*Originally published in 2007*

Twenty-four years ago I began home schooling. Now my baby is in college, and my oldest child has two children. It’s a good time to reflect on my experience teaching my six children at home over the last 24 years. This reflection, for those of you who have been on this journey with me, will have some familiar elements. The things that I think are really important I tend to say more than once. But bear with me, and please join in my reflection.

When someone asks me what I think of home schooling, my immediate response is that I loved it. I loved the time with my children. I loved learning with them, and seeing them learn. I loved watching them learn to read, to write and to argue. I was there day by day to see them grow, both naturally and supernaturally. I didn’t just watch, I participated directly in their accomplishments. This was and is a source of great joy to me. So when I was asked to talk about the joy of home schooling, especially with regard to passing on the faith, I was glad to oblige.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I am not saying that every minute of every day was a source of joy. There were days when all I really wanted to do was go back to bed. But overall, my experience home schooling has been very positive. And, perhaps more importantly for our consideration tonight, the results have been positive.

All six of my children either graduated from or are currently attending Thomas Aquinas College. One of them is a nurse, one is an accountant, one has a master’s degree in philosophy, is now head of an IT department, and is married to another, lovely, home school (and TAC) graduate. One is a mother, married to a wonderful man (also a TAC graduate), who is intending to homeschool her own children. The two youngest are currently in college. All of them are faithful, convicted, practicing Catholics. The reason this information is important is that, according to St. Thomas, joy has to do with a good possessed. It is one of the principal passions (in the sense of emotions), along with sorrow, hope and fear. It presupposes love. If we want to talk about the joy of homeschooling we need to think a bit about what joy is.

As I said, joy is a passion we experience with respect to a good we actually possess. Hope, on the other hand, is the passion we experience with respect to a difficult good we wish to posses, but do not yet do so. Hope is what we feel when the children are young and we are working toward the goals we want to achieve for and with them. Sorrow is the passion felt regarding an evil actually existing, while fear is the passion we experience regarding an evil not yet experienced. St. Thomas talks about this in the I, II, q. 25, and later on in the II, II, he adds to this consideration. He teaches that joy in the supernatural order is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, a consequence of Charity, and is primarily the passion one has in the contemplation of God’s own possession of His Goodness, and in others’ possession of God.

This fits well with the joy experienced in home schooling. We primarily feel joy when we see our children actively embracing their faith. We rejoice in their possession of God, both their explicit adherence to Him and their enjoyment of Him in His creation. They love God in loving the truth, and we rejoice in that.

Our homeschooling adventure has been directed to those ends: that our children will love God and His Truth, which is achieved as they come to understand His creation. When the children are little, we rejoice in their steps in this direction, and as they grow and mature in this respect we feel a more perfect joy in that attainment.

When I wrote Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum, more than 10 years ago, I asked my mother, Donna Steichen, to write the forward to the book. What she said there seems important to me and as true now as it did then. “An appetite for achievement is built into human nature. What men and women seek is not a life of easy luxury but a lifework deserving the expenditure of all their gifts. I believe that Catholic parents, especially mothers, find that kind of joy in the work of leading their children to God within the shelter of a living Catholic culture.” That’s what we are doing when we homeschool, we are participating in a lifework of great importance, a lifework of leading our children to God.

Now, there are two additional considerations that come to mind in this context. One is that though we may intend to lead our children to God, and though we may expend all our energy in that direction, I have enough experience to know that they don’t always fall in line with our plans. Our children have free will, and they sometimes exercise it to their disadvantage. The best thing one can do in this circumstance is pray and trust in God. God brings good out of evil and He brings a greater good out of the particular evil than would have occurred without it. That’s why, in the Easter liturgy, we speak of the “happy fault” of Adam. What he did was not good, and we have all suffered because of it, but it is still true that it is a “happy fault”, because God rectified the Fall through the Incarnation, and it is because of this that we can receive Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in Holy Communion.

We all talk about trusting God, and we all mean it, but we need to work on not just talking about it but living it. God has a plan for our lives, not only the big, overall plan, but a plan for today, for this moment. He knows what He is doing, and He loves us. He loves our children even more than we love them. He is faithful and He will hear our prayers.

The second consideration I want to bring to you is that if we want to have joy in our children we need to enjoy them. I can’t emphasize this enough. Enjoy being with your children and make it clear to them that you do. Sometimes, because we want so many good things for our children, we give them the impression that what makes them valuable is what they achieve. We focus on their accomplishments, and we nag them about what they aren’t doing. I’m not saying that one shouldn’t do those things, but I am suggesting that we should not do them exclusively.

We live in a society that values productivity, and is generally goal oriented. That’s not a bad thing. However, our children are not valuable because of what they do, but because of who they are. We need to make that clear. We need to be clear about it ourselves. Even though a child is resistant and difficult, we should still make an effort to enjoy him. It usually has good results.

I have found that there are certain elements that will help children, especially adolescent children, be happy. Some of them are what you would expect and some are surprising. For example, I have found that earning money can make a big difference to an adolescent’s attitude. He has concerns about his ability to operate in the grown up world that he is about to enter. Once he knows that he can make money, some of those fears are allayed, and his attitude reflects his increased confidence. Adolescents also need physical activity on a regular basis, and they need to have some interactions with friends. They don’t need daily interaction with friends, and they don’t need a large group of friends, but they do need a friend, because God made us social animals, so we need company, and because having a likeminded friend is affirming of one’s own values.

Most importantly, however, in my experience, for the happiness of your domestic community, is having time together doing something enjoyable.

More than once I have had the experience of counseling someone to make time for her difficult child. “Find something you can do together and that you both enjoy,” I say. “Something that won’t have you looking at your watch wondering when this quality time will end.” I remember saying that to one mother who replied, “I don’t think you have been listening to me, Laura. My daughter doesn’t ‘enjoy’ anything, and if she did, I know it wouldn’t be something I would enjoy.” However, that mom and I came up with some ideas for things they could do together. They finally decided to go to a coffee shop and talk. The mom said later it changed their lives. She said she picked the coffee shop because she really liked coffee, and her daughter (who was about 14) liked going there because it made her feel grown up. They went, ostensibly to talk about literature, but it gave them a place to talk about life, which they hadn’t been doing. They had been going to give up on homeschooling, but after a couple of months of weekly trips to the coffee shop neither of them wanted to.

Part of the reason for the success that mother had is that she now had a place in her relationship with her child where she could lay out her deliberation. She could give not only her conclusions, but the reasons for her conclusions. This practice is very important in achieving the heartfelt cooperation of your children.

A real-life example of this happened in my house many years ago. Now, I want to say that my point here is not that you should all agree with my decision on the matter I am going to speak about, but rather that you see an example of giving both the conclusion and the reasons for the conclusion.

When my two oldest children were little, some neighborhood children were having a sleepover. My husband and I talked it over and decided that we didn’t want our girls participating in the sleepover, and that it would be better if we just set a policy of no sleepovers so that we wouldn’t have to reevaluate every individual invitation that would arise over the years.

Now, we could have just said, “Girls, Daddy and I have been thinking about this invitation, and we have decided that it would be better for you if you didn’t go. Further, we don’t ever want you to go to such a party, so this is a decision for every future invitation as well. OK, now go away and play.” I don’t think that would have achieved much cooperation.

Or we could have done what we in fact did do. We said the following, or something like it. “Girls, we know that it seems like it would be fun to go to the sleepover, and we know that your friends Sue and Mary are going. But we have been talking about it, and we don’t think sleepovers are a good idea. Here’s why: people tend to get silly, and uninhibited, when they get really tired. They do and say things that they wouldn’t normally say and do. In fact, getting people overtired is a technique used to break down resistance in pressure situations. One is actually more likely to sin, and certainly more likely to say and do things she will regret, when one is really tired. I know this from reading about psychological tools used to manipulate people, and from going to sleepovers myself when I was young. So, what we have decided is that you can go to the party, but we will come and get you at bedtime. That way, you can have fun earlier in
the evening when it is time to have fun, and you can sleep later in the evening when it is time to sleep.”

I don’t know if you would have been convinced by our argument, but my girls were, in large measure because they saw what factors we had considered in our decision, and saw that those factors were serious.

Children who have reached the analytic stage of formation, usually around 12 years old, want to know the reasons for things. They are interested in knowing not just the facts, but the reasons for the facts. This may be a peripheral consideration, but it is important. Once one realizes that the 12 year old who is all of a sudden arguing is doing something natural, something necessary to achieve the mature human being, one’s attitude toward the argument changes. The student needs to learn how to argue, when and with whom to argue, and even about what to argue, but he will learn those things if you approach the matter the right way. Don’t feel that he has all of a sudden decided to challenge your authority. Recognize that he just naturally wants to practice argument and he is looking for the matter to do it with. I find one’s relationship with a 12-year-old is usually better if the right kind of matter for argumentis provided. It seems to me to be just like the baby who moves from sitting quietly in the middle of the blanket to crawling all over the room. In some ways it makes life harder, but we rejoice in the baby’s newfound ability nonetheless. Similarly, life with the student who has just learned about real, intellectual argument is harder in some ways, but it’s very exciting.

Recently I heard Dr. Ray Guarendi talk. He gave a great talk, and reminded us that as parents we have a right to expect and, in fact, demand, good behavior from our children. We shouldn’t put up with rolling eyes and rude remarks. It’s true, and to get good behavior we have to expect and insist on good behavior. But good external behavior is not enough. Obedience is central to the virtuous life, but the bottom line is obedience is no good unless it is in the children’s hearts. You may have to work from the outside in, so that you insist on the right behavior before they have the right internal formation. But that’s where you want to go.

We want our children to be formed internally, in their hearts. The very best way I know to gain the heart of your children is to talk to them, to enjoy being with them, to make an effort to spend time with them that is mutually pleasant. Develop an interest in their interests. If they love Lord of the Rings, make sure you know enough about it to talk about it with interest. If they love baseball, make an effort to go with them to their games. Also spend time with them in their homeschooling. Don’t just give them their texts and lesson plans and send them off. The time you spend with them on the schooling shows them how important you think it is, and how important you think they are.

The last piece of advice I have to help you find joy in your homeschooling is to suggest that you tell your children that you love them.
Our first reaction to the statement that we should tell our children that we love them is always, “Of course, my child knows I love him. I sure wouldn’t be homeschooling him if I didn’t love him.” And I know that’s true. But he doesn’t always know that.

He’s grown up surrounded by your love; that’s just the way things are. It’s like being aware of the air we need to breathe. We don’t usually think about it, we just breathe. You let your child know that you love him by doing four things. Appeal to all the possible modes of learning. First, say “I love you,” while looking him in the eye, which establishes that you are really aware of what you are saying. Then he has heard the statement. If he is an auditory learner, that will get through. Second, establish physical contact, even with older, adolescent boys who are at the stage where they don’t want a hug. If a hug won’t do, a playful punch in the stomach often will. Someone who responds to the kinesthetic mode of learning will respond to touch. Third, make sure that there are visual expressions of your regard. Think about this child when you go to the grocery store and get him that brand of tuna he really likes. He can see that you love him. The tuna is a concrete, visible sign of your love. Fourth, as I have been saying, spend enjoyable time with your child. Do things together that you both like doing. Make time for him in your life.

People used to talk about the importance of quality time over quantity time. They would say it didn’t matter how much time you spent with your child as long as the time you did spend together was meaningful. The fact is there is no quality time without quantity time. First of all, one simply cannot 'program’ important conversations. One can hardly say, “Johnny, I’ll schedule an hour on Tuesday for an important conversation.” In my experience, most “important conversations” happen in the context of daily life, where the topics are raised by shared experience. Something in the child’s schoolwork, something that happens in the household, or some piece of news, will raise a question. The child’s interest and attention are engaged. Then is the time to converse at length and with effect. Such occasions are difficult, if not impossible, to arrange beforehand. But when children are home with their parents most of the time, such occasions naturally arise, and there is the shared experience and the time necessary for discussion.

This is a gift of home schooling. We have our children with us, we can talk with them, play with them, discuss important concepts with them and pray with them. We can grow in virtue with them, so that we may all more perfectly serve Our Lord in His Church. It is in that process that we find joy in our home schooling.