How to Maintain Authenticity in our Homeschool with Betsy Jenkins

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Betsy Jenkins is the mother of five awesome boys, aged 6-20. She is an artist and co-owner of a decorative design company. You may know her best for her classical art memes on Instagram, Homeschooling with the Classics.

Also, she is married to a renaissance man who can build and fix anything. Together, they are just crazy enough to think that raising and educating a million boys at home is a really sweet deal.

Betsy Jenkins, Homeschooling with the Classics creator, and I discuss the necessity to develop our authenticity and vulnerability for our homeschool relationships.

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When I focus on my core why in my homeschool, for me: heart connection, it automatically brings my stress down, because I know what my job is.

Betsy Jenkins, Homeschooling with the Classics

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So, Betsy’s advice for homeschool mamas:

• You have to step aside with your ideas, what you believe to be the trajectory of your family, and your goals, and just focus on the children in front of you and what they need.
• Remember what Charlotte Mason says, “Your children are born persons”.
• It is not your job to make the garden grow. We’re garden keepers, we’re here to tend and feed that garden, but not make it grow.
• Continue in your own education, in your own thirst for your own knowledge and skills, and do the things you love.
• Get help, from a counselor, pastor, or friend if you feel at the end of yourself.
• Your only job is to hold up a mirror to them to who they are meant to be. I don’t have to bend them out of shape; I just have to help them grow into their shape.

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Betsy’s encouragement to homeschool mamas:

• When I refocus on my core why, heart connection, it just automatically brings all of that stress right down because I know what my job is.
• You have to set aside your ideas of what’s going to be their trajectory for your family and what the end goal is. And instead, focus on the children in front of you and what they need.
• Our children come to us with full personalities and likes and dislikes and tensions and quirks. All those things are beautiful and unique, and it’s our job to actually become students of our children’s natures to figure out who they are and the way that they themselves are meant to go. Not the way that society says they should go, or whoever our inner idea of the perfect family said they should go, but the way that this child was actually created to go.

You can find Betsy Jenkins online at:

• Instagram: @homeschooling_withtheclassics & @talltimbers_willowlake
• Facebook page: @Homeschooling with the Classics

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People also ask…

• How to deal with unrealistic expectations in your homeschool.
• How to keep sane when you’re a homeschool mom with five simple principles.
• Tell me more about your homeschool mama retreat.
• I’m a new homeschooler, are you able to walk alongside me and mentor me?
• Homeschooling is no panacea: persistence is required

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Call to Adventure by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3470-call-to-adventure
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/