Dec 28, 2007

Living up to homeschool stereotypes

I read a great post recently by Dana at Principled Discovery, and it brought to mind an article I had written for Home Education Magazine earlier this year. Since HEM kindly only reserves first printing rights, I can now repost the article here on the blog, in case anyone else would care to read it (for free)! You can scroll down to the end of this post for the link.

Dana’s topic is homeschooling stereotypes, which I’ve also found to be quite common in homeschooling circles. I’m not talking about the stereotypes that non-homeschoolers have about us, but rather the stereotypes that we apply to ourselves, the standards that we create in our minds that we feel the need to live up to. In the comments to Dana’s post, Marcy really hit the nail on the head when she shared advice given to her by her sister:

You know, I always thought other people were so much better homeschooling moms than me. I’d read about how they canned, or went on nature walks, or journaled, or had their kids involved in many sports, or read them all these great books, or made their own ______ (you fill in the blank!) – and I’d think how amazing they all were. Then it suddenly dawned on me – they don’t ALL do ALL these things!

You’ll find that in my article I took a positive approach towards those expectations that we develop for ourselves. My take is that while we are rarely living up to ALL the expectations we have at any given time, we are almost always doing SOMETHING that could be considered “productive” from a homeschooling standpoint. If we focus a bit more on what we are doing right, rather than what we’re doing wrong, we can avoid that unfortunate tendency to judge ourselves as coming up short on most counts!

You can read the entire article here. I’d love to hear your thoughts about living up to homeschooling expectations, whether self-imposed or held by others!

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1. Renae

   Yes, we do all deal with stereotypes, even if it is the imaginary homeschool mother in our mind. Marcy’s quote that they don’t do ALL those things is helpful. We are all unique, and we can use our gifts to bless our families.

   Also, the link to your article didn’t work for me. It sends me right back to this post. I’ll check back later. Thanks.

   Dec 29th, 2007

2. april

   Hi Renae – Thanks sooooo much for letting me know about that. (I’ve had a lot of hits on this page, but none on the article yet – so that explains it, lol!!) I was having trouble getting the page set up to display correctly, but I’ve figured it out now. So try again, and let me know if there are any problems.

   Dec 29th, 2007

3. april

   Ok, I broke it again, but now it really, really is fixed!

   Dec 30th, 2007

4. Renae

   April,
   You are welcome. Similar things have happened to me, and I wondered why no one said anything.

   Now, I’m off to read your article!

   Dec 30th, 2007

5. Mona Alicia

   I just read the article in your link. I remember sitting in the library one day while Joshua, Charlotte, Madeline and Claire were attending story time and Lori happened across this article in Home Education magazine and said you must be the author because she didn’t think April Duritza was a common name. That was the first secret you kept from us I think and you had to confirm that, yes, in fact, it was you It was also the first time I’d heard the term “un-schooler”. It’s a very good article and maybe now when we have those days that don’t go quite as planned I won’t stress out quite so much!

   Jan 7th, 2012

6. April

   Haha! I didn’t really MEAN for it to be a secret, exactly! If anybody had asked me whether I’d had anything published in a homeschool magazine lately, I’d have told them, no problem! I’m glad you like it!

   Jan 7th, 2012

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