New to Home Education? Step Three – Learning
Assuming you have RELAXED by claiming your rightful place as the authority over your children and their education, and hoping you have found a simple yet thorough program to follow such as ACE or CLE, we will now proceed with a few more details to make your home education journey less disconcerting and more exciting.
Let us first review what we have discussed so far:
• RELAX – nothing good is accomplished when panicking.
• Find a program for the interim. ACE or CLE are both good starter programs. You may not follow these programs forever, but they will give you a comfortable starting point.
• Memorize the three cardinal rules for home educators:
◦ Don’t Push
◦ Don’t Hold Back
◦ Don’t Compare
◦ … and remind yourself daily to follow these rules.
Most parents want to arrive at the destination before actually departing! This is understandable, as deciding to do something new is indeed to have a new destination. But nobody arrives right away. Few families, if any become “overnight unschoolers”! In fact, IF unschooling is the goal, one must follow a pathway that leads incrementally from “schooling” to “unschooling”. It goes from school at school to school at home, followed by home schooling which eventually leads to home education which may end at unschooling. Some people may skip a step or two or move through the transitional steps very quickly, but rarely does anyone jump directly into unschooling. It is something that develops with time. Be patient.
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