Our Favourite Story
Categories: Léo’s Insights 2024-2025
While our favourite story is not so much a story, it must be told because it represents the single most important observation we have had the privilege of making in our thirty plus years as facilitators. This “story” is about our own family.
Even though we didn’t decide to home educate our own children until our eldest had attended school for six years, it is still one of the all-time best decisions we have ever made. Our only regret is that we put the children in school in the first place. Our youngest was already damaged by his first two years in the institution that completely failed to meet his individual needs; our middle son was floating through as the compliant child; and our eldest was doing everything to gain the favour of her classmates, including purposely failing exams and assignments so she could fit in. I am not sure what took us so long to realize that the system I was struggling to teach in was the same system my children were in.
Being teachers, we immediately worked to make sure our children’s academic skills were up to speed, whatever that meant. As we gained more experience, we started to notice two things. One was that the home educated child’s ability to learn is in keeping with who they are as unique creations rather than as standard students. The other was witnessing the cementing of our family relationships. Our children became and remain each other’s best friends. And, as a bonus, we are part of that circle too.
You can count on your children outdoing what would or may have been possible in school. While this is important, it pales in comparison to the unity homeschooling brings to the family. This should come as no surprise, but it does. It even eluded my wife and me until we were able to see it within our own family and then in countless others.
We now make a point of assuring parents that while the children will do well with their academics while learning at home, the greatest blessing of unschooling, defined as just being a family learning and growing together, is being part of something God intended for families from the start. Only relatively recently has school become a part of human history. Study what this has done and is doing and you will quickly see it is more about destroying families than supporting them.
Keep your children home and become the loving family God intended.
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