Listen in as Harriet Yoder chats with interviewer Rob Vail about that bad homeschool day that no one likes to admit ever happens.
Transcript: What is a Bad Day of Homeschooling?
Rob:
What constitutes a bad day of homeschooling? What do you tell people when they call you up and say I’m having this rotten day?
Harriet:
Everybody has rotten days. A bad day in homeschooling is when nothing is going right. The kids are dragging their feet on every single thing you ask them to do. They are fighting; they’re punching each other; and they’re being rude to you. Nothing is getting accomplished. You are spending more time trying to correct them and get everything right than work is being done—actual schoolwork. Everybody has days like this. [Let’s be honest!]
It’s like when you are doing devotions and reading Bible with them. Some days you feel really spiritual and they’re getting it. Other days you feel like you are just speaking to a brick wall. Life is like that. We have valleys and we have peaks. We’ve had weeks when things are bad. I call those the dregs week.
The dregs are when God is purifying and refining the gold—He boils it. What comes to the surface? The dregs because He wants to get rid of them. What He is doing is exposing things that need to be taken care of. If you had them shipped off to school somewhere, you would never see this side of your darling little child. You would only see the wonderful little person who comes home and they’re tired and you need to give them something to eat and then it’s time for them to go to bed, but you wouldn’t see the character flaws.
When you’re with them 24/7, you get a pretty good idea of what areas need to be worked on. Dregs week is when all that stuff comes up and you are ready to give up, but if you just go to God… I have literally stopped school and said we are going to have repentance everybody. I sit everyone around the table. I call everybody in the house down and I say I want you to just stop and think about what you’ve been doing today and your sins. I want you to ask the Lord to show you. We’re all going to repent and we’re going to get back on the right foot again. God will show you what needs to be done. I mean if you have to stop homeschooling for a week to get it—to hear from God and see what He wants you to do differently to make things go right. Then you stop, just take a break. Step back and say what is going on here and what can I do to make it better, God?
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