Grandmotherly Advice

I've been helping a friend with her homeschooling efforts and it made me think of such a wonderful quote by my honorary grandmother, Sister Marjorie Hinckley, that I thought I would post what I wrote as a good reminder to myself (and yes, Sister Hinckley is really my honorary grandmother. I have adopted her. I bet you didn't know we were related.):

Don't stress too much about having everything on a timer, things will naturally adjust to a good workable schedule (if you let them!). For me, I would get worried if we weren't doing the 45 minutes I had scheduled for a subject. That's really not as important as doing it everyday. Fifteen minutes a day is better than an hour every third day.

I have found it invaluable to have other things to keep their free time full, not structured, but with plenty to do that is not merely entertainment. We don't watch TV, we don't play video games, we have lots of art supplies, lots of books, lots of games, and lots of chores, so their free time is productive and creative. I just wish we had more land. I'll admit it's a little challenging for me to leave them unstructured, but I've come to see how valuable that time is.

I'm not sure where that came from, probably, from me telling myself not to worry so much. I just read a quote from Sis. Hinckley saying there is so ... I'll go find it:

One day our oldest boy turned up missing. There were lawns to be mowed and irrigation ditches to be cleaned. The hours ticked away. All afternoon I practiced the speech I would give him when he showed up, and show up he did, at meal time, which I knew he would. ‘Where have you been?’ I asked. ‘Down in the hollow.’ ‘And what have you been doing down in the hollow?’ His reply, ‘Nothing.’

Some years later I had reason to be glad that I had not given him the speech. He was home from his mission and was a senior at the university. It was test week and he was under a lot of pressure to do well in order to get into the graduate school of his choice. The pressures of adult life were beginning to be felt. I watched him as he drove home from school one afternoon. He got out of the car, kicked a clod of dirt, went over to examine the swelling buds on a lilac tree, came out to our kitchen, straddled a chair backwards and said, ‘Mom I had a wonderful childhood, didn’t I?’

’Well, I hope so; you did your fair share of complaining about all of the work that had to be done.’

’Oh, it was wonderful—those long summer days when you could lie on your back in the hollow and listen to the birds sing and watch the ants build their castles.’

The memory of the peace of a summer day-- 'God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.' -- sustained him when the pressures of adult life began to crowd in.

Things are different now. Children hear so many voices from so many directions. There are so few empty summer days. There are pressures to excel. It has become a challenge to let children be children.

It has never been so important that children have a home that is a place of refuge, a place of peace, a place of unconditional love--even when the report card may not be what you hoped for...

...We all feel the pressures and stress of the sophisticated, fast-paced, complicated, competitive world in which we find ourselves. Not only do we feel it as adults, but the children feel it too. Because of TV, the press, and videos, our children are exposed to adult life very, very early. This makes it doubly important that mothers and fathers consciously strive to make it possible for children to be children before they become adults.

As a homeschooling parent it is really difficult to resist that, "I need you to perform because it reflects on how I am teaching you!" Maybe you won't have that weakness, but I battle it. I think I win ... most days.

A lot more than you asked for, but at least you got counsel from Sis. Hinckley, not me.

Laura