Learning To Let Go
Here’s why learning to let go has been on my mind of late:
Several months ago, my son and I made a thousand-mile drive together, from California to Idaho. I spent close to a week there, attending introductory college classes with other parents in the morning, and hitting stores of all kinds in the afternoon with my son—getting his place set up as he started college.
Three years before that, my daughter and I flew to Florida, over two thousand miles away, where I spent a few days with her adorning her dorm (and mentally preparing myself for the moment I would be heading back to California … without her).
If you’re a mother who has said goodbye to your kids as they’ve moved away for college or work or marriage (especially if they’ve decided on a college or workplace a thousand miles or more from home!), you know what I mean when I say those were some of the hardest moments of motherhood.
This is where learning to let go, little by little, is needful—to prepare both you and them for the inevitable switch to “adulting” that they will one day face.
As a young mother, I heard it from older parents, grandparents, and older members of church. You have heard it too, I’m sure: “Treasure these days when they’re young. They grow up so fast.”
The thing is, I always heard it in passing, while chasing down a child who’s running when he should be walking or trying to break up a tiff between siblings or apologizing that I have to leave early because toddler is overdue for a nap. It never really registered because those days didn’t feel like they were going by so fast.
When your kids are young, it’s quite the opposite. The days feel like they’re going to last forever, right?
You have the perpetual grind of getting the kids up in the morning and dressed and fed, getting the laundry done, doing the shopping, figuring out what to cook for meals, and making sure your kids have clothes that fit them (when they seem to be growing an inch per month). You have to schedule doctor’s appointments and dentist’s appointments and get your kids to and from those appointments. It’s go-go-go from the start of the day to the end.
If you’re a homeschooling mom, those tasks multiply exponentially. You are concerned with your child’s education and making sure they that you’ve chosen the right curriculum (or curricula) and that your kids are learning what they need to and not falling behind.
It’s hard to keep your head above water much less look ahead to the days when your kids will no longer need you as much … or even further, when they will move away from home. But every day that we’re going through that daily grind, if we’re wise, we’re also learning to let go.
What does it mean, learning to let go? What does it look like? Many things, naturally, but here are a few things that learning to let go looks like for me.
Understanding the Uniqueness of Each Child
Naturally, letting go little by little will look different for each family, and for each child in that family. Kids progress at different rates; they mature in different ways and at different stages from every other child. What comes easily to one young person might be a huge challenge for another, and so, part of learning to let go is actually understanding what that means for your child.
For some kids, it might be a huge step to have a sleepover at another home. (For some parents, it might be an even bigger step, right? I’m talking to you, helicopter moms. And yes, it takes one to know one, ha!) You’ll have the kids who want to bring their favorite pillow, blanket, and cuddle toy … while other kids might jump at the chance for an entire week away at camp and not even flinch at the prospect of days apart from their parents.
As your kids get older, you might have a teenager researching a college two thousand miles away and heading off to said college at the ripe old age of 16 (as was my experience with my daughter). On the other hand, you might have a young person who has no interest in heading off that soon or going anywhere near that far.
Each child, each young person, is unique—and not just in their learning styles. It’s our task as parents—especially mothers—to know our children deeply so that we understand and can empathize with their unique concerns, preferences, and even their anxieties and fears.
But it’s vital to realize that empathizing does not mean we won’t push them out of their comfort zone when we know that little shove is what they need. All of this takes time and attention, focus and discernment. It takes prayer. It takes a lot of love. This is all part of learning to let go.
Knowing the Difference between Protection and Preparation
I get it. As moms, we want to protect our kids from anything that might hurt them and we’d love to do this for as long as we possibly can, but constant sheltering isn’t always what’s best for our kids.
What they need is not to be sheltered from everything forever but to be prepared so that they know how to deal with all the things they will be facing as adults one day. Learning to let go means working toward that eventuality on a daily basis.
It means knowing that you will one day hug that no-longer-a-child goodbye and watch them head off to the security checkpoint at an airport on their way to college or a mission trip or a new job in a city you’ve never even seen. It means you keep that day—as distant as it might seem right now—in your mind knowing that what you do to prepare them for that day will only make them stronger.
I made plenty of mistakes in this area, such as when my daughter was young and the books I allowed her to read were fewer than would ever satisfy her voracious literary appetite. I was worried about the content or attitudes that she might encounter in some books, so I thought it would be “easier” or “safer” to keep those “off limits” altogether.
Eventually, I learned this approach was not serving my daughter or me very well; I had discussions with friends who were well-read and who not only gave me great suggestions for good books my daughter would enjoy, but who also helped widen my perspective on the kind of books that are “okay” to allow … with discussion and engagement … rather than to avoid completely for fear of a child getting a wrong opinion about something.
In our case, it was books. For you, it might be movies or video games or friendships. These are all areas that we parents tend to be concerned about because of the inherent dangers in the wrong kinds of books, the wrong kind of media, the wrong kind of friendships.
Yes, we should be concerned and discerning … but the answer is not to shut down everything forever.
Learning to let go means we are regularly preparing them to grow into intelligent and well-rounded young people who know of the dangers in the world but who have wisdom and discernment because they have had plenty of practice while under your roof.
Discerning When to Engage and When to Let It Pass
Learning to let go also means deciding to major on the majors. This involves letting some things pass rather than making a mountain out of every molehill in your child’s behavior, scholastics, and growth.
In a small church group discussion recently, a friend of mine spoke up about the approach she and her husband are taking with their preteen son as far as what issues to address and what things to let slide. She said they try to differentiate between “blunders of the mind” and mistakes versus actions that are sinful. When their son slips up in the former category (mistake or blunder) they treat it as such. This gives them the freedom to focus on the far fewer instances that fall into the category of willful sin and approach correction from a biblical perspective. I was impressed at this wise approach to parenting.
I’ve sadly also seen the opposite in play, with mothers who are very well-intentioned but who major on the minors and end up discouraging or pushing away their children. As parents, it’s our privilege and our responsibility to encourage our children and inspire them toward their God-given purpose.
Learning to Let Go
Letting go of our kids isn’t easy—at any stage of life. We pour so much time and love and hope into our children, and we want so much to see them succeed that it’s hard to find ourselves suddenly at that place where we aren’t as huge an influence on their lives, where we worry about whether that no-longer-a-little-boy is eating enough or that now-grown-girl is getting enough sleep.
We want all the good things for them and worry that the “big, bad world” might hurt them in some way. All this, too, is part of learning to let go.
It is learning to trust a very big and very good God, knowing that He is not only a Father to us but a Father to our children as well—and He is more loving and wise and discerning than we’ll ever be. What is more, He has promised to be with them always. He can be there when we can’t.
If there is any one thing we can do for our children to prepare them, it is to encourage their discipleship and nourish their personal relationship with the Lord—who loves those kids and who knows the plan and purpose He has for each one of them.
I have to take this advice when it comes to the schooling of my youngest. I tend to dig my heels in and insist she gets things done – no matter what and then lie in bed and realise that I caused a totally miserable day for both of us.
Homeschooling affords us the time for so much joy and adventure and exploration – taking it outside away from desks and workbooks ….
Clearly,I need a new mantra.
Great post, I should print it out! xxx
Thank you Nicole. I hate those nights when you realize maybe you could have done it differently, made it a little brighter. I am trying very hard to work in the direction of letting go so that I have less nights like that. The more I release, the more the kids personalities settle out too!
Great idea–particularly with younger students! Wow–you ARE ambitious. Me, not so much. Basically what I do is chart out the whole year–for each subject area–using Excell as my planning sheet. I divvy up each subject (divide book pages/chapters by number of weeks in our year, 30), then also build in extra weeks here and there (I call these “carrot weeks”–like the carrot held in front of the donkey motivating the donkey to take one more step ahead…with the carrot continually a bit ahead of the donkey’s reach!). The “carrot weeks” are FREE TIME weeks if–if–if the child(ren) are caught up on assignments for the previous weeks.
It used to drive me crazy that my well-laid plans usually by the end of the first week were already “off” because we took an UNplanned field trip to the park or the hills or a day in town. With the Carrot Weeks built in, my plans/their assignments could STILL be done “on time.”
There were subjects that didn’t get set aside during Carrot Weeks: Bible time, timed math/basic facts practice, spelling and handwriting–we just kept going with those…but all the “reading, writing, ‘rithmetic,” science and history were set aside IF they had the assignments up-to-date. The reason I “kept” spelling & handwriting throughout the Carrot Weeks is because I was using materials that were based on a 36-week school-year, and we needed to keep going in order to finish “on time.” The math I kept because I didn’t want my children to back-slide. So, Carrot Weeks usually ended up with just MORNINGS for Bible, math facts, spelling and penmanship. Afternoons were completely FREE if and only if they were all caught up in the other areas.
Most of the time, it only took them a day or two of pushing themselves to get their late/tardy assignments caught up or corrected. We lived in the country (rural farmland) and they had loads of FUN things they’d rather be doing than sitting inside and “working.” When we first started the “Carrot Weeks” I had to do a lot of prompting until they figured out, “oh hey, she means business.”
ALSO this way the children didn’t see Mom so much as the meaner, but the schedule (despite the fact that I was the one who’d plugged all the chapters and page numbers into the Excell chart for the specific weeks!!). Typical conversation:
Child #1: Mom, can I go outside and play?
Mom: Well, are you all caught up with your work?
Child: Um, no, I still have last week’s history and my science drawings to finish.
Mom: Just remember if you’re not caught up when we have our Carrot Week next week….you won’t get to have any free-time til those assignments are done…..
Child: Okay, well, is it okay if I do half of the history and THEN go play for awhile and I’ll come back in and do the rest?
Mom: It’s your choice. But if it’s not done by next week, you know what happens….no free time til it IS done.
Child: Okay
Later….
Child: Guess what, Mom!
Mom: What?
Child: I finished almost all my history, because I want to have all my free time next week!
Mom: Great! When are you going to finish ALL of your history? And what about science?
Child: I’m going to do it right now or maybe tomorrow. So if I get it done in time for next week, I was thinking that I could take the dog and hike on the neighbor’s hills behind our house. Could I do that?
Mom: That sounds like a plan! What kind of hike?
Child: I want to pack a lunch and my sketchbook. Would Dad let me use his binoculars?
etc….
This really happened!
My plan took a LOT of time in the summer to lay out–particularly the first year as I worked out the wrinkles and set up a worksheet on Excell. And because I’m a complete and utter control freak! But once I had the stuff plugged in….wooohh! It was great!!!
Deb, I like your “carrot weeks”. What a great idea! I had already decided I was going to plan out 30 weeks instead of 36 for this coming year. Not because we won’t do 36 weeks, but because some “weeks” only have 2 days where we can really get things done, so I figured when those times come, we can turn 1 week of planning into 2 actual weeks of time.
Thank you for reminding me to
a. Be more organized with my yearly goals
and
b. That it is o.k. to let go even toward the end of the year.
Renee, for me organization is key. Having the year laid out made it so that I knew I would be finishing most of the material during those 36 weeks. Before I would stress so much about breaks, or hiccups in our schedule because we “needed to stay on track”, only I didn’t really know what on track was until I laid it all out. Now I can clearly see what things we “skip”, when we can add, when we need to push, etc.
But this year taught me most about learning to let go of things that are not working! As homeschoolers we have the flexiblitly to change things if they don’t work, and we should use it to our advantage!
Heidi,
Good for you! I have never been as organized as you, although I did allow Sonlight to do the organization for us for a while. I even failed at that. Those big, beautifully organized notebooks made my head spin. I realized that we became more focused on “doing school” than learning. I found that too much structure made me feel like my kids were at the public school down the street.
I have been blogging for several months about trying to simplify our lives. How I homeschool now is much different than how it was when I began. I wrote a post called “The Best Homeschool Year” and several other posts about how we’ve changed how we do things.
I love your comments about dumping a program that doesn’t work for you. I do the same thing. I’ve posted on that, too!
As for science, you might want to check out SuperchargedScience. It’s interactive and full of fun experiments. It’s an online course, so there is a fee – we pay $37/month. But it’s worth it. My kids love science now and can tell anyone about atoms, black holes, Newton’s Laws of Motion…
Sounds like we’re on the same page. It’s the right way to do things for our family.
Love,
Laura
Laura, It is truly amazing to me what a journey homeschooling is. You can think you have everything worked out, and then BAM! Something changes. Thank you for the heads up about SuperchargedScience. We actually just did a free online science thing with them about roller coasters and the kids loved it (even if mom was a little tired of stepping on all the marbles from it)!
Heidi,
We did the same webinar on roller coasters! How funny. I’m still finding marbles all over the house. Our roller coaster ran from the bedroom upstairs into the livingroom on the main floor. That was NOT her best webinar, though. In fact, I think we only watched the first 20 minutes or so. I don’t know if I would have signed up for her program if we had not been introduced to it after a webinar on Astronomy. It was amazing. Nothing to do but listen to an hour of fascinating information about our universe. That’s where we learned what a black hole is and so much more. She took very difficult information and brought it down to our level (my kids are 11 and 12 – I’m 47!)
So true, that homeschooling is a journey. What an adventure, huh?
Hi Heidi, Thanks for sharing this post on NOBH! I love this tip and believe that many homeschoolers will be relieved to read that you need a plan B for those tricky times. Every blessing!
Thank you Kelly. I believe in being real and honest about myself and where I am at. I think that we can often get a skewed picture of what we think we should be, or be doing based on others, who may not really show you the “other side” of themselves. We are human, and trial and error is essential. Learning to let go is just one hurdle I am learning to leap!
Silly but that is one of my biggest problems. Thanks for the great advice – I have to learn to let it go. When my first was a baby I wanted to do Glen Doman’s Teach Your Baby to Read program. I diligently cut out the posterboard and wrote words in red marker just like they said. But I never started – because I did not have the 100 cards to start with. So ridiculous – I never saw any fruits from my labors because I could not just let go and start anyway. Instead I have kicked myself for years for wasting so much time and money on a program I never started.
How liberating to hear of another homeschool family that can just let go of a curriculum that is not working. Why do we continue to torture ourselves? I too lost sight of the joy of learning!
Got to this article by way of reading your blog on Homeschool Tracker. This story was just perfect for me to read. I’m pretty good at the letting go part, maybe to good. My issue becomes getting those great moments outdoors logged. How have you managed those random art, outdoor exploration, etc. moments into your record keeping?