5 minute read
A Beautiful Mess
BY JESSICA PRUKNER
Years ago, when we began our homeschooling journey, the purpose was mainly to allow us the freedom to travel. My oldest daughter was enrolled in a private half-day kindergarten, and in that first year, we took her out for a total of five weeks to travel. I offered to take her schoolwork with us and do it on the road, but the school had a meeting and informed us that after two weeks of absences, they would not have the time to pull her schoolwork for us to take, so she would just receive zeros for those assignments missed.
We happily accepted the zeros and traveled to beautiful places like Hawaii and Florida, learning all about the culture and experiencing the food, sights, and animals specific to these wonderful places. After that school year, we decided as a family that we would much rather our kids learn with a “hands-on” approach than have them sitting in classrooms, seeing beautiful places and creatures in textbook photos. So our journey began, and with it came lots of traveling to wonderful places.
The experiences have been memorable and impactful in many ways.
Our experiences were unlike anything a classroom or a book could have ever taught our children. A decade later, the kids still tell me their vivid memories of what they saw, experienced, and learned. Learning in person while visiting the sites of history—walking the Battle of Gettysburg fields and seeing places like Pearl Harbor—has allowed them to stack so much more knowledge as they now dive deeper as upper-age learners. It is really rewarding when I see that the choices we made for our family not only created memories but are now being explored deeper and further as our children grow.
With each meeting, they learned a lesson or gained a friend.
Along with this great life of travel came the opportunity to meet many wonderful and interesting people. While visiting Pearl Harbor, the kids were able to meet a WWII survivor who lived through the bombings, hear his story, and thank him for his service. They learned about the Polynesian people and culture while in Hawaii, made friends with the locals of Costa Rica, and exchanged language lessons with children at meals. They have been able to see how Washington, D.C. functions, witness Air Force One land, and wave at the president of the United States with a crowd of a dozen people. The experiences have been memorable and impactful in many ways. I tell everyone that my kids have never met a stranger; instead, with each meeting, they learned a lesson or gained a friend.
Although these experiences have been great, in the last two years, we have become more committed to homeschool co-ops and communities as we have learned the value of local, everyday relationships. My kids are now teenagers, and solid, everyday friendships are vital to their well-being. They strive for deeper connections and especially for relatable relationships with kids their age. An asset in the early years that I never found a necessity is now that which breathes life into my kids on a daily basis. My daughter has a homeschool group chat thread that is ever-growing and constantly needs my permission to add a new friend. My son has learned how to find good guy friends who like to play chess, drums, and Legos like he does. My oldest daughter has found the positive peer pressure to help her make wise, God-fearing decisions for her life.
Recently, my oldest daughter had a boy interested in her, to whom she began showing some interest back. Her father and I were not very happy with this situation and let her know that we would not be allowing this relationship to progress. As most teenagers would be, she was unhappy with our pushback; we had a week of hostility in the house as I became overprotective of her whereabouts. I prayed for wisdom, prayed that this boy would move on, and then prayed some more. That Sunday at church, I saw two of her school friends come to talk to her after service. Later that day, she came up to me and said God sent two friends at church and six friends from school via text to all share that they felt like this relationship was a bad idea and she needed to be careful, so she was going to heed their warnings and ask the boy to stop reaching out to her. At that moment, I realized how great God is in all areas of their lives. God uses people, in this case, her friends from school and church, to speak to her heart in a season when the voices of mom and dad are hard to always agree with and understand.
I also immediately saw the value of having a good, positive community surrounding my kids. I am now convinced there is a blessing in community, which all homeschool families need. We were not meant to do life alone, to parent alone, or to do school alone. God gave us wonderful people to surround ourselves with to help us love and direct our kids in the way they should go.
If you homeschool, I encourage you to Google, reach out, visit, or start your own community so your kids can experience the many blessings my kids have been enjoying these last few years. As the great Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
