Do you credit your child's interests in your homeschool?

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Let me share three unique ways we show love by honoring our child’s unique gifts and interests in our school life.

I keep the focus on each individual child and their interests, and avoid a school day where I am the only one winning

I have a son that loves to win.

My son is deeply committed to wiping us all off the board when we play a game. His drive makes the game less enjoyable. I constantly have to remind him, there is no game if he offends his brothers. The purpose of game nights are to enjoy each others company as a family. When we get focused on a goal of education alone, we do the same to our children. It is easy to get lost in the teaching and measuring, we can forget these are unique kids and we have a tiny window with them. Take the time to find out how to serve them best and lead them in their interests.

We have many requirements to keep in mind; college standards, graduation credits and record keeping for the states in which we reside. We should not lose sight of those requirements. If we allow those to be the only influences in our child’s education, we can miss the unique opportunity homeschooling allows us. We show love by incorporating our children’s interests into their education. What does that look like? Take an inventory of your child’s interests. Now, ask them what they want to learn more about. Are you doing anything with those subjects during school hours or are opportunities to explore what they are passionate about few and far between?

I encourage you to make it a priority to add a class in a subject area that your child is currently interested. Get creative in how you can incorporate their skills, talents and interests into their education. Making what they love creditable shows that you value it. Validating our children makes them feel secure and loved.

Connect With Similar Interests

I have a daughter who loves to write.

We had a curriculum that was heavy on writing, which was great to give my daughter a foundation for her love of writing. The problem was that she was not getting a lot of personal creative writing time due to her academic requirements. The next school year, we decided to cut way back on the amount of assigned and graded writing. Instead we created a novel writing class. We dove into NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month) and began a crazy challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November. We gave her full class credit to write her own novel.

As a result, she has dedicated a lot more time and care to her writing. By carving out time we affirmed that her writing is valuable. She shares her writing with me because, I first showed that I was interested. The best part of the experience is how we were able to connect with a common ground. I am a writer; NaNo gave us a bridge to strengthen our relationship. She ended up with 36,000 words in her novel over the month. The book is still in the works, it might be forever, but the experience will never be forgotten.

Affirm The value of Your Child’s Independent Interests

My oldest son is a gamer.

You don’t have t know about a subject or even like it to apply this concept. I am not a huge fan of gaming, but as a school assignment my son wrote me a great persuasive report in defense of gaming. He cited several real benefits and defended it in detail, for school credit of course. I am sure some of your kids would like a copy. Instead of objecting to an activity he was clearly enjoying, we are looking further into computers, game developers and app coding.

It is important to note that these are not areas I am naturally interested in, but I am interested in my son.

In fact, the more he shares, the more curiosity I develop in the game creating industry. I am a little bit fascinated by the growing trends of young classical instrumentalists creating video game music. If we are humble and give ample time to listen, we can all learn something from our kids.

I encourage you to search for ways to show love to your children by validating their interests academically. It might stretch you. You may have to enroll your child in an online class or commit to lessons of some sort. There are many great ways you can connect your homeschool to the interests your child loves.

[Tweet “One of the greatest gifts of homeschooling is being the person that cheers the loudest for your son or daughter”]. Cheer them on in the things they love. Then they will trust you to lead them in the areas they like less.