The Dog Went To The Park. (Or, How To Give Your Kid The Best You Have)

A simple sentence.  The dog went to the park.  Simplicity at its finest.  The hesitant hand that penned this sentence is that of my four-year-old stepson, Tiegen.

Tiegen is homeschooled by my wife, Krystal.  Along with Tiegen, Krystal "babysits" two other young children.  I placed the word babysits in quotation marks because I take issue with it.  Each morning, a local mother drops off her three-year-old and seven-month-old daughters at our home under the care of my wife.  So, on the basis of that alone, yes, she babysits.

Krystal, however, would never be satisfied with simply sitting home and making sure the kids don't get into the laundry detergent, or making sure they don't crack each other on the heads with plastic hammers.  That's not enough for her.  You see, my wife is a teacher.  It's not just what she does, it's who she is.  If you place her in a room with children for more than a second or two, those children are going to learn from her.  And she teaches in unique and fun ways--ways that resonate with the children.

When Krystal and I were first dating, I paid a visit to the preschool/daycare center in which she worked.  It wasn't the first time I'd been inside a center, as my mother ran several of them when I was younger.  However, being a bit older and... shall we say... less patient, I realized what a special type of personality it takes to operate in that type of environment.  I've often said if I were a daycare teacher, parents might arrive at the end of the day to find a neat little row of Hefty bags with name tags.  Obviously, I'm not cut out for that kind of work!

Krystal is.

Kids adore Krystal.  She is firm, but fun.  She challenges their imaginations and their sense of ingenuity.  She teaches them problem-solving skills.  She comes up with outstanding lesson plans and craft projects for them to do.

When we got married, we decided that Krystal should stay home with Tiegen and teach him.  We crunched the numbers and realized that if we brought Tiegen home from daycare and she took in two to three other children, she would actually be financially better off than she was while working as an underpaid and under-appreciated daycare teacher.  Add to that the benefits of being able to teach Tiegen with much more personal attention than he would receive in a daycare, and we decided it was the best way to go.

Tiegen's always been a sharp kid.  He shocks us with his memory.  For example, one day we were driving down the road and he said to me, "Daddy, do you remember when we went to the zoo, and I played in the water?"  I scoured my brain, searching my memory banks.  He continued, "Remember how there were these little holes and water would shoot out in my face?  Remember how I laughed and laughed?"  I was stunned.  That event occurred on his first birthday!  He was remembering something that had happened three years earlier, while he was still toddling around in a diaper!

However, Tiegen is learning at extremely accelerated rates.  I believe that is, in large part, because of the approach Krystal takes to his education.  In the former daycare setting, he was one of many kids whose activities were loosely monitored by bored and underpaid ladies who seemed like they would've preferred to be elsewhere.  He came home repeating words and phrases he'd learned from other kids and teachers that we found to be inappropriate.  He learned to push and shove, and that when reason fails, volume is the best way to get what he wanted.

Since he's been at home with Krystal, any adults who deal with him remark about how unbelievably polite and intelligent he is.  He is learning the values we hold dear in our family.

Not only that, there's a story behind the sentence you see in the photo at the top of this post.  One evening while waiting for me to arrive home from work, Krystal was in the kitchen cooking.  Tiegen said from the dining room, "Mommy, how do you spell went?"  Krystal responded as we always do, "Sound it out, buddy.  How do you think you'd spell went?"  A moment later, Tiegen excitedly bounded into the kitchen to show his mommy the sentence he had just written.  This four-year-old boy, whom Krystal assumed was playing with his toys in the living room, had sat down with his beloved dry-erase board and--unprompted and uncoached--had written a perfect sentence.  All at an age when many kids are speaking in baby-talk and struggling to learn letter sounds.  I attribute this wonderful success to Tiegen's intelligence and to Krystal's skills and passion as a teacher/mother.

I am writing this today because it's on my mind.  There is a vast and growing debate in our country about homeschooling.  Some say that homeschooled children suffer socially.  One man, while singing the praises of the public school system, told Krystal that children need to be pushed down by other kids in order to learn their place in the world.  He said sometimes advanced kids need to simply "dumb down" and be normal.  

Really?  Is that the kind of innovation that made this country great?  Is that the way to give our kids the tools necessary for success?  "Look, kid... I know you already know this stuff and it's really easy, but your classmates aren't at your level.  Therefore, you'll just have to sit through it until the rest of the kids catch up to you."  Sorry, Jack.  It doesn't work.  I've been there.  The high school from which I graduated had that same outlook.  It was torturous, and it certainly did not help me excel.  

Others say homeschooling isn't for everyone.  On this point I agree.  For example, the man of whom I just spoke wrote with the use of only one type of punctuation: the comma.  He seemed diametrically opposed to capitalization and grammatical rules.  This man has apparently settled for a life of semi-literate bliss.  He should not be teaching, as he is unqualified.  Krystal, on the other hand, is exceptionally articulate, reads the dictionary for entertainment, and is a thinker.  She makes an excellent teacher.

Homeschooling isn't for everyone.  However, standardized test scores among homeschooled children are quite impressive, routinely surpassing that of public school students by as much as 30 to 40 points.  Plugged-in parents can easily put their kids in social environments.  Tiegen is involved in Rainbows at church, has his daily playmates, and gets lots of playtime at the park...where he has shown a knack for being exceptionally caring and compassionate to the kids around him.

I find it fascinating that, as a nation, we spend more than $10,000 a year per student in public schools while the average homeschool family spends between $600 and $1000.  Yet, homeschoolers tend to score 30 to 40 points higher than public school students on the same tests.  Perhaps the socialized approach to education doesn't work, after all.  

I actually didn't write this entry to push the idea of homeschooling.  I wrote it to say how proud I am of my wife for the hard work she puts into raising a smart, happy, well-adjusted boy.  I recognize a special gift in her, and in him.  We have made this decision for our household.  It is not without its difficulties, but it is well worth the investment.

Thank you, Krystal, for being a great mom, a skilled teacher, and a wonderful wife.  I love you.

Oh, and by the way, here is a list of people you might recognize.  Each one of these people was homeschooled.  Enjoy.

·  President John Adams

·  President John Quincy Adams

·  President Grover Cleveland

·  President James Garfield

·  President William Henry Harrison

·  President Andrew Jackson

·  President Thomas Jefferson

·  President Abraham Lincoln

·  President James Madison

·  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

·  President Theodore Roosevelt

·  President John Tyler

·  President  George Washington

·  President Woodrow Wilson 

·  Pierre du Pont

·  Benjamin Franklin

·  Alexander Hamilton

·  Patrick Henry

·  William Penn

·  Daniel Webster

·  Alexander the Great  - Greek Ruler

·  John Barry - Senior Navy Officer

·  Stonewall Jackson - Civil War General

·  John Paul Jones - Father of the American Navy

·  Robert E. Lee - Civil War General

·  Douglas MacArthur - U.S. General

·  George Patton - U.S. General

·  Matthew Perry - naval officer who opened up trade with Japan

·  John Pershing - U.S. General

·  David Dixon Porter - Civil War Admiral

·  Albert Einstein

·  Michael Faraday - electrochemist

·  Oliver Heaviside - physicist and electromagnetism researcher

·  T.H. Huxley

·  Blaise Pascal

·  Booker T. Washington

·  Erik Demaine - Popular Science Mag: One of the Most Brilliant Scientists in America 

·  Alexander Graham Bell - invented the telephone

·  John Moses Browning - firearms inventor and designer

·  Peter Cooper - invented skyscraper, built first U.S. commercial locomotive

·  Thomas Edison - invented the stock ticker, mimeograph, phonograph, and perfected the electric light bulb

·  Benjamin Franklin - invented the lightning rod

·  Elias Howe - invented sewing machine

·  William Lear - airplane creator

·  Cyrus McCormick - invented grain reaper

·  Guglielmo Marconi - developed radio

·  Eli Whitney - invented the cotton gin

·  Sir Frank Whittle - invented turbo jet engine

·  Orville and Wilbur Wright - built the first successful airplane

·  Hans Christian Anderson

·  Margaret Atwood

·  Pearl S. Buck

·  William F. Buckley, Jr.

·  Willa Cather

·  Agatha Christie

·  Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

·  Charles Dickens

·  Robert Frost - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

·  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

·  Alex Haley

·  Brett Harte

·  C.S. Lewis

·  Amy Lowell

·  Gabriela Mistral

·  Sean O'Casey

·  Christopher Paolini - author of #1 NY Times bestseller, Eragon

·  Isabel Paterson

·  Beatrix Potter - author of the beloved Peter Rabbit Tales

·  Carl Sandburg

·  George Bernard Shaw

·  Mattie J. T. Stepanek - 11-year-old author of Heartsongs

·  Mercy Warren

·  Phillis Wheatley

·  Walt Whitman

·  Laura Ingalls Wilder