No one will deny that homeschooling is a learning experience. What I think that many people don’t realize is that no one really learns more that the homeschooling parent. Now I was very prepared to what homeschooling was and some of the lessons I would learn. I would gain knowledge that was left out of my conventional education. I would learn to have patience and how to schedule better. Already I see those lesson taking form in me. But there are some lessons I didn’t foresee and I am sure that there are more to come.

The big lesson I didn’t foresee was sometimes you need to leave them the heck alone. It started when I was trying to teach my oldest how to use scissors. I couldn’t figure out how to communicate to him on how to make the scissors work and cut on the line. So I went to a woman at church who works in our children’s department and asked for advice. She said hand him the scissors and paper, then leave him alone. Well, she was right.

Same child a couple of years later we are working on first grade math. Now I tutored math for years so I felt like I had a handle on this situation. Well, I may have been wrong;). The fact that I was making sure that he had a handle on the concepts before I gave him the work to do was really exasperating him. I found that he worked so much better if I gave him his workbook and when he stumbled (more than once or twice) then I would pull out the textbook and go over the lesson.

Now this isn’t always the approach for all my children but it was something I wasn’t prepared for. I just wonder what unexpected lesson I will be learning next;).