Growing homeschoolers towards maturity by Mimi Rothschild

“When will I be big enough to go to college like all these boys?” This used to be the favorite question of our seven year old as the father and son walked together through the campus of the University or the father was employed. Although he was thinking of “big” from the standpoint of chronological age, his questions got us thinking about the questions which many homeschooling parents ponder at times. When will my child, be prepared for making his own contribution to the larger society of which he is a part? When will he be mature enough to make his own choices and decisions? Will he develop the degree of self reliance and independence, which all successful adults require?

The problem of the child’s readiness for taking his or her place in the adult world, when that day comes, is pushed into the distant future, as parents untangle their homeschool children from the immediate problems of the day. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” They gasp, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Actually, these parents are crossing now, the bridge of the child’s adjustment in later years. What that far off day holds is being determined now by the way parents help the child learn to adjust day, by the maturity parents help them to achieve with the passing years, by the attitudes which he is developing day by day.

Maturity is a possession which none of us can dispel upon our children: the most that we can do is provide them with the experience is and relationships which will enable them to claim this precious possession for themselves. Doing this is one of our biggest tasks as parents. If our homeschooling children are able to cope with the vicciisitudes which life inevitably brings, the personal characteristics which make them so will be the result of guidance given, usually by parents, through the years of their childhood. A wise professor once said, if the early years of life are of such importance for personality development, it follows that the family occupies a commanding position in the field, since the child’s earliest and most profound experiences are with his family. Parents must be concerned with affording the child the opportunities for growth toward maturity during his early years, so that the anticipated adventure of being on his own will be another stage in his development rather than a frustrating and disappointing experience.

How big will our children be when they grow up? Will they have what it takes to measure up to the demands of life? Well, the future of our children is in our hands as parents, for we are entrusted with their training to our relationships with them day by day, right in our own homes: through the attitudes we communicate to them: through helping them to understand a person must learn to trust other people: through helping them to discover their own unique abilities and to trust in their own worth: to helping them to understand that the golden rule is of little use, unless they realize that the next move is bears: through enabling them to learn through experience that the world is a looking glass, which gives back to every man the reflection of his own attitudes.

The strains and tensions of modern life require that our children develop healthy personalities. If our children are to be able to withstand the pressures that are sure to come in later life, the foundation stone of this healthy personality is maturity, which consists of faith in God, devotion to Christian principles, trusting one’s self, and in life as a whole, and independence and reliance on the Lord in thought and action.

Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online K-12 Christian homeschooling programs and homeschool Christian curriculum. For more information about how online homeschooling is revolutionizing homeschooling, please go to www.LearningByGrace.org today.

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