Are You Adding Pressure to Your Kids?

Guys, today we are hitting at what I would call a “real issue in homeschooling”.  Pressure on our kids.  Like it or not we like to think that our kids a smarter, brighter, quicker, more adapt to the ever-changing world than those who attend public or private schools.  They very well may be.  Universities and colleges do seek/accept homeschoolers because of their usually higher academic achievements and readiness to enter higher education with fewer lower classes.  But are we pushing too hard?  Are we adding pressure to our kids?

Yeah I saw him dancing there by the record machine

I knew he must have been about seventeen”

I Love Rock ‘N Roll – Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

Yeah, he just turned 17.  Wow, where has the time gone?  My oldest son has made it to the “I understand everything in life” age now.  He is wanting to jump into the world and follow after what I do.  He wants to be a children’s pastor.  I believe that he will make one of the best that there has ever been also.  So, to help him along this path, we decided to push things on through this year and combine the junior and senior year together.  He looked at us and asked, “Does this mean that I will graduate this year?”  To which we said yes if you complete everything. This was to him the best news that he had heard in quite a long time.

Everything – every single thing or every particular of an aggregate or total; all.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/everything

Everything turned out to be about 8 classes.  No free time.  No family time.  Missing time at church (not good for the future plans).  No social time.  You know, everything gone, to achieve everything.  

Dad, Mom, is this something that you are doing as well?  I watched as my boy was being beat apart by his desire to make it up a hill that was brutally beating him down.  As parents, whether we homeschool or not, we at times put undue pressure and stress on our kids to “help them”.  In our minds, we see them able to conquer any obstacle that is placed in front of them.  And they can!  But when we line up multiple obstacles in front of them or stack them on top of each other, and then add the constant stress of “Are you done yet?” or “You’re falling behind” we are adding pressure to our kids that does not help them.

If you were to take a golf ball and watch it in slow motion as it is being struck by a club, you will see the ball deform and reshape due to the stresses that are applied to it.  This is normal seeing as how the ball is being struck from one side.  Now if you were to place the same golf ball in a press or vice and start to apply the same pressure to it something different happens.  The ball not having anywhere to go starts to crack, split, and finally has structural integrity failure.  When we apply undue stress to our kids, we are doing the same thing.  The pressure from the parents, the pressure from society, the pressure from self to achieve, the pressure of the teacher, the pressures all build up to a point of collapse.

Today, I have a junior.  Today I have a son that is handling the pressure of schooling with a smile on his face.  Today I have a son who is happy with where he is going and sees that he can manage everything that needs to be done. He and I have both seen where mistakes were made. He and I were both man enough to back up and make changes. Neither of us failed anyone. However we would have if we did not take time to see a problem and readjust. Taking time to fix a problem is not failing, it is learning.

Where are your kids in the homeschooling or even life path they are on?  Are they feeling the pressure so hard that they can not grow, expand, and reach full potential?  Take a good look at your kids and see how they are doing.  See how you are doing.  Don’t let the world dictate how you educate your kids.  That’s why you are homeschooling in the first place.

Till next time…

I’m just a husband of a homeschooling mom.
Steve