I homeschooled my boys for a portion of their childhoods. While there are many reasons one might choose to do this, I allowed my children to learn at home for the freedom it provided. I believe children need alone time, wide open spaces, access to the stuff of life and living to play and create, and long stretches of quiet, enriching absence of input from others.
I believe the spirits of children are still beaming brightly with God’s long after they arrive. There is no hurry to push them into a line, funnel them into a category, make them produce before a bell rings or a grade falls. There is something more amazing and grand in a child than just a budding adult, charging forward into career and competition. There is the soul God made them to be now and forevermore. I wanted my children to become acquainted with that soul and hold onto it first and foremost. The world could wait.
The Bible tells me I must be like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. Children are nurtured by their parents. They are to respect their parents and live according to their authority. Parents provide good things for their children to freely and joyfully receive. To live as a child is to behold God’s great love, guidance, creation and provision. It is discovering and acknowledging one’s smallness next to God’s greatness. It is resting knowing He will always be my Father and I will always be His child.
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:2-3
Meeting God at the Park 