My daughter has lost her love of learning. This concerns us. Because all through life she has got to WANT to learn things. Sure there are times when you HAVE to learn something,but learning is such a lifelong process that it should be a love of it that is instilled in our children from the start. Otherwise, how do you ever improve yourself? How do you explore your interests and find out where your God-given gifts are if you don’t want to learn in the first place?
Her love of learning was crushed early on. She was in Kindergarten and was going to fail because she couldn’t read 3-letter words. CAT was too hard for her. She knew what each letter sounded like but just couldn’t grasp the blending of them to form a word. She knew that only herself and one other child in her class were going to fail.
We pulled her from school to homeschool her. In the beginning, homeschooling was simply “school at home.” Strict, regulated, on a schedule. We *had* to do homeschool this way due to outside influences that were beyond our control. There were tears. There were fights. My relationship with my daughter was full of tension. Our home was becoming a warzone. It was frustrating, sad, and pathetic.
Now, I know most people would say, “Hey, you gotta force this stuff. They have to get used to a job that forces them to do things they don’t want to do.” but at 6, 7, 8 years of age? There’s time to learn that. Meanwhile, she’s losing her love of learning. She has no motivation. She quits when the going gets tough. She hates the word “learn.”
On New Year’s Day, my husband and I sat down to discuss how we homeschool. How can we encourage our daughter to WANT to learn again? We decided to take the 6 months off… we told our daughter that she will be directing her education over the first half of 2007. She wants to learn something? Then she needs to bring it to our attention so we can get resources. I know many think that we are foolish. Only time will tell in the end if our decision was a favorable one.
6 months seem like such a long time… but I know they will fly. And we are praying that God will use this time to teach her that learning is good… it can be fun… and although it may not be easy, there are always rewards for putting for the effort of your own steam.
Let’s see what 2007 has in store for us… 