Michelle Becerra

Happy Fall! We’re still early in a new school year. Let’s chat about coaching your children to build healthy life habits. This will bless both your children and your homeschooling!

Go ahead and pick one habit that you want to pass on to your child. It can be anything: kitchen chores, math facts, making one’s bed…the list is endless. Please just pick one habit to begin. You can now focus on being a good coach, day in and day out, to build this one essential habit in his or her life.

I know what you are thinking! I want many habits built into my child’s life, not just one! Aaah, yes, of course! However, you are one young mom who wears many hats in your family’s life. I am almost sixty-two years old and can speak from experience. Let me urge you to start with one habit and then pick a new one in a few weeks.

Am I saying don’t have your children do anything else for a week or a month while he or she builds this habit? No, not at all. However, this habit or life skill you have selected will be your coaching focus. Will you do it perfectly? No, no, not all.

But the real question that must be answered by you as the mom is: will your child do it perfectly? And does he or she need to do it perfectly before you can build another new habit? Absolutely not. An excellent coach is gracious and forgiving with beautiful words of encouragement that make and build into the child’s life. As parents, we must understand our children’s ages and developmental strengths; please be patient!

The great football coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Tom Landry, was asked once how he viewed his job as a coach. His response motivated me daily to keep going and persevere in forming good habits in my children’s lives. “My job is to get my athletes to do what they do not want to, achieve what they have always dreamed of.” Landry’s quote motivated me to keep going as a parent even when my children’s responses were far from positive.

Now let’s chat about a crucial aspect of habit formation – the time commitment required. This is a critical coaching tip. Without it, you might finish reading this article with the wrong impression. You may think you need hours a day to build good habits in your child’s life. You might read this and think, ‘who is this woman adding hours to my busy day of homeschooling?’

Wisdom and best practice for parental coaching of children to build a good habit, one life-long habit at a time, is, to begin with about five minutes per day! What? Five minutes? All this habit formation can start with five minutes a day of coaching and guiding your child to build a particular habit? As time goes by, it will build. But it will be very, very slow. It is a daily building of a life-long habit. Beginning with five minutes per day will yield great results as the days turn into months! It will prevent discouragement for both you and your child!

by Loretta Lambert

On April 21^st I’ll be holding a workshop just for you. We will be discussing how to cultivate creativity and imagination in your child. I pray that everyone will gain new ideas on how to ensure that their homeschooling inspires their children. Those precious early years are where perhaps we, as parents, spend too long with the curriculum requirements leaving very little time for children to be creative. Why is this so crucial? We are losing our children’s hearts and minds by the time they reach high school. What if we could accept the challenge of developing in our children a drive and desire to learn that would extend into the high school years?

Am I suggesting that we throw off the non-negotiable academics in those early years? Am I meaning that we allow our children to burn our houses down using their creative juices? Of course not! We need to learn how to move our children forward academically in a way that does not exasperate the late or the early bloomer. I knew that the time was very short for my young children. I knew that if I did not permit my children opportunities to learn and create in those early years, they might have lost their enthusiasm to learn by the time they hit high school. Also, the time spent through the years created bridges of good communication that now extend into their adulthood. Our children could even have wound up resenting us because of our methods to complete the curriculum in the early years. Yes, high school is very different, but the goal is to usher your children into the high school years encouraged and affirm that they are ready to do their very best. I believe with all my heart that children can be prepared to face high school and ready to learn. We need to examine and possibly risk some time before they reach high school to go down the “rabbit trails” of learning that our children are interested in. Again, I will share much more on April 21st about how to do this and stay sane as a mom. I will even explain what “rabbit trails” are and why they are essential to our children. Let me close with a short poem that I discovered in the summer of 2007 when our son left to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point. I began to cry when I realized how much it encapsulated what we, as teachers, can be to our children in the high school years.

 by Loretta Lambert

The Teacher

Said to the students:

“Come to the edge.”

They replied: “We might fall.”

The teacher said again:

“Come to the edge.”

And they responded:

“It’s too high.”

“Come to the edge”

the teacher demanded.

And they came and the teacher pushed them and they

flew.

1. The necessity of Discipline

• To deter destruction (Heb. 12:4) – Discipline is discipleship!

2. The Means of Discipline:

• Actions and words (Heb. 12:5)

3. The Motive in Discipline:

• To express love (Heb.12 :6-8)

4. The Goal of Discipline:

• To teach obedience (Heb. 12:9)

5. The Result of Discipline

• Short term pain= Long term gain! (Heb. 12:10-11)

7 Steps to Discipline

1. A clear warning
2. Establish responsibility > “Who did it?” > “Who chose?”
3. Avoid embarrassment
4. Communicate grief > “ What you did is not who you are.”
5. Institute discipline
6. Sincere repentance
7. Unconditional love

Last year at our Town Hall parent meeting we asked two questions of the RCA families.  And here’s how they answered.

QUESTION:  Why is Homeschooling a good idea?

• You can avoid the comparison trap; your kids can achieve their own goals.
• Homeschooling will allow you to help your child hold on to their innocence.
• We are currently seeing the consequences of Godless behavior in public schools.
• (Prov. 22:6) is not a suggestion.
• Homeschooling will allow your children to avoid bullying and persecution.
• Avoid getting called into the school office.
• Your children can be taught at their level.
• You are called to be set apart!
• You can protect our children from physical altercations.
• No one cares more about our kids then we do.
• You can avoid death threats & be in control over your own household.
• You can be obedient to the Lord.
• Homeschooling will allow you to teach in God’s way. (Deut. 6:4-9)
• Homeschooling will allow you to teach one on one.
• You can go by your own schedules – such as sleeping in. And you can modify your schedule how you please.

QUESTION: What did you learn this year as a parent?

• We learn what our kids know, and we learn from our kids!
• Some mom’s aren’t crafty or artistic.
• One mom learned that her child’s learning style was different than her own. She had to adjust her teaching style to her child’s learning style.
• “I taught my child to read.”
• “I learned to give my son to the learned.”
• One mom hates dirt and her daughter likes nature.

CHEA does not support the Educational Savings Account Initiative as put forth by California School Choice due to the threat it poses to private homeschooling freedoms.

CHEA is aware of the Educational Savings Account Ballot Initiative currently circulating petitions. In keeping with our mission to promote private Christian home education and to protect parents’ rights to direct their children’s education and upbringing, we do not support the initiative due to the threat it poses to private homeschooling freedoms.

Government Money, Government Strings

Seldom does government funding not include government regulation. In keeping with the history of public funding of private educational institutions, these may come in the form of government-directed teacher qualifications, curriculum content, and testing regardless of the protections for private schools the framers have included. The protections built into the current initiative are too vague to adequately address the very real concerns that come with funding, both directly and indirectly, homeschooling specifically and private schools as a whole.

Looking at the history of charter school law, the original intent was to put control and decision making back into the hands of parents and educators. Regulations were introduced incrementally over the years. Thirty years later, it is now highly regulated under state control, not in the hands of parents or the local educators. Like charter school law, with the passage of an ESA initiative, we can expect that more regulations will come; incrementally and regardless of the framers’ original intent.

A Cautionary Tale

Another phenomenon that took place with the passage of charter school law was the emergence of an industry of high priced educational service providers built around the proliferation of educational funding. Time honored extracurricular providers such as dance studios and music studios also began accepting state funds. What followed next? With the proliferation of funds, all families, regardless of whether their children were enrolled in charter schools, faced paying higher prices for their children’s extracurricular activities. Eventually, dual price structures started to emerge. Those families who paid with educational funds were charged higher fees than those who paid “out of pocket.”

Why should we not expect the cost of private education to increase with the proliferation of public funds? Private school tuition that was once $10,000 per year could become $20,000, and so on, regardless of whether a family chooses to take government funding or not.

A Very Real Concern

California is one of 13 states where private home educators operate according to laws governing private schools. We have been doing so successfully for many years. In 2008, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeals definitively declared that parents may legally educate their children under the private school statutes.

Still, the term “homeschooling” is not a legally recognized term and is not used in the California Education Code. We are concerned that use in this initiative will invite scrutiny and definition by our liberal and progressive legislators. Doing so will likely remove us from the protection of the private school statutes and result in additional regulation. This would effectively change California from one of the best states for homeschooling to one of the most restrictive.

In Conclusion

We are aware of parents’ disillusionment with California’s public education system. And we are sympathetic to parents who are seeking financial relief from the costs of education outside of that system. Regardless, the ESA initiative poses a very real threat to private homeschooling freedom, and risks negative impact on all private schools with or without a campus.

We maintain that homeschooling under the private school affidavit option provides parents with the most liberty to direct the education and upbringing of their children to the glory of God. We have consulted with Family Protection Ministries and Home School Legal Defense Association and appreciate their assistance analyzing this initiative.

For more information on government funding of private education, see the article by Nathan Pierce of Family Protection Ministries, Should We Take Government Money for Private Education?