The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Have you ever had the ever the experience of turning to another person when you needed to know something? Someone who had done it before and knew what you were going through, and who was available to answer your questions, or just listen as you talked about your worries?

My Random House dictionary defines a mentor as "a wise and trusted counselor or teacher." For our purposes here, that would mean an opened minded person experienced in homeschooling.

I often serve as a mentor to new homeschooling parents. The first time I was asked for advice, it took me by surprise. I had never thought of myself as someone with anything to teach another parent about homeschooling. I had never heard of mentors when we started homeschooling many years ago—I just sort of struggled along as best I could with books about homeschooling, until we learned enough through trial and error and things smoothed out. After all these years, though, I can really see the value in passing experience along to others just starting out on the same path.

I was talking with a homeschooling mom the other day—a new homeschooling mom with two young boys—7 and 9—in their first year of homeschooling. She is struggling with doubt about her ability to teach her children.

"The boys are loving homeschooling—it’s me that has the problem. I’ve finally had to admit that what I thought homeschooling was, is not what my boys think it is. What I am doing is not working. They are going along with what I want to do because I ask them to, not because they want to. I can see that they are not retaining any of it. I know I need to learn to let go and let them learn how they want to—but I’m scared. It scares me to just let them learn without the workbooks and textbooks and all of that stuff that goes along with what I thought teaching was all about."

This mom is struggling, as many new homeschoolers do, with her preconceived ideas about what learning and teaching really are. To her it means sitting her boys down with workbooks and textbooks and proceeding, in an orderly fashion, to cover all the required subjects, hour by hour, until the end of the school day. Just as a "real" teacher would in a public school classroom.

She wasn’t prepared to deal with the fact that her boys prefer to play, build things, and explore. This family’s problems are complicated by the fact that the boys have, up until this year, been in public school. It turns out that the mom is from a long line of public school teachers—mother, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers—are all teachers. And you can bet they are all watching her, waiting for her to fail and put the boys back in "real school."

Luckily, this mom can stop and admit to herself that what she is doing is not working—and she is looking for a better way.

We talked a while about why she took her boys out of school in the first place—she didn’t agree with some of the things they were being taught, and felt a strong need to be involved in her sons’ education. Every time she showed up in the classroom, the teacher made her feel unwanted. She admitted too that she is feeling the stress of her teacher relatives all watching her and all of them thinking she is foolish to even try. This is the real reason she is afraid to let go and trust her sons to lead her in the direction they need to go.

It is also hard for this mom because she thought it would be "easy" to teach her sons because of her rich background in education (she herself was groomed to become a teacher, but decided not to.) She thought she would have all the help she needed from her relatives that are teachers. Unfortunately, their kind of help didn’t work for her kids. She was also unaware of the fact that children coming out of the public school environment need time--sometimes months or a whole school year--to un-do the damage that has been done to their natural desire to learn. It takes the kids a while to figure out that they are no longer being forced to learn, and that they can learn about subjects that they are truly interested in.

I’m not all that sure that our talk helped with her dilemma—I think she knows the answers to her own questions, she is just afraid to try something that, for her, is very radical. She is distressed to be considering herself a failure, and of thinking of putting her sons back in public school. I think I helped by simply being there, listening, and relating my own experience. Several times she commented, "Oh, I’m so glad to hear that you’ve felt that way too. I thought it was just me. "During our talk, I recognized in her the same fears I myself had—the fear of being responsible for the welfare and education of other human beings—very precious ones--and the fear of doing it wrong. I reminded her, as in Mr. Lincoln’s quote above, to not try to do it all at once, just to take it a day at a time.

My point in telling you all of this is to suggest that you try to find a mentor—a homeschooling mentor—so that you have some one to talk things over with when you hit a rough spot—which, trust me, you will. And more than once. Try to choose someone who is sympathetic to the idea of homeschooling—the last thing you need is someone telling you "I told you so."

I have seen instances where having a mentor made all the difference between success and failure—and I like to think that I’ve made a difference in some cases. I am so interested in seeing you succeed that I am willing to mentor you if you cannot locate someone close to you. Mentoring via Email is a poor substitute at best, but it is better than nothing. I can offer my ear and my experience until you have been homeschooling long enough to find a mentor close to you. In the way of things, someday you yourself will be a mentor too.

If you would like to set up a mentor relationship with me, or would just like someone to bounce an idea off of now and then, please feel free to email me at Anita@ChildCareMagazine.zzn.com. I’ll do my best to help you succeed. I also know many other experienced homeschooling moms who act as mentors, and who would be willing to do so via email.

Until next week, happy homeschooling.

Questions? Something you would like to see?