Beautiful Daughters and Growing Strong Leaders

Growing a Leader Part One

Hi! This is Betsy, from BJ’s Homeschoool. Today I’d like to share how my daughter grew to become a leader, during her years of learning at home….

My husband and I homeschooled her all the way from preschool through the high school years, and later helped her to apply to college. She was accepted by four colleges, and is now commuting to a small public college nearby. There she recently joined the student government on campus, and spoke at a meeting hosted by the business school there.

My previously very shy daughter was to taking on leadership opportunities at college! We were thrilled. Recently, she helped organize an activity on her campus.

My daughter went to college with a confidence and a motivation to grow and develop her leadership skills. But this confidence did not happen all at once…..it was built day by day, year by year, in our homeschool.

I had no idea that my daughter would want to be a leader when she was young.

Nurturing Interests

There were many reasons why my husband and I decided to homeschool. One of our biggest reasons was to help our daughter discover her God given gifts. And we could help her to explore them, and grow them, one day at a time.

Through the years, my husband and I worked to support her interests, in whatever way that we could.

We worked to support her in her efforts, in making things, doing things, and exploring things and we did not try to steer her and particular way. Her interests were encouraged as she expressed them. And this process started when my daughter was a little one, and was all about making things with tons of cardboard and tape.

Growing a Leader – Early Years

First it was all about art. There were tons of art projects to be made. And we were always running out of cardboard and tape.  Painting, finger painting with pudding, and coloring were her go to favorites. She worked on this one, below, along with her older cousin, who helped her….a lot!

They were so sweet working together…Her cousin drew the shapes and she colored them in.

Then, later that year, she asked if she could learn some ballet. She had seen a story about ballet in a book from the library. So she practiced herself, at home…

I was able to find a nice little ballet class nearby. We worked it into our week, and began soon. She loved going to her class, struggled to learn her ballet routine, but loved performing in her recital………as much as she could remember of it! It was so cute. None of the kids knew the routine, but their efforts were glorious, and that was all that mattered.

We often went to the park after her class, or with our homeschooling friends on park day.

I noticed that my daughter liked to explore the nearby streams, so we spent a lot of time there. I loved relaxing by the steam, too. And at the library, she was always looking for books on streams, fish, and rocks.

These always made it to story time in the evenings with dad. Dance and art, little did I know, were to become strong interests, through elementary and into the middle school years, too.

 

What better way for a child to discover and develop their interests than through homeschooling?

This is my first post in my series – Growing a Leader. Look for the rest of this series to see what happens next, and where my little girl’s interests led, in elementary, middle school, and beyond. Coming up…Growing a Leader – the Elementary Years.

 

Betsy is a christian writer and blogger at BJ’s Homeschool, where she shares encouragement and resources for the early years to high school, with tips for applying to college, too. She and her husband helped her daughter get accepted by four colleges. As a veteran homeschooler, Betsy also offers homeschool help to families.

 

 

 

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