Homeschool News & Views
Issue 29, July 6, 2007
from Homeschool Helpers
in association with Pass It On Ministries
Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool
News & Views.
In a society which is configured to keep fathers away
from their families, fathers must figure out how to reverse that.
Most homeschool families have the mother do the teaching, while the father is
employed away from home. A few are able to
have family businesses where all the family works together and does school together,
but most homeschool families are not going to do that. The challenge,
then, is to get the most benefit for the family from the limited time that the
father does have at home.
If you figure it out mathematically, it would seem that the father would have
plenty of time to spend with the wife and kids, even though he works eight
hours a day at his job. If he sleeps
eight hours, then that gives him another eight hours off the job, plenty of
time to help with the homeschooling and to spend time with the Mrs.
In real life, it never seems to work that way.
First of all, if you work eight hours on the job, you
have to add in the time it takes to get to and from the job, plus lunch
hour. So a worker will actually spend
more like ten hours on work than eight. Many people work more than eight
hours a day. If you are a homeschooling dad, you have to evaluate
carefully if you should actually work extra hours, instead of spending that
time with your family.
Further, you have to add in the time it takes to get ready to go to work
in the morning, and doing this and that after work in the afternoon, maybe
stopping by the store to get milk or taking care of some other minor
necessity. Generally that will cost you another couple of hours a
day. That will perhaps leave you, Dad, with a maximum of four hours in
the evening to spend familizing. However, you, the father of your
family, must spend time alone with your Father. That is even more
important than spending time with your wife and kids.
We have a Bible message on Homeschool Helpers about how much time God expected
His people
Some families might do a ten or fifteen minute devotional together. I
don't consider a fifteen minute devotional very devoted. If I am awake
about sixteen hours a day and I give God a tithe or a tenth of my waking time,
that is about an hour and a half a day. If I get down to under an
hour a day that I give God, then He ain't getting much. I spend that much time
feeding my face every day. Can I not spend at least that much time
feeding my faith?
John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the
This information gave me real pleasure for so great is my veneration for the
Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of
all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men good, wise and
happy -- that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they
pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and
confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens of their
country, respectable members of society, and a real blessing to their
parents...
I have myself, for many years, made it a practice to read through the Bible
once every year...
My custom is, to read four to five chapters every morning immediately after
rising from my bed. It employs about an hour of my time."
That was the opinion of John Quincy Adams about studying the Bible. Of
course, he probably would not be elected today.
So then, after all of that, the homeschool dad is left with a few hours each
day, maybe two or three, that he can spend with the
kids. Three hours is a good block of time mathematically. But the
challenge is to use it effectively.
I have noticed that I can be working at something, and can get a lot done in a
couple of hours, and it seems like those hours go slowly. Then I
may take a break, get a drink and sit down, and a half hour goes by in nothing
flat. It's easy to put in the hours at work when the company says you
have to, but when you have no taskmaster other than yourself it is very
difficult to maximize your time. Few people are able to do that
very efficiently.
If a father has two or three hours after work to be a homeschool dad for his
kids, what will he do with those hours?
Maybe not much.
Why not?
Because at the end of a day's work, and then stopping at the store to get milk,
and then getting under the sink to see where the drain is leaking, he is a dead
tired dad. To plan out each evening and say, "Wow, we can get a lot
done in that time!" is far different than coming home dead tired, full of
the day's problems at work, and face fidgety, freckled kids for three more
hours.
And there's always the TV to struggle against.
Well, then – what should Dad do with his kids in the evening?
First of all, he should lead them in the family worship. Some may do this
in the morning, but often when it is done in the morning the devotional is
rushed and runty. It doesn't last too long. The family Bible
study and worship should be relaxed and stretched to the fullest, getting
deeply into God's word without worrying about going overtime.
It is vital that the father is the leader of the family worship. The
father is the priest to the family, placed in that position at marriage by
God Himself. He is the head of the family, and the head of the
family should be the one who leads the family in its most important
activity, worshiping God. The father should not leave the
devotionals to the wife to do during the day when he is gone. If the
father does nothing else with the family at all, he should lead them in their
Bible study and worship time.
How often should he do this? With little children, it should be done
daily. As children get older, then I think it is good to let the
children establish their own individual routine of Bible study and God time,
besides doing it together as a family. Then that may be a combination of
family and individual Bible study, as the family determines.
There is no substitute for taking in the word of God through Bible study and
taking in the spirit of God through prayer and reflection. If a
father fails at everything else in life and he leads his family to God, his
will be a successful life. If a father succeeds at everything else in
life and does not take time to lead his family to God, his will be a wasted
life.
Fathers, be the priest to your family. Just as the daily sacrifices were
offered by the priests, so you must do your priestly duty and daily lead your
family toward God.
So now, after all that – maybe that leaves you with a couple of hours in
the evenings. Don't touch that TV dial! One flick of the
switch and your whole evening can go right down the drain, and at the end of
the night, you won't have a thing to show for it.
What should homeschool dads do with their children during that couple of hours?
Whatever you want to.
Seriously.
Whatever you want to. That is, you should do with them what you are most
interested in doing with them.
Look. You're in a very challenging situation. You're tired,
faced with problems at work, and when you get home you want to set your mind on
cruise and just relax, but you have these energetic kids you have to teach and
train. There's a good chance you ain't goin' do nothing. So
do whatever it is you would most like to do with them.
Is that science? Probably not, for most fathers. Trying to remember
this phylum and that phylum can send some people to the asylum, but a few folks
enjoy that type of subject. If the father likes bugs and bats, then
him be the professor of that subject.
For others maybe it is math or language or literature. My point is to
make it as easy as possible for Dad to get involved with the kids.
What does he like? Then let him do that with him. Mothers, in
teaching homeschool, make sure you don't give Dad the dregs, the hard subjects
that the kids just can't get into. Let Dad do what Dad wants to do.
Maybe it will be less academic things, such as sports or music. That's
all right. Most of life's lessons are not learned out of books, but
out of life. Playing sports or music with kids can teach them about
life. Mother can teach the book subjects.
I have played many hours of sports in my life. Margie and I played sports
together before we were married, and once we got married we continued to do
that, like best buddies. When the kids came along, we began to play
sports with them well before age six. Those were fun things, like touch
football or balloony ball, and we would adjust the rules to fit the kids and
the situation. We were not trying to set world records. We
were just trying to have fun, and we did that. I don't guess there are
any world records at balloony ball, anyway.
In playing sports with our kids, we taught them how to win and how to lose, how
to play fair and how to be nice under pressure. I am about 60 years
old now. With all the kids grown up, our family still plays sports
together, not because Daddy says to anymore, but because it is still so much
fun. And in all those thirty years of
playing sports together as a family, there has never been one argument over any
game – never one argument over a foul or a shot or an out of bounds line. That's a valuable lesson.
Homeschool Dad – what is it that you really like doing with your wife and
kids in the evening? Then that's probably what
you should do.
The important thing is to do something. Don't let your work be your life. Don't let the factory be the father to your
children. Use that little bit of useful time that you do have to be as
useful as you can with them.