At some point along the road, most home educators will find themselves teaching at least one older child whilst managing a baby, a toddler, or even both! This has been the norm in our home educating lives to date. My youngest set of twins are now four, and for the first time in about twelve years I no longer have a little one to manage. Life looks different.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have a twelve-year old and two ten-year olds about to enter a very different stage of life. As I shore up wisdom for the new ground we are about to break, I can also reflect on the past years of home educating and distil some principles that might just help people who find themselves home educating with littlies in tow.
Principal 1: God knits our Families Together
‘…in your book were written, everyone of the them, the days that were formed for me…’ (Psalm 139:16)
There are a range of views amongst Christians as to how much we should plan or not plan the timing of our family and its size. The point is that no matter how much thought we might put into these matters, life rarely pans out exactly as we are expecting. With two sets of twins, we can testify to that! Babies arrive early or late, in ones, twos or larger numbers. Families wind up with all boys, all girls or a compilation of the two. Whatever the arrangement of our family, we can rest in the certain knowledge that the one who knits babies together in their mother’s womb, also knits our families together.
If we know that God has called to home educate, we also know that he will supply all our needs (Phil 4:19), which includes growing in wisdom as we negotiate teaching whilst managing multiple ages.
Principal 2: The Success or Failure of a Day Mostly Depends on the Mother’s Reaction
‘It is better to live in a corner of a housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.’ (Proverbs 21:9)
I hope I am not being too provocative in taking this verse and applying it to bad tempered mothers who are managing their children!
Little babies cry and make a fuss and ditto toddlers. They have no sense of timing and are excellent at picking bad moments to make their needs known. My experience is that children in the five to ten age bracket generally handle these situations well. They do not always notice nor indeed comment on the disruptive toddler and will probably attempt plough on with work regardless. The person who becomes stressed tends to be the mummy!
As home educating mothers, we must learn to expect disruptions. They are part of life! When we are teaching an older child and a little one spills a drink, makes a demand or is simply making a fuss we have a choice: to respond in frustration and anger (which ruins the day for everybody in the house including ourselves because we will feel bad afterwards) or to continue talking calmly to our older child while we manage our little one. The aim of the day is to make a habit of picking option two!
Principal 3: Our Children Need to Know They are Loved
‘We love because he first loved us…he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.’ (1 John 4:19-20)
We cannot ignore our little ones for the sake of the education of our older children. Wisdom is needed to work out ways of showing love to our little ones while we teach. Little babies and toddlers obviously need lots of hugs and cuddles, which (with a bit of juggling!) are easy to administer whilst teaching. I find that by the ages of three or four, children are keen to join in whatever their older siblings are doing. I try to accommodate this in my lessons. For example, my little guys LOVE memory work, so I make sure they are present when we learn poetry or anything that needs repetition. They are also delighted to listen in on lessons where I read aloud. I simply make sure they have a colouring book or some hama beads to hand.
I also try to mentally assign different parts of the day or week to different children and at this point in time my little ones get the beginning and the end of the day for my special one-to-one attention. It is not a perfect system, but it is what I can manage. Somehow spending the first part of the morning together ‘fills their cup’ so that they do not need me as much once I concentrate on the older ones.
Principal 4: All Our Children Need Training.
‘Train up a child in the way he should go…’ (Proverbs 22:6)
This verse goes for babies and toddlers as well as twelve-year-olds. Just because we are teaching an older child does not mean that the younger ones should be allowed to continually cause chaos. Sometimes fussing toddlers need to be removed from a situation for a few minutes whilst I finish what I am doing with the older child. They can sit on the stairs or in their bed to wait for me. The earth does not revolve around them, and they cannot always have my attention when they might want it.
For the sake of the whole household, I do think that babies and toddlers need regular naptimes and this may well be the point when older children can concentrate on studies, or perhaps play lego without worrying about potential destruction by an inquisitive toddler.
And Finally
The art of home educating whilst managing little ones is an inexact one. It calls for grace and patience on the part of the mother. Nevertheless, I am thankful for those years of juggling babies and toddlers whilst teaching my older children. I guess that when we pray God will make us more like him, he sets up situations in our lives to try, test and refine us. Perhaps we had something a little more glamourous in mind. The truth of the matter is that little exposes our own sinful hearts to the tender work of the Lord like a Maths lesson taught to the tune of a baby crying and rounded off with a two-year old spilling black currant on the floor!
