Parenting

The Truth About Being Annoyed With God (It’s Helpful for Eye-Opening Transformation)

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

You can learn that from me! You’re welcome! Good luck!

man holding telephone screaming

The worst, most terrible, awful part about parenting and homeschooling, is that God will want to transform your attitude, heart and motives and that STINKS!

I mean, think about it – you have always wanted to boss someone around, and now you have your little people to line up army style and pull rank on. YOU know what’s going on and YOU call the shots. You’ve been alive longer than they have, and so the world is in perfect order, thank you very much!

Then God steps in and messes everything up for you.

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

At least that’s what happened to me every SINGLE DAY. Yeah, it stinks. For example, consider entitlement.

One day, I was looking down my nose in condemnation at my five-year-old because – WOW!- she wasn’t thankful!1

“How did she end up as such an unthankful little human?” I wondered with fear and trepidation. Would she be an unthankful little brat her entire life? THIS has got to be fixed!

I lectured her for half an hour on the benefits and joy of noticing the little things.

She looked at me blankly and continued to blame me for not buying her a third ice cream cone, stamping her little feet and yelling insults at me.

Yikes!

“What do I do now?” I wondered, finally looking up at God. “Can2 you please help me?”

And He did whisper to my heart that day as a gentle wind passed us.

And what He said was THE most annoying, infuriating and upsetting thing He could have mentioned to me right at that exact moment.

He seemed to whisper to my heart:

And how is your level of thankfulness, child?

His words were not harsh or condemning, but gentle, patient and full of the same kind of love I had for my daughter – I WANT her to find joy, and this is the path to it!

So it is for you, he seemed to remind me, turning the parent-child relationship on its head again.

How had I become the child again?

I wanted to be the parent, carefully explaining truths to my little mirrors of me.

And THAT was precisely the problem.

She WAS a mini-mirror of me on this issue.

Time for me to change.

Jesus held out his hand to me, and asked me to walk with him on this path towards a having a bit less gunk in my heart.

Would I follow?

Will you? He holds out his hand to you, too. Will you follow?

Yeah. I know. It STINKS to follow God sometimes because instead of changing THEM, He ends up changing US! I HATE THAT!

But Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
In Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

Ancient Text

The song below is too humble for my taste. However, it contains some excellent thoughts about gratitude that are worth considering. As the song below plays, consider asking God how He may be a Shepherd to you, increasing joy through gratitude.

God, help us to figure out the (one or two places) where your plans for us are better than our ideas for how to run our lives, we pray.

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

Photo Credit – Someone ELSE (NOT me!) Being Annoyed At God by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

1 It is worth noting that whenever my children demonstrate excellence in virtue, they naturally reflect the excellent teaching, values, and confidence that I instill as a homeschooling parent. But whenever they do something naughty (WHAT?!), of course, that is because they didn’t sleep well or their stomachs were upset, as explained perfectly clearly HERE. (Yes. That article is about my dog, but the SAME THING is true about my kids, OF COURSE!)

2 Notice the verb “Can” which of course makes Jesus laugh and slap his knee, wiping the tears a tear from his eye because he is laughing so hard. The answer “Yes. He CAN help!” A valuable truth to remember, one I often seem to forget. Jesus IS helpful!

How Not To Be A Jerk When You Homeschool AND How To Have An Awesome Year!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment
woman in black crew neck shirt

I have already written my best advice on this topic HERE, where I clearly explain that the way to sidestep being a complete JERK is to PRETEND to be someone you’re not.

Today, we continue the same theme with more helpful advice on how to NOT be a jerk when you Homeschool.

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

I learned many of these lessons from my (failed) efforts to train my dog, and let’s face it, we all know that the lessons we learn from shepherding our pets can be directly applied without any variation at all to lessons about God and parenting.

I was running behind my dog, yelling STOP again as the door opened and a visitor stared wide-eyed as our tiny goldendoodle pounced toward him, intent on humping his leg (again). I chased the dog around the yard hollering at him to behave while our visitor watched, which is the usual routine whenever someone knocks on our door. I finally catch the dog and then explain that our dog had a bad night’s sleep, or an upset stomach, so that’s why he didn’t obey today, AS HE USUALLY DOES, OF COURSE.

So yeah, dog training is EXACTLY like parenting.

Which gently directs this conversation very naturally into parenting advice.

So, how do we not long to give up altogether on this Homeschooling adventure and toss them into public school and hope for the best, even though it may only be our first month or day of Homeschooling?

An excellent question, and that is the topic of today’s newsletter.

Here are my top three recommendations (with four more recommendations in the following newsletter) containing my best advice on how to have a fantastic time Homeschooling:

  1. Try to be someone else. See HERE or the first few paragraphs of this newsletter. (Note to my editor: Yes! I could edit this newsletter so that all of my advice is in one list, but editing is boring, and I have my Duo-lingo streak to maintain, in addition to this writing! I’m busy!)
  2. Have VERY low expectations. Most people have problems with Homeschooling simply because their expectations are too high. Looking to have a GREAT year (or even day) Homeschooling? We experienced Homeschooling ones are laughing our guts out, and the reason why is explained HERE. When your kids cry a bit, grab yourself a martini and read a magazine for a while until that passes! It’s just another Homeschooling day, friends!
  3. Keep the big picture in mind – This is why you have a manifesto. Then you can remember that playing Snakes and Ladders IS your top priority! (See the last bullet in Point #3 of THIS MANIFESTO for an explanation). She is your best friend, so squeeze moments of joy out of every moment someone isn’t crying, friend!

Join us next time for four more tips on having the best Homeschooling year you can (which means not a perfect year or that every day is fantastic, but we got through it, friends, and that’s what matters most!) Oh! I almost forgot the following quote!

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. . . So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the . . . help.

The Message

So enjoy your transformation because you’ll find that many of your sharp edges fall off as you Homeschool because you will have to return to God on your knees, asking for help every day. (Do that too! It helps!)

A butterfly is flying over a piece of wood

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Photo Credit – Mom Not Having The Best Day by OSPAN ALI on Unsplash, Butterfly by Lin Qiu Yi Wan on Unsplash

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

Empower Yourselves, Parents! New Science Proves Teens DON’T Actually Have To Be Jerks!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment
a woman in a black hoodie talking on a cell phone

Of course, we all expect our teen children to hate us, be embarrassed around us, talk down about us to their friends, and find every way they can to show that they are rebelling against everything we stand for as the authority figures in their lives.

We wag our fingers at them and say, “YOU SHOULD do this or that!” even though we didn’t do this or that when we were their age, and getting up off the couch to talk to our kids is hard for us sometimes because our snacks and our devices call us to do more important things.

What if there is a different reality to parenting?

Even if we’ve rolled up our sleeves over the last nearly two decades and gotten “Good Parent Points” on our clipboards for throwing balls with our kids, giving them birthday parties, and teaching them to drive, what if even then, deep down, we still expect our teens to be embarrassed around us, spend as little time with us as possible and talk disrespectfully about us behind our backs until they are finally “Free.”

What if the expectations we have of our teens are too small?

It turns out they are.

Check out this NEW1 research.

Lecture 17 of Your Best Brain: The Science of Brain Improvement by John Medina says:

“[The scientist] makes several important observations about the powerful effect of culture [on teens] . . . [He] points to a study . . . looking at adolescent behaviour in 186 pre-industrialized societies. The research did NOT find lots of classic impulsive, obnoxious, get me away from my parent’s teenage behaviour in ALL of them. In fact, they found the opposite. More than half the young males exhibited no rebellious behaviour at all. Teens in these cultures spent most of their time hanging around their parents. They often helped with the chores both in family and in broader social activities”.

We saw an example of this kind of teen culture in reality at the homeschooling conference we recently attended.

It was a culture shock because not all the teens were jerks!

Consider the following:

(1) At the homeschooling family barn dance (Can I stop there?) . . .

(2) In which parents and all ages of family members, including teens, danced in the same big hall (Can I stop there?) . . .

(3) Often a very young child would join in the fray. Partners switched every few seconds sometimes, in a (deliberately) Jane Austen style. EVERY SINGLE TEENAGE BOY that I saw whose turn it was to dance with the 3-year-old, hunched down, smiled and spun the little girl in time to the music. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Watching teen after teen do this was so sweet – It made me tear up.

(4) These are not the teens skulking in corners, hoping for a chance to get outside and smoke more pot.

Entering this homeschooling culture, even through reading this newsletter, may be enough to destroy culturally low expectations of today’s teens.

Check out this site for teens for another example: The Rebelution – Rebelling Against Low Expectations

So friend, now that you feel empowered to refuse low expectations of your teens, I recommend you go home, yell at your kids, throw some stuff around the house and make your point VERY clear that now you KNOW they don’t HAVE to be jerks anymore!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

After that advice, consider asking God how you may need to throw out the way that you see that child and see them instead through the glasses that God gives you, the way He sees that child.

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

The Message

Oh, and by the way, the expectations of the Father for your life are greater than you imagine for yourself, too.

Do you have time for coffee and fresh vision?

Thank you for liking me! I like you too! Let’s journey together!

Photo Credits: Teen by Микола Тонкодуб on Unsplash, Barn Dance From Logos Online School Website

1This book by John Medina is over 10 years old, but “New” is a relative term, and let’s admit that we all have forgotten half the stuff we need to know to do well in life, anyway! Related, consider the following quote:

If you want a new idea, read an old book.

Ivan Pavlov

This quote proves that you have no idea what you are doing, either, as you parent your kids, and any information, whether new OR old, will help you!

Overwhelm Threatening To Suffocate = This One Surprising Opportunity

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

men's white top

Head in hands again. Trying to shut out the noise. The kids with their needs swirling around me.

We are homeschooling in February.

Continuing this thankless task in February becomes my annual despair, one shared with all homeschooling families (Except for the perfect families we all hate. Don’t feel jealous. They’ll crash and burn out too. I’ve been homeschooling for a while, so I’ve seen a few things.)

If you are not homeschooling in February, what is your despair?

We all have the odd despair that tries to attach itself to us like an unwelcome leech.

Anyway, I sat on the couch, my overwhelm consuming me. Do I declare (another) fun day and take the kids cross-country skiing?

Should we call all our homeschooling friends and organize (another) hockey party on the free outdoor ice rink?

Do I give them as much “independent work” as I can and try to tackle the mess of stuff in the basement, the pile that seems to have acquired a life of its own and that roars at me as I pass like a Yeti in the basement?

Or do I confront the emotions in my heart that are spilling out onto the couch next to me, a mess I am trying to hide but that is emerging despite my best efforts to pretend I am confidently steering this homeschooling ship?

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide behind the fun. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that our home is so disorganized that we can no longer find pencils to do our math. Or that no one cares. “I like using a green crayon to do my math, Mommy!” she asserts.

She is not trying to make me feel better. She is genuinely happy. Her needs are met.

And mine?

“I’m not worried about the kids,” my husband would assert. “I’m worried about you.”

So I offer you tea and a listening ear, dear friend, and ask:

How are you?

Not how are your kids?

Not how is the state of your home (We know it’s a disaster. You homeschool!)

How are you?

People who suppress feelings experience less positive and more negative emotions.

APA PsycNet

And then your tears, and your head in hands, and I put my arm around you to comfort you.

And as we:

  1. Admit to first ourselves and then another, through our tears, that all is not well . . .
  2. And after we put the ridiculous plans we cling to for creating super kids off the shelves of our egos . . .
  3. After we slow down and watch our kids learn for a while (Healthy plants in healthy soil grow. Similarly, healthy kids in a healthy environment learn, even and especially when we don’t beat them with rods to “encourage” them to know exactly what WE want) . . .
  4. Then we’re finally ready…

For what, you ask?

To learn the one most important lesson that overwhelm teaches us, which is that:

When we feed ourselves with unhealthy food, our tummies won’t feel very good for a while.

However, This is GOOD NEWS because we can go to the store and buy carrots today!

And how does this relate to homeschooling, for example?

If you follow the crowd and eat whatever they eat (50% highly processed foods), your tummy will get a bit upset afterward. Similarly, if you follow the crowds and set up your homeschool to mimic public school goals, for example, you’ll find that burnout is as certain as feeling bad after eating an entire box of Oreos.

Overwhelm is the blaring red light that tells us that letting our minds and actions drift with the crowd isn’t a healthy option.

There is a better way, friend, and overwhelm, our teacher and friend, unlocks a higher path.

a bird flying over some rocks and grass

More on the first step of HOW to get out of overwhelm next time.

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Image Credits: Man Upset by Dmitry Vechorko on Unsplash, Bird Soaring by Kshithij Chandrashekar on Unsplash

Advice: Your Bridge To Hope After Your Kid Moves Out

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment
green trees near brown wooden bridge during daytime
Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash

I’m mad at you! At all of you with a child over seventeen years old who left home! I hate you all! Why didn’t you tell me it would be this hard to say goodbye when they left for college!?

And all of you with babies too, babies that are older than my oldest baby, I hate you all too!

Before we had babies, why didn’t you tell us that looking after babies would be so hard!?

Ah, yes . . .

It is because we wouldn’t have believed you even if you would have spoken up.

And if our teens truly understood the depth of our loss, many of these kids wouldn’t leave home. They are good kids. I relayed these thoughts to my husband, processing them aloud through my tears.

“And we want them to leave,” I cried out. “Yes, we do,” my husband comforted. Then he shoots me a sideways, knowing look. I remembered that this morning, our teen was DEFINITELY right when she was DEFINITELY wrong, and instead of bursting into tears, I burst into laughter.

I feel some joy mixed with some sorrow.

And so, “Goodbye!” we say as we wave.

Except it’s not kindergarten, and they are heading to school on a bus. We homeschooled, so we missed that milestone. It’s 600 km away, and the tearing, the necessary, painful cleaving continues.

Reflecting God’s nature, He created them male and female. . . Therefore, a [person] leaves his father and mother

The Message

I told you it would be that way, Jesus reminds me softly. Many years earlier, in prayer, Jesus showed me a picture of my daughters, one after the other, ready to board a plane to soar off on their journeys of independence. He began preparing my heart to say goodbye many years ago, even then.

Many of us homeschooling parents pushed the love boundary of our hearts a little further than expected when we cracked open those brand new math texts on day one of homeschooling.

The depth of love surprises us all and surpasses the boundary markers we set up to protect ourselves. If we love what we know, we will get to know these kids, and our love for them will transform us. Love always does.

I’m not saying that homeschooling is one domino after the other of perfect days.

I have homeschooled for 4,745 days (I’m convinced you don’t have enough math skills to figure out how many years I have spent homeschooling- Who does?). Of those days, I have NEVER yet had one perfect day.

Nope.

Not one. Just daily joy mixed with daily sorrow. Master storyteller J.R.R. Tolkien explains it this way:

The possibility of [sorrow and failure] is necessary to the joy of deliverance . . . giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

And so saying goodbye to the teen as she flies off to college is just another homeschooling day: some joy mixed with some sorrow.

We are used to that. We’ve gotten stronger over the years. It’s just another part of the daily homeschooling rhythm.

We will be ready because we have been practicing daily for this: some joy and some sorrow, repeat tomorrow.

We’re going to be OK.

And so, as we watch them soar, we nurse our grief a little and then flap our baby wings and listen for the call from Him into a new adventure.

And in the same way that we invest in our future by putting aside a few dollars each month, is He asking us to invest in our spiritual future by putting aside a few minutes each day to listen to Him calling us, comforting us, asking us to set aside the old, and to pick up the new?

How is he calling you to wake up?

Where to next, God?

I can’t quite fly yet, but I am sensing another adventure.

Yes, I’ll follow!

(How about you?)

Follow the Rabbit (Poop?!) to Learn How To Homeschool With Joy!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Discouraged as a homeschooling parent?

Today, let’s talk about the foundations of this discouragement. We will never be able to come up for air, to feel like we are swimming in the lake on a bright summer day (i.e., homeschooling with joy), if public school culture guides the foundation of our homeschooling.

They will be holding our heads under the water. If we do what they tell us, we gasp, struggling for breath during our homeschooling journey.

The truth is teaching kids isn’t as complicated as we thought.

Teaching kids is sort of like the scatological habit of rabbits. (Yes, scatological means poop. Stay with me.)

We have an amazing little bunny that runs all over our house and currently only poops in two locations- in her little toilet and on my husband when he is sitting. If she only pooped in her little toilet, this would be a perfect analogy, but we can’t have perfection. We’re homeschooling!

My point is that you can train rabbits to use their toilet.

Our rabbit has almost attained this lofty goal. But there’s a trick to teaching a rabbit to go to the bathroom. This same trick (well, nearly!) helps us homeschool our kids so that we don’t constantly feel like drowning.

The rabbit decides where she will go to the bathroom.

Similarly, kids decide, at least in part, how (or what or where) they will learn.

Understanding how to work within the nature of rabbits’ scatological habits and kids’ learning habits is the key that sets us free.

I’ll explain.

Pet rabbits were traditionally kept outside in pens, as it was assumed these animals couldn’t be toilet trained.

Someone brilliant figured out that if the rabbits are allowed to choose their place to go to the bathroom inside your home, they will go to that one place with proper training. If a rabbit owner decides on the location of the toilet for the rabbit, complete with carrots, rabbit toys and treats of every kind, this won’t work. They won’t become toilet trained.

But if we set the rabbit free in our home and wait, a fantastic thing happens with some training.

The rabbit chooses her location to go to the bathroom.

So when you find a large pile of about 100 poops (because rabbits poop about 150 times per day), don’t despair, rejoice! Put your little rabbit toilet in that location and let the training begin.

Kids are identical to the pooping habits of rabbits.

If we believe the Ministry of Education that kids need to learn over 300 discreet and tiny bits of information every year and that this changes every year depending on the child’s age, we might as well put the kids outside in those rabbit pens and forget about homeschooling them.

It’s impossible!

Sure, if you have 30 kids exactly the same age and leave them in the same room day after day this could work . . .  (Wait, that analogy breaks down. This approach doesn’t work in the classroom either, if we’re honest. But that’s a discussion for another day).

The point is that this approach will kill our kid’s love of learning, our love of homeschooling, and maybe even change how much we like our  students (which happened to me once) if we work diligently, trying to do what they tell us, and how they ask us to teach our kids.

Instead:

  1. We dig around the soil of the little plants that we have been entrusted to steward, our children, and we transplant their little minds and bodies as often as possible to the place where their joy in learning can be protected.
  2. Sure. We also jump through the hoops and play the game of doing what we are told if we have the energy, but we try to minimize this as much as possible. Required to teach your kids about the Solar System in Grade 3, but they’ve already moved on to studying Astrophysics? We spend half an hour filling out a worksheet if this keeps our teachers happy, but we minimize this as much as possible. (Sometimes your rabbit needs to be in her pen).
  3. Sometimes, we accept the perception of defeat for a more significant cause. For example, our kids might look like idiots for a while because we are after longer-term goals. So be it.
  4. We sit back, put our feet up, and watch them learn. Just like toilet training a rabbit, joyfully homeschooling our children is possible when we let them choose the where (or the how or the when) as often as possible.

How specifically to help them do this while we put up our feet with a cup of tea and watch our rabbit use a toilet inside will be discussed another time.

Desperately Thirsty? No Hope? A 3-Minute Reset Brings Reliable Raindrops

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I was discouraged that day.

My head was in my hands as I slumped on my desk. That light on the horizon, the hope I was clinging to, in this case, “summer” for a homeschooling parent, seemed very distant. I reached out my hand but couldn’t touch this horizon today.

I got up, dressed and showered, a “skill” I had learned from previous years of homeschooling. I knew I needed to wear my best outfit and smile like I had a job outside the home. I knew I needed to greet my little students with love as they emerged from their bedrooms in their little onesies and messy hair.

But how do I give my children what I don’t have?

I fall on my face alone in my room.

Then I hold out my outstretched hand containing the seed of homeschooling He placed in my heart many years prior. I have carried the seed close to my heart. I have worked and tended this garden. These seeds (No! – Wait! These small plants!) have been watered by my sweat and hard work, ploughing in the sun and the rain. Will these small plants grow thick, strong roots downward? Will these roots find the hidden, underground springs that will sustain and nourish them?

That is my hope.

That is why this tired mother rises early again, gets dressed, puts on lipstick, and seeks hope in these pages that have fed her in the past. But what happens when we search these pages of the book but today there is no hope to be found? We have searched and turned the pages, but it is a dry season, a time of drought.

What then?

I set my three-minute timer, my little “vacation” getaway. I close and lock the door and lie down on my face alone in my room. I try to ignore any sounds outside my door, for those few minutes.

And do I pour out my heart and explain to God my life situation, knowing at a deeper level that He understands more than I do about my problem?

No.

I put on a worship song, fall on my face in my room, and praise Him for three minutes. Sometimes, the tears flow, sometimes, the anger comes, and sometimes, the drought feels too much to bear. But every time, after a couple of minutes of focusing on Him, the one who created the world, worship reminds me how big God is.

And by definition, I then remember how small I am.

And this is my hope.

When I stop shrinking God down to my size, the rains come. This drought today is over for now. Because He is so big, powerful and wise, He has multiple answers to my problems in His little pinky finger.

Will I trust him, remember His grandeur and pick up the hope that came with this rain of his presence? Will I take a drink? Will I stand in the rain? I’ll be cleansed, if so, my face uplifted to the One who is the source of living water, the God who, by touching the hem of His robe, can make us well.

And I don’t understand it, but I can trust the rain and hope I found today. And this rain becomes living water in my heart so that I can pour out hope on my children today and face whatever dangers, tigers, or math come our way.

And when we stop at the end of the day, decade, or season of life and put up our feet, we can thank Jesus for giving us the strength and hope to keep going.

. . . I provided water in the desert. . . Drinking water for the people I chose, the people I made especially for myself, a people custom made to praise me

The Message

How To Exercise When You Are A Busy Homeschooling Parent!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

How do we become the kind of homeschooling parent with time to exercise?

Good question.

As discussed here and here, we throw our old identities of competent, non-butt-smelling parents out the window. Then, we think up a new plan that is dissonant with the parent we thought we would become. We embrace our inner loser.

And so, when I therefore stopped trying to be excellent as a homeschooling parent, the solution became apparent:

Let them rot their brains!

I decided, in my excess of homeschooling wisdom born from a recognition of my incompetencies, to begin each day by pouring into my children’s brains not challenging academic subjects, but . . . content dribbled from online devices straight into their beautiful little brains as they stared intently at screens!

I essentially bribed them.

“Look,” I said that morning as I pulled out their new to-do lists. “Do the stuff on the list this morning and then you will get to rot your brains with time online!” I promised them that big carrot held out tantalizingly close.

And so they finally got up, brushed their little teeth, put away the milk (one of their to-do items in that season), got dressed, combed their cute little hair, and then sat down to veg out on a device.

I let them watch anything they wanted from the RightNow Media app. I can trust what this company produces. And for a high-tech tip, if you triple-click your iPad or iPhone the kids can’t suddenly switch from the app of your choice to their favourite “Candy Plus Violence!” (or whatever) app.

We all won!

I got my sweat on downstairs on my elliptical machine for half an hour while they watched something that was loosely a morning character development program. (That was the rationale of the old “I must be an exceptional homeschooling parent” tiny voice remnant that still lurked in the recesses of my mind.) I got my sweat on, and the best thing was that I could find them all at 8:00 am, and they were ready to go!

When I sneakily put pencils into their hands in the last 10 seconds of their program, it was a transition they barely even noticed, from vegging out to doing math!

By 10:00 am every single day, I felt I should have won a homeschooling award. (I didn’t. No one cared. God does though!*)

So, lose your respectable homeschooling parent identity!

Let them rot their brains online early every morning instead!

You’ll feel amazing AFTER exercising! (Not before or during exercising – Let it be known). It feels pretty great (eventually) to shift identity, too. And so, how do we change our identity to the kind of parent who exercises?

1. All of our initial ideas about who we will become as homeschooling parents are kind of nut-so if we’re honest! Let’s toss those ideas with our huge egos and embrace mediocrity for our children instead! 

2. Our children may need their brains to rot a little so that this homeschooling journey is sustainable for all of us. So be it! 

3. Time for popcorn and a group educational video at 11:00 am, little family? We did something useful today! Let’s celebrate! We give each other a high five, and I have time for a visit with a homeschooling mom that afternoon. (While the kids build a mini-nuclear reactor or do whatever it is homeschooled kids do in their spare time). 

This homeschooling ship is on course!

When a mom’s long-term well-being matters EQUALLY as much as the (nut-so, unrealistic) goals we have for our children*, this homeschooling ship can sail into the future as long and as far as God calls us.

Well done, parents!

Love others as well as you love yourself

Jesus of Nazareth, a guy with tons of wisdom!

As you listen to this song below, consider asking the King of Kings, the guy who longs to pour love on you as your Father, what gifts He longs to put into the hands of His favourite child, you.

(Because we’re all His favourite child. Shhh… that’s God’s secret that He is whispering to you even now. Hear Him?)

Blogpost Footnotes

*That discussion is for next time – we are all works in progress!

The Best Solutions Suddenly Materialize When We Embrace Our Inner Loser!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The problem I couldn’t solve in that season was, “How do I, a VERY busy, mentally fragile (We’re around kids a LOT) homeschooling parent, find time to exercise?”

I did, eventually, find a solution to this problem by embracing my inner loser. I hope this problem-solving method helps you find solutions to your biggest problems, too! Here’s what happened, which is a continuation of this post.

And yes, I realize this last post was useless without an explanation, which I didn’t have time to provide.

Now, where was I? Ah yes. Smelling kid’s butts. After the low of us parents becoming butt-sniffers, we hit an even lower low several months later.

Butt-sniffing became our accidental family culture.

Our two-year-old, who loved to mimic our behaviour, stopped next to me as I sat on an office stool and then had a sniff before she carried on with her other little tasks. I looked at her, startled and then smiled lamely at my husband.

How did we become THAT family?*

The point is, as discussed last time, the person we become is not always the person we aspire to be.

Not only did I find it convenient to assume the identity of a butt-sniffing parent, but I also found it convenient to shirk the identity of a homeschooling parent who has all of her ducks in a row.

Which brings me, finally, to embracing our inner loser so we can become a homeschool parent who exercises.

Before I started on this homeschooling journey, I, like you if you homeschool, envisioned myself as a particular type of homeschooling parent. This is not the parent I eventually became. I’m okay with that now.

But the shaky ground of this identity incongruence was a roller coaster ride.

I envisioned myself nicely coifed and looking like my favourite public school teacher in Grade Three, Mrs. Chamberlain. Instead, I very quickly became that parent still wearing a house coat and curlers in my hair at 11:00 am, downing my fourth coffee, and trying to find the kids so I could corral them inside. We began the day with our “Homeschool Morning Routine”, which, for us was trying to find our books or pencils strewn around the house and yard the day before.

A new problem also emerged: I knew my inconvenient, neglected body needed to start exercising again.

I couldn’t even figure out how to encourage, bribe or command my children to put the milk away after they finished breakfast (In fact, I still haven’t figured that out with one of my teenagers). How would I keep these little ones on their homeschooling tasks while I left their side to exercise?

The feat seemed impossible.

Until my new identity as an incompetent homeschooling parent thought up a solution.

Realizing I was – ahem- a BIT of a (whisper) homeschooling loser, once I stopped trying so hard to be an exercise enthusiast, and embraced mediocrity, the solution to my problem was obvious!

I’ll tell you specifically what that is next time.**

The point is, let’s embrace our inner incompetence!

Perhaps the solutions to your problems can be found there, too!

Since we’ve . . . proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God . . . got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

The Message

Once we accept our identities as people who are incompetent in so many ways, life suddenly gets much more manageable!

Time to stop trying so hard and embrace your inner loser, too?

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Blogpost Footnotes

*See this post for a perfectly reasonable answer, thank you very much, okay?!

**Ah! I forgot to say something useful again!

Not Exercising? Try Shifting Identity To The Parent You Never Wanted To Become

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

How do we develop an exercise routine we can stick to as parents?

We must morph into the parents we never dreamed we’d become.

And I mean to become the parent we feared we would become.

I’ll explain.

It all started the day I started sniffing my kid’s butts.

When I was a well-coiffed, austere young woman in my twenties, I wrinkled up my nose at those homesteading women with several children crowding around them as they made cookies and managed a beehive simultaneously. “Isn’t that disgusting?” my sophisticated friends and I whispered, and we looked away in horror when one of these busy moms lifted her toddler, sniffed around their child’s middle for signs of a “Number two” and quickly set them back down on the floor again. This mom then happily continued stirring cookies, unpasteurized honey, or whatever she did all day.

“I would never do that butt-sniffing manoeuvre!”

When my children were toddlers, I gasped my way to a mom and toddler’s event one morning, my hair dishevelled, unmatched dirty clothing thrown over my and my toddler’s forms. I was clinging to a half-drunk coffee for dear life as I sat next to a fellow mom and empathized delightedly with her. We shared similar tales of near survival, of these miniature beings often holding us hostage to their need.

Suddenly, I remembered that I should probably check the older daughter, who was not yet fully toilet trained.

I grabbed my daughter’s arm and yanked her away from her friend. My daughter morphed from playing contentedly to screaming like a fire truck. I nearly lost the battle of the wills but managed to stuff her into the change-room, where I opened her training diaper and

. . . nothing.

There was nothing there.

When I returned to my friend, she was already chatting with another dishevelled woman, and for the rest of that “mom’s time,” my two toddlers had incessant needs again.

So it didn’t take long before I happily lifted my toddlers when they were playing contentedly, smelled their butts, and set them back down again with a wink and a nod.

I continued my coffee and well-deserved amiable chat with other homeschooling parent survivors,

My identity had shifted.

And similarly, what kind of identity shift do we need to become the kind of homeschooling parent who exercises?

1. We realize that if we are going to stay in this game long-haul we’ve got to surrender our pre-conceived ideas of success as defined by this culture, or worse, by our expectations of ourselves.

2. Our identity must be firmly linked to those who are societally undignified. We delight in our identity as children of the king, not as classy members of a specific culture (i.e. of any culture).

 3. We have fun, dancing with joy with our two-year-olds because we finally figured out that when we are happy, our little ones are too.

Throw off your chains, captive daughter . . . ! God says, “You were sold for nothing. You’re being bought back for nothing.”

The Message

And it was this change in perspective, from “culturally respectable” to “daughter of the King,” that led me to be the kind of parent who exercises regularly, as well.

The link between a shift in identity and exercise will be discussed another time.

I promise to say something useful sometime! That is if I remember to finish this blogpost series on exercising when homeschooling. This post was essential to set the foundation for when we will dive into the nitty-gritty of the shift in identity required to exercise while homeschooling young children.

For now, the first step is to stop trying to be “respectable”!

It doesn’t work anyway!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!