Thrive: advance, do well, get ahead, get better, grow rich, prosper. We want to thrive so we need to find a vision for your homeschool.
Is my family thriving? Some days just getting by feels like it surely must be enough.
Let’s chat about finding a vision for your homeschool.
But first, you say, you have other stuff to do…
- The kids are fed. They poured themselves a bowl of cereal, I think.
- They’re dressed. Well, he did wear that outfit to bed, but it’s relatively clean.
- And they’re all kept out of harm’s way. Until I realized a hot cup of tea shouldn’t have been on a side table with a toddler in the house.
I might want to find a vision for my homeschool, but my ordinary homeschool life has a lot of demands.
In early family life, just dressing them, feeding them, and keeping them safe seemed a daunting task.
- Finding time to pee or shower without an audience was a challenge.
- Grand ambitions of happy outings to the zoo seemed unrealistic when you had the two-year-old unhappily strapped into her car seat, a container of cheerios splattered on the floor, and the baby desperate for a nap — just as you are gearing to get out the door exactly two hours after originally planned.
Challenging days, some days.
Children get older and are independent enough to make their own breakfast.
Different ages, different struggles.
- They still need to learn how to talk kindly to their siblings.
- They need to speak in a way they’ll get heard by parents.
- They learn to deal with their angst about, well, everything an adolescent gets anxious about.
What does thrive mean when we just hope to survive?
So how do I find a vision for my homeschool?
1. Be proactive, not reactive.
It’s the go-to, default setting to parenting: reactivity. It is too easy. Your child intentionally walks away while you’re telling her something, and the offense is your instinct. A child roars down the stairs with, “Mom, she hurt me, took my thingy away, isn’t being fair…”
If I know that one of my kids has a habit of whining, what do I do? If I know that one child reacts more harshly than seems appropriate, what will I do the next time I hear her lambasting her brother for touching her? If I can see that two children fight whenever they’re underslept, oversugared or overstimulated, how will I plan their days? I definitely need to pre-plan or I will react.
2. Make a declaration.
When reading American History with our four kids, we studied the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. In order to cement the learning, we drafted a preamble to our family constitution:
“We the people of the Wiedrick family, in order to form a more perfect family, establish harmony, ensure happiness, provide people space, promote consideration, secure privacy, share and help those in need, do not play fear inducing pranks on our kin, do not create excessive noise to ones ear, do not stir more trouble into our kin’s life. We endeavor to keep the spirit in the bond of peace.”
Wiedrick Kids
This was primarily inspired by my three girls.
Otherwise, I would have added a few more things, but I was pleased that they knew how they wanted to be treated and what they valued in how they should treat each other.
And as you know, it was lovely to pin to the fridge. It was a thousand times easier to write than to implement. We acknowledge our imperfections, we’ll always be imperfect, and we accept that this family thing is a journey and we have much to learn, but remind ourselves of what we’ve declared about ourselves.
3. Have a vision for your family.
When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I daydreamed about my upcoming mothering days. My kids will be so cute, I thought (and they actually are). They will be amusing little sidekicks to my already focused life (actually, I became the sidekick). The daydream crept into reality at certain moments.
The days can be long, and demanding, and extending, but we decide each morning to approach each day with intention and vision because though the effort is immense, the payoff is greater.
- What do you want your day to look like?
- Do you start a creative activity before the kids sit for breakfast?
- Do you want to have a fifteen-minute break after lunch?
- Do you want to spend the day learning together, playing games, crafting, feeding the goats, helping neighbours, and building snow forts?
- What theme words do you want your family to live by?
- What values do you aspire to?
How to spend eighteen years with your homeschooled children?
5. Recognize that each child has a vision for their own life.
We have our visions, but our children have their own too.
This, of course, might not be easy to see when they’re three. Though I’ll bet not sooo hard as they gravitate toward scissors and books, or playing in the flour bag, or staring at picture books for hours. It all speaks something about them.
As my children have grown, I’ve come to understand them better. Two kids are spitfires. Two generally follow the rules. Some love structured time and checking all the boxes. Some want to explore things their own way, thank you very much! Just as there are no two fingerprints or DNA strands, each person contributes heartily to our world, and if we follow their internal spark, we will help fan that spark to flames.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled” (thanks Plutarch). As Dr. Peter Benson summarizes in a TED Talk titled “How Youth Thrive”, we can ask our kids, “What is their spark, what is their fire?”
6. Adjust the vision along the journey.
Just as growing as a person has helped me enlarge and adjust my vision along the way, so does my parenting vision. And with surprising regularity.
- These kiddos do the same thing day in, day out, for such a long time that we identify that ‘thing’ as them, but then they stop doing that activity and move on to something else.
- They love British history and are lost in books, then one day, they have no time for reading.
- They gravitate to the playroom for Barbies with their sister for years (so many years you wonder if it’s appropriate that they’re still playing Barbies), and then magically one day, they don’t want to play.
- Their interests expand along the way, and so will their visions for themselves.
Some days and some weeks don’t feel like we’re thriving at all.
But when we learn to be more proactive, and less reactive, chart our vision, expand our vision, consider our children’s visions, and adjust our vision again, then we will thrive again.
“The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.”
Maya Angelou
Reimagine your Homeschool Workbook
Introducing the Reimagine Your Homeschool Workbook! Reflect on the past year, assess what worked and what didn’t, and build the homeschool you truly want. Evaluate curriculum, routine, philosophy, and plan for the future. Get renewed inspiration and fresh ideas.
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I think it’s so important to keep adjusting that vision along the journey!
Oh yes! No choice but to adjust.
Thank you for sharing this. For a long time, it seems like my family has been in survival mode, but I’m ready to move into thriving mode. I love your idea of a family constitution preamble as well as a family vision.
Yes. I like the idea too. It is a great idea. And yet writing it down never quite makes it all flow perfectly. Cause that thrive notion is our goal but a loft goal, and most days, a totally unreasonable goal. Thrive and survive is what I should call that post. Some days thrive, some days survive. Tis life. No perfection. But over the long haul, it’s a charmed life.
Having a vision for each child is a great idea!