Cookies and Homeschool Insecurity

Our Own Ideas

If you were to ask five different home bakers what makes the best chocolate chip cookie you’d get five different answers. Primarily, because everyone has their own idea of what makes it the best. To some it is the quality of the ingredients. To others, the texture. No one really cares; we are happy for others to have found their favorite. We’d never argue with them about what makes their recipe their favorite.

We might even have the opportunity to taste theirs and appreciate it for what it is. Perhaps we’d learn a technique or an ingredient to add to our own favorite recipe.

But at the end of the day we are quite happy with our own favorite recipe, having had our own life experiences develop our own taste for certain flavors and textures.

Discovering Your Favorite Ideas

Consider how you discovered your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Odds are rather high that from childhood on you’ve had a mix of hard or soft, with or without nuts, and white, milk or dark chocolate cookies. A loved one may have served you hot cookies with a cold glass of milk, forming an emotional bond to your idea of what makes them right for you.

Perhaps you’ve even landed on the fact you hate chocolate chip and are solidly in another cookie camp. That’s great. But you got there because our culture is pretty cookie rich, cookie supportive, and cookie diverse. No one feels like their favorite cookie is inadequate or doesn’t stand up to everyone else’s. No one feels like they’re judged for having a favorite cookie.

Judged for Our Ideas

But what if, in our quiet little homes, we were bombarded with innocent messages in the form of beautiful square images about what others, on their very best days, were doing with their cookies?

What if some of the images you saw portrayed beauty on surface level but, because you can’t taste what you only see, you don’t know they’re actually burnt on the bottom. Or they used crisco and you’re committed to butter. Or they accidentally tripled the baking soda and they taste gross but look pretty so the one sharing doesn’t tell the whole story.

What if some of those were sponsored by a cookie brand that wanted your business and they were trying to sell you on what you absolutely needed to successfully make your favorite chocolate chip cookies?

What if we were told, let’s just pretend, on an annual basis that there was this new great curriculum (I mean, ingredient.) that would make our recipe that much better.

If we were continually tweaking our favorite recipe – would we recognize, let alone enjoy, it after 16 years of this tiresome process of tweaking and overhauling?

I don’t even super love cookies. So if you’re in that camp, don’t get lost in my cookie illustration.

But I’ve been thinking about the insecurities that arise when we look at home educating our children, and I’ve narrowed it down to two things. I think it stems from a lack of exposure and an overexposure. (Haha. Under baking and over baking?) Enough with the cookies.

Lack of Exposure to Ideas

Most people are not intimately familiar with homeschooling because most people were not educated that way. My kids are fourth generation homeschoolers on my side and second on my husbands side, and I can attest to the fact that while it wasn’t always done well through all those generations the lacks were not a hindrance to lives well lived. The rich exposure I have has given me confidence that I will most certainly miss something and fail my children in some aspect of their education. Failure should not be debilitating. It’s a platform for learning, growing, and for God’s grace to shine.

But how do you form an idea of what your “recipe” should look like, and what things to add to it, when you haven’t been exposed to many cookies in the first place?

I think many times we underestimate our own ability to make decisions for ourselves. Just like having a favorite cookie recipe that you confidently stand behind is not a criticism of the cookie choices your friends make, neither are the educational choices you make. It’s not a commentary on your parents choices, either. God has given you children, and there are very practical decisions to be made – and you get to make them (alongside your husband.) Hush the voices that would tell you your cookie recipe isn’t right because it doesn’t look like theirs. And be brave enough to examine what you like in your own recipe.

Before looking elsewhere for ideas, spend time prayerfully considering what you like.

Not everything you like can necessarily end up being what you pursue, but start by considering what you would like your homeschool days to look like, without allowing the unknowns to cloud your ideals. Your husband may or may not be able to speak in to this. Mine was always supportive of my decisions but didn’t have many of his own opinions in their younger days.

As an aside, I struggled with whether to join a co-op or not when our boys were young. I’d never been a part of a formal one and saw the potential to it and was very curious. To this day I praise the Lord for the older lady who took me aside and told me she didn’t think it would be a good fit for me and the educational goals she knew I had. What a gift to have had someone bravely speak into my “recipe.”

While thinking through what you might like consider starting with the end goal.

For us that was wanting to raise our boys to be men that love learning, and for them to finish high school equipped to move into the next season of education.

It sounds simple, but it has been a challenge that has formed so many decisions, from where we spend our time and money, to how we respond to challenges, to how we train them to work independently, to the books we choose to read.

Another consideration is the atmosphere you want to cultivate in your home. Days spent driving to and from activities will by nature create a different atmosphere in the home than a quieter schedule.

Once you have some basic ideas of what you like start looking for those who have gone before you, in real life if you’re so blessed or in books, podcasts, or social media. Be careful about those who are still in the recipe formation season but who take lovely pictures and string together compelling words.

The older the ages of the children the harder it is to find those who will talk about what they do. I found that as my boys hit middle school age and I looked for writings from moms ahead of me that there weren’t many personal stories, and I determined I wouldn’t do that. And then I did. Primarily because this is my recipe and I love it and am enjoying it. But for all it’s good it has its quirks and challenges that are unique to us. There is so much that is hard, and hard isn’t bad. But it is nuanced and is more intricate than Pollyanna’s Glad Game.

It is “His grace is sufficient” lived out in the flesh of ordinary day to day living.

Overexposure to Ideas

The flip side to jumping in and learning about what you like is when do you determine to just commit and move forward with the ideas you have formed?

There comes a time when all the research and testing is over and we just need to commit and prayerfully move forward with what we know.

This does require bravery and a level of commitment – things take time to know if they are working as they ought.

It takes sensitivity and humility to recognize when you made a wrong decision.

It also requires precision and saying no to some really good things in order to just have the excellent for your family.

In a world of influencers and beautiful pictures of clean children (dressed in organic linen. With flower crowns) it’s hard not to buy the product because we want what the picture is showing.

There will always be an endless list of options for all of the subjects we need to teach and equip our children with.

Enjoying Our Ideas

But if we know the “recipe” we love and aspire towards, we can appreciate the good and the beautiful that others are enjoying and be happy for them and move forward with our own decisions.

With our unique family makeup, our strengths and weaknesses, our challenges and advantages, our backgrounds and our future goals, we should look different from other families. And they should look different from us.

And we should be able to say in genuine appreciation: “Wow. Your cookie looks good. It looks like you worked really hard on that recipe.”

And then we should be able to look at our own cookie, that is different in every way, and say to ourself: “This is my favorite cookie. But I’m so glad I live in a world of such beautiful variety.”

Favorite Homeschool Books

Here are some of the books that have formed my thinking on educating our boys over the years. The first two I find to be exceptional. And I would be remiss if I did not also include a link to Ambleside Online, which beyond being the “curriculum” of choice for us, holds a depth of wisdom and encouragement within the endless pages you will find there.

1. “Mere Motherhood” by Cindy Rollins – 4.7 out of 5 stars with under 100 reviews
2. “For the Children’s Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School” by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay – 4.4 out of 5 stars with over 300 ratings.
3. “A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning” by Karen Andreola – 4.3 out of 5 stars with over 200 ratings.
4. “Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler’s Guide to Unshakable Peace” by Sarah Mackenzie – 4.7 out of 5 stars with over 1,000 ratings.
5. “Educating the WholeHearted Child” by Clay Clarkson and Sally Clarkson – 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 700 ratings.
6. “The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids” by Sarah Mackenzie – 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 600 ratings.
7. “Laying Down the Rails: A Charlotte Mason Habits Handbook” by Sonya Shafer – 4.2 out of 5 stars with over 100 ratings.
8. “Home Education” (6 volumes) by Charlotte Mason – 4.8 out of 5 stars with over 200 ratings.
9. “Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition” by Karen Glass – 4.4 out of 5 stars with over 100 ratings.
10. “When Children Love to Learn: A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy for Today” by Elaine Cooper – 4.3 out of 5 stars with over 100 ratings.