The title of this post could also be, “The disadvantages and advantages of home educated children in learning about marriage, relationships, and all-things-family-harmony.” But that’s kinda long.
It’s a truth, universally acknowledged, that if a family homeschools, the children will be intimately aware of the function, and dysfunction, of their parent’s homeschool marriage.
If we were flies on each other’s walls, what stories might those flies talk about our homeschool marriage?
Our kids will see all the stories of our relationships, especially our homeschool marriage.
- Is it early December, right before the frantic attempt at completing and clearing curriculum from desks so the family has time for Christmas cheer that an argument breaks out in front of the Christmas tree about how best to spend the holidays?
- Is it the first few months after the first baby is born when the partner relationship is being renegotiated as frustrations arise about the inequality of parenting efforts expended?
- Or is it two days before the menstrual cycle takes a downward curve that everything the partner does isn’t hitting the sweet spot?
- If there a loss of a job that causes one partner to feel irritated with the other’s inability to pull up his/her bootstraps and get going?
- Or is it when there’s a disagreement on which homeschool philosophy the homeschool family should follow, or whether the kids should even be homeschooling at all?
You fill in the blank to whatever seems to get the two of you going. So many stories for the fly on the wall to share.
But, for certain, perfectly harmonious marriages, without conflict, misunderstanding, or disagreement, don’t exist.
When homeschooling a gaggle of girls, or a brood of boys, or a crew of kids, these homeschooling children become an audience to our homeschool relationships.
Even if you step into another room to have a mature discussion, homeschool kids have their spider-sense wired to their parents. We’re the WIFI hotspot to their iPods. They’ve got you on auto-detection, auto-reception, and mind-to-mind perception.
And they know what mom says to dad, or dad says to mom, that confuses, confounds, or complicates harmonious connection. They know what gets mom or dad going. They might even know what will get them to stop going…
Perhaps they don’t have a mature understanding of how a relationship flows or understand the details of the dynamics and history of the relationship, or have the relationship skills you’ve learned from tenacious grit and persistence, but you are the actors in their “relationship-learning stage”.
The benefit of the homeschool marriage? Homeschool kids get taught the value of these relationships, how one speaks to their significant other, how to manage conflict, and what one should expect from the other.
It’s all being taught, with or without intention. A daunting thought.
As with parenting, we are imperfect in the marriage too. These pivotal relationships reflect back to us what we need to learn and teach us how to love. With grace, forgiveness, humility, and a giant listening ear, we can walk continually toward graciousness, forgiveness, and humbling ourselves, so we can learn what needs to be learned.
After nearly twenty-five years of marriage, our story includes stories of self-inflicted pain, confusion, frustration, grace, humility, and forgiveness: plot lines so thick it would be a challenge to capture the themes of all we’ve learned into a single film series.
Ours is a story, like many others’ stories, a story of grace, forgiveness, humility, and personal growth.
So we continue learning from one another, continue learning about ourselves, and continue learning how to love.
Check out these resources for your marriage:
- The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
- Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
- Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson
We unintentionally teach our children stuff they might need to unlearn in their relationships, but we also teach our kids about humility, forgiveness, grace, what to expect of others, and what to expect of ourselves: the homeschool marriage.
Build your Boundaries Journaling Workbook
Journal questions can aid in your self-exploration, to get curious about what your reasons for boundaries issues may be. They can be a self-coaching tool to help you clarify your needs, your relationships, and your identity, so you can get your needs met & become more you. This 31-page self-coaching workbook will be your best tool to build boundaries.
People also ask:
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- How to Love My Homeschool Husband
- homeschool family harmony: the invisible education in an imperfect family
Teresa Wiedrick
I help homeschool mamas shed what’s not working in their homeschool & life, so they can live their homeschool moms lives authentically, purposefully, and confidently.
Appreciate your post and appreciate your self-care video on the 2020 Canadian Homeschool conference even more. You role model such an abundance of contentment but express the grit that it takes with such endearing honesty!
Aww thank you for this. I’m so glad my story and my learning has been useful for yours!
Thank you for sharing that Jaclyn–can you believe I responded to this four years later? Yikes. I really appreciate your thoughts. How are you taking care of you?