HOMESCHOOLING BEGINS WITH HOME
High School Homeschooling

This series of Christian Homeschooling Articles addresses the following themes, including high school homeschooling:

1. Relationship
2. Stewardship
   • The Big Picture: Walk in the Vision of Liberty
     
   • Step 1: Exercise Godly Authority
     
   • Step 2: Follow your Leader
     
   • Step 3: Become a Mentor (This article)
     
3. Scholarship
4. Easy Recordkeeping

You can find various articles about the how-to’s of the high school homeschooling years.

This article takes a little different approach, as it addresses how high school homeschooling affects mom’s life.

It is divided into two parts:

Part 1 (this article) provides vision and homeschool encouragement for moms whose children are not yet in high school.

Part 2 addresses moms whose children are in high school and who are dealing with negativity and lack of motivation—both in their children and themselves.

If you have been exercising Godly authority over your children’s lives, leading them to the cross through your everyday life together at home, you will find that primary responsibility for your child’s education begins to lessen as your children pick up more responsibility in this shared stewardship stage of their growth. They will begin to join you in joint stewardship of their whole person throughout the high school homeschooling years.

Because you have been leading them while exercising Godly authority over their lives, bringing them alongside you when they were young and coming alongside them as they matured, they will desire that you continue to be a large part of their lives and will ask you to come alongside them even more through their home school education. They will actually want you to be a part of their lives.

I have personally found the high school homeschooling years to be the most rewarding time of homeschooling.

Why?

Because I began by homeschooling—developing the tool of home. All those years of child training and laying down my life for my children are finally bearing fruit that is ripe for the picking. As of 2010, I have one daughter in college and one son in high school.

Homeschool Encouragement: These are the things I learned and the Lord continues to confirm through this season of high school homeschooling:

• You will not teach your children everything they need to know—there is simply too much to learn. You will have discovered this important principle during the elementary and junior high years as you maintain an eternal perspective about acquiring knowledge.
  
  • If you have been acquiring knowledge together throughout the elementary and junior high school years, your children’s love of learning will begin to serve them exponentially through the high school years.

  • The feelings of inadequacy that many moms experience will not devastate you; rather those feelings will confirm that your child is ready to move on in life without you because the child is becoming an established child of God.

• You will become your children’s guide or mentor rather than their teacher.
  • The skills—personal, moral, relational— you have taught them to begin to serve them.

  • “The fruit of discipline is an increased skill you will love to use” becomes reality in their lives as they have the skills they need to acquire the knowledge they desire.

  • If you have been growing together in character through deskwork “opportunities,” your children’s discipline and motivation will increase during the high school years.

    

  • Their desire for excellence will also begin to serve them as they tackle difficult subjects. Because they have learned how to learn, they will not fear trying something new and challenging. In fact, they will embrace those challenges with gusto because they understand and have experienced that the fruit of discipline is an increased skill they will love to use.

• You will continue to build upon the foundation you have been laying—the foundation of Christ becoming Lord in their lives as they grow in Godly character.
  What a blessing to watch them
  build upon the foundation that has been laid!
  • This refining stage of character development deepens your relationship with your children, as they share their hearts with you and you, with them. Your discussions about real life focus on their hearts, their relationships, and the world at large.

    Personal Testimony. This has been a most exciting time of learning who my children are becoming in Christ, and I wouldn’t want to miss this aspect of the high school years for anything! I have found and continue to find that my children minister to me, teach me, and love me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Thank You, Lord!

  • Whatever your children choose to do at this point is a reflection of who they are, and their life course is no longer for you to determine. They begin to walk with Christ in liberty. If that has been your vision all along, releasing them to the liberty of Christ is a joyous process as they become established in Him.

• You will begin to use textbooks more than you have in the past.
  
  • In high school, using textbooks for subject content enhances their education rather than stifles it. If you have not overused textbooks in the elementary and junior high school years, you will find that your children enjoy acquiring in-depth knowledge through textbooks as you guide them through their learning.

  • You will also begin to read together more deeply in areas such as history, politics, economics, logic, literature. Since you have a strong relationship with your children, they will read and share with you, you will read and share with them, and you will read and learn together. You may even find your supper table is a place for great thinking as you chat about real-life decisions and discoveries over a cup of tea.

  Personal testimony. Because my “unintentionally unschooled” daughter had years of informal learning in the core subject areas such as history and science, she began formal high school around age 15 and finished the textbook coursework within a year-and-a-half. She then chose to attend some community college classes and began her formal college work in January of 2008. Through her learning process, one of the keys I found to determine whether a high-schooler is ready for college-level work is this: As mom and the child learn together from textbooks, the child begins to teach mom! In other words, children who have developed a love of learning in their younger years will begin to embrace a love of study on their own, thus reducing mom’s input into their academic lives. It happens so naturally. This very thing is currently occurring in my 14-year-old son’s life. He loves math and science and became highly interested in chemistry after an introduction to it through his personal research and reading. As we dove into the textbooks, he began teaching me. He was able to read the material and comprehend it much faster than I. My husband and I are currently preparing him for community college work as well.

If you are currently researching the option of high school homeschooling, you may have read that other homeschooling moms find the high school years full of negativity—both on the teen’s part and mom’s part.

For those of you reading this article in anticipation of homeschooling through high school (but are not yet there), I would encourage you to examine the following things to determine if you are laying a foundation that will bring blessing to you and your children through the high school years. Ask yourself these questions:

1. How am I currently growing in relationship with my children?

2. How are my children responding to me? Do I hold their hearts?

3. How am I exercising Godly authority over their lives now?

4. How much extraneous and unnecessary activity occupies my time and theirs—preventing me from providing for their true needs, protecting them from harmful influences while they are yet growing into Christ their Head, and promoting Godliness?

Part 2 of the article will address the two downfalls some moms experience: lack of motivation and negativity.

Additional articles related to the theme of Stewardship:

• The Big Picture: Walk in the Vision of Liberty
  
  • How will you know your child is established in Christ?
    
  
  
• Three Steps to Releasing Your Children to Walk in Liberty
  
  • Exercise Godly Authority
    
  • Follow your leader during the season of primary stewardship
    
  • Become a mentor while sharing joint stewardship
    

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