As I was driving to work I came around the corner and saw two girls crossing the road. They were perhaps ten years old. There was no real danger because I could have stopped even if they had frozen in the middle of the road. But their response was interesting. The first girl hurried to get across the road before I got there. The second girl took her time, evidently confident that I would break rather than hitting her. No harm done, but it did get me thinking. The first girl displayed a proper sort of caution. The second girl displayed an attitude which is going to cause her problems in life. Even at ten years of age I can make a reasonable prediction as to what her personality will be like a decade from now, and what types of troubles she'll experience.

The same thing happened in my Sunday School class. I told the senior class very frankly that I knew which kids were trying to walk as close to the edge as possible, which were trying to stay as far away from the edge as possible, and which were wandering so aimlessly that they didn't even know where the edge was. I even stood up and pretended to walk along an edge. I hope my object lesson got them to think. I didn't tell them individually which category I thought they fell into, but personality traits appear at an early age.

And this is why we parents must work hard to shape our children’s personalities. Hopefully our decision to homeschool our children will yield strong academic results. But it would be sad if academics were all we achieved. None of us homeschool for one isolated reason. But in our efforts to train our children’s minds, lets not forget about training their hearts. 

In Service,
Shawn