You + God Are Enough
Are we really equipped to teach our own? For many years, random moms have approached me about homeschooling, often following an educational crisis with one of their children. They’ve all expressed fear about their ability to teach their own children.
Having homeschooled my own children for 18 years and having been in leadership in our homeschooling community, I became a resource person for friends, friends of friends, and complete strangers. One friend, a schoolteacher for many years, came to me with questions after an incident with her child in a small rural school caused her to start asking questions. We were returning from a weekend church event and she suddenly began peppering me with questions for the entire three-hour drive home. I answered to the best of my ability. We arrived home and resumed our lives. A year later, I was helping out at a homeschooling event and looked up in surprise to see my friend standing there. She had recently started homeschooling, and ultimately continued until all her children graduated.
A few years ago, I received a phone call from a worried mom whose child had been physically ill every day before school. I met with her and her husband, both experienced educators, who asked me questions like, “Is homeschooling legal? How do you do it? What curriculum do you use?” After a few minutes of discussion, they looked at me and asked: “Do you think we can really homeschool our child?” I was stunned at the extent to which parents in America are convinced that ONLY the government school is capable of educating children. I told them, “Absolutely! No one knows your child better than you do. No one has your child’s best interests at heart more than you.”
I remember an occasion when I expressed to a friend how inadequate I felt to teach my own children. She said something I never forgot: “You do the best you can and God will fill in all the gaps.” We teach what we can and give them the tools to learn the rest, along with reliance on God to fill in any remaining gaps.
“Education” means to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. That was my baseline, not what my friends were doing. I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted my children to know when they ultimately left home. My priority was to teach them to read well, so they could find information on their own; I wanted them to have a solid understanding of math concepts, so they could go into any field they wanted down the road; I wanted them to have a solid foundation regarding special creation, including a love of science, lots of hands-on experiences, and a solid defense against evolutionary teaching; and I wanted them to have a good grasp of real (not rewritten) history, including people and events that birthed one of the greatest nations on Earth. Finally, I wanted to teach them gratitude for all God has given us.
Relax! God gave you your children and has equipped you to give them everything they need, including an education. Do your best and trust God with the rest. He will absolutely fill in any remaining gaps and, in the final analysis, your children will have everything they need to succeed!
Ruth Sundeen has a B.S. degree in Biology, with a minor in Chemistry. Home-educating her own two children for 18 years, she decided to include other students in their high school science classes, including Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Anatomy & Physiology. She added Physical Science to her portfolio, when she started teaching science in private Christian schools for the past two years; in addition, she tutors college physics and chemistry.
Ruth is passionate about teaching science from a special creation perspective, helping students develop a love of science, a strong grasp of the scientific evidence to support special creation, and the conviction that they can make a difference in the world we live in.
She was awarded the 2017 SchoolhouseTeachers.com Teacher of the Year for her Biology curriculum design. She and her husband, Larry, live in Abita Springs, Louisiana.
