The verdict is in…

I am GUILTY!

I have been found guilty of expecting too much and being unrealistic. Expecting…

Too much from my curriculum– it’s supposed to make our lessons easy! and quick! and perfect!

Too much from my morning cup of coffee– it’s supposed to give me the energy of a 5 year old boy that’s hyped up on sugar… and give me the endurance of a marathon runner.

To make things even worse, this also extends to my starry-eyed expectations of my children. I expect them to be cheerfully obedient 100% of the time. I expect their handwriting to be flowing and beautiful, even if they haven’t finished the third grade yet. I expect them to never have a bad day. I expect them to be little adults that know that when glow-in-the-dark rubber dinosaurs are placed on a lightbulb to increase their glowability and it starts emitting black smoke, that it is NOT a good thing. Not very realistic expectations are they? Well, except that last one– they’ve had enough life and science experience to know that black smoke leads to fire and that is not something we want in the living room!

Oddly enough, I also expect the gifts of one child to meld with the talents of another– thereby giving me the PERFECT child! Bwahahaha! Talk about nutty. I’ve had almost 33 years to try to be perfect and haven’t gotten even close yet… so how ridiculous is it to expect that from my 8 year old?!

Perfection is elusive. And impossible. And a lie. Sure we should all have GOALS, but expecting perfection? It just doesn’t make sense. Of course nobody is perfect! We all know that already. And yet we still have this outlook in so many areas of our lives and especially in our homeschooling.

If your child is doing their best, how could you possible ask them to do more?! We are not to compare ourselves as homeschooling mothers (or our children as students) to others. Boy, would that zap all the joy out of me! We are, however, to try to live up to our POTENTIAL… not our unreasonable, Utopian vision of what should be!

Part of the JOY of homeschooling is that we can tailor our days and lessons to each individual child and to our own unique family. We are sure to fail if we set the bar too low or too high. As in all things there is a balance to be found– and this balance is different for each family, mom and child.

So stop comparing and start helping your children strive to do not their sibling’s best or their neighbor’s best, but their very best!