Paul Vaughn on raising sons...

I just listened to this via the link provided. It was very encouraging. I love Paul Vaughn's stuff that he writes in Homeschooling Today. I get old copies from the library, but have been thinking lately that it's worth it to subscribe just for his articles alone (there's also lots of other great stuff in this magazine). Also, I would like to financially support them. It's actually only $15 a year if you subscribe to the online and $22 for the paper version. Thanks for pointing this out Marylee. Moody often has really helpful short segments of this nature.

Homeschooling moms especially need to listen to this broadcast. I was convicted by the part when he talked about the importance of boys being able to wake at a certain time and get chores done by certain deadlines, etc. ON THEIR OWN. Last year we struggled through homeschooling with our then 10 year old son. I couldn't figure it out. Things were going so well with our 12 year old daughter. My son and I would fight all the time and I was frustrated and threatening weakly to "send him to public school". It was pretty bad.

Two things happened to wake me up a bit. First we went to a new church and we were talked to for the first time about typical trouble homeschoolers can run into. You know, about how so many homeschool moms really control the family from the background and how sons when they get to be about that age need some input other than their "mommies". I stepped back and realized that I was still treating him like his 8 year old brother. He had to sit at the kitchen table with the younger children and do math at math time and science at science time, etc. I realized that I was being controling. The second thing that happened is that my husband and I decided to send him to stay with his Christian uncle who lives 3 hours away and work doing foundation repair for one week over the summer. He loved it! My uncle and aunt told us that he was great. He got up on his own at 5:30 am every morning and read his Bible (something he rarely did at home) and dressed for work and was at the breakfast table with his bed made by 6:15am. We were shocked. It hadn't seemed possible. So, we sat down with him and my husband explained to him that he still needed to respect his mother and do what he was told, but that we would assign him school work at the beginning of the week and he would be responsable for getting it done by Friday or their would be consequences. The same with his chores and his Bible reading. It really has made a lot of difference. We still argue sometimes, but for the most part I can calmly ask him to do a certain chore now rather than wait and he will do it without argument. I can check up on his school work and he is proud to show me what he is learning. He wakes up pretty much on time by himself so that he can read his Bible. I am very thankful for the godly pastors we have for telling us things that we need to hear. I just hadn't realized how I was treating my son. No man wants to be hen-pecked. Not our husbands and not our sons. For fathers it is important to instruct sons and mothers can help by not being stumbling blocks to our boys who are rapidly turning into men.