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The Imperfect Homeschooler |
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Cardamom Publishers P.O. Box 4 Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235 |
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Call Me Mrs. Chips
How many times have you read in a book or seen in a movie how teachers can be instrumental in inspiring young people to follow their dreams? Right off the top of my head, I’m thinking of Mr. Chips and Miss Jean Brodie and Sidney Poitier’s character Mark Thackeray in “To Sir With Love” and Richard Dreyfuss’ Mr. Holland. These characters are teachers who see talent in their students and encourage them to pursue their dreams. Being a homeschooling parent means it’s up to me to encourage my children in their dreams. There is no Mr. Chips here. It’s just me and their dad, and while he may encourage them when he can, I’m the one they work with every day. But it’s not easy being my kids’ Mr. Chips. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve done such a good job so far at encouraging my kids in their dreams. It’s not that I don’t want to be encouraging, because I do. But there are so many things that get in the way. We parents tend to be very practical, and practical is not a word that goes well with dreams. For example, one of our children might dream of becoming an artist. Nothing wrong with that, but the parent part of our brains immediately starts sending off warning messages: it’s hard to make a living at art, you’ll starve, get a good day job and paint on the weekends instead! And if we let that come out of our mouths, well, we’ve failed at being Mr. Chips. Sometimes it’s not so much the logical section of our parent brain that reacts as the emotional part, which can be kind of selfish. For example, my daughter keeps threatening to move back to Chicago, where she lived for four years until recently moving to Wisconsin. Today she called to let me know she made it down there ok (she’s gone to spend the weekend with friends). There was such joy in her voice. She’s so happy to be there |
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because she loves that city. But whenever she talks about moving back, do I encourage her? No, I don’t want her to go back. I’d miss her too much, and I’m happy she’s no longer living there. My heart doesn’t skip a beat every time I hear about a young woman attacked or murdered there. Selfish? Yes. Encouraging? Not even a little bit. It’s quite a responsibility knowing that you have to be the supportive Mr. Chips to your children because you’re their teacher as well as their parent. But if you put yourself in your child’s place, you know they really need the encouragement, just as you yourself did in your youth, or may need even now that you’re an adult. I’ve learned quite recently that even adults appreciate a little encouragement. Since the industry in which my husband had his business largely moved to China, he could no longer earn enough money in his field to support us. So we moved to a small Wisconsin town where the cost of living is much more reasonable than it was in the Chicago suburbs, and he’s starting a new business. Our parents’ reactions to this big change in our lives have ranged from silence to disapproval. They come from a world where you worked at a job for decades and came out with a pension. They don’t understand today’s economy, and the fact that many people now lose their jobs to offshoring and have to start new careers in their 40s or 50s. On the other hand, extended family and friends have been very supportive of us, and their reactions remind me how good it feels to be encouraged. That, in turn, makes me resolve to be more encouraging towards my children when they bring up future plans or goals. So I’m trying to be Mr. Chips more often than the practical parent now. After all, if we homeschool parents don’t encourage our kids, who will?
© 2008 Cardamom Publishers/Barbara Frank
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