Igniting Your Kids’ Passions
Parents begin homeschooling for a wide variety of reasons. Some of us (hello!) began homeschooling completely unexpectedly because it was what our kid needed, even if it wasn’t what we had pictured for our family at all! Some of us chose homeschooling for relationship building or because of the educational flexibility and opportunities it provides.
But at some point along the way, you are going to question your choices. You are going to wonder if your kids are missing out because they are homeschooled. What if there are gaps in their education? What if there things they don’t do that their traditionally-schooled peers get to do?
Will Your High School Graduate Have Gaps?
Spoiler alerts: all kids miss things. Every educational pathway (even the most rigorous public education or prestigious private school) doesn’t teach their student everything the need to know before they graduate from twelfth grade. It isn’t a factor of the particular model of education. It’s just a fact of life. Everyone leaves formal education with gaps.
So our job as homeschool parents isn’t to make sure we leave no gaps (not possible!) or even to try and make sure our kids don’t have different gaps than the ones that kids coming out of a traditional school have. Comparing your kids to other kids has never been the best way to make sure you give your kids the education is that is the best possible fit for them.
The Most Effective Way to Develop Children’s Interests
So, what does an excellent education look like? How do you know if homeschooling is actually a good thing for your kid, providing them with what they need to succeed in life?
The secret is igniting their own passions. It isn’t about teaching them things – facts, ideas, data. It’s about teaching them how to learn. And, even more importantly, that learning is something we can and should do for the rest of our lives! It’s about discovering your child’s interests and supporting them in their pursuit of those true passions.
Learning isn’t about mastering a specific list of skills or memorizing a specific set of details. Learning is about equipping and guiding our kids to discover their own unique learning styles, favorite methods of information gathering and – most importantly – the gifts and passions that really ignite their interest and motivate them to develop a love of learning!
The Raising Lifelong Learners Podcast Episode #197 – Igniting Your Kids’ Passions
You can tell from the title of my site that I’m all about lifelong learning. But today we dive deeper into that topic. How exactly do you develop your kids as lifelong learners? How to you figure out what their unique abilities and true passion are (especially when it seems like it might just be video games!)? And what does it look like to support and even stoke the flames of those interests and pursuits? I’m sharing some of my best tips for doing just that and hopefully helping you to reframe your entire perspective on what a successful homeschool looks like!
Links And Resources From Today’s Show:
- SPONSOR: CTC Math
- The Learner’s Lab
- Raising Lifelong Learners with Colleen Kessler
- 10 Benefits of Raising Kids to be Lifelong Learners
- Lifelong Learning
- RLL 01 Colleen Kessler: What Does it Mean to be a Lifelong Learner?
- Interest Led Homeschooling: Helping Your Child Find Their Interests
- RLL 02 Caitlin Curley: Diving Down Rabbit Holes and Following Kids’ Interests
- Interest-Led Learning In The Early Years: Preschool and Beyond
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