Shoved to Them
**Because it’s Monday, and we could all use a little encouragement**
It is so easy, as the mom in charge of what feels like everything, to set unrealistic expectations for ourselves of what our homeschool should look/be like. We begin to demand a level of perfection from ourselves which isn’t realistic. These are actual real children we’re in charge of, not perfect people in a fictional book. These kids are going to have days, weeks, moments, and maybe even lives which don’t look the way we would wish for them to be.
We need to learn to get over it and stop beating ourselves up for not being able to achieve perfection. God is the perfect father, and most of His kids don’t listen to Him at all. Even the best among us aren’t even the shadow of the parent He is, so we shouldn’t demand of ourselves better results than He gets. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. By golly, we should try to get a little better every day! We just shouldn’t expect that to happen immediately, if ever. There’s a vast ocean of disappointment and resentment between those two words — try and expect.
Over the past 11+ years, I’ve seen a lot of mothers burn out on homeschooling because of the unrealistic demands they have placed on themselves. These moms come into it with a picture in their minds of perfection and then stop when they find that they can’t do it. The thing they miss is that NO ONE could live up to that kind of ideal, and certainly not right away.
I once was the mom who was ready to walk away from it all. I just couldn’t figure out how to do a full day of schoolwork (which was 8-3 in my mind during which time I never left the classroom) with 4 children under the age of 9, PLUS go to daily Mass every day, PLUS say a rosary daily, PLUS say the Angelus at noon, PLUS get in a family reading time of only Great Literature, PLUS run the house and feed my small army. I remember crying and feeling defeated because there was just no way this could work. I WAS RIGHT! There was no way for me to do all of this. I was defeated in this before I ever began, because there was no way it could be done. Once I wrote out a schedule for myself, I saw how unachievable it was, and I began to relax.
What I forgot was that everything positive that we do with our children is a blessing to them. If we can’t get through the whole rosary in a day, start with the beginning. Do the first beads of 1 Our Father, 3 Hail Marys, and 1 Glory Be. If you haven’t prayed regularly with your children, start with just 1 Our Father, this is HUGE! It doesn’t sound like it when we read about the amazing accomplishments of other moms, but maybe you should cut down on how much you’re reading them if they make you discouraged. How about listening to the Divine Mercy chaplet being sung on EWTN radio instead? It’s on every day at 3. My kids will sing along to it, even the littles, while they are doing their work or chores. Is it the ideal? No. Is it a blessing to them? You bet. They are now to the point of turning the radio on by themselves at 3:00 without a reminder from me. They are inching their way closer to what the ideal looks like, and they don’t see me beating myself up. That’s definitely a good thing.
Did you pray for them today? Did you pray with them? Did you talk about God? Did they see you try to live a Godly life? Did you do what you could do today? That’s enough. The rest will come. Go easy on yourself and stop expecting perfection. The Pursuit of Perfection is the same path as the Road to Burnout. Instead of chasing an ideal, why not seek out what kind of mother/teacher God is calling you to be? I guarantee that it’s not what you have in that picture in your mind at all. It’s so much more than you can imagine, and will not suck the soul out of you, or the life out of your family.
Teaching our children isn’t about the things that seem big, or that look like the recipe for perfection. Teaching them is about the small lessons taught daily. It’s the small nuggets which build, one on top of the other, to become a mighty mountain. You just have to commit to beginning the mountain…one tiny grain of sand at a time.
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