Homeschool Journal: Dear Mom Without a Degree

Dear Homeschool Mom Who Doesn't Have a Degree,

I just wanted to write you today and encourage you to be confident because you ARE enough.  A degree collecting dust on your living room wall does not qualify you to teach your child.  Did you need a degree to be a mother?  To learn how to change diapers or feed your sweet little ones the right food at the right times?  Did you need tens of thousands of dollars to listen to 'professionals' explain the order of teaching your toddler to walk and run or hold a spoon or pencil and use it properly?  Did you need to sit, 4+ years of your life, in classrooms with piles of books and papers and due dates and exam stress to figure out how to handle a teething child or explain what the letter "A" looks like or how to count blocks as they stacked them into a tower?

The answer is simply no. 

Somehow, somewhere in life, people got the idea that the only 'qualified' person to teach and train our children was someone with a degree.  Someone who has spent all of your child's life not with them. Not learning how your child learns and when they have been pushed too far.  Not understanding the things which tug at their lives and make them hurt and not ready to pay attention that day. Teachers are wonderful people.  Most of them do have a heart for teaching and learn to have a heart for your child.... but they don't have our heart for our children.  Our passion to see them succeed in more than just academics and worldly ways.  Our passions and pulls for the spiritual well-being alongside their academic growth.

Remember, too, your children aren't just learning from a teacher, they are also learning from their peers... usually all the tidbits you would rather they didn't learn!  Dirty jokes and 4-letter words not on the vocabulary list.  Un-censored viewing habits are shared along with the best ways to lie and talk back to parents and other adults.  Even the best kids find themselves privy to all these tidbits at one time or another in their public school education.  Worst of all, they learn how to strive for approval and acceptance to avoid rejection (or overcome rejection) verses striving for their personal and God-given best to glorify God and know they are always accepted in His eyes.

My dear Homeschool mom who doesn't have a degree, if God has called you to teach your child, then he has already innately equipped you to be your child's best teacher.  Over a century ago when schoolhouses didn't dot our communities, parents didn't think twice about teaching their children all they needed for life.  Abraham Lincoln got all he needed to become a lawyer and one day the president of the United States from his step mom and a handful of books.

You.can.do.this.

I know, because I am a homeschooling mom without a degree.  It was during a degree pursuit for Early Childhood Education that God called me to set my studies aside.  It was through these studies that I realized; everything I needed to know to be a good homeschool teacher was within me as a mom and within my ability to read any book or article to find answers to questions on techniques and tactics best for my kids. Anything I didn't already know, I had the ability to learn right alongside my children.

If you are reading this and you do have a degree... I am not intending to diminish your hard work.  But if you don't... don't diminish your own God-given abilities.  Pray and trust Him to guide you and give you all you need to be the best teacher for your child.  And on the days when you feel like you can't get anything right and you just lost your temper with your young student... again, realize, public school teachers have days like that too.  The difference is, homeschool students have the comfort and security of knowing they will not be rejected in those moments... that they are still unconditionally loved and accepted, faults and all.

Be confident, homeschooling mom, no matter your situation or education.  God has made you more than enough and that is more than all you need!

Train up a child in the way he should go;    even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

 Blessings,

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