Transparency, or Lack of It

The other day I had a client at my house who also happens to be a homeschooling mom like me. We were discussing parenting in general and she mentioned that a recent homeschool mom's meeting was one of the most dissatisfying that she had ever attended. The topic for the evening was parenting and people were to bring books they found helpful in teaching them to be a good parent, or discuss counsel they found helpful in assisting them in the parenting role. The upshot of the whole evening was that this mother went away from it thinking that she was the only one who is often puzzled, astounded, and flummoxed by her children. At least, she was the only one who admitted to it. Everyone else had on their "we're homeschoolers and we're okay" faces.

It is too bad I wasn't there with her that evening. At the very least she would have had the comfort of knowing that she isn't the only one who is regularly flummoxed by her kids.

One of the myths of homeschooling that I bought into when I first started nearly 20 years ago, is that if you homeschool your children, you will have children who will be normally socialized and you will avoid the rebellious teen years because your children will not be exposed to the peer group and all the rebellious attitudes that can infect them from it. It took me a while to remember that public schools are a new invention and human rebellion goes back to the dawn of time. In the course of history, children were mainly homeschooled a great deal of the time, and rebellion still happened in spite of it.

Another myth is that Proverbs' advice is a guarantee that if you train a child in the way he should go, he won't depart from it. Some Christian parenting books drill it into you that if your kids stray, it is all your fault. You obviously didn't train them right. As a result, I was highly judgemental of other parents who had kids who were giving them fits, since my little darlings were doing just fine then.

Teens really have a way of humbling parents.

By that you may be surmising that I have a teen who is currently giving me fits, and you would surmise correctly. (Names are being withheld to protect the guilty.) If you have read books about Christian parenting and believe that kids who do this are the result of parents who did it wrong, then you need look no further than me for:

Exhibit A -- Reformed Parent who did it ALL WRONG
Avoid her example.

Well ok, I didn't do ALL of it wrong, but I haven't done all of it right either. But who does? God is a perfect Heavenly Father and His children rebel against Him all the time for no good reason.

Growth is terribly painful. Last night I was reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective Peopleby Stephen Covey (yes, he's a Mormon, but the principles expressed are true, nonetheless). Some of the things in it hit pretty close to home and I wanted to hurl the book across the room, except I was at the gym and the other patrons wouldn't have appreciated getting dinged in the head with it. I hate seeing my faults. I would rather believe that I am just fine, thank you. But [sighs heavily] I see there is still a lot that needs refining out of me and I think this is going to be yet another means for doing so.

Which brings me back to the whole transparency thing. Homeschoolers (especially those with large numbers of children who tend to intimidate others by sheer number and the assumptions that go with it) are unable to help one another if they don't admit to having faults, let alone confessing them. Proverbs is true. If you train a child in the way he should go, he won't depart from it when he is older, providing that he is one of God's elect. Parents are one of the means that God uses for bringing children into the fold, but the means are not the grace itself.

By the way, I haven't been a complete failure. One of my wandering daughters has been making rapid strides back to the fold. She isn't here yet, but I can definitely see that the Lord is teaching her some painful but valuable lessons. And my eldest son looks like he is through the worst of the adolescent doldrums without too many scars. I didn't want you all to think it was completely hopeless here.