“ Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous
light, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” Cummings
When I was in college, I spent a summer working as a camp counselor at a
camp just outside of Detroit Michigan. I had the pleasure of taking groups of
kids that normally would not venture outside the parameters of the inner city
on hikes through acres and acres of forest where the thick humidity of the
summer air was almost as difficult to manage as the swarming mosquitoes.
It’s probably no surprise that many of these hikes were spent with lots of
complaining along with the kids questioning their ability to complete the daily
hike.
With one particular group I noticed that one girl started complaining
before she even laced up her shoes to go on the trail. I pulled the kids
together and I told them that I was going to choose someone from the group
that I knew could be a good leader and that had determination and spirit and
could withstand hard times. I chose the girl that had already preemptively started complaining as a challenge to see if she would step up and live up to these characteristics. Sure enough when we got on the trail mid day the heat was brutal,
mosquitoes were out for blood, and I heard campers that were struggling right
off the bat. However the girl that I chose to be a leader took on full
responsibility of a leader with the characteristics that I said. When other girls
in the group started to complain she was encouraging and lead the group with
a sense of power.
The point of the story is that sometimes we have to speak truth into our
kids. And sometimes it’s a stretch to speak positive things about our kids. But
even if we just say the things that we want them to be and tell
them the potential we see in them, that’s all they need to identify with those
characteristics.
Just as my camper didn’t think that she could complete the hike and was
complaining about the truck, as soon as I called out things that I saw in her or
that perhaps that she could be, she gladly stepped into that role and played the
part well.
So where does this fit in with homeschooling? Well of course we are not
just teaching academics but rather the whole character. Because we
homeschool we get to play a big influence on how kids identify and view
themselves. Their idea of who they are is ever-changing by what they think
they can and cannot do, how they do things, what they like, and the list goes
on. Since we get to spend so much time with them, we can recognize
all the good qualities they have. Maybe it is leadership, maybe it’s great math
skills, maybe it’s their empathy they have for people.
I highly recommend that you also have mentors set up in their life were
they're meeting with them on a consistent basis. These people, whether aunts
uncles or neighbors or family friends can speak truth and life into your kids and confidence and character will blossom from these relationships.