When Your Homeschooled Child Isn’t a Prodigy

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Yesterday my kids and I watched Wonder for the umpteenth time. As with what usually happens when I’ve watched something once too many times, my mind started drifting and ended up – you guessed it – focusing on how this movie perpetuates some common homeschool stereotypes.

If you’ve seen this film, you might be assuming that I’m referring to the fact that August’s mother has decided to send him to school for “socialization,” and while that does irritate me just a bit, that’s not what I’m referring to today.

Today I want to take a look at the notion that homeschoolers tend to fall on one of two spectrums: they’re either hopelessly ignorant or they’re freakishly smart. I think you and I both know that that isn’t really the case.

In this movie, August’s classmate’s automatically jump to the conclusion that he knows absolutely nothing, when, in fact, he is extremely intelligent and puts them in their place more than once. Am I complaining about that? No way. I think it’s awesome that he was portrayed in a way that shoots down the “all homeschoolers are dumb” mentality.

What it did bring to mind, however, is that we homeschooling parents tend to compare our families with others a bit too much, and truth be told, very often the only positive stories we hear about homeschooling from the media are about those families who have produced child prodigies. You know the type. Speaking three languages by the age of four, graduating with a Master’s degree by the age of 12, and doctor by the ripe old age of 19.

Although hearing stories like that are inspiring and make me even prouder to be a homeschool mom, let’s be honest. It can make it very hard for those of us whose children don’t fall into the prodigy category to accept the fact that we are still doing a phenomenal job with our children. We are not “less than.” More importantly, our children aren’t, either.

So today I want to encourage you with this one thing I’ve learned over the ten years we’ve been homeschooling:

Academic excellence should never be your primary goal.

While it is certainly something we should all hope to help our kids attain, the fact is that there are far more important things we need to teach them first.

Things like:

• Empathy
• Kindness
• Confidence
• Resourcefulness
• Creativity
• Independence
• Integrity
• Generosity
• Good morals
• Boldness
• A love for the truth
• Faith

Armed with those qualities, our children will be well-equipped to face anything that comes their way as they travel into adulthood.

In this day and age, my friends, people with those qualities are anything but normal……. so if you ask me, they are the ones we need the most.

 

Homeschooling and education are my passion. It is my fervent hope to one day devote more time to creating content for you. If you’d like to support this ministry, consider supporting me on Patreon.

Thank you so much. I appreciate each and every one of you!