When They Fail

Last week, I posted about my realization that I need to challenge my girls more and let them fail occasionally.  However, I know how hard it can be to watch your children struggle and/or fail.  So, today, I would like to share some tips I have found for supporting your children when they fail (or are afraid of failing).

1. Pray!!!!!

Prayer should always be your first response to problems (and joys) in your life.  Pray for your child and pray with your child that God will give him the strength to handle the situation.

2. Give your child a hug and reassure him/her with words.

Make sure that your child knows that you love her and will always love her, even when she fails.

3. Allow your child to share his/her feelings about the situation.

Let your child know that it is ok to feel bad about not being able to complete the task.  Encourage him to share feelings verbally or through writing/drawing.

4. Share stories with your child about times you have struggled or failed.

Children need to know that others struggle too and that failure is a part of growing.  They will feel much better about their failures if they know that you sometimes fail too.  You might also want to share with your children how you felt about the failure and how you overcame it.

5. Help your child create a plan for achieving his/her goal.

Sometimes, our children fail at something that we know they can accomplish.  In these cases, they may just need help figuring out a plan for success.  These times are a perfect opportunity to sit down with your child, discuss goal setting, and help her set goals.  Just be sure that your child has dealt with her emotions before attempting this.

Good luck as you help your child work through his/her failures.  As hard as it is for you and for them, remember the benefits that come from failure!

Marla is a former special education teacher and homeschooling mom of two little girls (ages 3 and 5) and is expecting #3 soon.  She has her PhD in Special Education and loves to put her knowledge to use teaching her children and sharing learning/teaching ideas.  She blogs about raising and teaching her children at Marla's Motherhood Musings and her family's experiences living in Zambia at Our Life in Lusaka.

Five Mistakes from Our Homeschool Journey

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again,

only this time more wisely."

- Henry Ford

Certainly, I have experienced many opportunities to begin again
with the mistakes I have made in our homeschooling journey.
Today, I am sharing my 'top five.' 

1.  Overburdening a child academically
Not that I really think you should rank mistakes, but I still think this one was my worst homeschooling mistake, ever.  One of our children advanced through academics very quickly.  Another did not, but I expected her to work at the same pace as her older sibling.  It was a terrible mistake.  One that I hope I never make again. 

Did you know that a llama will simply lie down if you overburden it? Wouldn't it be great if children had a similar signal? Oh, but they do!  Children show us in many ways that they are overburdened. We just have to know our children well enough, and observe/listen well enough to determine if they have been overburdened academically.

"When you get to the end of your rope,

tie a knot and hang on."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

2.  Not taking advantage of interest led studies
You know that spark you see when a child's eyes shine with interest?  He may ask numerous questions and want to do more with a topic.  Too many times, I haven't fanned these interest sparks into flames.  I should have.  Who knows what great discoveries and learning experiences we missed because I wanted to stick to the lesson plans and not alter them.

3.  Trying to do the same as another family
Yep, been there.  Dare I say it?  More than once.  Every family is unique.  What works for one may not work for another.  Even if you find a family with the same number of children aged exactly like yours, I guarantee, something about your families will be different. Personalities, interests, and budgets vary greatly.  While I find great value in another's suggestions, experiences, and advice, I can not make my homeschool just like theirs.  Nor should I try.

"I don't know the key to success,

but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."

- Bill Cosby

4.  Comparing myself and our children to others
Have you done this?  Tell me I'm not the only one!  Haven't you met another homeschooling family and started comparing yourself or your children?  For me, the other homeschooling family usually gets put on a pedestal.  She is more patient, takes a relevant field trip every week, or prepares her own lessons.  Her children know more math, read harder books, or have more activities.  This better mom/better child comparison does not encourage, and should not be done.

5.   Succumbing to discouragement
It's easy to do.  Mistakes discourage and rob us of the joy of homeschooling.  Moments that I succumb to discouragement, I want to quit.  It is then, that I must remember...we all make mistakes.  It is what we do with the lesson we learn that matters.

"I have not failed. 

I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

- Thomas Alva Edison

A Successful Lesson in Failure

I actually confronted the issue of failure recently with my kindergartener. In our second year of homeschooling, failure just hadn't come up before.

Then, we started to struggle with addition, and my default-plan of letting my son choose his best papers to show his father wasn't giving my husband a complete picture of how we were really doing. As I talked over our struggles with my husband, he was a little confused; after all, he saw only success and mastery. I decided I'd better make some changes to my default-plan. And that's what led to my discovery that I was failing to truly teach about failure.

The next day, my son worked a math sheet and missed several addition problems. Together we talked through the right answers to the problems that I had checked. He reworked the problems with me and then I broke the news to him: "We're going to show Daddy this page, because he needs to know what we have trouble with as well as what we're doing well in." Immediately my son burst into tears. Suddenly, I understood the unintentional lesson I was teaching my son.

Inadvertently, I was teaching him that only success brought reward, that only perfection brought the attention that he wanted. I wasn't giving my husband the opportunity to praise my son for determination or perseverance; my son was only receiving his daddy's praise for perfect papers. It wasn't a lesson either my husband or I had planned to teach, and it definitely wasn't our view of success. But regardless, my son had already shaped the idea in his head that approval was gained through perfection.

Daddy came home that day, and my son sheepishly showed him the marked-up paper. And the most beautiful lesson unfolded: a lesson of love despite imperfection, a lesson of approval for a best effort, and a lesson of praise for character rather than performance. As I watched my husband and my son interact, I couldn't help but wonder at how close I came to missing out on this moment.

What if I had chosen to show the paper to my husband without my son's knowledge? What if I had caved to my son's tears and decided not to show that paper at all? What if I had continued with our trend of only showing off the best?

My son would probably not have been scarred for life had we not addressed the issue of failure in this way; but then again, he might very well have developed an attitude of success vs. failure that would begin to shape his future.

By allowing my child to fail, I was teaching him about success. (<Tweet This)

It was a valuable lesson for all of us, and not one I would have ever thought to pencil into the curriculum or schedule into my lesson planner. 

Feeling Inadequate

We all have it - that one subject that just makes us cringe.  The one subject that we hate to teach.  The one subject that almost makes us want to have someone else teach our children.   For me that subject is Bible Study.  Math, Reading, Science, and Social Studies all excite me.  I love figuring out new and fun ways to teach Abigail the academic skills!  I am never at a loss for fun ideas to teach those skills.  However, when it comes to teaching about the Bible,  I freeze.  

It makes no sense, but whenever it is time to plan our bible lessons, I don't know what to do.  It is almost like I have never taught before.  I am clueless.  I feel so inadequate.  Most weeks, I don't even know where to begin to plan those lessons.  So, sometimes I don't.  Sometimes, we don't do a bible lesson because I am too scared to create it and never get it done.  On those weeks, we just read the toddler bible from beginning to end over the course of the week.  I know that reading the bible is not the same as a planned, structured lesson, but fear keeps me from doing more - the fear of failing as my girls' teacher.

In my mind, anything that I create to teach Abigail and Charlotte about God is not good enough.  It is all inadequate.  I have tried using curriculums that I have purchased, but quickly gave up.  They weren't good enough either.  Nothing meets the standards that I have set in my mind for a quality bible lesson.

Deep down, I know that my lessons and the lessons I have purchased are good enough (and are much better than nothing).  So, despite my fear of failing, I have resolved to try harder - to try harder to ensure that we have a bible lesson each day and to try harder to have faith in my own abilities.  Doing so will only benefit my girls and me.

When Something Is Not Working

We all have bad days every once in a while. Heck, sometimes we have bad weeks, or tough months. But usually that is just us complaining; the entire day, week or month wasn't that bad. There were just difficult parts that became magnified, and perhaps put us in a position to behave in a way we aren't proud of.

Homeschooling can be like this. There can be other pressures in our lives that cause distraction or a break-up of our usual routines. There can be something new and frustrating to learn or teach that causes a bump in the road. There can be a misunderstanding or disorganization that becomes a problem.

But how can you know if what you are doing is really not working? You loved this curriculum so much! The artwork is so _________, the stories so _________, and the messages perfectly _________! It is all put together so professionally, in a logical manner, with practice and reviewing!

It can be a very hard thing to face when learning is not going well. Sometimes, because you are the parent, you just know it's not going well. You feel it in your bones and you won't hesitate to change what you are doing. But sometimes, it's hard to face those changes because it could mean one of several things: You spent money on something you aren't going to be using, you need to go looking around again for something else to use in its place (and spend MORE money), or there is something going on inside your child that needs addressing.

For my family, it was the latter of these in the end. We were very committed to a curriculum that I loved. As it turned out, I loved all of it except for the phonics portion because it was the bane of our exsistense for my first grader and I. I stuck with it for 18 miserable weeks. (I was new to homeschooling then. Please learn from my mistakes.) During that time, it occurred to me that he might have a learning difference but I was unwilling to address it. I'm still not sure why.

We finished first grade with my own cobbled together ideas for phonics/reading, which I feel was a good thing looking back. There was far less pressure and the structure was very flexible. We began second grade with another phonics program, and once again, by the time we were six weeks in, dyslexia kept finding it's way into the search box of my browser and there were far too many bad feelings in my house during lessons. Through those internet searches I changed phonics curriculum again. We followed the new curriculum until March, when the official diagnosis came through (yep. dyslexia & mild dysgraphia). Since then we have been working with a specialized tutoring program.

The lesson I take from this? Follow your instincts. None of the reasons listed above are more important than your child learning - and especially loving to learn! One of the reasons many parents are committed to homeschooling is the opportunity for tailoring their child's education around their needs and interests. Homeschooling parents have so many ways to keep learning fun and exciting.

You are learning together, and things are going to change and develop. Things you find attractive may not fit the learning style of one of your children. The math program may have, in theory, been just what everyone wanted - but in practice it's torture. If you've given it a good go (in my opinion that means going through a few weeks of lessons) then put it away. Incorporate fun activities that apply to that subject in its place. If in a week or two it makes everyone moan to consider going back to it again, put it in a box labeled "sell" and find your family something else.

If you are concerned that your child may have a special need or learning difference, I would encourage you to look into their symptoms and what would be required for a thorough screening. If you feel a diagnosis would be helpful, find a qualified professional who specializes in children dealing with whatever you suspect is the trouble for your child.

And there is an incredible wealth of material out there. Talk to other homeschool families. Peruse used curriculum sales. Read reviews and research materials online. There will be something that is a good fit for your children, and learning will be fun again - for all of you!

Room for Improvement

Our start to homeschooling last year began with a rocky start, a long break for re-evaluation, and then a much more successful second attempt.

And this year—well, it hasn't been without it's own adjustments. It seems that everyday, I'm tweaking our schedule, our system, and our material. And everyday, I'm closer to where I'd like to be. Of course, there are those days when success comes to a screeching halt and triumph throws a tantrum in my school room floor. But then, I call it a day, re-evalutate (again), and tweak a little bit more.

It's been in the midst of all that tweaking that I've come to appreciate a few of the opportunities that come from the fine-tuning:

1. Involving others in the solution. Sometimes a situation is more than I can handle on my own. That's a tough reality to accept. But I can't educate my children by myself. And yet that humbling reality leads to a much richer discovery in the help I receive from others.

My husband has been one of those heros, coming in to save my day. Discussing the school day with my husband and including any frustrations or challenges I've faced allows him to stay connected with the family. And his objective advice on those situations has, on many occasions, been exactly what we all needed.

My mom has also been a huge contributor. Having homeschooled me and my two siblings, she has the perspective and retrospection that I often lack. From her, I get to hear what she found helpful and what she would have done differently.

Other homeschoolers also offer a wealth of wisdom. I interact with internet homeschool groups and even occasionally send questions to my favorite bloggers. Their perspectives and advice have often been revolutionary for me. And the beauty of the internet is that it doesn't matter that they are homeschooling all the way across the country; they can instantly become my cyber-neighbors.

2. Realizing my own short-comings. I'm not perfect. And facing that fact, that I could be the one at fault and not my student, is extremely helpful in a couple of ways. First, it allows me to be more patient with my children's short-comings (especially when I see that they've inherited those faults from me). Second, it forces me to depend on a Strength outside of myself. For when I am weak, then is God's strength most evident. Both my children and myself are able to see the Lord answer prayer and become a vital part of our homeschooling day.

3. Learning and understanding more than ever before. I've heard many times that you learn a subject best when you begin to teach it. Whether that subject is phonics and reading or modern art and poetry, teaching forces you to learn. Like the mother bird digesting the food for her chicks, I must digest every fact before I present it. And that is one thing I want my children to see: that you never outgrow learning.

4. Discovering who my children really are. I've learned more about my children and their personalities in the last several months of schooling them than ever before, in spite of hours of playing blocks and capturing imaginary bad guys. I see how they react to challenges. I see their response to success. I see what does and does not motivate them. And I see every time their eyes light up with understanding. I'm a part of nearly every moment of discovery, and that does more than just create a special bond. It also prepares me for my role as a parent.

Taking my lessons from the school room, I better understand what will provoke my child to wrath and frustration. I have keener understanding of what motivates and inspires my child. And with that knowledge comes a higher accountability to make the most of the opportunities I have with each child to nurture and admonish in the Lord.

5. Recognizing that homeschooling is not a place or state of being but a process and a journey. It's not about where we are educating; it's about how we are educating. It's about having the opportunity to make those adjustments rather than to helplessly look on while a child stumbles through learning. It's about the privilege of taking a breather together and facing the challenge once more, united rather than at odds. It's about having the means to administer the changes that are necessary.

Heading into our second year now, I'm certain we will constantly be making adjustments. But I want to see those adjustments as more than just rescheduling recess or pulling out a new activity. The changes do help my child to learn better, but they also provide an opportunity for me to learn as well.

Doing It All

With home and school, as well as blogging, reviewing, church, and mentoring other homeschool moms, I hear the question often-How do you do it all??

The truth is, I don’t. If I tried to do all that I am supposed to do/want to do in a day, something gets put on the back burner. 

I realized that and yet still tried to keep going with everything.

I ignored the laundry piling higher than normal. {The pile that once was not even a pile…} 

I failed to see that my children didn’t see me much other than school, unless it was over the top of my laptop. 

Home cooked meals were suffering from lack of attention, 

and too many pizzas were picked up. 

Clutter was overlooked. 

I told my husband I wasn’t really unplugged from him.

And then one day I finally got it.


I may enjoy helping other moms, and connecting with those who are so much like myself, but I was missing the important part.


The part that kept me home in the first place.


So how do I do it all? By redefining “ALL”.

The laptop is off limits until 1:00. 

The phone can be used briefly to filter emails {I do have online responsibilities}. 

I have stopped saying yes to things online. 

I have stopped saying no to my family. 

I keep the meals and homemaking on my mind at all times, and I thank Him for giving me the time to come to my senses.

“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.”
Tenneva Jordan

I am still far from perfect, far from doing it all, but I am on the path I need to be.

{This post is also on my site, Sam's Noggin.}

Combatting Self-Criticism

On some occasions, the harsh criticism of others can be crippling, but most often the criticism that does the most damage in our lives is our own. Self-criticism is a more deadly poison because we often don't set up any guards against it; we have no defenses.

It happens when I compare myself to others, or when I'm embarrassed that my child didn't perform up to par in public. It happens when I feel defeated after a bad day rather than determined to find a better solution. And it happens subtly, when I mutter "we homeschool" under my breath and feel as though I might ought to offer an apology for that fact.

Self-criticism is sneaky and subtle, yet overpowering. And the best way to defend against it is to stay alert to its tactics and to prepare for it.

Recognizing Self-Criticism.

The first step to guarding against self-criticism is recognizing its tactics, knowing where it's likely to attack, and the verbal assault that it is about to launch. It could happen at your local homeschool group, or at your favorite blog. It could happen on Facebook or while you are chatting with your friend. Instead of rejoicing in someone else's success, we immediately notice the differences. And the self-criticism begins its attack: "We don't do it that way." "I never would have thought of that." "I couldn't possibly do more than we're doing already." And then, from noticing the differences, suddenly those differences make us feel inferior: "No wonder we struggle." "I'm just not cut out for this." "I could never be that kind of a homeschool parent." We resort to absolute statements of "always" and the even more common "never." Then, we resign ourselves to defeat and discouragement.

Defending with Realism.

Ironically, many of us who struggle the most with self-criticism claim to be realists. We're just "facing the facts," we say. And yet, it's probably more true that we are omitting certain facts.

For instance, I only occasionally post about our bad days on my blog. Every now and then I will have caught it on camera or will have learned something valuable enough from the experience to warrant publishing it to the world. But everyone's natural tendency is to present only our best for the world to scrutinize. Remember that as you drool over someone's curriculum, school room, or craft-filled lesson plans; remember that their children throw tantrums and color on walls, too.

Another dose of realism is to recount your own successes: the things your children have learned, the days that were highlights of education, the moments when the light went on for your children. If you find yourself a frequent victim of self-criticism, keep a journal of your high moments and refer back to this often. Bottom-line: remind yourself of the reality that everyone has lows and that you, too, have some highs worth remembering.

Personally, I find myself most susceptible to self-criticism when I feel that I have something to prove. I put more pressure on my children to succeed in public, and I put more pressure on myself to do things perfectly. And the result is that I'm destined for defeat. It's the fear of man, and it's a guaranteed snare.

One of the most powerful quotes in my life, one that I come back to over and over again says:

"I live before an Audience of One. Before others I have nothing to gain, nothing to prove, nothing to lose." --Os Guinness

When self-criticism fingers its way into your day, recognize its tactics, be prepared to face it off with reality, and then remember to whom you are accountable. There's only One opinion worth worrying about.

To read all of Tracy's posts on "Combatting Criticism," click here.

False Starts and Failures

I began our homeschool journey last fall with lots of enthusiasm and a lot of confidence. After all, I'd been homeschooled from the end of first grade all the way through to graduation. I'd even written and edited for a Christian textbook company. I knew the ins and outs and ups and downs.

What I didn't count on was a four-year-old attention span and a two-year-old distraction. My beautiful school room, shiny new workbooks, carefully laid out teaching plans, and creative displays could not prevent our homeschool days from crumbling into disarray. After four grueling weeks, we took a breather--and Mommy regrouped.

The research, that should have started my journey, suddenly took priority. I read a number of books and searched blogs like crazy to get ideas. Then, a few months after our first failure, we took another stab at it--with much greater success. Homeschooling became all I had ever hoped it would be. After we finished off K4 (just this last week), my son came to me with this announcement: "Mom, I've got a great idea. Let's do school through the summer." And so we are.

We are in our groove now, but I learned a very valuable lesson from our rough start. It takes the failures to find success. And there might be a few false starts along the way to the finish line.

For us, everyday is an experiment, and even when the experiment goes awry--I've learned something. Like the great inventor Thomas Edison, I've simply discovered one more way it can't be done.

My encouragement to you would be this: don't be afraid of the mistakes you might make. It's a natural part of the process.

As you do your research and cruise those beautiful blogs with all those wonderful ideas, keep in mind many of them started with the same fears (and perhaps even failures) that you are facing. Learn from their wisdom, but remember--we're all on a journey of discovery.

You can follow along on our journey of discover at Growing in Grace.

Care to read a few more "rocky start" stories? Here are a few links to my favorites:

• The Rise & Fall of a Homeschool Mother – My Story
• A Rocky Start to Homeschooling
• The Mistakes I've Made