While I am not so naïve to believe that our children cannot hear or see “bad” things if they are homeschooled—after all we are seldom with them every moment of every day, and there are potential “bad” things in our homes via television, internet, etc. However, protecting our children from hearing and seeing things that we do not want them to hear or see is a huge benefit of homeschooling.

I can remember when our oldest was a few years old and we got our first “television” (to watch movies on with a vhs player….yeah….many years ago!). We got Joshua this animated movie (that we still love and sing the theme song to even now thirty years later!) called “Seabert, the Seal.” It was a cute cartoon about a seal who saved animals from poachers. However, there was a period of time when Joshua got “grounded” from Seabert. It was when Joshua started saying two “s-words” that Seabert often said….

STUPID and SHUT UP.

We called them “slang words”—though not too many years later our children would begin calling them (and continue to do so today, twenty-something years later) SLIME WORDS. Somehow they didn’t understand what slang words meant and they thought we were telling them that they shouldn’t use slime words…so forever in our family a word that is not a “cuss” word is called the dreaded (and punishable!) slime word.

Anyway, the problem wasn’t that Seabert said them. After all, we would never let our child watch anything ever if we boycotted movies with any slime words. The problem was that Joshua began saying them. So Seabert went on the shelf until Joshua quit saying those two slime words.

So how do we take advantage of this homeschool benefit? Especially in this technological age? I have a few ideas—but I raised my kids in an age where we could simply put a television on a rolling cart and leave it permanently (and only)  hooked up to a vhs. A few times a week we pulled it out of the closet and watched something all together. No computers. No iPods. No smart phones. Not even “television” as we know it.

And it was blissful. And we not only could take advantage of the not hearing and seeing so many things benefit—but we cashed in on that amazing homeschool benefit known as TIME. So while I might not be the one to come to in order to get ideas on protecting our kids from hearing and seeing “bad” things, I can’t close without a few tips! 🙂

1. The first way to protect our kids from hearing and seeing things that they shouldn’t is putting guards on things. This can come in many forms—only having one main computer for kids under eighteen and having it in the main area of the house; putting blocks on any computers any where (laptops and desktops alike), etc. This also includes televisions—using blocking products so that things do not come through. (I would add that if we had, had television and computers, our kids under a certain age would not have been able to just go turn them on and use them. It would be just like the refrigerator—the decision to watch something or eat something any time a child wants is not really theirs to make.)

2. Secondly, and I know this is one that many would disagree with, but we do not let our kids under eighteen or so have the internet on devices of their own—smart phones, tablets, etc. It isn’t worth the risk to us. They can use mine when they need to, but to have the internet at a ten year old’s finger tips seems unwise to me. We are giving them (forcing them really) to make decisions about things (do I look at this; do I write this, etc.) that children are not equipped to make.

3. Lastly, we can protect our children from hearing, seeing, and experiencing negative things by not allowing them to be with people that we do not fully trust and know to be growing, godly people. This includes hanging out with non-Christian friends unsupervised and going to neighbors’ homes and other people’s homes in which the adults are not growing Christians that we know to not be involved in ungodly activity. I have been surprised by people’s response to this—sort of the whole “they have to be light in the school” argument turned to “light in the neighborhood.” But there are many other ways to be light without subjecting our children to other people’s sinful habits and sometimes downright dangers. This has shocked me because to me it is a no-brainer….

So there you have another homeschool benefit. Protection. It is a potential benefit if we want to take advantage of it in keeping our children away from sin, things that are too mature for them, and people who might influence them negatively.

The post Homeschool Benefit #6: Parents Have More Control Over What Children Hear and See appeared first on Character Ink.

I already mentioned in an earlier homeschool benefit post about being able
to be with our children all the time. I will always cherish the eighteen
years that I have had with each of my children all day long… well sixteen
years until they started working day jobs and going to college, etc. I will
never regret that I spent those years with my children.

Likewise, I will be eternally grateful for the time that my children had
together. It isn’t always easy to have your kids together twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week. Trust me, I know–for twenty-nine years. However,
my children as adults between the ages of nearly seventeen and thirty-two
now have strong bonds with each other –in large part due to the fact that
they were together all the time.

One of the things that we tried hard not to do in terms of our children’s
relationships with each was to continually rescue them from each other. That
is, always attempting to separate them and always intervening and working
things out for them. They will come out much stronger in relationships with
other people as well as in relationships with each other if we don’t try to
thwart the very nature of homeschooling–that our kids are together. When we
do this, we are not taking advantage of the full benefit of this benefit!

This is not to say that we did not intervene in disputes and problems; we
did. However, we didn’t constantly try to send them apart from each other,
so we would not have the headache of them being together. Instead, we kept
them together in school; we took them to activities together; we grouped
them together in subjects whenever possible; we spent a lot of time
together; and we taught them how to work through difficulties with each
other and with other people.

The siblings-in-homeschooling relationship is one that you can get nowhere
else. Home is where a person is usually himself or herself. While the child
would not treat a friend in a certain way, he or she might be tempted to
treat a sibling in that way. Our children having been together all these
years has given them the opportunity to learn to compromise. They learned
how to put others first. They learned early on that they are going to be
together every day for many years – as my now- thirty-two year old son once
said about this subject, “I figured I better work it out and get along with
them and like them because I was pretty much stuck with them all the time. ”
He says that he decided at a young age that he would rather have fun all the
time then to always be at war with his siblings. And so he learned to work
things out.

Siblings are our children’s first friends and hopefully siblings are their
last friends. That is, hopefully, they will be friends for a lifetime.
Homeschooling affords them the opportunity to share life with these
“friends” every day all day long. I am so grateful that my kids have been
together every day for many years.

The post Homeschool Benefit #4: Siblings Get to Be Together Every Day appeared first on Character Ink.

Thirty years ago when my husband and I began homeschooling my younger sister and we had a little one-year-old toddler, all the homeschooling buzz was teaching our children the Bible and protecting them from bad teaching at school in terms of humanism. Humanism was a buzzword at that time, and those of us who were seeking homeschooling were going to keep our children from being indoctrinated by it. Here we are thirty years later, and there are many other dangerous teachings in government schools besides just the original homeschool enemy of humanism.

None of us like to think that if our children go to school they are being taught bad things. But if we look at many teachings in schools, we have to admit that much of it is not what we would be teaching our children if they were at home with us—because we wouldn’t want to teach them things that are opposite of the Bible. Sex education has taken on a whole new meaning as now curriculum is provided for schools to teach about gay marriage and to push many non-traditional (i.e. non-Biblical) family arrangements.

When we take our children to museums, I always think about all of the things that we tell them as we walk through the exhibits. How the billions of years are not true. How we do have an intelligent designer. How the creation story in the Bible is really the truth. And on and on and on. Then I think how difficult it would be if my children were in school. We would not just be looking at how to undo one day at the museum with creation materials and biblical teaching. Every year in science and even many times in history, our children would be learning that evolution is true, that the big bang is what really happened, that there is no creator. I often feel overwhelmed just trying to undo one day at the zoo or one day at a history or science museum. I can’t imagine how a parent could have the time, energy, and resources to undo ongoing teaching that contradicts the Bible that is taught in science classes year after year.

This is not a guilt trip for those who have to send their children to school by any means. It is not even a guilt trip for those who choose to send their children to school. But I would be remiss if I did not say that a major benefit of keeping our children at home with us is being able to teach them the Bible every single day.

It is not just creation, biblical marriage, life at conception, and other “science” teachings, but it is way bigger than those. Through homeschooling we have been able to, day in and day out for at least twenty-five years, teach our children the one another’s of Scripture, how to live like Jesus would live in our treatment of others, what the Bible says about character and living above reproach, how to have strong relationships by interacting in a way that is pleasing to God, how to make wise decisions, how to become an outstanding worker through applying biblical concepts, how to guard our hearts from evil and those who would lead us astray, how to live a moral life, and so much more.

If teaching our children science as it applies to the Bible were all we were able to do, that would be enough to say that this homeschool benefit is valid. But I was able to spend every day for twenty-five years reading aloud to my children from godly poetry, hymns, character training books, nature books that are biblically-based, creation science materials, the Bible, discipleship books that point us to living for Christ, and much more. My husband and I have also been able to teach our children from the Bible as we “walk in the way,” “sit in our house,” “rise up,” and “lie down to sleep.”

Being able to teach our children from our own religious beliefs is truly a major benefit of homeschooling – – let’s not let this opportunity slip by and become complacent in teaching the Bible and God’s principles every day in our home schools.

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