What Are You Teaching Your Kids?

Dads, I have a rather poignant question for you today. “What are you teaching your kids?” Now your first thought may be “Whoa, Steve, I support my wife in homeschooling anyway I can. But when it comes to teaching, that is all her!” This is what I would call the typical answer from most men when it comes to homeschooling. But when you do that, what are you teaching? *BAMM* Gotcha! Now don’t get mad and quit reading, work with me here.

What Are You Teaching Your Kids?
What Are You Teaching Your Kids?

There is more to teaching than sitting down at the table, chair, couch or wherever you homeschool and start lecturing out of a book or some curriculum. Don’t get me wrong, it takes a lot to actually teach a subject to a single child or a group of subjects to a group of kids, but there is another type of teaching, and that is the art of “doing”.

Kids are like sponges. Picture a large sea sponge sitting there all dry and hard. Now start pouring water onto the edges of the sponge and watch it as it slowly starts to absorb the water. At first some will just fall off till some of the pores are opened up to allow more water to enter. After some time, the whole sponge is just sucking up all the water that it can hold. Now does the sponge absorb some dirty water? If it is presented to the sponge, it does. It does not filter out the bad things in the beginning, it just takes it all in and then processes it.

Dads, you may have an eleven year old sponge like I do. He is watching me and everything that I say, I do, and how I respond to life. In essence, I am pouring into him my life actions or my “doings”. In the same way the sponge soaks up the water, he is taking in all my mistakes, triumphs, and failures. As I have said before, there is no such thing as neutral parenting, your either going forward or going backwards. Each of us have a decision on how we handle things that come up, and how we respond shows what you are teaching.

Till next time,
I’m just a Husband of a Homeschooling Mom
Steve Blackston