Do you feel the need to be a “know it all” and be totally knowledgeable about everything but feel that you always fall short? Let Brave Writer (visiter her HERE) soothe your worries! (This is a Facebook post)
Today’s thought: It’s okay to not know.
You can’t possibly know all you believe you need to know to homeschool:
before you homeschool,
while you homeschool,
long after you retire from homeschooling.You won’t have it all together before you start. That’s okay.
You won’t have it all together as you go…ever. That’s okay too.
You won’t have had it all together, when you look back, though it will seem more like you did as you romanticize the past. That’s the reward for your persistence.
You may not have all your books, your plans, or your “necessary” materials before it’s time to begin. Begin anyway.
You won’t have your philosophy of home education nailed down and held in place for 15+ years with no alterations. It evolves as you home educate. Philosophy of education is discovered in the “doing.” It’s not a prerequisite.
Your children may not be in the “learning mode” you fantasize about in your head at the time you crack open the new books in the fall. They will get there by winter.
You will be going along when some new idea hits and you’ll smack your forehead and wonder how you could have gotten by for so long without that one key piece of information, insight, or ingenuity. That’s how it happens. You’re on the right track.
You won’t know enough in some subjects to be the best “teacher” your children could have. Dive in anyway. Learn what you can. Model what you can. Get help. Be satisfied with less.
You can’t know if what you are doing with your children today is enough to prepare them for college. You can’t know until the slip of paper comes back in the mail with the red letter “ACCEPTANCE” on it validating all your uncertain work. Yield today to the process of this day’s learning. Leave college for tomorrow.
You can’t worry enough to save your children from gaps, challenges, and failure. You can love enough to be with them no matter what, with a willingness to “do what it takes” as that is revealed to you.
You don’t know if you are a good enough mother, good enough punctuator, good enough mathematician, good enough enthusiast for learning. You can’t know. You take the risks to be those things to the best of your ability today, and then trust.
You can’t know if the laws will change, or if the state you’re in will protect your rights. Take advantage of the laws you have today.
You can’t possibly know if your children will be glad you homeschooled them. That’s theirs to feel and own. You make your parenting choices for your family. They will make theirs for their children. Both are okay.
Stay open. Keep learning. Principles and compassion keep your family grounded.
You don’t yet know what you don’t know. You can’t.
What is incredible though is how much you already do know and how valuable, useful, and rich it is when you live into your knowing.
Make peace with “unknowing.”
Embrace your risk-taking, adventurous spirt.
In the end, it’s not the knowing or the not-knowing that create the best homeschools. It’s the willingness to engage that process with heart, hope, and flexibility.
I struggle with my lack of knowledge and my inability to have a concrete set in stone plan that continues the whole school year. The idea that there are so many people out there with “it all together” haunts me every time I come across a homeschooler’s blog that is just so well put together, where their photos show organized learning and well planned out weeks.
As I face another year of prep work to begin, a year of ideas to come up with… topics to choose and basics to cement the knowledge that others are also struggling along learning, not knowing brings me some peace. The process began over 9 years ago when we found out we were expecting our baby (and later realized BABIES) and will continue even past our homeschooling years… I hope we never stop learning, stop trying, stop finding new things to know!
