I’ve had these thoughts for a long time. As a family that homeschools, I always wonder if people hear themselves when they talk.
“How do you do it?”
“I could never do that with my kids!”
“I just wouldn’t have the patience!”
I always want to respond with something like, you realize how you’re talking about your kids right now, right? Or, well, God puts the responsibility of educating children first on the parents. Or, it is sort of our job as the parents to educate our children.
I know, I know. It doesn’t work for everyone. Some people can’t make it work due to work. Some kids have additional needs or challenges.
I know. I’ve heard it all.
But really. Stop and listen to what you’re saying.
And now, with so many people having kids home from school, I’ve seen posts from others on social media about posts they’ve seen. And people are finally realizing there are some parents who don’t seem to have very many good ideas on what it means to parent.
That’s partially because we’ve pawned much of the responsibility that should be on parents, extended family, community and church off on government. Or government has taken that responsibility. However you want to view that.
But this temporary time of challenge creates an outstanding opportunity to make parenting your kids more of a focus. It’s a time to read more. Play more games. Have some sort of family movie night. Sit and eat at the table together. Talk together.
Really dig in and invest in your children.
Sometimes people kid about the “how do you do it,” or the “I could never homeschool my own child,” or the “I wouldn’t have the patience for my own kid.”
But I think sometimes people mean it too.
When this whole Coronavirus epidemic is done, and life returns to normalcy, I hope moms and dads realize spending more time with their children isn’t a burden or a challenge, but a blessing.
It’s all limited. The amount of years, months, days, hours and minutes we have to truly form our children is more limited than we realize when we’re in the midst of it.
And, the truth is, if we’re all being honest, I think almost all of us would admit we waste too many of those minutes, hours and days.
The Coronavirus epidemic is undoubtedly a curveball being thrown at us all. We can knock it out of the park if we start doing the things that, perhaps, we should have been doing all along.
And maybe, just maybe, we won’t look back at this period in time as a pandemic, but as an opportunity to get back on track.
If our families can find a way to get back on track, it will go a long way in our country getting back on track.
