How To Have a H.E.A.R.T. For Your Kids by Rachael Carman: Introduction

I have had the pleasure of hearing Rachael tell her "how we came to homeschool" experience in person--on several occasions and now enjoyed reading it in the Introduction to H.E.A.R.T.

Each time I've heard their story, I'm utterly amazed at how God put the pieces in place for them--how His plan was so perfect. They moved to a neighborhood filled with homeschooling families, repeatedly the public school in which their son was enrolled made dangerous errors, and right at the moment when Davis and Rachael had to make a critical decision--when their public school option had seriously failed their family--He put it in Davis' heart to see that the teacher they were praying for was Rachael.

For me that was the most moving part of their story and of all of our stories--that moment when God reveals His plan.

Have you ever stood dumbfounded in the middle of a parking lot, in the middle of your driveway, in the middle of your kitchen when God's plan for something was revealed to

you or He delivers His plan in an envelope, a text message, a phone message, a conversation?

Have you been there with your decision to homeschool? Have you looked back to see the path God laid for you that led to that "Aha! We are going to homeschool" moment?

I don't remember the first time we decided we would homeschool. It seems like it was something my husband and I always knew we'd do.

But. we did have our "Ah-Ha! He is showing us AGAIN why we need to homeschool" moment." It was the moment when God showed us that it definitely was His path for us.

It was in 1998, when homeschooling wasn't in its pioneering days, but more of its "Industrial Revolution" days--we had many new learning products to choose from (unlike the homeschooling pioneers), you'd see more children and moms in the grocery store at 11 a.m., and more and more people were accepting it, but there was still some resistance to all the change. We felt that resistance from some family.

But, God was good and gave us a moment when He strengthened our conviction and belief in His plan for our homeschooling.

As part of our plan to "ease the family" into our homeschooling, we placed our son in a church kindergarten program. We were going to spend that year giving the family a little more time to digest the fact that our son would not enter public school, but would be homeschooled.

It sure was easy to drop him off there. I could continue to work full-time in my well-paying job. I could continue to travel and earn those rewards points--we wanted to go back to Europe on those points! Yeah, this non-homeschooling lifestyle was pretty comfy.

I'd go in once a week and help out in the classroom (a strong indicator that I was a homeschool mom at heart--always volunteering to be in the classroom, help with field trips, bake the goodies for a class party, etc.) I was always there on phonics day--these started in March as a prep for first grade.

Phonics time lasted about 5 minutes. The children sat at a table. The teacher held up a stuffed frog and the children repeated, "F is for frog and it says 'fuh' 'fuh' 'fuh' Frog." They repeated this 5 times, then colored a picture of a frog.

The next week, the same thing, the frog came out, they did their chant, and colored a page. Except the second week my son didn't want to sit still and figured since he was already reading, he'd rather play with a truck. So, he wandered off, bored with phonics time.

Unfortunately, the third week, he did this again. The teacher called a conference with me. She told me he was being disruptive in class. I told her he as bored to tears.

To which she replied, "I can't do anything for him. If I teach these children anymore than this, the first grade teachers will be mad at me because they won't have anything to teach them. They have their lessons set."

To which I replied, "Thank you." and left.

That was all I needed to hear--I knew in my heart I couldn't let my son stay in a system that was trained to teach to the least common denominator or didn't try to help customize an education for children who needed something other than "the standard plan".

God opened my heart that day to what my son needed, just as he opened Rachael's heart.

My next step was getting to know my son--just as the woman on the phone advised Rachael. It took me 3 years to do it--when he was in third grade, after years of trying to get him to conform to my idea of recreating the classroom at home, I finally asked my son, "What do you want to learn about?"

His reply, "I want to build a robot." I went right out, invested $150 in a Lego Mindstorms kit. We started one of the FIRST Lego League teams in North Carolina, we stayed heavily involved in FIRST Robotics for the next 8 years. He became involved at the high school level, accomplished some neat things that impressed a university and a major engineering company enough to give him a hefty scholarship and a job while he attends college.

I look back on this all and praise God for bring this all before us--for somehow helping us follow this path. Some days I felt like I was stumbling along the path, but God is faithful.

On page 23 Rachael writes, "Get to know my kids? What did she mean? I knew my kids, didn't I?" That takes guts to ask yourself that--we spend hours and hours with them, do we really know them? Do we have a HEART for them?

Have you opened your HEART to what your children need? To what your marriage needs?

If you haven't read this book yet, I urge you to get a copy and, if time permits, join this discussion group.