Taken from http://katharinetrauger.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/abcs-of-homeschool-2/
Written by Kathy Trauger

Hello, Friends!

This week I must devote entirely to several speaking chores. So I thought you would enjoy viewing the introductions to my presentations. Here they are in their approximate final draft. Enjoy!

Raising children is like a boat race:

  • You never feel ready
  • You always feel watched
  • It’s hard to change your mind
  • Disasters can happen

Too often, a bad beginning can cause a disastrous ending.

What can we do to ensure we are even in the right boat?

Since we are SO FAR from the shore, what are some boat safety rules?

A. We can examine our attitudes. Many begin this race badly, with a bad attitude when they board the good ship homeschool.

Sometimes people begin home schooling because of a bad teacher experience. Often these parents are angry and the thrust of their actions is intended as a javelin thrust into some teacher or educational system.

They just want to rock the boat . . . .

We all need to get used to the fact that the State Institutions are failing everywhere. It is not personal. It just is a cosmic failure, such as comes every time we build a cosmic house of cards.

Those who begin for this reason, alone, often stop just as dramatically as they began, when they, for some reason, decide putting their child in a State Institution is not really such a bad idea, after all.

Some parents begin because the child is failing. Whether he is unable to learn, or simply untaught where he is, the parent decides to take the plunge because of embarrassment or natural protective instincts toward the child. This reason also fails the parent quickly, because soon as the child homeschools, he does better.

Amazing!

The parents allow this progress to lull them into a false sense of security. They opt for State Institutionalization for their beloved child, after all, thinking the problems were a false alarm.

They change boats in the middle of the race, and slow the progress of both methods.

The third reason is more stable. These people do not become quitters as easily.

They are the ones who begin because they see the rightness, the necessity of it. They see God’s commands to teach our own children. They see the State Institutions growing constantly more hostile to morality.

They see ketchup as a vegetable and “two mommies” as a norm, or even a goal.

These frightening observations rivet them and they realize homeschooling as a part of being a family, homeschooling as a part of the decision to have children,
homeschooling even as a part of the decision to marry.

It’s just the natural, normal result, for them, of being alive and desiring to succeed.

And they do.

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