just enjoy your kids I can't tell you how many times life stopped our homeschooling you know what most people would call your school your school part of your day but our kids never stop learning Okay so we've had crisis that we've had to go through I our youngest son was in the hospital for the two for first two months of his life um open heart surgery at three days old six and a half hour surgery we almost lost him several times so there was not just those two months but it was more than that because by the time we brought him home there was all this care he needed and I had to let go and just recognize that my kids were learning so much just by being together through a difficult time and me making the time to just sit with them and read to them and leaving margin in the day for them to share their grief their emotions that kind of thing that they never could do if they walked to to a class into a classroom every day under those circumstances we could make that time so fruitful just by being together and walking that out well we can't just like dump that off to the side and just go we got to get our schoolwork done that's that's craziness like this over here this is real life there's love and there's loss and there's there's pain and there's joy and there's all these things to celebrate let's take the time to do those things and to do them well for the sake of our children they're learning from us how to live life well that's up to us we're showing them what is the good life right I read that in a book early on what however we're living Our Lives we're communicating to our kids what the good life is okay so if they think that the good life is only we have to be in bookwork all the time like how is that helpful to them right let's show them a balanced life where can we play that balance of that well and doesn't that also o mean decisions that the outside world will will think are so absurd absolutely like one that comes to mind for our family is Scott and I we've always been a united front on this this is just our personal choice is and I have very close friends who make a different Choice than me because this is what they want and they love it but our personally we have chosen not to do travel teams there's a lot of reasons the time the traveling the expense the actual chances of a child actually getting a college scholarship for all the spent all those years I mean there's a lot of reasons why we have made that decision but we're so careful with extracurriculars that's one of I love the book by Kim John P Simplicity parenting because he has a whole section in there on he talks about simplifying everything clutter all that but his part on time we and I think that as homeschooling moms because we are constantly given the message that we are not doing enough we're not socializing enough they're not around day what do you mean that we tend to over involve ourselves in extracurricular activities and ultimately haven't we just created that same prison that we left right if we're and in my last Workshop that I taught I emphasized that real life is between the lines that's why you hear of moms of high schoolers and their their most precious memories with their kids are when they're driving them to and from practice well why do you think that is it's be it's between the lines right it's from that one busy thing to another that's the moment that you actually have connection together and just how valuable yeah just slowing down it's a margin it's that margin yeah beautiful and it's going to look like decisions so yeah we literally are making the decision that we're probably not going to have college athletes check it off okay we're GNA do other things we're okay with that yes exactly that's so good you know I talk actually talk about this in the book on boy I address the the topic of sports just because it is such a thing you know every person has to make the decision for themselves obviously like you said but it's something we need to think through and not just assume I think that's kind of what you're saying like don't just assume we're going as parents we're GNA make unpopular decisions sometimes they're even unpopular with their own kids but at the end of the day I don't know about you but I wanted to get to that point in my life when my kids were grown that I was overall content with the decisions we had made with the direction that we had taken I have peace about that I think that's unusual it only happened because we were willing to say this is what's important to us this is not important to us and and we just moved on you know but it's it's so important to understand that every family is unique and I think this is something that is just not it's there's such a disconnect in our cult when it comes to like first of all that families are a thing like they're they're not just a bunch of individuals coexisting right we're actually a unit you know and this is why we want to encourage teamwork within the family we want to encourage like everybody participating when it comes to housework and yard work and all of that a kid should be participating they should be doing those things and doing them with us and doing them separate from us we should be setting an example this is another way that we're teaching them about real life but understanding that each individual family has its own flavor like that's the way it's supposed to be that's what makes the world unique that's what creates this new generation of kids who are just unique and have different callings and purposes and we get to nurture that but we have to understand that family life is very very important part of that that is an anchor for our kids for the rest of their lives you know I talk about sibling relationships actually it's probably the next book I'm going to write is oh well that's the next question I'm going to ask it's right here ask your question you had a lot of kids and I'm sure not everyone got along every day no no I want to talk about sibling fights because and sibling tensions and tattling and all of that and I know that's a big nut to crack there are moms listening today that are literally at their wits end because they are they've dived into this homeschooling thing maybe they're within the first five years and don't yet have every tool that you you know you've been doing this 30 years what would you say and I know you can't answer the question but maybe you can say what's the first step a lot of people say homeschooling is easy and I just flat out disagree I think at times homeschool can feel really hard and part of it is the weight of the responsibility to not mess up our kids we are often riddled with self-doubt second guessing and feeling overwhelmed with excessive amounts of information out there and all of the options and at the same time we love our kids we don't want to mess this up so how do we build a homeschool that our kids will thank us for later on down the years when they are adults well the first step is joining Thrive homeschool Community where you find The eight-step Homeschool success framework this helps you build an undeniably successful homeschool that gives your kids what they need now that also prepares them for their future and helps you in the daytoday as well each year and each kid presents us with Uncharted Territory but with the right plan you can rest in the security and confidence that you are doing a great job the path is easy join Thrive say a quick hello to all your new friends start right away The eight-step Homeschool success framework and kiss anxiety goodbye it's risk-free no contracts you can cancel any time no questions asked what would you stay and I know you can't answer the question but maybe you can say what's the first step I think that the first first thing is expect your kids to fight okay your kids right and they fight and they don't get along and they're selfish and they have to learn to be unselfish and they have to learn to be other oriented and they have to learn to think outside of themselves right so one expect it and two see it as an opportunity this isn't an obstacle this is an opportunity for a long time I was like okay can we just all get along so we can get our schoolwork done or we can get these chores done this is ridiculous we're wasting time this is dumb you know that's that was kind of my and all of a sudden it was like okay this is happening and it's happening a lot I need to do something you know so of course what do I do I pray and I realized oh my goodness there's an opportunity here to teach my kids not just how to love each other and how to get along but teach them what healthy relationships actually look like so that when they go into relationships outside the home whether it's friendships or marriage or whatever they they know when something isn't right when someone is treating them poorly so if we're letting our s the siblings talk to each other in a disrespectful way and we don't do anything about it we're basically saying it's okay for you to talk to each other or we just scream like just stop right we're not actually helping we're we're not we're not teaching them okay what's going on here so my first question was always are you treating him the way you want to be treated and are you treating him the way you want to be treated every time the answer was no there was an opportunity to talk about how you know even if this person comes at you you have a choice to say to come back with a softer answer not to come back with a with a bam for me that was all you know rooted in in scripture that talks about a soft answer Turning Away wrath so I could bring my kids to that and say look a soft answer turns away wrath so if you can not react and instead respond you actually have control in this situation to diffuse this whole thing you're not a victim here the point is we want them to have self-control right that's what it comes down to and you're having a soft answer uh to turn away wrath does not happen overnight takes practice because it goes against our nature right so yes every time it happens we have the opportunity to help them retrain themselves to have self-control you cannot have back-to-back activities and expect to handle those situations well these things take time you've got to have the time to work through the conflict with your kids I'll give you an example uh two of our boys were fighting over a pair of handcuffs I was like okay you guys figure it out you know give them a chance to figure it out first I think that's important they need to practice it because then they own what's going on right and they were not working it out so I grab I said come here hand give me the handcuffs I took the handcuffs and I handcuffed them together and I gave them each a sponge and cleaner and I brought them to the bathroom and I said I want you to clean this bathtub handcuffed okay it's kind of like the getal shirt thing and they were like what and I was like yeah you got to clean this thing together teamwork DreamWork later and I went in the other room you know eventually it got done they did beg me about halfway through to take the handcuffs off and I said no you need to do this and so they did you know so lot of scenarios like that where you just got to get creative training sessions that was a lot of it was training sessions I remember another time I had the two oldest girls they were like night and day they still are polar opposite personalities they could not speak to each other without fighting I mean it was so bad and finally I just looked at them both and I said are you guys enjoying this like are you okay with the way you're relating to each other and like no we don't like it we hate it we just don't know what to do about it I was like okay and I would say okay I want you to tell her what happened and how that made you feel like what what you were seeing in the situation briefly don't go on and on because girls can do that and then I and then I would have the other one tell her what she heard her say the first time they did that she didn't hear anything the same that I heard coming out of my daughter right it was just there was like they were speaking different languages and so this drive-through talking all right say it say it again in a way that she can hear what you mean because sometimes we have to do that we have to kind of adjust our words and our tone in order for somebody else to understand what we're saying and so their relationship greatly improved after that it was not perfect but they had the tools to work through the conflict I did not go into this knowing how to resolve conflict I did not have classes on it I you know I just basically said like you I'm G to figure this out you are GNA figure this out I'm not liking you know I often say like okay I'm not enjoying life right now let's target why just those simp yeah yeah so this and this kind of upset and upheaval in our home I was not okay with it we get to set the atmosphere in our home as moms so we can decide this is not okay and we're going to take the time to work through it so just going back to how we're treating each other I would look at them and say would you ever treat your friend like that they would be like no and I would tell them look the most the hardest place to do the right thing and work through things in relationships is at home with your own siblings because you live with them all the time this is the hardest place to do it if you can pull it off here you can pull it off out there and they never forgot that and they as adults they'll tell me you were right like that was was hard this is easier so it's a really great training ground like we want our kids to know this is what a healthy relationship looks like this is what healthy conflict resolution looks like and for me being a woman of faith I went to the scripture I went to the New Testament that talked about like be patient with one another bear with each other's weaknesses um appreciate and respect each other's strengths so these are all things that we want to encourage in those sibling relationships so hopefully that was helpful that's incredibly helpful this episode was so jam-packed thank you so much for sharing your 30 years of homeschooling wisdom with all of us I'm so excited about your book on boys that are coming out but you have other really great books we're going to put everything in the show notes where can my audience find you denda you can find me at the denda Wilson podcast and I'm at denda wilson.com and then any of my books you can find on my website or at Amazon wonderful thank you so much for being on the show I can't wait to share this with everybody thanks for having me