I am a driven perfectionist, always wanting to be the best, always wanting to get more done faster. I first realized I had these tendencies when I was fifteen, volunteering in labor and delivery at our local hospital. The nurse stood watching me collating a table full of take-home packet papers, pushing myself harder and harder to get it done ever more smoothly, in less and less time, and said dryly, “You’re a perfectionist, aren’t you?” I smiled. It fit. And stuck. It worked well. It got me through community college, and into Stanford, through classes that left me crying in my dorm room because they were so hard (syntax, semantics, and that second year Hebrew class where the only other student had been born in Israel), through graduation, my wedding, the births of beautiful children, and the start of homeschooling. And that’s when the trouble started.
Perfectionism is one thing when you’re geekily driving yourself to write the perfect research paper or diagram a sentence using “head driven phrase structure grammar.” It’s quite another when you extend it over your whole family and start driving your children all so Mommy can write a lot in her homeschool records for the day. I got so bogged down in cracking the whip, seeing to it that we had a formidable list of things that we do, that I let things slip in the realm of what we are. I was grumpy and joyless as we plowed through work sheets amid many tears from my children who had to listen to a constant stream of, “It’s already eleven o’clock! We’re supposed to be starting lunch, and you haven’t finished your math!”
But who am I trying to impress? Some imaginary person who may ask to see my homeschool records at some nebulous point down the road? The neighbors? “Yup, we finished all our school work by 1:00, and now our kids are playing wholesome, educational games.” My homeschooling friends? “Oh, your kids are a grade ahead in math? Well, mine are, too.” What about my children? What is their memory of growing up going to be? Mom was never happy, never satisfied, always pushing? Wouldn’t I rather be a little less impressive and a lot more joyful? Wouldn’t I rather have the kids grow up thinking that learning is fun and that Mommy loved teaching them and learning with them and just being with them?
After all, completing lots of worksheets isn’t what prepares children for life anyway. It’s far more important to encourage their curiosity and excitement because curiosity and excitement are what lead to genuine drive. Drive for its own sake is just bondage that frustrated, squelched children will want to throw off later.
Ironically, I knew this back in the day when I was the student in my mother’s homeschool. (Funny, how smart our parents look as we get older…) My mother was an extremely relaxed homeschooler. “I can learn anything I want,” I would tell people proudly. And I did. I studied French and Shakespeare, American Anabaptist movements. I was curious. I was having fun. And that’s the spirit that carried me through the hard stuff later. How did I go from reading every book in our public library on the Amish to fussing over whether my kids were moving at an acceptable rate through their history workbooks?
I think the answer is pretty simple. Perfectionism. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to have the perfect homeschool. I was driving myself, and I pulled my kids along for the ride, not remembering that this is their education to prepare them for their lives. The drive has to be theirs, too; it has to come from their hearts, their curiosity, their excitement. And that means that my primary, fundamental, most important job is to share joy.
I’m the poster child for the life I want to pass on to my kids. Do I want them to be excited about learning, full of questions, ready to try things, to work hard and dig for answers? Then that’s what I need to be. They’ll never be interested in learning if learning is the thing that makes Mommy grumpy and frantic and unhappy with them.
So, I’m making joy my top educational goal. If I’ve been a happy and excited homeschooling Mommy, if we’ve explored the world and been curious together, then I’ve succeeded, no matter how many items I get to write down in my records for the day.
This article reminds me of some of the writings of Debi Pearl and her daughters (from No Greater Joy Ministries).
And I can totally see myself becoming the perfection-driven home-school grumpy mommy if I’m not careful…..
Eek, “head driven phrase structure grammar.” I’m having flashbacks to my advanced grammar class where I argued with grad students and my cognitive linguistics class where I was constantly confused. Both taught by the same teacher, it might be noted. Alabama’s linguistics department is sadly lacking in faculty, but what they lacked in quantity they made up for in quality. And difficulty.
And now I’m missing school, haha…. I just need to start reading the textbooks I was supposed to read in the first place but didn’t have time to peruse as I wanted while I was actually taking the classes….
Interesting how perfectionist tendencies work themselves out in mothering.. You remind me of my daughter. I would have never characterized myself as perfectionist–I’m more global, which make me want to give the details to someone else. God has a way of working out the kinks of our character–some of us (you) need more challenges to get there! I was always too tired to be a demanding homeschool mother.
I love this post. I am just starting this year with my five yr old and I get a little stressed because my state is strict. I exaughst myself searching for things to both interested my daughter and meet the requirements. I think that she’s ahead but I don’t really know. Do you use a curriculum for homeschool? How do you know if the child is where they need to be?
Trish
As a fellow perfectionist in the early stages of homeschooling, I appreciate this reminder. Thanks!
PS My daily checklist includes “Play” with children so that I can learn to relax and have fun with them, and still get the sense of accomplishment when I check it off.
Trish,
Yes we do use textbooks. I buy them from different publishers for different subjects depending on what I think my children need.
The question of how we know where our children should be is an extremely complicated one. First, the learning curve that takes children from infancy to adulthood is not necessarily linear. And second, it is almost certainly not the same shape for all children everywhere. Children are different. They learn different things at different rates, and public schools (and indeed all schools that do no allow for an individualized approach) cram children into a one size fits all mold. If your state has requirements, then by all means meet those, but beyond that, I would encourage you to do some educational research and develop your own philosophy of education. The beauty of homeschooling is that we can do what is best for our children without being bogged down by the enormous school machine, so spend some time educating yourself on what “best for your daughter” really means. And take heart, it’s pretty hard to ruin a kindergartner. Have fun with her and enjoy the year (that’s good advice for both of us
).
That is a real struggle for us, my wife especially. In trying to homeschool our eight kids, it is easy to fall into a joyless drudgery of homeschool, making homeschooling little different than regular schooling. We have tried to not get caught up in grade levels, achievement scores, testing and everything else the world tells us is a measure of a “good education”.
Wow. Thanks for writing this post! I, too, am a perfectionist. Like you said, it worked well for me…until homeschooling. My first thought when I read this was, “Did someone tell her about me?” I’ve actually said the statement about finishing math before lunch! Thank you for the reminder to focus on the joy of learning and the importance of leaving our children with positive memories of mommy. Perfectionism is like an addiction in many ways. I pray that I will overcome this with the strenghth of the Lord.
Ouch! That described my journey so well (except I’m a first generation homeschool mom).
Good post.
Yes! Perfectionism can totally hang us up and keep us from doing normal things with our kids because we’re caught up on “is it the perfect thing” or not? If we can relax more, we can realize the normal things, done with joy, are what makes our experiences (and our kids’) perfect.
(Found you through LAF, by the way). Good blog!
I completely agree with you! Schools push stuff into our children’s heads, but it’s up for homeschooling mothers to share joy and curiosity and the love of learning.