RAR #246: Sally Clarkson’s Advice to Her Younger Self

Sarah Mackenzie (00:05): Hello, hello. Welcome to the Read Aloud Revival. This is the show that helps your family fall in love with books and fall in love with homeschooling. I'm your host, Sarah Mackenzie. I'm the author of Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler's Guide to Unshakable Peace, The Read Aloud Family, and several award-winning picture books for kids. (00:25): Now, chances are if you're a homeschooling mom, you are familiar with the name Sally Clarkson. She is one of the most beloved names by homeschooling moms all over the world. And it is no wonder why. She homeschooled her own four kids all the way to adulthood, and she's been writing for and encouraging moms for decades. She's also one of the most requested guests around here. Now, today I have a treat for you. A few years back, I invited Sally Clarkson to RAR Premium, my online program for homeschooling moms who want a relaxed, bookish homeschool that they love. So I invited her to RAR Premium to talk with us about advice that she wishes she could give her younger self. If she was able to rewind the clock and whisper some sage advice into her own ear decades earlier when she was in the throes with young kids, homeschooling and all the rest, and boy did she deliver. (01:26): She actually talks about the advice she would give herself, or she wishes she could have given herself at different stages of parenting, the early years when her kids were really young, the middle years as they were growing, elementary school and up through the teen years. Today, I'm sharing that conversation here on the podcast. I know you're going to enjoy it. So listen in to hear what Sally believes is the most important piece of the homeschooling puzzle, what to do when your child is struggling, and how to be a student of your child and more. (02:00): I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sally Clarkson. Sally Clarkson (02:04): One of the things I just wanted to start out with tonight is to say that the most important component in my mind for the fruitfulness or productivity of your home education is you, because home education is a marathon and you're going to be taxed daily, every moment of every day on a regular basis. And so I think that for a mom, it's so important for her to be growing, to be reading, to have friends who stimulate her, friends who are accountable to her, to have whatever it is that your personality needs. It is very important because your children are going to be drawing from you on a regular basis, and you need to make a plan every year to try to be resilient until you die, until you see the Lord face to face, until you see heaven. And I think that a lot of moms start out with ideals, and it's important that you end with ideals, that you stay the course because I absolutely love home education. (03:18): I love who my children are. They are my best friends. By God's grace, they turned out to be, they're fun, they're interesting, they're excited about life. They are doing strategic things. I lived in Oxford this year for many reasons. It's a long story, but I would be with them because several of them were studying there, and I would take notes because I couldn't wait to learn what they were reading, what they're thinking. And I want you to know that it really matters. You are my heroes. You are establishing a legacy that people don't even know to have. So take care that you keep putting yourself, I love that you're in the membership with Sarah because you're going to get encouragement and inspiration and have a place where you can meet other people. So that's the first thing I would say. I think I'm just going to jump in because we don't have 10 hours, right? Sarah Mackenzie (04:10): Absolutely. Sally Clarkson (04:11): Sarah, asked me to jump into the different stages, what I'd wished I'd known. Sarah Mackenzie (04:16): Yeah, that's what I'm always hoping we could do, is that you could think back on the different stages of raising your kids and those things that you wish you could go back and whisper into your ear when you were in that stage because that's what we want to know so much. Right, ladies? Sally Clarkson (04:29): Two or three more things I want to say. One is decide that who you are is enough. You do not need to be anyone else. You don't need to compare yourself. You need to be unique, you are unique. And you're going to be good at some things and you're going to not even enjoy some things. And who you are is exactly who your children need for you to be. And I think that living by fear destroys enthusiasm and destroys life and destroys the ability to be spontaneous in your days. And I think living by guilt is a poison. We're all going to blow it. And I mean, we are in the process of growing and maturing too. I was talking to my son, Joel, tonight. He helped me put up all the sound and everything, and he's home for a couple of weeks. And I said, "Joel, do you know one of the things I feel the most guilty about in the world?" (05:26): And this is not going to seem like a big deal to you all maybe, but except that I'm a real feeler and I wanted to be patient with my children, especially him, because he is so nice to me. He's my helper. He helps me do a lot of things. And my husband was, we were living in California and we were working, he was working. The standard for his job was 70 to 80 hours a week. My children were all ear-infected asthmatics, and it was constant sleepless nights and everything. But someone was coming over for dinner, and so I had cleaned the house and I had gotten things ready and I even had something cooked and I had finally gotten Nathan to sleep who never sleeps. And so I put Joel and Sarah, it was a kind of a smallish house into this tub of bubbled water, bubble bath in my sink in my kitchen. (06:20): And Joel immediately stood up as a little boy would, a two-year-old boy would. And he went [inaudible 00:06:26] and then he screamed and he was throwing water all over everything. Well, I went ballistic. All he's doing is having fun. All he's doing is being a little boy. And I was like, [inaudible 00:06:40]. Anyway, I want you to know that all of us are in the process of growing. And I immediately, his little face was like, Mommy. And I thought, ugh. So I apologized to him. But there are moments that we all have that we don't want anyone else to know about because we're not perfect. I wasn't trained for this. I'd never changed a diaper. I didn't know that I was going to go without sleep for about 36 years. Not really, but you know what I mean. And just give yourself grace because this is a learning curve. (07:19): And I think that the real reality of postpartum depression, I know there's other things too, but it's that a lot of times you're by yourself. You had no idea how much control you were going to lose of your life, and these kids want you all the time, and then you're isolated and sometimes bored, and those are all normal things. And so I just want you to know that if you can nurture your heart enough with vision to have long-term perspective, to say, I don't have to be perfect, but I will grow because I care deeply about the story of leaving a legacy through my children. What is the outcome that you want to have? Because if you can keep your eye on the goal, and for me, it was I wanted my children to be emotionally healthy, spiritually strong. I wanted them to enjoy the capacity that they had to learn and create. And I wanted them to feel the affirmation of two introverts, extreme introverts, Sarah and Joel, into extreme extroverts. And they're all different. (08:29): No child is alike. They don't learn at the same pace. I think I didn't realize that I needed to step back and realize this is how God created children to be. They're created to be dependent. Don't see your children as a problem, as an interruption. Children were created by God to need us, and they're beautiful if we choose to stand back and go, this is a miracle. I was older when I had Sarah. I was almost 31. And when she came out, I was shocked. I don't know what I was expecting, but I thought, oh my goodness, this baby. And even though I went through all of the things I just mentioned earlier, the fact that I felt a stewardship for a little life, this was a little person who came from my love, helped me to make it through the stages. (09:23): So you kind of have to accept the fact that children are messy, interesting, changing, loving, demanding. I saw a little card yesterday at a shop that said, "Children, the gift that keep on taking", the gifts that keep on taking. If you don't, at some point, decide to plant your flag and say, okay, this is my story, this is normal, this is what all children have done for all generations, and there must be a reason why God makes them dependent upon me during these first stages because I can give them a sense of security, comfort, self, love, humor. I can give them something. And God trusted me to give that to them. (10:11): I just kept thinking, when I had three children under five, I kept thinking if I just had the right Daytimer or planner, I could make this all be tame. And that's when I began to learn, no, this is your best life. And now, of course, I look back on those years as all people do, not all people, but most people. And those were really, do you remember when you first started driving and you couldn't think about the gas pedal and the brake and steering the wheel and stopping for the guy in front of you. It was just, you could never imagine doing it. But then now you do it without thinking about it. And I think that having lots of kids and incorporating them into your home and learning how to deal with them is a process that you will grow into. (11:07): The problem is our culture doesn't train anyone for it. They don't train them to be lonely and isolated and without adults, and so it's a big learning curve. And I would say one of the most important things, too, is find people in your life that can help you build into your life, mentor you, that can help you be as successful as you can be. And don't be afraid to ask, and don't be afraid to admit that you have a need for help. (11:35): So going into the first years, the first years, of course, we've all seen this who are older homeschoolers, it just tickles me to death when these moms of four and five-year-olds say, I don't understand why my kids don't like homeschooling. We only homeschool 10 hours a day and I've got the Latin book out. I'm being very facetious. But what children really need in the first years is they need to play. They need shape sorters, and they need to sit and read the same book over and over and over because those brain pathways become deeper with vocabulary and understanding. And they need you to be verbal and touch them a lot, kiss them a lot. They need music. They need to be able to explore outdoors. (12:24): When our kids were three years old, that's when they started emptying the knives, forks, and spoons, because that's a perfect shape sorter. We did a lot with water and bubbles and chalk and play dough. And I visited all the secondhand stores. I lived in Vienna, and we got Ravensburger puzzles and we would put each puzzle in a giant Ziploc bag. And so we'd only take one puzzle at a time because puzzles are good for your children's brains. One puzzle out at a time, and they have different stages. And then you put that one back in before you get the other one out so that you don't lose pieces, in theory. (13:02): Think of your home as a place of a resource. Think of how many different things you can put in their rhythms of their days that they will learn to be a part of your life, learn eventually to do chores, but also that your home can be one of the most interesting places they can be. And we regularly went to Goodwill and I would give the kids several dollars and they could come home with, we had a stack of dress-up clothes and plastic swords, and I made each of them a cape. I'm not a seamstress. So if you go to the material store and get just a long piece of material and then you just hand stitch at the top, just turn your material over once and then you put a ribbon through there. So for my girls, it became princess dresses. It became coronation things for my boys. It became Superman capes. (14:04): They wrapped it as a hat for a turban when they were playing Middle Eastern soldiers. Just have some things that go right back in there every day that they can play with and that they can pretend with. And play is one of the most important facets of little children. Pretend actually creates in them a sense of self and a sense of intellectual power because they have to imagine and they have to think a story out and they have to pretend. And so let your children play a lot. Sarah Mackenzie (14:37): I love that you're saying that too, Sally, because the opening story in your daughter Sarah's book, caught up in a story I think is of her and Nathan maybe playing a story that you had read or something, but they were acting it out. I don't remember what story it was, but I think she was wearing a cape or he was or something. I can see it because your daughter's even talked about it. Sally Clarkson (14:58): And it was easier then, but we didn't do television very much ever. I used it for ear infections. I don't know what I would've done without Winnie the Pooh. You have to think of giving your children appetites for things that actually will increase their interest, their vocabulary, their imagination. You'll feel guilty for it, but try not to use machines to entertain them because something I read years ago, now there's much more research that there were three components in most geniuses, and one was they were surrounded by books. Thank you very much, Sarah McKenzie. The second thing was they were in the company of many adults. In other words, they had relationships with adults. And the third thing was they had a lot of time in their life to be bored, like to go out- Sarah Mackenzie (15:56): [inaudible 00:15:57] homeschooling to me. Sally Clarkson (15:57): I know. And so let it work for you and trust it. And if your children are bothering you, say, well, would you like to scrub the floors or would you like to go out and play? You guys, I'm being facetious a lot, but you just have to be able to say, no. No, not now, not today. Sarah Mackenzie (16:17): Well, that's interesting. I think Daniel Willingham in his book, Raising Kids Who Read, I think it was him, he was talking about how it's actually more uncomfortable for us when our kids are bored and they're coming to us. So we want to say, give them the phone or give them the screen because it alleviates our discomfort. So it's all about us getting over the fact that we're going to feel uncomfortable telling our kids, no, sorry, you're going to be have to be bored. And just being fine with it. I thought it was interesting. Sally Clarkson (16:44): It wears us down. Sarah Mackenzie (16:46): Yeah, it wears us down. Yeah. (16:49): Christelle asked, what age do you suggest starting formal, "formal" homeschooling? Sally Clarkson (16:56): I think that I started really formally teaching most of my kids, it was different a little bit with everyone. Sarah, from the time she was little, has had a vocabulary of about a million words. I did these little reading things. I put a chart up on the wall and I had a hundred windows in a hotel or whatever that they had to read a hundred books before they could do this reading that we had. And a hundred books meant that they would, even if it was a picture book, that they would eyeball 20 pages of a book, and that's what most picture books are. And Sarah started doing 50 and 100 pages at a time. And so I had to make it harder for her. She was going to finish in several weeks, whereas some of my kids are really slow. (17:40): So if you are finding that your younger child just can't seem to get through it, if they're normally pretty obedient or pretty easygoing or whatever, and they're fidgeting all the time, then you're pushing too hard. And all research has shown that children who read early are not necessarily ahead of children who read later. The most important thing is that you are talking to them, reading to them, playing with them, engaging with them. And so again, don't live by fear. And I think that with your first child, you're so excited to start early, but don't create such an environment that your children end up not liking being with you when you're trying to cultivate education. And I would say, too, maybe some of you don't know this about us, but we hardly used any curriculum, and that's what our book, Educating the Wholehearted Child was about. (18:43): We kind of teach people how to get, like Sarah, the best books, the best artists, musicians, historical stories, literature, lots of different real things. And then we only used curriculum in general. When they were older, we would use some, but and we'd use some along the way, but we mainly used curriculum for one math a year, and we did five to 10 minutes of very simple language arts. Because I had been an English major in college and I'm a writer, and I really felt like an overemphasis on grammar for eight years in a row is really a waste of time because children who are read to and talked to and learn to write because you're cultivating that and you staple a bunch of papers together and you say, well, I want each of you to write a book and illustrate it and we're going to get together tomorrow and read your book. Some children are ready earlier and 25% of all children are inclined to sitting still. 75% of all children are not inclined to learn best by sitting still. (19:52): So you might have that first child who will just sit still and listen and all. And Sarah was a reader and she was very verbal. I started reading books to her when she was in the womb, practically, [inaudible 00:20:07]. But then the other kids took a little bit more time to read. But you start introducing, I would say, I don't know, Sarah, what do you think? I just really feel like to do what I call formal education, because people are so excited, they buy this expensive curriculums, and I did it too. Sarah Mackenzie (20:28): My six kids, I feel like some of them were ready at six and some of them were ready at eight or nine. So I feel like it's- Sally Clarkson (20:33): Yeah, exactly. Sarah Mackenzie (20:34): ... your own child. But I will say, I remember being really excited and I think there is something to that enthusiasm. If your oldest is five or six or seven and you want to do some school that sounds fun to you because they're going to feed off that enthusiasm. I think it's just exactly like you said, that there's that line between getting stressed because you're behind, realizing you're not behind, you didn't have to do any of this. You can't be behind with a seven-year-old. So that can take off the pressure without saying you can't do school with the younger kids. If you're excited about it and they're excited about it... And I think you're right, if they're fidgeting, that's what I've noticed with my own kids too. If they're fidgeting a lot, if they're crying over reading lessons, then it's too early. A lot of that you can't figure out until you just try it a little bit and then go, well, that didn't work. Sally Clarkson (21:20): For women who are taught that, that's a disobedience, they're being rebellious. I'm very grace-based and also high training. We required our kids to be polite and to learn to honor people and to do chores and all that. I think it's so important for you to understand, too, that your children are made to learn. And that's why the average four-year-old asks a hundred questions a day. "Mommy, why is this? What is that? Did you see that? I don't understand. Why are puppy dogs this way and cats are this way?" And so there's a lot of learning going on. If you make your house a wonderful resource and if you are intentional as a mentor to answer questions and to say, "What do you think of that, or what would you done with story? Who's your favorite people?" You're developing their appetites and their ability to think and ask questions all the time. It's not that you're not teaching them, it's that you don't require them to sit still and do this physical hand-eye coordination. (22:18): But my son, Joel, is very bright, but he was eight-years-old. And I would say, "Honey, if you don't..." I thought if I threaten him, maybe he'll be able to do it. So we were going through this language arts, this really simple language arts thing, and he just did not have a hand-eye coordination. I'd never heard of that and didn't know it. And at eight-years-old, I would say, "When all the kids go out to play on our break, you're just going to have to stay inside until you can do this work." And he said, "Well, I guess that's okay, mama, because I can't do the work." And so I realized that I started doing it orally with him, and he just loved it. He could answer every question. He was sharp as can be, but his little hand-eye, he could not draw letters. (23:09): And again, giving every child a chance to be who they are, because Joel is the guy that whenever he'd take standardized tests, we lived in several states where we had standardized tests. He would score at 99.5 percentile every time. But he was my absent-minded professor, and he was very introverted and creative. His hand-eye didn't develop for a while, but he was taking it all in. So don't judge your children by comparing them to the timelines of other people. Sarah Mackenzie (23:49): Sally, something that you just said there that just, first of all, you said you were expecting him to have hand-eye coordination. You didn't know that that was a thing that you- Sally Clarkson (23:57): I didn't know. Sarah Mackenzie (24:00): And then you watched your child and realized like, wait a second, that's not working for him. So you responded to that. I find as a mother, I am constantly feeling, as a homeschooling mom, I feel like I need to know all the things about how my children learn and how they're all going to learn differently because I'm so worried about making a mistake. But what I just heard you say is, well, I didn't know that, but it didn't break him. It was just a learning opportunity, so we shifted. But the key to why it worked is because you watched your child. And I think so often that's where we get... We are constantly looking in books or manuals because we want to be told... We want to be, I think, validated as homeschooling moms. If my child does this thing at this benchmark or performs this way, I will know that I'm doing a good enough job. Sally Clarkson (24:40): Oh, don't do that. Don't do that. It will kill you. Again, you have to put the school out of your mind, the formal schools that you had in your mind. Because I think that when I look at my kids, and I'm very grateful, they've all written books, they've all created music, they've all done public speaking. It was a part of who they became, but I had to take a step of faith. I had to take risks to educate them in the way that I did so that they actually were able to grow into their capacity. If I had been measuring them by age-graded curriculum, I'm quite sure they would not be as creative today. I never gave my children grades. I hate to tell you that, but I never did. Sarah Mackenzie (25:29): Keep telling us more. Sally Clarkson (25:32): Because I felt like if you learn what I'm teaching you, and I would go through the math, and if... For instance, you have to understand that most math curriculums are developed for school sort of kids. So let's imagine that in California they stop at less than 72, and I'm making this up. In Saxon Math or whatever math. It's all math. Or in Kansas, they stop at lesson 96. So what happened is there was this development of math that the first 40 to 50 lessons are review from last year. So what I realized is that sometimes it was just so tedious for my children to go through 40 lessons of things they already knew. So I would go every year to lesson about 35 or 40, and I would say, if you can do all these problems except for four, I would just make up an arbitrary number, if you can get them, well then, we will skip forward. And oftentimes I would be able to skip to lesson 50 to begin with because it's all repetition, because they write it to be sure that nobody is left out because you never know what child this is. (26:41): Again, you have to step out of the box and assume that your children are intelligent because they were made in the image of the one who created snowflakes and DNA and all the animals in the world. Take them to the zoo and that's when you explain what a mammal is and a reptile is. Let's look at this little book and you take them to the nature center and you say, "I want you to collect five different leaves, and well see classifying means that each leaf has a different shape. And let's look in this little Osborne book or let's look at this little book I got at the library. If you really are interested in your children loving learning, then you're going to learn from other people, copy wise women, but also, it's going to be an adventure. (27:28): And if you aren't willing to take a risk and say, I'm going to do it differently because the school system is not doing so well, and I did this because I believed I wanted my children to have a different way of life, than live that way. And if you need some curriculum during the year, get your curriculum. If you can do it without it or if you can get suggestions from other people, do that. But whatever you do, just be consistent and affirm your children. Love them. That's also the foundation of mentoring is unconditional love, saying, I believe in who you're becoming and speak forward into their lives and enjoy them and laugh at their silly four-year-old jokes. Children will thrive the more affirmation and love and encouragement you give them. Don't listen to adversarial parenting, judgmental guilt-producing- Sarah Mackenzie (28:27): I have noticed that every time I'm reading either a parenting book or a homeschooling book or a blog or a Facebook post or anything online, and I come away feeling like I don't think I'm good enough, it's almost always because I'm operating out of that fear or judgment or that adversarial thing where it's like me against my child instead of reminding me that that's exactly the opposite of how God created a family. It's me against my child. Sally Clarkson (28:54): That's the thing. We need to have a few friends in our pocket that are doing it at the same time. I remember I used to go to these mom's nights out when I was younger, and I still love to go things like that, but I would think, oh, too tired to go to this tonight and what a day we've had and look at my house is a wreck. And I would go to this meeting and these moms would say, "You think your day was hard?" And then they would tell their story and they would say, my kids are driving me crazy fussing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I always went back feeling better, oddly. I would think, well, I guess my kids aren't as bad after all. But it was just the fellowship of being in the same process. (29:36): It's kind of like imagine that you're in the Olympic training and people say, your brain is too, me too. Can you believe the coach made us do this? It's just when you're in anything, Army, school, lessons, whatever, classical piano, there is a learning curve and it's messy. I heard that Michelangelo, when he was painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome, that at the end of every day, he would come down and he would've chalk and paint and junk and plaster all over himself, and one day one of the servants mistook him for a beggar and kicked him out of the church. And so making a masterpiece does not always look beautiful. There's always residue. There's always evidence of all of the tangling, but it really matters. It really, really, really, really matters what you're doing. Sarah Mackenzie (30:37): What I'm noticing too is what you're talking about kind of controlling what's going on in our head realize, because you thought, oh, my day was so hard and I don't want to go to a meeting with other women where everybody else is rocking it and I can't get my act together. This is funny. I've never been to this, I don't think, but I used to, for a lot of years, we'd be in church on Sunday and I'd have all my little children there and everything, and I would look around and I would wonder, I'd look at the other women and go, so I wonder how they got their house cleaned and dinner in the crock pot, and here, because I would know what the state of my house was just for us to get to church. And I can't even tell you, the one day I'm in church and it occurs to me like, oh, what if their houses are as messy as mine? (31:23): This seems super obvious to me now, but at the time, that's how I was constantly... We don't even notice the voices in our head that we were constantly comparing ourselves against some fictional woman that doesn't even exist, right? Sally Clarkson (31:35): Yeah. Some women are just, their moms trained them to do housekeeping, and they walk through a house and it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Tame, oh house, you. And then some of us never were trained to do anything in our lives. And the thing I will say is, your capacity grows. Sometimes I don't feel like people live into their capacity. Like, get stronger, do better, try harder, because you'll feel better if you keep going. I will never be the person who says [inaudible 00:32:07] like my husband does. He is the most organized person in the whole wide world. I will never be him. But the more kids I had, the more stresses I had, the more things that happened in my life, I got stronger. And I would say, don't focus on depression. Everybody gets depressed and we have dark times and we have sinful family, and we have broken children, and we have broken people, and that is a part of living in this fallen world. (32:41): But what if God trusted you to live during this time in such a way that people would believe in light and in goodness and beauty because you chose to dance and you chose to light a candle instead of accepting the darkness? I have been through many depressed seasons where I thought I was going to lose it. I didn't know what I was going to lose. Have you ever felt like that? You don't know exactly what you're going to lose when you're pressed to your limit, but you know you're going to lose it? Sarah Mackenzie (33:07): Yeah. Sally Clarkson (33:08): But then I would go to sleep, I sleep a little bit longer and I would still be alive the next day. And as I look over in my life, I see that God was strengthening my muscle, giving me compassion for people because of my failures. Your story becomes your platform for encouraging other people. And if you give up on your story too early, you won't get to see the fruit. You won't get to see the masterpiece. I think the golden years are the elementary school years, like I would say from five to 10 or 11 or 12, depending on your children because they want to marry you when they grow up. They love you. They still hold your hand when you're walking places. They're sucking in all of this knowledge. And so I would always spend every morning, first, we'd have a devotion. (34:12): I tried to avoid too much formal God-talk. I did teach them concepts, but I feel like what my children needed to know was they needed to feel the love of Christ by me touching them, scratching their back and saying, "Isn't it amazing that God made us with the capacity to enjoy back rubs? He's such a kind God. And isn't it amazing that God painted the sunset so beautifully? Let's go paint a sunset." And I would say, "What a creative God who made fajitas and dark chocolate." What I wanted to do was I wanted them to understand that God was more than a theological thought to be known. But what I mean by God-talk is understand that vocabulary needs to have a meaning. And pictorial vocabulary in the spiritual realms is much more important for them. Paint a picture of God's love. (35:08): Can you imagine that on the night when he was going to die, that Jesus was probably already knowing it's going to be so hard, and all these loud, noisy, funny men came in and they came into the room and he had already prepared this great smelling lamb, but all of their feet were dirty, stinky feet were dirty, and they came in and Jesus took off his beautiful outer robe and he knelt and he touched them, first, because we all love touch. And then he washed 120 dirty man toes. Can you imagine God doing that? So when you're talking to them, it's because God is real and He is your father and He is with you. And so I don't know if that makes sense, but don't always be in a very serious and dull. Sarah Mackenzie (36:03): I just had to write down 120 dirty man toes because the next time I'm frustrated at how dirty my house is or my kids are, this isn't 120 dirty man toes. Sally Clarkson (36:15): I know. And the streets were filled with animals and animal junk, and it was sandy and Romans and horses and it was real. And God becomes real to us when we enter into the dimension of His story. So anyway, every day would start out with a devotional. I did a lot of memory work during those years. The kids have capacity to memorize poems and scripture and just all sorts of things. And so we did a lot of memory work. And then immediately, because if I didn't do it immediately, I would fall asleep in the afternoon. Immediately, we went to our reading because the time when I had the most adrenaline, I just had a night of sleep, and you'll have to read my book and listen to my tapes on homeschooling to find out how we did it. (37:07): And again, Sarah has an idea too, but we made reading the most important thing, reading stories about heroes and history and artists and musicians. And we would listen to music and paint at the same time. And we made reading something that we did every day, and we did it at night and we did it in the car, and we did it in all these other places. And so when people said, "What writing course did you give to your children, because they're all amazing writers and they've all been published?" And I think, "Well, we read to them." "Oh, no, no, no. I mean, what thousand dollar curriculum did you use?" "Well, we read to them. And then I know what we did, we talked to him at the life-giving table every night. We engaged and we actually used whole sentences." "No, no, no. How did you do it?" (37:55): So really, you all simplify your life. Read and then read again, and then read again, and then talk, and then discuss and ask them questions and let any answer come. Don't correct them for wrong answers. Say, "Well, that's interesting. Have you ever thought about this?" But give them the opportunity to engage their mental muscle in deep and profound articles, thoughts. We brought lots of interesting things to the table at night. So during those years, think of it as an input time. You are developing appetites. You're giving them lots of things to think about, lots of things to do, lots of things to create. We let our kids would give them money and go to the garden store, and each of them would have their own plot of land, I'm talking little plot. They decorated things. (38:49): We had lots of people in our home, they had to wash the dishes, prepare the meals. They had to learn how to cook. They had to learn how to do their own wash. And it was a slow process because that is not my strength. And somehow now, much to my surprise, they can all pay their bills. And really, I didn't know if anything was taking. They can pay their bills and wash their own clothes, and they're fairly sound adults, and I wasn't perfect in that area. Sarah Mackenzie (39:21): You just don't even know. You just threw out something that we have to... You just said, I didn't know if anything was taking. And ladies, isn't that how we feel? I don't even know if anything is going to stick, especially things that we're not really consistent or on the ball about or that we're not using a curriculum for. Sally Clarkson (39:36): Yeah. Sarah Mackenzie (39:37): Yeah. So that's good. That's so good. Sally Clarkson (39:41): So anyway, those are the golden years. And then, all of a sudden, one day your little child between nine and 13, you'll say, "Would you empty the dishwasher?" And they go, "Why does everybody in this house have to use dishes?" You think, wow, what just happened to my child who was always sweet before? And then you enter hormones and then you enter pushback time, and then you enter, I'm smarter than you time. My kids, we taught them how to honor and everything, but what you need to know is that every child has to grow up and every child gets hormones. Have you ever been irrational with hormones? Sarah Mackenzie (40:23): Never. Sally Clarkson (40:25): And so your children are too. And so they need you to be the adult and to understand this stage and to be very patient. And the thing that I want to say to you, again, don't give your children a legacy of guilt. If you really want your children to tell you every secret, and you want them to when they're teenagers, and it's a very hard secular world. And so you need to enter into that phase and go, okay, I loved them, so they trust me. They come to me because they learned that I am safe and that I'm not going to make fun of them, and I'm going to listen to everything they say even when I'm tired. That's when you're acting like, oh, this is very interesting. That's when you act in loving ways towards your children, even if you're thinking something else or feeling something else. Because what nobody is thinking about when their children are young and in homeschool is that a secular world is coming for their faith, their souls, their emotions, their morality, and it's all going to happen when they go out into the world. (41:29): And so if you don't keep in mind that your goal is to reach their heart, to give them a vision, to teach them the love of God, to say, you have a purpose in God's mega story. You know how the Lord of the Rings, all the guys were a part of defeating evil, that's who you are. And it's so important that once you go from the elementary, you put in all these resources, then you are really spending those junior high, senior high years, the most important thing is putting messages into their little minds, their big minds about I believe that you'll be strong in your generation. I'm believing forward in your life that you'll be a light, that you'll be able to go through all the difficulties because look at all the people we just read about. (42:23): Don't worry about your SATs and ACTs. If you're really laying good foundations, great. You can't lay a good foundation as easily when they're 14, 15, and 16 if you haven't been doing that their whole life. And if you have, they'll be just fine. But what you really need to remember is that laying a spiritual formation is the most important task you can do. And giving them a purpose. Because when kids have a sense of self and feel like they're called to invest their lives in purpose, they're going to be much more likely to hold fast to their morals and to their ideals. Sarah Mackenzie (43:00): That's the stuff that's harder because you can't check that off a list. So it's the stuff that's easy for us to overlook those conversations or speaking life into our teenagers because that's not something that we can put on our lesson plan and check off at the end of the day. So it's easy to let that go, but that's the most important stuff. That's what I'm hearing you say, I think. Sally Clarkson (43:21): Yes, exactly, and you need to pay attention to it. And can I just tell you that all women get tired. I remember I was 59 by the time Joy, I had Joy when I was 42 and I was 59 by the time she finally graduated, and then she went to college early because she got a scholarship early. We graduated, and this is a whole nother subject, we graduated all of our kids the moment they turned 16. Sarah Mackenzie (43:46): Oh yeah, tell me about that. Sally Clarkson (43:48): It's a long story, but we wanted the kids last couple of years here to be actually practicing something that they might want to become. Sarah Mackenzie (43:58): Okay. Sally Clarkson (43:59): We said to Sarah, you're a natural writer, what do you want to do? This is a professional sort of thing when you're 16. And so she said, "I have a story in my mind." And so we hired an editor because we didn't want people to accuse us, that we had somehow plagiarized her story. She had to write it, learn about publishing. She had to report it. She had to figure out... We met with real publishers. Joel wanted to design an album. Nathan wanted to go to school. He wanted to go to high school. He said, "I need to be a light to the high school and influence all these kids." So we made him come up with a plan. It's a whole nother thing, but that's what he did for a senior project. He had already graduated. And Joy actually went to College Pathways when she was 15, and she started college a couple years early because she got a scholarship. (44:50): Somebody said they would pay for her for school. And I said, "That just became God's will. That's the school you're going to." So it's different with every child. But even by the time Joy, my fourth child, was 13, I could tell she was through with me. And that doesn't mean that she was through with me training her virtues and discipling her and helping her to mature, but she was already interested in education and she was reading things and creating things and doing things. I could tell that we had accomplished our goal, which was to give our children a love for learning and the skills to be able to work hard. And I could tell that's how she was. (45:31): We actually had a lot of people who said, when we sent her away to college early, oh, she's going to lose her faith and I can't believe you're doing that, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we knew that he who is faithful in small things... When our children are faithful and we see them be strong, we have to trust them to go and to be right there talking with them and all. But Clay and I feel like a lot of people try to control their children, and when you over control your children, they will never grow in their muscle. They need you to be there right with them, talking with them, speaking to them, training them. But if you try to control them, they won't be able to spread their wings. Sarah Mackenzie (46:16): So what did you think? I hope this episode encourages you, regardless of where you're at in your own homeschooling journey. I'll include my own favorite books by Sally in the show notes for you, which are at readaloudrevival.com/246. And now, let's hear from kids about the books that their loving lately. Skyve (46:51): My name is Skyve and I am five-years-old, and my favorite book is [inaudible 00:47:02]. Lucy (47:08): Hi, I'm Lucy. I'm from Kansas. I recommend the Kaya American Girl Ball book because I like to be a Native American and I like to learn about the Nez Perce. Landon (47:29): Hi, my name is Landon. I'm seven-years-old and I live in Georgia. And the book I'm recommend is This is My Home, This is my School by Jonathan Bean. And the thing that I recommend it from it is watch out, here comes the crabby cafeteria lady. Zeke (47:51): Hi, my name is Zeke. I'm eight-years-old and I live in Ohio. I recommend a book series called The InvestiGators. It's a graphic novel book series about two gators who solve crimes named Mango and Brash. This book, it is also hilarious. I recommend it because there's a ton of crime fighting and sometimes there's even supervillains. James (48:20): Hello, my name is James. I am five-years-old and I'm from Ohio, a state in the United States. This is my high book that I recommend. It's called Too Much Tubular. It's from Brave Books and it has a map, and it's so, so, so chaotic. [inaudible 00:48:46] Bye. Aaron (48:51): Hi, my name is Aaron. I am eight-years-old. I live in Salem, Massachusetts, and my favorite book is Harry Potter because it's exciting. Mia (49:00): Hi, my name is Mia and I'm five-years-old, and I live in Salem, Massachusetts. And my favorite book is Little House series because I like dressing up like Laura Brandemere and I like playing cats cradle. Amalia Riley (49:21): Hi, my name is Amalia Riley. I'm 10-years-old and I live in Salem, Massachusetts, and we talk in Russian also. My favorite book in English is The Redwall series because they're exciting and funny and is about animals. And my favorite book in Russian is [inaudible 00:49:42] because there's about a very cute and little funny mouse. Sarah Mackenzie (49:51): Thank you, kids. If your kids would like to tell us about a book they love, head to readaloudrevival.com/message to leave a voicemail and we will air it on an upcoming episode of the show. Show notes for this episode are at readaloudrevival.com/246. I'll be back here in a couple of weeks with a new episode. But in the meantime, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.