Dreaming within my means

A few days ago I was driving through Wanneroo to visit a friend and saw this property for sale. If I had a million dollars handy, I'd love to buy it. It has a lovely back yard for the kids to play in!

But I have to be realistic. We sold our first house to finance three years of theological studies for Jeff and I cannot see us ever being able to buy another. Which is terribly sad, but by no means the end of the world.

There are other things in life about which we have to be realistic as well. Jeff and I have been reassessing our priorities and resources over the past week and we've just made a very sad (for me) decision. Next year, Joshua will be going to a local Christian private school for Year 1 instead of homeschooling.

Unless Joshua experiences a lot of difficulty fitting in socially because he hasn't been to an "away-school" before, we will still homeschool the others for the pre-compulsory years. This means I'll essentially be doing Year 1 with Anna at home next year because although she is too young physically and emotionally for five full days a week of institutional school, she's ready intellectually for the academics. She's done fine with the K5 maths along with Joshua and she'll be as good (if not better) at reading and writing as he is by the end of the year as well, I think.

There are a lot of factors in this decision, some good, some bad, some surprising. In part, I think this decision could have been avoided if I had been better organised (or rather, more disciplined in carrying out all the things I had organised to do). A big problem for Jeff is that I haven't been giving the littler kids enough attention and loving care because I have been so focused on the bigger kids' education. There are only 24 hours in a day and homeschooling has been taking more than two of them. I've been doing much of the homeschooling in the morning when the kids' brains were fresh, but this has really cut into my time with Abi and Sam. I didn't realise how much I had been relegating them to a far second place until I spoke to Jeff about it at length. As of this week, all sit down academics has been done in the afternoon after Abigail and Samuel go down for their naps, and it has helped free us up to do family things in the morning.

However, looking forward to the future, Jeff doesn't think homeschooling will be sustainable with (not too far in the future) our four kids all learning together. Part of the problem is that we have chosen to have our children so close together in age. (Not that I regret that at all, but that's another post entirely.) This means that if we were to continue homeschooling for the junior primary years, there would be a lot of individual tutoring needed, while I taught the kids to read and write well enough to do more of their work independently. There are things that all kids would do together (history read alouds, for example), but not everything could be done in this manner. The kids would always need some or all of their maths and literacy done separately, and much of it would need to be heavily supervised. I do wonder how early primary school teachers do it. I mean, they have not just four but 24 or maybe more kids who cannot read. Of course, they don't have to keep up with the laundry and cooking and cleaning and ... (fill in the blank) at the same time as they're teaching.

Another thing that Jeff and I have come to realise over the past week or so is that, because I have been able to do what I wanted with the homeschooling, I haven't been trusting God enough with regards to the spiritual welfare of our children. I have begun to forget that He loves them much more than I do and that He will equip them for the good works He has planned in advance for them to do - regardless of just how much input I have to their schooling. So when we talked about sending them to school, we talked about the possible challenges to their fledgeling faith of sending them to the public primary down the road. We talked about the friendships we oversee them making, and those they seem to be making without any help from us. We talked about me being available to "hang around in the background" while they play with their friends. We talked about raising them to be confident in their faith, so they could fit in with a crowd when it suited them, but shine like lamps on the hill when they needed to. And, after I checked out a few Christian schools online, I thought and prayed a lot about being a good steward of the things God has provided for my use: my money, time, talents and the access He has provided to educational facilities that are not solely within our family and home. While the school we have now applied for a place in is not "at home" nor "classical", it is "Christian", and this last description is far more important to me in the scheme of things. I know I can trust God with the education of my children, as indeed with all things, but unfortunately homeschooling allows me to convince myself it is I who is in charge. And I'm not. It's such a pity I had to learn this the hard way!

It's strange - the only things I thought might be reasons to send our kids off to school were academic struggles or "the socialisation issue" and these haven't been a problem for us at all. Our kids are learning to read well, they can write neatly, they love listening to good books, they know what an "Ursus maritimus" is, they get on well with homeschooling and church friends as well as the kids in our street. But I haven't had time to sit down and play with my baby enough, Jeff is getting sick of having to cook dinner and I am forgetting to rely on my Lord and Saviour for all things.

So this decision is terribly sad for me. We've been planning to homeschool for at least half a dozen years, and I've been doing very well with it (at least from an academic perspective) so far. But, as with never being home-owners, it's not the end of the world.

I am very thankful that we can enrol our children in an away-school where the teachers are all committed Christians and their fellow students will all come from families with at least one committed Christian parent. I am very thankful that I don't have to put Anna into full-time away-school when she's not yet physically or emotionally ready. I am thankful that Joshua will be able to learn art from a teacher rather than a text, since I can see he enjoys artistic activities immensely and is actually quite good at drawing. I remember how relieved I felt at finding a place for Sam on Wednesdays in childcare, and I am very grateful to be able to look forward to a time when, with my children all being educated outside our home, I will be free to help my husband in ministering to our congregation. Perhaps I might lead a Bible study for ladies during the day, teach a Sunday school class, do some more talks for women's and mothers' groups or just sit and chat with the neighbour who's recently divorced and hurting. I might even be able to go to classes at Trinity and learn Biblical Greek from a lecturer rather than out of a book!

Looking on the bright side does help. But ultimately, Jeff has decided this needs to happen and I need to submit to his headship in this matter. So that's how it's going to be.