The more I homeschool, the more I relax. I suppose it’s because I am starting to reap the benefits. See the results of my hard work. Watch my children learn and grow and generally behave well. So I relax.

Hope TV mixing room in Bucharest Romania, where I gave an interview about homeschooling

Like most people, I started out with trepidation. Will I be able to do this? Can I even think of finishing one homeschool year? Or will I call the local public school in tears one day? Doubting one’s abilities to teach one’s children comes easy to most parents.

But. And I tell my kids as we read different books, whenever there is a “but” in the story, something is about to change. But. When you accept a calling, you should remember the One Who called you. He does not place His calling on people who cannot rise up with the occasion with His help. He knows the end from the beginning.

Then, you just take it one day at a time. There will be tough days. But you keep going. It’s grit. You grind and you grind until it finally dawns on you, “My children are learning. They know stuff. They remember stuff. Wow! The vocabulary on that child… He just did multiplication in his head!…”

This will be our fourth year homeschooling officially and I am more relaxed than ever. I do not want to relax to the point of unschooling. We still have a routine we enforce, curriculum we must finish, records we keep, and extra-curricular activities to which we dedicate a lot of time (because they are worth it).

It must be the Suzuki books I read over the past few months. This one or this one or this one or this one. The psychology behind teaching your own child or, in this case, helping them practice, is complex. These books stay with you and percolate through you long after you finished them. They are probably one of the best things you can read if you are a homeschooling and instrument parent.