By Curt Williams, Founder & Executive Director
Continuing our series on the Five Things You Owe Your Kids, we come to the fifth element, and that is Access to Education. In my book, White Knuckle Parenting, I continually stress a simple but practically lost concept: You cannot prepare your child to face adversity by protecting them from adversity. You cannot fight their battles, excuse their procrastination or complete their homework and expect them to grow into independent, strong and resilient adults. I will stress that access to a safe, quality learning environment is just about all you need to do. It has been proven that we learn over 90% of life’s valuable lessons from our failures, while our successes usually puff us up and cause us to think more highly of ourselves than is realistic. By completing assignments, constantly haranguing your child to do better in school, and seeking to soften their education experience, you are reversing the maturation process. Failure is one of life’s best teachers.
Where you should be very prayerful is in the decision of where your child will gain their education. For my wife and me, there was never any debate. We made the hard choice and all the subsequent sacrifices to homeschool our seven kids. We controlled the schedule, the rigor, the curriculum, and, to a large degree, their peers. Many think this will lead children to be socially awkward and unable to cope with peer pressure later in life, and this is certainly the case if children are otherwise sheltered in an unrealistic bubble. For our kids, real-world experiences, travel, experiential and tactile learning, and the careful introduction of hard and complicated social issues have resulted in strong adults. I am not just saying this, as you can ask those who know them and even connect with them yourself if you doubt this testimony. Today, we have seven adult children who are free of addictions and honor Jesus and their parents.
It is a legal obligation to ensure that your children have free access to education. For you, how they gain their education is in your court, and then you must allow them to succeed or fail based on their initiative and performance. Remember: We are not raising kids, we are raising adults, and in this ever-changing and complex culture, adults with strong character are desperately needed.
Be a parent who delivers. You can do this.
Order Curt’s book, White Knuckle Parenting, for more wisdom on raising kids at every age.
