HomeschoolIng – 5 MAMAS and a blog

Mondays hate me. They do. I am thoroughly convinced that Monday is a living, breathing thing destined to make homeschooling a nightmare for me. As each of the first 6 Mondays of the school year ended, I was looking for the hidden cameras in my house. I really shouldn’t complain. Nothing really terrible happened…just life with four boys and a puppy, and my always patient and loving reactions. Not. Thank God for no cameras. Oh, a small recap, you ask?

I seem to remember the one morning where I had just finished washing the kitchen floor from a puppy accident, while attempting to do math with two of the children, when another one ran up behind me and with a kiss on the back of my head said something about the bathroom. That something I found out about an hour later when the 5 year old decided that flushing the clogged toilet over and over would fix it, and then his brother helped him by using the entire linen closet to sop up the water. Don’t you just love doing laundry?

Or there was that time that the teenager dropped an advil tablet on the floor and the puppy decided to eat it right up. Bet you didn’t know that it’s toxic to dogs, huh? I kind of thought that the hydrogen peroxide that I had to turkey baster down her throat to make her throw up was, too, but apparently it saved her very expensive purebred little life. Of course this happens when I’m supposed to be out the door in 15 minutes. (Apparently, having a dog again is good for the family. I’ll have to get back to you on that one.)

Add on everyone waking up overtired from the weekends, to bad attitudes, to the laundry still sitting in the washing machine from like…last Thursday, to it being my hubby’s longest day so reinforcements were not coming, it was not a recipe for success. And success was the goal for this certain letter type, list addict, task orientated girl.

My calendar is organized.

My school planner is planned.

My to do list is freshly updated.

And it was becoming more important than the people I was doing it all for. I was putting my list and my need to accomplish it all before the relationships in my life. My reactions to normal life stuff was showing it. And this was not who I wanted to be…definitely not what I wanted for this school year.

A friend introduced me to this book, Teaching From Rest, and there are some amazing nuggets in there….the things YOU KNOW, but FORGOT THAT YOU KNOW. Like…

Surrender my idea of an ideal day…

…or relationship, situation, experience…..

and give it to the Lord, trusting Him with the outcome

The being and becoming needs to come before the doing and checking off…

…being in the moment, undistracted and focused on the people in my life

Do less to do it well

…simplify, simplify, simplify so that what I do choose to do can be done with excellence

Whose “well done” am I working for?

…work, serve for the praise of God, not man

It’s not about being “successful”…God is looking for our faithfulness

…to keep going, keep at it, persevere through it all

Every task, each assignment is an offering of love to God

…no matter how small or insignificant it seems

And most importantly, put relationships before anything else. This one. I mean, this is why I decided to homeschool in the first place…my children’s hearts.

So, I decided to quit. I quit Mondays.

Practically speaking, I redid the planners to make Monday an easier day, I emptied the calendar of any Monday appointments, I got up earlier and I let go of my start time a whole half hour. Listen, small steps, my friend. 🙂 And peace reigned in my home. No, everything did not go perfectly. The computer crashed, I got sick, the puppy…well, let’s just leave that unsaid. This is all just… life. I still have my lists, my planner, and my beloved calendar, but I put them back where they belong. I saw an immediate difference in my children and remembered the amazing gift I have in being able to stay home and school them.

My thing is the homeschooling, but I think those little reminders apply to anything we start putting in the “doing and checking off” list as being more important than the “being and becoming.” I know I’ll need to be reminded of this very often…at least every Sunday night.

I never imagined I would be the mom to twin boys, or that I’d be homeschooling. Through God’s amazing grace, I am doing both.During the 10 years I’ve been parenting my twins and the 5 years we have been homeschooling, I’ve learned that both parenting and homeschooling bring daily joy as well as daily challenges. I’ve often heard that it must be so easy homeschooling twins. It’s not as easy as you might expect.

Like any family with multiple children being homeschooled at the same time, I try to remain flexible, patient and aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each child. There are some specific obstacles that twins face. At times I experience people wanting to treat each of the boys as equals; equal in their likes and dislikes, creative ability, athletic interests and learning ability. They are sometimes treated so similarly that people even see them as one person. For example they may get one shared gift at Christmas or a birthday. And it is common for people to refer to them as “the twins” rather than by their individual names.

Since their birth, I’ve be very deliberate to treat them as individuals, never dressing them alike unless they request it, of course, which often happened when they were younger. I have always used the same curriculum with my twins, but that alone can cause problems. If one child is not “getting it” the way his sibling is, he can feel very discouraged. On the other hand, sharing a curriculum can motivate him to work harder because he wants to keep up with his sibling. It can get a bit complicated, but understanding how our twins groove, how they react, and what motivates them has been a big help.

When they were young, they enjoyed being similar, but as they have gotten older, the individual in each child has come rushing out. Thankfully, through all their changes they remain each other’s best friend. They can be conflicted about this at times, wanting to be similar, but wanting to be seen as individuals. If one expresses an interest or particular competency with a subject or activity, the other will often times want to participate as well even if it’s not their true interest or talent. Often the one without the “natural” capacity can become frustrated or discouraged that he cannot “be as good as his brother.” So one of the challenges of having twin sons is to keep each boy encouraged that he does not have to be like his brother and that he does not have to be as good as him in a particular talent or subject.

There are times that the desire to be like his brother benefits me as their teacher. If one child does not want to work on a particular lesson, watching his brother eagerly complete this same lesson encourages the other twin to do the same. Often I am able to just sit back and let this happen without coaxing. One child may ask “Well, what did he do?” Sharing that his brother completed the task is enough motivation for the other twin to give it his best effort.

There are other times when I feel like the ball in a tennis match. Because my twins are working on the same lessons, I find myself bouncing back and forth when questions come at the same time. Through these few years that we have been homeschooling, we’ve thankfully fallen into our own rhythm and have found our own personal way to remedy this. Patience, for me, is key. The thing about patience is that you never believe you have it until you are forced to use it. From their infancy, they have had to learn patience, for example while waiting for their turn at a feeding. I have had to learn my own patience in so many mommy ways.

In many ways, homeschooling twins is no different than homeschooling multiple aged children. The biggest lesson I have learned from being a homeschooling mom to twins is that though they may look alike, they are different. It’s taught me that one specific way to teach can bring about two very different results based on the child’s personality or learning ability. Realizing this fact has given me freedom as a mom. It has taught me to adapt and modify when necessary and to be flexible. From my experience, twins have an amazing and unique bond. I feel filled with joy as I’m able to watch that bond grow and change.

-Mary (originally published many yrs ago, but the facts remain the same)