Picayune: fiddling; small and of little importance
Brought to you by Catherine Johnson
My problem with goals is that I know what I want to do today (roughly what I did last week) and I know what I'd love to be doing in 30 years ...it's the in-between that's hazy. Five years from now? 10?
<shrug> I don't know.
That makes it hard because I don't know how to get from here to there. And without that clear direction, I'm left wondering if what I'm doing right now is "right" or not. And that makes me wonder if a similar quandary drives some of our fears in homeschooling. We want to love learning with our children and we want our children to succeed in life... it's the time between now and then that has us concerned. Are we doing it right? I mean, we certainly don't want to find out that we've been doin' it wrong.
I think this concern that we "do it right" drives questions like: What do you do when a kid flat out refuses to do anything? The wonderful thing is that there are very good answers to these questions (like the one I just linked). And, often, those answers contain a strong recommendation that we relax a bit. Which is nice for a high-strung person such as myself. <smile>
But I'd like to postulate today that perhaps our concern over what we're doing today is too often birthed from a lack of perspective. Could it be that we get so caught up in the current struggle with math, or writing, or reading, or personal development, or a character flaw that we miss the long-term goals. I know I lacked proper perspective again and again during my brief stint as a parent. I think I would have been much served by a few long-term written goals for our family and the girls. Then, no matter what was currently irking me, I could step back and see it in the perspective of where we ultimately wanted to be.
Speaking of perspective, I thought this Scale of the Universe thingy was interesting.
Have you found written goals have helped you in your homeschool and parenting?
~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester
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