Switching from private or government school to homeschool is like whoa. And I see how it can strain a marriage and a household.
My husband and I have taken this step after realizing that our private Christian school could no longer serve our kids, especially our son who is on the autism spectrum.
We are joining a growing army of other Christ-following Black families who are rejecting private schools and government schools for a laundry list of reasons, especially the hostility towards Christian values, and ignorance about our history. Plus, scripture commands us to be diligent about training our children:
And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. —Deuteronomy 6:6-9 NKJV
Apparently a lot of other families are on board:
Homeschooling increased nationwide after the pandemic disrupted in-person learning; among households with school-age children, the percentage who reported homeschooling them rose from 5.4% in April 2020 to 11.1% in October 2020, the last week for which those figures are available, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. The increase was most significant among Black families, about 3.3% of whom were homeschooling in spring 2020. By fall 2020, 16.1% were homeschooling, according to the survey.
My House Feels Like a Constant Work Site
With two parents who work from home and home school, my home has started to generate a constant to-do list in my head. I can’t turn it off, so we are proactively looking at new rituals we can form to avoid some of those pitfalls that make a marriage between work-from-home, homeschooling couples go stale, especially the all-work-no-play habit that leads to exhaustion like I had anesthesia.
Some Ideas to Protect Our Marriage from the Demands of Homeschooling:
- Weekly walks – no kids
- Monthly staycations – no kids
- 4-day school week, and a grandparent takes the kids on Fridays
- Be strict about the sabbath. From Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown we do nothing that feels like work
Here’s an excellent sermon that we’ve listened to from Dr. Voddie Baucham about the right mindset to balance marriage, kids, and homeschooling.
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