Parent Directed Education
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147.2078
Summary
The Ambersons have been part of the homeschooling community for over 23 years, educating their 10 children at home. They have six graduates, a good job and a good family, and are currently home schooling the youngest 4 of their children ages 8 to 15.
Transcript
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all right well thanks everybody for joining us here today and it's great to have you in we've
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got a great conversation going on and my assistant laurie dunbar is going to introduce our speakers
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today go ahead laurie hi everybody i'm so glad you could join us today i'm really excited to
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introduce good friends of mine joining us from regina saskatchewan the ambersons have been part
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of the homeschooling community for over 23 years now educating their 10 children at home they have
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six graduates good job and are currently homeschooling the youngest four ages 8 to 15
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rod is the current president of the saskatchewan home-based educators this couple has a wealth
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of wisdom that we're excited to tap into today and just as even a personal note i've had the
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opportunity to work with rod on the saskatchewan home-based educator board and i've also just
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found any kind of conversation with him just inspiring so i'm so glad that you can sit with
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us today as we as we talk about this important topic now rod and joe you've been around for a
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while i did 14 years of those 23 years um at the same time but i just have a question for you um in
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regards to when i think about education and um you know educating our children sometimes i wonder
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about how our presuppositions our cultural um ideologies and and these things lead us to think
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about education in a certain way and and in a conversation i'd had with you before um regarding
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even deuteronomy 6 um we had spoke about how how that influences the way you think about education
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and we want to be able to be biblically based and uh and not just culturally based in how we
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think about education and parenting so so either one of you but i'd love to just hear your thoughts on
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that sure well thank you laurie thank you action for can action for canada for having us here it's
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just great to talk about these things um yeah presuppositions cultural presuppositions just
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things that you assume but you don't actually even realize that you're assuming right so it's just kind
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like the the water that you that you're in and um it's one of the things that we need to uh work on
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to have a biblical understanding of the world um that's something that you know
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you grew up assuming certain things and one of the things that you assume is that
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you know you get you have a have a baby you you raise the baby and you send them off to school and
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that's just the way things are done um there might be other presuppositions that we have about
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um different ways of living that uh that are not biblically informed either
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but in terms of children i mean the first thing all right so one major thing is just
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who defines what the good life is right like what what are you striving for in life
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and lots of times we just one of our presuppositions is is to have lots of you know it sounds crass and
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and nobody would frame it this way but it turns out to be something like a nice car and a nice house
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and uh a child or two and lots of entertainment you know amusing things to do uh places to go
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and experiences in that regard and some of that there's nothing really wrong with some of those things
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but if you switch that presupposition around into what's biblically informed then you find out that
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god places if he's going to bless if he's saying that something is a blessing often that involves
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children and relationships it involves um balance so it doesn't necessarily mean that in enjoying
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a good meal is a bad thing but overwhelmingly um children family and relationships are what is
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stressed it's a community uh that's supportive and that shouldn't surprise us uh because uh we we
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we understand god to be trinitarian that doesn't mean that he is entirely defined in a social context
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but it does mean that that he created us to be in relationship with him and that our main problem
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is an estranged relationship with god and that's exactly what jesus christ came to live a perfect life
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of obedience to the father to to bring us back into relationship with him so he satisfies all the
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penalties that we incur all the all the wrath he extinguishes on the cross but he also gains for us
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the obedience that we can come back into blessing with god and and have a restored relationship with him
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so if that happens on that vertical level then you know can can we not also say that god's biggest
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blessing is peace and love and joy right what is the kingdom but um it isn't uh it is it that's what
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it is that's the good life so then when you come to raising a family i mean first of all what's one of
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the biggest blessings that you can have is a spouse right and and just to recapture some of that
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is to value that to value the idea that the the most intimate earthly relationship that you can have
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is with your spouse and and by intimate that that means it should make us incredibly sad that we keep
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secrets from our spouse you know when adam and eve sinned the first thing they did was cover themselves
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and that wasn't just from hiding from god that was hiding from each other so this most intimate of
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relationships should be with your with your spouse and yet how many times do you buy something on amazon
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or somewhere and not really you know you're kind of embarrassed that you bought yourself something
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some little trinket or something and so even that right but that's the essence of being naked and not
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ashamed and we should try to strive for that again with our spouses and then the next relationship i would
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say is is with children and so what what did it strikes me that there's animals out there that can divide
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by cellular division and they just and there's no caregiving there's no nothing right
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and and if god is all powerful and he designed and created all things he did it in a certain way
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to show his glory and he created men and women in his image but also he created procreation
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right so he designed how we would have children and and that happened a certain way he didn't just look
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down from heaven one day and say hey you know that guy there he kind of goes out and bangs something
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over the head and brings it home and feeds his his family with it and i'm kind of like that i provide for
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my creation he didn't do that he created husbands and wives fathers and mothers and said this i'm doing
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this as a picture of how i relate to my creation not the other way around so he provides for us
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and that that gives it like that brings dignity to the family um so he did that for a reason
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and then he expands on that to say that that nurturing and caring for children is in the domain
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of the family that that's something that fathers and mothers do together it's part of the um joint
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mission that husbands and wives have together is is to raise their family and you mentioned deuteronomy 6
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i mean it's not just there it's it's in it it's in the background of of everything else where
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children are talked about um it's even in the background of of problems that exist um relationally
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between generations or between mums and dads and and children but the idea is that parents are
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um responsible for the nurture and admonition of of their children uh parents are to love them they're
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to teach them um i i don't think that's merely being a role model you know um it's not like i said it
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there's multiple times where where the bible says as you get up and as you lie down as you walk by the way
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wherever you're you're going and whatever you're doing um you're to be teaching your children as you do
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that they're to be with you they're to be alongside you and you're to be passing along this
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this the presupposition that god is that he exists and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek
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him so this this idea that you are to pass this on to your children so ultimately parenting i think is
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about um nurturing raising your children giving them the appetite for god as much as it depends on you
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but also then weaning them off of you and on to their heavenly father so you know where whatever
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your failings are god doesn't have those same failings right so uh it's an amazing thing to me that
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uh baked into creation is is the idea of of a of a father of a mother of nurture of caring
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and that even if you have a you know not a great not a not even a good parent um god can be that for
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you and he just works all things in in that way but if you're coming at this from the parents
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standpoint and how am i supposed to what are my presuppositions about parenting then you come to it
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like that like this is this is a blessing this is god's blessing in my life it's not just like a grit
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your teeth and do it it's enjoy this really set your mind to enjoy this time and to understand that
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this is this is yours given to you by god as a duty but a joyful duty and you're gonna you know
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honestly it's okay that you're gonna have to give an account for that um yeah that's where i'd go i
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don't know i'm running out of i'm gonna start repeating myself if i'm not careful anything to add
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yeah absolutely there's um that's a good perspective on on why we need that biblical um background and and
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what that presuppositions can give us but sometimes we come into homeschooling we have we don't have
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that um when we started we actually didn't have that um background and so we came into homeschooling
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in a completely different way just for academics and relationships and and those were the things that
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we were most uh focused on at that time we didn't get an understanding of that uh the biblical reasoning
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and um the benefits of it until farther into our our homeschooling time but that um i've often said
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when you are homeschooling and when things are getting tricky and when you are just you know feeling the
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weight of it um that understanding of the biblical reasoning and the biblical blessing of homeschooling
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is such an amazing thing to help you get through those times and being able to to push through or to
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to reset your priorities or whatever you need to do to to keep going and and actually make it be
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uh an enjoyable and and awesome thing to be doing so yeah i love that joe um and while you just
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kind of mentioned it what led you into homeschooling like what what was the catalyst
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okay first thing was that rod came home one day from work we had at the time
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i think i was pregnant with our fourth and uh we had uh we had just registered our oldest for preschool
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he was three or almost four and rod came home from work one day and he said that he had heard
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this guy from work who homeschooled his kids and he's like we should do that and i was like
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i could never do that but the truth is i had at that time we didn't know anything about homeschooling
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i didn't even know that was a thing really people could do there wasn't i mean there were no
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zoom meetings there was nothing happening to tell us about homeschooling um no facebook
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there was none of that right we actually i actually found a bulletin board on the internet
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so we were able to find out some things there but not till later so that was it that was the end of
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that conversation i was like yeah no um but not even two weeks later my best friend from high school
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called me and we're just catching up on things and she tells me that she's gonna homeschool her
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oldest child and i was like what and so i i'm on the phone right oh yeah that sounds interesting
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and then as soon as i get off the phone i'm like i need to look into this this she is getting into
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something i don't know what it is it sounded crazy to me so i went and i i did look up i found this
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will to board on like a chat room kind of thing and i found uh actual library books and uh
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so i did all this research i printed off little papers and um by the time that summer was over
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i was telling rod i'm like you know we we should do this like this would be so good for uh our
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relationships i don't have to send billy off to school we could just you know stay doing stuff
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together he's so smart he doesn't really need to go to you know go to kindergarten at least or
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whatever and and then i just thought like this individual attention would be great so we'd be
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able to surely we could you know find him what he needed it'd be it'd be so good and rod's reply
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i had come home i had been thinking you know won't it be great when the kids are in school and you can
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go back to work and make all the you know we can double our money and have the cottage at the lake and
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you know of the thought bubble over here and uh she says well actually you know just put a pin in
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that bubble all the you know talk about presuppositions but all the things that you think you
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you need or want that that are most important to you um yeah so then but she did have all these books
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all this stuff right and um things like uh john holt and and just different ideas and and stuff like
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that that uh yeah it was great so we we looked up this group in regina called the association of
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regina christian home educators and we we went to a picnic and it was good i mean they were kind of
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weird like us um except that they prayed all the time which was kind of weird to us um but in the
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end you know they they kind of made all that very plausible in a in a real kind of way they were they
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were doing things because they were um convinced that it was the right thing to do and made really
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good friends they were living according to what they said they believed so yeah it was a really
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good experience and then uh we did start we started homeschooling and never really looked back i would
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say yeah you just touch on some of those resources those early resources that you that you had the books
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and like um like um like hold on to your kids and dumbing dumbing them down or something like that
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like there's there's uh weapons of mass instruction yep so there's john hope and on taylor gatto on taylor
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gatto yeah um and those you know i wouldn't discount any of those resources they're they're still relevant
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today um there's you know more now i think one of the early things on in one of the first homeschool
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conventions that we went to what or that she went to was um george neufeld is it george gordon
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neufeld hold on to your kids why parents need to matter more than their peers and that is hugely
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influential because what they do um gordon neufeld and gaber mate they kind of go through from a
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a research standpoint just how do kids mature and i was reading that we had you know
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there was so many things happening at that same time but we had been uh been going to church we had
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been reading our bible all of these things and it just kind of came in all at the same time and and
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that so this is kind of like a natural natural science natural understanding of uh meaning meaning
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that it's not biblically informed but it's it's looking at at revelation the way it really is
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and drawing conclusions that are very very consistent with what you would expect if you if you looked at
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natural revelation from a biblical standpoint so things like parents matter to kids to children children
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need to have uh security in their relationship with their parents that that this bonding actually helps
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them to mature and without it it it's it's a very difficult process that peers don't have a
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um a vested interest in the in the good in in the best interest of the child i would i would argue that
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nobody has a has more of a best interest of the child than parents do um like nobody i i mean nobody
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right there's no professional who is getting paid to look after your kids who has a who has your kids
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best interest in mind as much as the parent does because and you know how you know that don't pay them
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and see how long they're there right don't pay the psychiatrist and see how long he's gonna he or she is
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gonna do counseling just whatever the the professional is and parents do it for free and not only that i feel
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like i want to just um interject here you know coaches or um even youth pastors or all these
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different ones they they may love your child but they have not been with them they don't have that
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history they don't have you know the the nuances of okay this this kid struggles with this or this works
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or whatever it's it's uh it's they really come at a disadvantage to your child even if they did love
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them you know a fraction of what we do um i found that um that hold on to your kids very helpful
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in in understanding um even i read it when my girls were teenagers actually when i should have read this
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when when you know like 20 years ago it would have been hugely helpful in in understanding just even the
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the nuances of my heart or even like the the way that um i felt about how other people were
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trying to invest in my child and i was just going no that's i don't feel like that's right i actually
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even felt that way when we were considering kindergarten because i just went no this this
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this attachment is really key and i think it's interesting how um so many people come into
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homeschooling from you know a wide range of of reasons that bring them into homeschooling and i feel
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like that um all those presuppositions and the reasons that bring us into homeschooling
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really influence how we homeschool and joe i love how you just touched on like and i know you think
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this way too rod just you need to know why you homeschool and and some of the reasons that um that
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people uh that have led people into homeschooling will lead them out very quickly and then other
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reasons will will have the endurance of 23 years plus you know and and so i just like you to maybe
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touch on that a little bit with um uh as you've been in the homeschooling community for so long
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um have you seen that develop have you seen like what works what doesn't as in um like i've seen people
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come in through covid um you know even some newer homeschoolers now they um i've just seen people
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come and go in the homeschooling community and and the longevity is maybe not there as much and
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there there are so many different resources that we can that we can gather to ourselves and online
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schooling and all these different things um but but what are some of the you know the things that
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really help people uh grab onto homeschooling and have a good foundation that will that will serve
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their whole family and their children well um so what we've said lots of times there's lots of issues
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with with public school we've always encouraged people to have and to write down a positive reason
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to homeschool you can't just be fleeing a system that's broken right and you know i don't expect the
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system to ever work i don't think it ever has worked and i don't think it ever will work but at the same
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time um write down a positive reason do the research to come up with good positive reasons to homeschool
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not negative reasons why not to do something else um i think that's uh first of all and and and second of
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all when we were starting out we used to say we'll take it one year at a time and that's not necessarily
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a bad thing um i i get that i think ideally you want to be committed and say i'll never do that
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but sometimes life i think you you want to not come at it as a i must do this and and always try and
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remember that it's i get to do this right um yeah i think um i think one of the problems that people
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do have when they come in is that they don't have any real view of of the purpose of doing it they're
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just trying it out or they're like rod said just trying to get away from something else
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but without kind of a reason that's keeping you going you're you're not going to because it's not
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always easy it's not always um convenient and sometimes people will say things like well you know
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if if the children want to homeschool will homeschool if they want to go to school they'll
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go to school i think there's benefit in in taking that into consideration but i don't think you need
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to let your kids decide those things on their own just it's a pretty it's a pretty big thing if you
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really look at uh what your plans are for the future i think um you those are decisions that you
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need to have some strong opinion on one way or the other you can't just do whatever the kids want or
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i think i think would be hard to to keep going that way now they want to now they don't i don't know
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um and when you start looking at those reasons that's when you can start realizing um where your
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benefits have come in too so then you then you have more reason and it builds up reason to to keep
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going you feel those blessings because you you can understand that um they are uh directly because
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of certain decisions and maybe um sometimes your relationships go through hard times while you're
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homeschooling but in the end you you will have a stronger relationship if you've worked if you work at it
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through through that time i want to also say that if i believe that parents are in are have the
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jurisdiction to decide that means that i don't have the jurisdiction to decide for them as well right so if
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they make different choices than i would make with my kids i need to respect their choices as well
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right and so i think and and i'm a firm believer in home-based education parent-directed home-based
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education and i think you you see that but i also am a firm believer that of of our freedom in christ
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that this is not um a salvation issue and that it really is the jurisdiction of the parents and so we encourage
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but in the end i will respect their decision so i'm not sitting here going advocating for any laws that
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outlaw any other form of education i'm just advocating for parent-directed home-based education
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because i think that's best and i think there's reasons that that's best but we don't live in a
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perfect world either there's lots of things that we just that are broken in our society and there's
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so you're not going to be able to do everything optimally all the time and and so i want
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i don't want to come across as as overly you must do this that's not what i'm trying to say
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so for those parents who have made a decision that and they feel because parents feel guilty they feel
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guilty about homeschooling you know they they sacrifice a lot of stuff to homeschool and then
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they end up feeling guilty about doing that anyway because they think did i make the right decision what
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about sports what you know all these other things so parents who decide to send their children to a
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school a private school online school whatever it is that isn't parent
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directed i i just can't i just think that lots of times they're going to feel guilty and they're
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going to hear me say that they're awful parents and that's not what i'm trying to say
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yeah absolutely and actually from my background i have four children and two of them actually went
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through the school system so my older two went through the public and private education system
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and and uh would have loved to have homeschooled them but um but they were yeah it just wasn't wasn't
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to be but i was able to homeschool my younger two all the way through so yeah i understand that
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there's just lots of different life situations we're a blended family so got lots of different dynamics
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there as well so um yeah that's that's good um rod would you be able just to explain you've talked
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about the jurisdiction of the family would you be able just to touch on on what you mean by that
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and uh and i know what you're talking about but if you can kind of explain that for our audience
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so i think if if we look at it like so if you've heard terms like sphere sovereignty or or abraham
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kuyper or stuff like that that's a you know you can fast forward through this but the essentially
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you've got the jurisdiction of the family and you don't have a an outside circle of that you have a
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circle beside that of the the state the civil authorities and then outside of that you have
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a church a sphere for the church so what what the church is given is authority over over truth and
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and and and church things right so um god has given certain parameters for how a church is to be led
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that he's he's said word and sacrament you know here's the bible preach the bible that's where you
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get your definition of right and wrong you don't just make it up for yourself um how the church is
00:32:10.320
to be organized and how it's to worship he's given you that and that's in this sphere of the church and
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the sphere of the civil government does not get to tell you what to do in that sphere right so the
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civil government has and so the gospel is kind of like the keys to the kingdom right how do you get
00:32:29.360
into the kingdom you believe on the lord jesus christ you trust in him for salvation you you place all your
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dependency on his work on your behalf you don't add to it you don't subtract to it he did it all um so
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that's the keys and then the sword is is justice so the civil magistrate has a certain set of parameters
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that they're responsible for and that does not extend to mandating what the church can do or cannot
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do right so the church has its own sphere of of of authority and that comes directly from god it's a
00:33:10.820
delegated authority likewise when jesus said um you would have no authority except that it was granted
00:33:17.340
to you from above he says that to pontius pilate what he's meaning is there's no earthly authority
00:33:25.060
that is not delegated so civil magistrates the civil government federal whatever power that is
00:33:33.780
has ought to realize that they have a delegated power they have only the authority that god
00:33:40.760
has given them um that's maybe why when you delegate things that belong to another jurisdiction
00:33:48.100
um the government will think it looks an awful lot like a sword right you give them education they're
00:33:55.460
gonna use it like a sword to enforce their doctrines and their beliefs and and their whatever it is
00:34:04.700
then you've got the family and the family has been you know just i find this helpful as a um
00:34:12.140
as as a kind of something to wrap around this but when when when you talk about the family it's been
00:34:20.960
given the rod the rod of correction of instruction of nurturing you know it's it's not just a rod of
00:34:27.480
discipline it's a rod of of come alongside of go this way so the family has basically everything that
00:34:35.900
hasn't been given i think to the state or or to the to the church so nurture uh health care you know
00:34:45.160
all of those things those begin with the family and especially the nurturing of the next generation
00:34:51.860
um obviously there's overlap in that right yeah absolutely that's what i was just about to say
00:34:58.820
it's just that that doesn't uh doesn't encompass everything and every nuance and and all the you
00:35:05.260
know how we can influence and all those kinds of things absolutely because we're individuals within
00:35:10.320
anyone within all of those spheres right absolutely whatever you believe um yeah anyway i think that's
00:35:18.820
great yeah and why i brought that up was just understanding um in our culture we are um brought
00:35:25.920
up to think that yeah you at five years old or or even now sometimes at three years old you hand your
00:35:32.740
child over and you know the the state will educate your child and they will have them for whatever six or
00:35:39.620
so hours a day and and then uh and then we sometimes bring that um understanding or that maybe lie
00:35:48.480
actually that we that oh you know like only educated people can actually educate my children i'm not
00:35:55.080
actually you know qualified to be able to educate my children and how that can actually influence
00:36:00.600
homeschool parents um i've talked to many homeschool parents that go well i i don't know or actually
00:36:06.500
pre-homeschooling parents that are considering it and going i don't know that i actually have the
00:36:10.460
qualifications and uh and just being able to talk about that with them and and let them know no you've
00:36:17.100
you've done a lot of training and teaching already so just talk about that for a little bit here um
00:36:23.420
maybe even joe uh what are your thoughts towards that
00:36:28.060
yeah absolutely i think it is very nice to have that understanding that this is your jurisdiction
00:36:35.980
this is where you're supposed to be uh influencing uh your family um but from now from having experience
00:36:47.360
doing it just realizing that yes you actually start way before the your child is three or five or
00:36:56.060
whatever right you you've already spent all that time you've put all that effort into helping them
00:37:03.000
walk helping them sit up like just helping them do each of the steps along the way when they're when
00:37:10.340
they're little and there's really no need to to pass that on to somebody else even if you didn't know how
00:37:18.800
to potty train your your little child you you got help you figured it out you asked some other people
00:37:26.460
for advice you did what you needed to do to figure out how you can do your part in teaching
00:37:32.840
your child and that's really all you just keep doing um if if there's a lot of funny little sayings
00:37:42.500
right like how successful is your public schooling if you don't think you can teach your five-year-old
00:37:49.020
what what to do next right like yeah yeah if you're public school then you don't think you can teach
00:37:56.760
your five-year-old maybe public school is not the best place for your five right there's a lot of
00:38:04.160
things like that but but honestly i think we just we get psyched out we think like oh we we can't do
00:38:10.440
this i can't do calculus and and you can do all of the things that you need to do all you have to do
00:38:16.540
is step by step figure out what's next get help where you need it you know ask other people
00:38:24.860
how they've done those things or you know you find the right resources you find the right math book
00:38:32.760
you teach your children how to find those things for themselves right like um as an adult you want
00:38:40.760
them to be able to learn things without you telling them each each part of of the the lesson and so
00:38:50.100
you want them to find out how to teach themselves and so you're going to be doing it little by little
00:38:56.180
you'll you just keep parenting them and that's what that's what it is actually you just keep parenting
00:39:04.140
them you just keep going and i think when you can break it down like that and explain that
00:39:10.920
then i i think people can see okay maybe i i could do this you know i don't need to know all of the
00:39:19.040
things i don't need to know grade 12 biology to to do kindergarten yeah to teach your colors you know
00:39:27.120
it's um it's one thing at a time yeah don't get too zoomed out right but i would also say um
00:39:35.620
like don't discount the relationship part of it too because um what you're doing when you're home
00:39:44.800
when you're home educating is is you're doing those things that that gordon neufeld talks about too
00:39:51.220
you're gathering you're you're being the one from whom your kids take their cue so and and that's
00:40:01.100
going on every day every day that you homeschool um so i would say you know i wouldn't ever advise
00:40:13.000
anybody not to teach their kids how to read that's important and and you have to get if you need help to
00:40:19.640
do that then get help to do that but at the same time don't ever forget that what you're doing this
00:40:27.380
about is relationship and to help your kids with um you know you're not it is it is about character
00:40:37.580
right you're trying to teach your kids character um but not in in in a kind of uh you just want them to
00:40:47.820
catch it from you so they want you want to put that on display always have them coming back to you
00:40:56.040
and so i would just add that because that's something that i think our kids have really
00:41:03.620
benefited from um you know i want i come down i work from home and lots of times i'm not necessarily
00:41:12.920
the one that's there every day but i see them doing morning basket and uh watching world watch
00:41:21.680
together and joe reads out loud to them and i just see them really having that relationship and and that
00:41:33.580
lasting through into adulthood that i think is what we were what we were really aiming for
00:41:42.920
back all those many years ago when we said this would be good for relationship and and it has been
00:41:50.480
despite all the times that we've done stupid things and yelled at our kids or done whatever right
00:42:00.020
yeah can you just talk a little bit about um parent the difference between parent delivered
00:42:08.440
and parent delegated education and what that looks like in the homeschool context or even broader than
00:42:16.100
that sure um yeah well i mean that's a good point right it could be broader than that um so there's
00:42:24.500
nothing first of all when i start talking about this people start missing misunderstanding me and
00:42:30.460
saying well rod doesn't think that anybody but parents can ever talk to their children and that's not
00:42:36.080
what i'm saying um but if you look at it you've kind of you've you've got government sponsored paid
00:42:47.140
for education up here send your kids to a brick and mortar school um and that's very much institutionally
00:42:55.580
directed right not even not even the teachers have a lot of leeway in that you've got private school
00:43:02.620
where you know the parents kind of choose have a little bit more say in what's delivered to their
00:43:12.200
children and who's delivering it but the day-to-day is still it's it's teacher directed it's school
00:43:18.480
directed you've got at home delivered education but it's still directed by a teacher maybe online or
00:43:28.480
something like that so the parents again they have the choice they direct their children into that
00:43:34.720
but then they don't deliver the they don't direct the education they don't um so then it's kind of
00:43:42.900
teacher led or school led then you've got home-based parent directed education where the parents really
00:43:50.900
uh deliver the education they're directly involved they've chosen the the whatever material it doesn't
00:43:59.480
have to be curriculum um could get into a whole discussion about just you've chosen the environment
00:44:07.980
that your kids have they have access to certain books and they don't have access to other books they
00:44:12.940
have access to certain uh electronics they don't have access to other electronics that you are directing
00:44:20.320
their education um and and yeah and providing that worldview right the background to all of that
00:44:31.420
to what yeah so then you know and and all of those lines are they're kind of fuzzy right because you
00:44:40.380
you can use tutors you can have someone who really knows um whatever calculus or carpentry or
00:44:50.180
something like that and and so you but you're still the one to introduce that and to bring that on
00:44:56.260
um so i think that's what i would say parent directed is is as much the the parent is you know
00:45:13.940
yeah that's good and uh joe you just talked about morning baskets um can you just explain a little
00:45:23.540
bit of what that is because i think that that really plays into you know parent directed education
00:45:29.860
yeah one of the things that we've um developed in our in our homeschool as it as i said it's been a
00:45:39.460
lot of years so we've made a lot of changes here and there but one of the things that we have really
00:45:45.060
enjoyed doing is having some time each day together as uh all of the all of us as many as
00:45:52.800
her homeschooling and usually there was little ones and whatnot we still get we have some adult
00:45:59.480
children living here so they'll they'll just pop over and join us sometimes and we just add them in but
00:46:06.320
what uh what we like to do um well these days what we do is we watch we watch the days uh news with
00:46:17.220
world watch together we do some uh my our older ones are involved in bible quizzing so we'll read
00:46:26.660
the chapter the appropriate chapter of the bible uh that they're memorizing we'll read that all together
00:46:34.360
out loud and we'll um we like to do um we like to do mad libs together we'll create a story putting
00:46:42.320
i'll just say i need a noun and this person will give me a noun and this person will give me a verb
00:46:48.260
and we'll go around and fill in the story and we do that together every day um we read usually we're
00:46:55.980
reading a uh a biography together just one chapter a day we like to read um one or two more novels
00:47:06.240
together um also during the day and then um if we're working on a unit study we will work on that
00:47:15.960
at that time we we've been doing a lot of unit studies the last couple years it's been pretty fun
00:47:22.320
there's great resources these days it makes things get easier and easier in some ways with all this uh
00:47:28.320
additional resources but so we'll we'll do a fair amount uh together in the morning i i read a lot
00:47:35.940
out loud i really enjoy it um so it's it's pretty good and uh and now i'm finding because i've got these
00:47:44.580
younger kids i'm i'm having to redo some of the stories that the older kids have been like what uh
00:47:50.880
they don't know this story mom you gotta read this one to them and so okay we'll add that one in and
00:47:56.380
so um it's pretty fun well we also read some history together and yeah we've got we do a lot of reading
00:48:04.000
there's a lot happening there that that isn't just the novel that you're reading not just the biography
00:48:10.440
that you're reading you're doing it together and and you're you're listening so so you're taking
00:48:17.240
your cues and you're orienting your to your kids you're gathering all the things like that we've
00:48:23.920
got it's great because our family has all of these you know little phrases and and random songs that
00:48:32.420
that pop up that everybody's familiar with because we've done all these things together
00:48:36.620
um with our unit studies we watch a lot of videos there's video parts and so we we just kind of
00:48:43.240
i cast things to the tv so that they can see it as well as as listening to me read and so um there's
00:48:51.060
a lot more interaction than it kind of sounds like when i say i read a lot but um it's pretty fun
00:48:57.480
sometimes the kids will read some of the chapters for me instead if they want or um but yeah it is really
00:49:05.420
neat to see how some of those things uh sometimes the kids are like oh that's why you always say this
00:49:12.320
yeah that's why that's why the big kids as we call them that's why the big kids talk like that yeah
00:49:18.460
yeah and that's that's a lot of family bonding that's a lot of sibling bonding and and all kinds
00:49:24.600
of things going on there i love that that was probably my favorite part of homeschooling as well
00:49:28.340
just lots of bonding thank you so much for your time this evening is there any closing thoughts that
00:49:33.760
you'd like to share i think um when when joe before joe and i were married we talked about one thing that
00:49:43.860
we wanted to do and i just encourage families to eat together and share a meal try and share a meal
00:49:52.060
together if you can at all because some of our best conversations have been around the supper table
00:49:59.600
of the the the big questions in life my kids used to be famous that if i was putting them to bed
00:50:06.980
they would come up with the big theological question but as they get older all those conversations happen
00:50:14.080
around the dinner table and and it's a lot of passing on your whys why do you do the things that you do
00:50:21.120
parents why why so if you're living in light of your faith the this the supper table is huge that's a
00:50:31.020
huge area of blessing but it's also a huge area of passing on in a joyful providing context of
00:50:40.240
just passing along your values your discussion talk about the day's events talk about whatever has been
00:50:47.200
going on let them talk about their stuff our oldest is in university taking economics and they're just
00:50:55.060
going on about something economic stuff you know but it's great because you don't always have to be
00:51:03.600
the one leading that discussion but i'm rambling again what i'm trying to say is share a meal together
00:51:10.940
just try and do that if you can add one thing in start with sharing a meal together every day
00:51:18.540
and i'll just say that as uh now we have a couple of grand babies and we see um you know our daughter
00:51:26.700
talk about homeschooling them and and different things like that it is so much of a blessing to to see
00:51:35.260
um our older kids moving into um into their their times where they're going to have to make decisions
00:51:45.580
about homeschooling and and things like that and and i'm just very thankful that they seem to have a
00:51:54.140
good feeling towards how they the some of the decisions we've made and some um they're excited about
00:52:02.540
their futures in that as well so that's pretty fun that's awesome well i know doris and i have
00:52:09.500
talked about that too with our grandchildren doris's grandkids are being homeschooled now and she gets to
00:52:14.540
be involved in that so that's pretty awesome and that uh mine will be soon too so what a wonderful
00:52:21.900
discussion thank you so much for your time and your wealth of wisdom thank you for all that you've
00:52:26.140
contributed and continue to contribute to the to the homeschooling movement across canada and
00:52:31.660
especially in saskatchewan it's been wonderful to have you here thank you thanks laurie thank you
00:52:37.740
i agree it's been a great conversation thank you so much for sharing all your um experiences and wisdom
00:52:45.580
and it's uh just very encouraging to listen to both of you thank you thank you