A few years ago, I was invited by visiting friends, who are horse-lovers, to attend a natural horsemanship clinic with them. They were thrilled that this traveling clinic was going to be so close to my home—because it was a lot closer for them to attend than from their home in Australia!! During one section of the clinic, we all sat watching in amazement as an instructor demonstrated the relationship she had developed with an “untrainable” horse. The two of them played together, performing beautiful and intricate maneuvers, while constantly reaffirming the special love, trust, and respect they had between them.
Two things struck me about this incredible relationship:
1) It took a LOT of time. The trainer, working little by little, day after day, unobserved by others, eventually developed the extraordinary trust and working relationship which we were seeing.
2) We were the passive audience. Very few of the thousands of the people entertained by this beautiful sight would be willing to invest the necessary effort to experience it for themselves.
What a rich analogy this is for homeschoolers!
Have you noticed how much time you spend with your kids?? Of course you have. That’s one of the inescapable facets of homeschooling. So, right from the get-go, you are already spending what is absolutely required to develop a relationship with your kids—hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, months and months, years and years together.
And, you are working at it. You’ve probably heard someone say that they would never be able to homeschool because they couldn’t stand being around their kids that much. It’s sad, but, oh, so common. You, on the other hand, are already miles down the road toward building relationships with your kids because you are investing the effort to figure out how to do this in real life. You keep learning, moment by moment, how to get along with each other. You keep discovering the nuances of how to teach them math facts while you learn important subjects like “laundry off the table and dinner on the table!”
You have chosen to take the time and effort to be “corralled” with your kids. . . And I, for one, want to take this moment to recognize the amazing progress you have already made, and enthusiastically say, “Well done!!”
Now that you recognize that you have made progress in leaps and bounds toward achieving a relationship with your kids, I have two quick suggestions (that take a lifetime to implement):
1) Laugh more. A lot more. Intentionally find ways to add humor into your daily life. Read funny books out loud, practice funny jokes, play funny games, observe funny animals. You name it. If it’s funny (the good kind of funny—not making fun of somebody else), do it!
2) Enjoy your kids. Right now, just as they are. Those things that drive you crazy are actually the immature version of their adult giftings. (Can you imagine Mikhail Baryshnikov’s parents trying to get him to sit down and be still? Or Barbara Walters’ parents trying to get her to stop asking so many questions??)
Take the time. Savor the journey. Reap the healthy relationship with your kids. Believe me, THIS is the life!
And, just for your delight, here is a beautiful video of Parelli foals.
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