The Joy-filled Life With Young ‘Teens’

And there they sit, sprawled on the couches like a young man and a young woman. Laughing and chatting as they work on the day’s lessons. Talking about ghost sightings and card games while finding least common factors between scads of polynomials, learning word roots ‘sacr’ and ‘beati’, and writing epilogues to chrea exercises. My daughter is adapting her chrea writing assignment to convince our guinea pigs that, as George Washington cautioned in a speech before congress, being prepared for war is the surest way to ensure future peace (and plenty of alfalfa). The hub is canning figs in the yard and periodically comes through the house asking where I store wooden spoons, or the camp stove, or tongs, adding to the general peacefully chaotic feel of the day. In spite of a mini-heat wave that forces us to spend our days near our portable fans, it is an excellent day.

As I stop to answer my son’s question about polynomials, a wave of fulfillment washes through the room and sweeps me back five years when I was coaxing and prodding and encouraging my then young ones to teach them to read and write and do basic arithmetic. At the time I thought those years were wonderful and homeschooling and child-rearing would be all at once difficult and dull once my kids were young men and women. Boy was I wrong. Spending time with my children while teaching and guiding them is one of the greatest joys of my day.

Yes, a young ‘teen’ can be impulsive and emotional. But so can a toddler. The difference is that you cannot really reason with a toddler, beyond giving them a time out and discussing consequences. With a young ‘teen’ you can have discussions that enrich both of you. You can deal out wisdom and reason and tools for dealing with situations as an adult, and your young ‘teen’ opens a window to the workings of that beautiful mind that you both have been nurturing for over a decade. That mind is now thinking for itself and making it’s own decisions. It is no longer parroting ideas and morals that you placed in your child’s head. That brain is processing and developing their own unique set of thoughts. For me the feeling is that same sense of wonder and anticipation and abject terror when my twins first began walking. Can they navigate this world full of misrepresentations, logical inconsistencies, and evil temptations? Will all the work and effort you have poured into them take? Will all that time pay off which you spent reading classic literature to them, exposing them to godly morals, and trying to demonstrate what it means to be a good person.

I am beginning to see that yes, the effort pays off. Your kids generally do emulate your example. Given the opportunity to discuss freely and investigate when the whim takes them, your kids turn into their own people. And the precious gift and awesome responsibility is that you and your husband are the keystones which provide your kids the links and motivations and also you are there to reap the benefits of their company.

So if your kids are well cared for (as nearly all homeschooled child invariably is), you can approach the ‘teen’ years with anticipatory joy.