16 years ago, George W. Bush was in the final days of his Presidency, Illinois Senator Barack Obama was about to become the 44th President of the U.S., the Chicago Cubs were nine months away from going 100 years without winning a World Series and a little blog called Home School Dad published it's first post, Why We Homeschool.
That little blog still exists, in fact, you are reading it. Its name has changed since then and may change again, as I mentioned in my last post.
In the inaugural post, I answered the title question with 2 pictures and 7 words. The words were: Three precious reasons: Lucy, Emma, and Charlie, and the pictures were of the aforementioned children. The post did not go into further detail but one of the main reasons why we home-educated our children was part of a concerted effort to build into our children a Godly character.
Those reasons are all now adults and the youngest is 5 years removed from her last homeschooling, unless you count her Freshman year of high school where she was having school at home because of COVID. At the moment, all 3 of our children are at home until the youngest goes back to Champaign later this month.
In the past few months, I have had sufficient opportunity to evaluate the character development of all our kids. Each of my children has talked with me or my wife or both of us recently about individual issues they are going through. I'd detail them here, but it wouldn't make it through the vetting process. They are handling these issues in a mature and Godly fashion. After we talked to one of them yesterday my wife reminded me that their response was a specific answer to prayer she had sent to our church just a few months ago. I can also see the beginning of adult friendships taking place between them. We just came back from a trip out East to a family wedding and most of the family squabbling was relegated to me and one of my siblings who accompanied us on the trip.
I don't look back at our home school adventure as a qualified success. However, on the 16th anniversary of this blog, I am glad to look back and see that God has at least used it to help meet some of our purposes for it.
