Before my wife and I married, I was committed to homeschooling. By contrast my wife, who came from a background and country (South Africa) where homeschooling was unheard of, had many misgivings. Yet, as with many things where I stood apart from my wife’s experience and training, she yielded, choosing to join with me in marriage, knowing full well that her life was going to look much different than she had ever imagined as a result. Thus, long before our first child was born, we were committed to homeschooling, neither of us knowing what that would look like nor how we would do it.
Necessity is the mother of invention
Necessity is the mother of invention, says the proverb, and so has been our experience. When Joseph (our firstborn) arrived, I was ecstatic, but completely ignorant of what to do. I still remember the nurses handing me my son for the first time. My wife was in recovery from an emergency C-section, and they left me alone with him in our hospital room! I went to give him back to the nurses as they were leaving the room, figuring he belonged with someone far more knowledgeable than me, and they said: “No. He is yours.”
I remember laying there in bed, for I had been up for more than 24 hours, holding this precious little bundle against my chest. He was sooooo small and I felt soooo unsure of myself, like I might break him if I was not careful. Sometime later, the first of a series of nurses came to our room to do I remember not what. What I do remember is that each one of them had a different way of swaddling my son.
When the first one came, she showed me how to do it. I did what she did until the second one came in and told me I had done it all wrong and I was supposed to do it this way. The third did likewise. Quickly, I realized that I was going to have to figure out what was best for my son myself. Moreover, I realized that there was no way to please everyone, not even in something as common as swaddling a baby. Homeschooling is a lot like that, each child and each family is unique. You are going to have to decide what is best for yours, accepting responsibility for your choices, so you can make the periodic adjustments in course that may be needed.
The next challenge came when we placed our son in his car seat as we were leaving the hospital. Though a nurse was present to inspect our car seat to make sure it was legal and that it was installed correctly, I remember feeling, as we buckled him in, as though I was doing something illicit. Surely the baby police would recognize that I was unqualified and would swoop down to rescue my little charge from the incompetent hands the hospital had so foolishly left him in. I distinctly recall furtively looking around the circular driveway to the hospital entrance for the keen-eyed officials poised to pounce. Finding none I opened the door for my wife (as is our custom), thanked the nurse that assisted us, and drove home! The reality that it was on me – i.e. it was my responsibility – to see to the proper raising of my children crystalized.
If I faced such challenges in my first few days as a father, I trust you know that there have been many challenges since then. As I write this, Joseph’s 14th birthday is 10 days away. His siblings Sam (12), Ruth (10) and Abigail (8) followed him in rapid succession. I will jump in from time to time with some lessons that I have learned along the way, but for starters let me sum matters up this way:
Necessity truly is the mother of invention, but you will never learn the truth of that proverb unless you commit yourself whole-heartedly unto the task of homeschooling. If you give yourself any way of escape or excuse for failure, you will likely find it.
My wife and I COMMITTED to giving our children the best education possible from the outset, which forced us to find a way to address every challenge along the way and that has made all the difference.
By Steve Atherton
