In our milestone 200th episode, Carole Joy Seid is joined by her son, J.J. Seid. They talk about how they'd answer the question "Why homeschool?"
In this episode, you'll hear:
RESOURCES
Get our FREE ebook: 5 Essential Parts of a Great Education.
Attend one of our upcoming seminars in 2024!
CONNECT
Carole Joy Seid of Homeschool Made Simple | Website | 2024 Seminars | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest
Help us share the message of homeschool made simple with others by leaving a rating and review. Thank you for helping us get the word out!
In our milestone 200th episode, Carole Joy Seid is joined by her son, J.J. Seid. They talk about how they'd answer the question "Why homeschool?"
In this episode, you'll hear:
RESOURCES
Get our FREE ebook: 5 Essential Parts of a Great Education.
Attend one of our upcoming seminars in 2024!
CONNECT
Carole Joy Seid of Homeschool Made Simple | Website | 2024 Seminars | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest
Help us share the message of homeschool made simple with others by leaving a rating and review. Thank you for helping us get the word out!
You're listening to the Homeschool Made Simple podcast with Carol Joy Seid. I'm Rachel Winchester, and it's an exciting day at the Homeschool Made Simple podcast because today is our 200th episode. We started this podcast in the spring of 2020 and it has been fun to look at the library of episodes that have been created over the years and see all the things that we've talked about In that time. We've had over 550,000 downloads and listeners tune in from all over the globe! So it's really amazing and we thank you for being here with us and being a listener.
Rachel Winchester:As we thought about how best to celebrate this milestone in the podcast, we thought about some different episodes that we've done over the years, and one that came back as key and important is a conversation that Carole had with her son, J. J., about why to homeschool. Their conversation hits on so many of the reasons we homeschool and especially why we use the Homeschool Made Simple method of educating our children. So if you're new to the podcast, this will be a great introduction and if you are a veteran who's heard every single episode, it will be a great pep talk on remembering all of the wonderful parts of our research-based, interest-led, literature rich educational approach. Listen in.
Carole Seid:I am so honored to have my son with me and my assistant, Rachel, through an idea at me today and I said, yeah, let's go for it. So we're gonna talk about why homeschool, and I thought I'd interview someone who's been homeschooled pretty much all their life and now he's homeschooling his four children, and so I think he's well qualified to hit this topic. So welcome JJ.
J.J. Seid:Thanks so much for having me on this is fun.
Carole Seid:So let's talk about if someone you know asked you out to lunch, or a pastor you have a lot of these, you know experiences with folks wanting to pick your brain about things. So one of the men at church, young dad, took you out for lunch and said so JJ, you know, our kids are four and five and we're thinking about. You know educational options, so tell me you know about homeschooling. Why do you think it's a good idea? What would you say?
J.J. Seid:Excuse me, yeah, and and before I jump right into answering, I think the way you framed it up is helpful. You and I have talked, and you know we don't want to have this podcast bogged down into these things, but as a pastor I have to give caveats. You know, people are always looking for other forms of righteousness besides Jesus, and so it's easy in especially in the church, to think that if you send your kids to public school, you're being more missional and if you send them to private school you're doing a better job of positioning it for the future. And if you homeschool them, you're doing a better job of cataclysm them and protecting them from from things that could pollute their faith. And everybody's always getting into debates about which one is more spiritual and of course, that's just not the right way to frame it up. So this is a more helpful way to think through it.
J.J. Seid:This isn't so much an apologetic conversation, as much as I do get asked that question a lot because I was homeschooled and so people are doubly interested. One, they know that we've opted for that choice with our kids, but they also know that I'm a product of homeschooling and so there is an element of fool me once, fool me twice. You know it's like, well, if you've been homeschooled, you actually know a little bit of what you're getting into. Yeah, to decide to do that now as an adult, why would you, why would you choose to re-up? You know, so to speak, and that is interesting. I this is purely anecdotal, but it is interesting that some people that were homeschooled will say I will never homeschool my kids, and then many other people who are homeschooled are going. I can't imagine doing anything but homeschooling my kids. And I think you probably agree. It's purely anecdotal, but those answers usually tend to fall along the lines of how those people were homeschooled absolutely I, and there's no way to homeschool my kids.
Carole Seid:I'm like, tell me more about how you were homeschooled.
J.J. Seid:That's right, and and you know not to not to shamelessly sell, for you know your philosophy, but it does seem like people that broadly pursued your philosophy of homeschooling are often folks who want to re-up with their own kids it's true, and they're in the seminars, they're coming.
Carole Seid:They come up to me and they say now I understand everything my mom did. I didn't know where she got these ideas and how she knew about these books. It was because of you, and now I'm doing our kids and right.
J.J. Seid:So I think it is encouraging. I think we're seeing some second generation folks like myself where you guys, as our parents, were sort of on the bleeding edge of is this legal and are we gonna regret this later? You know, you were a former school teacher. You had your masters in education. This was sort of a brave new world for you. Now, my generation, this doesn't really feel that risky, because we're the product of it and we went off to college and got decent educations and and have now experienced our homeschooling as a great benefit.
J.J. Seid:So in the conversation shifted, but that's the first thing I have to say. People are either saying never again or I can't wait to get to do this with my kids, and it really often relates to how they were homeschooled. So I think that speaks a lot to your philosophy. I think a lot of times coming out of the gate.
J.J. Seid:If that dad is asking you those questions, I'm gonna have to address some of his fears and misconceptions. You know, first, that they're not qualified to do it and of course, the answer is they are. They are qualified to do it far more than they realize. The people underestimate the power of student to teacher ratios. People underestimate the power of presence and organic relationship when it's your mom who you love, who's also your teacher, that gives unique superpowers to that mom and it unlocks unique superpowers in that child. So people underestimate the power of that dynamic for learning, I think, and so it's kind of sad that parents are often so scared and feel overwhelmed when the truth is they're gonna do a far better job than they would assume by virtue of some unique assets they have that even a teacher of the year would necessarily have, by virtue of not being the parent of that child.
Carole Seid:They don't have the relational investment that you have.
J.J. Seid:That's right. And who has studied a particular child more than that parent? And you think about learning styles and personality and how people's energy ebbs and flows and how somebody best receives communication, or how you inspire and motivate them. And I think a lot of times parents are uniquely qualified to be that person in a child's life. So that's to speak, I think, to some of those fears and misconceptions, that to homeschool is to sort of roll the dice. You know, and you might find out later, that you were really bad at it and now you've ruined your kids and you can't undo it. I just think that's overblown. I don't think that's true. The thing that I tend to think of first whether or not I say it first is that homeschooling has this powerful potential to introduce your children to learning as something they do rather than something that's done to them.
Carole Seid:Yes.
J.J. Seid:There's something very active versus something passive, and that's not to say that anything you do in public or private schools is automatically passive. But there's something unique about homeschooling that creates an active dynamic for kids of exploration and provoking their curiosity and allowing their interests to run in directions that their curiosity is pulling them, things that, even if you're the best teacher in the world, the limits of time and space don't allow you to indulge for 30 students. But when you've just got a couple kids and they wanna slow down and look closer to flower, or they wanna go and read a second and a third and a fourth book about Abraham Lincoln because he's really piqued their interest, you have that freedom and flexibility. And I think what people underestimate is that when you build that muscle or feed that appetite of curiosity and self-directed learning, it gets stronger. And so we always wanna ask ourselves is our learning model, whether it's at home or in a more formal institutional setting, is it actually strengthening curiosity or is it diminishing it?
Carole Seid:Yes.
J.J. Seid:Because commencement if you go on to college or even postgraduate education. It's been said too many commencement speeches it's a tired illustration, but it's not meant to be the end of your education, but it's meant to be the commencement of your education. Your education is meant to now kick off. You've been given the tools and you're now supposed to spend the rest of your life being really curious about every job that you take on, every vocation you step into. And so we have to ask are our learning institutions inoculating kids against learning, or are they instilling in them a lifelong passion that can continue?
Carole Seid:to learn it. In light of that, talk to me about how homeschooling and your childhood shaped your relationship and your feelings towards books.
J.J. Seid:You know we've told the story multiple times there was a season where you sort of wisely allowed me to go explore private school, you know, out of this fear that I was missing out in this way or in that way. I won't get into the details, but you sort of non-anxiously allowed me to do that. And what was so interesting, in the contrast of transitioning into a really good school with some great teachers, some world-class teachers whose names I still remember, was the limitations I immediately encountered. Oh, what book are we reading this semester? I've already read that book three times.
Carole Seid:That happened in seven three you know and missed the master, and you would have read it any day.
J.J. Seid:That's right. And even worse, we're gonna ruin your appetite for this book because now we're gonna fill out worksheets.
J.J. Seid:That's right, and I said Asking how you felt after you read chapter three. You know, and of course any good, self-respecting readers gonna think well, that's none of your business. How I felt, you know, just leave me alone, quit ruining one of my favorite books, you know, by dissecting it. Eb White, you know, author of Charlotte's Web, also famous essayist, writing from New York and Maine. You know EB White famously said humor is like a frog if you dissect it it dies. And you know that's true for books. I think sometimes a good book can die while it's being dissected.
J.J. Seid:So I noticed that right away that some of the books I loved were being ruined. I was also being forced to read books I already read and was therefore being prevented from reading other books I hadn't. And then, because I spent so much time in textbooks which, if you want to inoculate someone against the love of reading and make them read textbooks, you know who gets in better after a long day at work and thinks, man, I can't wait to crack open a textbook. You know. So by the time I got home, not only did I have homework, not only was I coming home late because of basketball practice, but I had my nose in the kind of books that make you want to read less all day.
Carole Seid:That's right.
J.J. Seid:I noticed immediately that my reading for pleasure significantly dropped off in that setting, even though it was a great school with great teachers. So there's something about homeschooling where, again, you're not reading a lot of textbooks and you are reading for pleasure, probably a little bit more that actually invites you to read more, and the more you read, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the more curious you become.
J.J. Seid:So I remember feeling saddened by that when I was in that setting. Oh, I'm not reading for pleasure as much, even though I'm working hard, I'm learning a lot, I'm doing a lot of homework. I've got great teachers. They give great lectures. But I know that reading for pleasure is, in a sense, the gateway to learning.
Carole Seid:Yes.
J.J. Seid:And I'm doing less of that in this environment, whereas whenever I'm homeschooling I'm reading for pleasure a lot more, and I already am old enough to realize that's really the gateway into discovery and self-directed learning, because you can pick up a book and teach yourself almost anything, but you have to want to and you have to have been instilled with an appetite to do that.
Carole Seid:Yes. So let me tell you a fun story. I don't know if you remember this. So our then pastor and also your professor, dr Lyle Dorsett, and Mary were having dinner at our house one day in the dining room, and Dr Dorsett said to me that you were the best prepared student he'd ever had in all of his years of teaching. He was about 65 at the time and he was trying to praise me. And we were sitting in our dining room, which we had made into a library. You know, we had all the bookshelves built floor to ceiling in the library, I mean in the dining room and I just said well, lyle, I didn't do anything. Jj just read every book in this room, and some of them three or four times, and see, that's the simplicity of it. It seems so like, oh, come on, but it truly is why you were prepared and why you were well-educated and why you loved learning. When a lot of kids get to a school like Wheaton, where he was a professor, and they're burned out, and so you know they-.
J.J. Seid:Understandably after a lot of AP classes and-.
Carole Seid:That's right.
J.J. Seid:Lettering in three sports and doing college prep work. And you know. Yeah, by the time you get to college, you're like man, I'm exhausted. I feel like I'm about 40 years old, exactly.
Carole Seid:But you had such a love for books. As you know, we live very close to the library and when we drive by it, if we weren't stopping, you would kind of point your finger as we drove by and go. Ah, because every time we drove by you wanted to stop there, and if we were at the library you would, in the course of just driving that I don't know half a mile, you'd already have read one of the books from the library as a little boy. You know driving to our house, like you, inhaled books, and when you didn't have something to read you got very crabby because Well, and it's important.
J.J. Seid:It's probably important for us at this point to also name for people that I was a flesh and blood American boy, just like any other American boy. I spent lots of hours outside playing tackle football with my friends until we made each other cry, and playing basketball on the driveway and making bows and arrows and shooting our neighbors and all those kinds of things. If, to get really personal, if I'd been allowed to have a Nintendo like most of my friends, I wouldn't have read as many books. If we'd had all the cable channels, I wouldn't have read as many books. A lot of times I was reading out of desperation because there wasn't anything else to do.
Carole Seid:Right now and create new corner. That's right, and so that's probably the.
J.J. Seid:Yeah, I scribbled that down here. I think that's one that we could talk for an hour and forget to mention. But the older I get as a parent, I'm quicker to give that answer. So I think self-directed learning and creativity are my first answer. But I think my second answer would be boredom. I'm seeing it now with my oldest child, who's 13. I'm not by any means an expert in parenting I haven't launched any of my kids yet but I've now got a kid who's old enough that we're getting to kind of see some of the fruit of living this way, and she started her own business.
J.J. Seid:She's bought a lot of her own things with her own money and I could have never predicted that she would have come up with this business. It takes a lot of downtime and creativity and quiet for her to create the things that she creates by hand. It takes a really high level attention span that I probably wouldn't have. But what I'm struck by as I see her engaging in that is to think you know what? She's a smart girl. She's driven. She's a first born girl.
J.J. Seid:If she was in a private school setting she'd probably be doing fine. She'd have a lot of friends. She'd probably play one or two sports. She'd be involved in this or that club. She is in theater. She acts in a local Christian theater group Christian theater group. So sure, she'd probably be doing a lot of those same things at school, but her time would not be her own and she'd bring home homework. She'd be there many hours a day. It would just take longer for her to do what she's doing at home in much less time. She wouldn't have this business that involves creativity and making and selling things.
J.J. Seid:She's been allowed to stumble into that through having free time and it's like that's just a lost thing in America and publications like the Atlantic, the New Yorker, new York Magazine I'm reading in these magazines that are starting to mourn the loss of free time and boredom for children. And kids are beginning to exhibit symptoms of anxiety because at that age, developmentally, they weren't designed to have 16 hours of their day already mapped out for them. They need to have downtime, they need to be bored. No homeschooler should start their day at noon. We're not advocating laziness or sloth, but kids actually need more sleep than they're getting. They're staying up too late, they're getting up too early. They're living the life that you could maybe be living in graduate school as a well rested 24 year old whose body stopped growing. But they're doing this at 13, when their bodies are still growing and they're chronically sleep deprived and they every moment of their day is booked up, and so it's really hard for a kid to stumble into a home business or to find a hobby.
Rachel Winchester:We are taking a short break from the show to tell you about our in-person seminars coming up in 2024. Our newly revised and updated book lists are hot off the press. You don't want to miss our very own American history handout for the elementary years. Carol and JJ will be teaching our basic seminar, a literature based approach to education, where you'll learn the framework and get the tools you need to homeschool with confidence. We have seminars coming up in Minnesota, dallas and Nashville later this year and if you aren't able to come to any of those locations, you can join our live webinar on June 1st. To learn more, visit our website at homeschoolmadesimplenet forward slash seminars. We can't wait to see you in 2024. Now back to the show.
Carole Seid:So let's segue to that. Let's talk about nature and its place in children's lives and creating that downtime and that rest of their mind.
J.J. Seid:Yeah, you go first. What are you thinking of when you make that connection? I think you're right.
Carole Seid:Yeah, I'm thinking of Richard Love's book Last Child in the Woods and what his research that he's gathered shows about dealing with like anxiety for children, depression, add, adhd. And he even wrote a book called Vitamin N saying that nature was the cure-all for so many of the things we're seeing in our children with the up in anxiety, depression. You know all these things. Where does nature fit in to creating margin in children's lives?
J.J. Seid:Yeah, that's a great question. You know we live in the suburbs and so, again, we have to be more intentional. But we tried to buy a house that at least had some trees behind it and some places for our kids to occasionally catch a frog and dig holes. You know, I've never seen my boys happier. I have a six year old boy and two eight year old, identical twin boys and then a 13 year old daughter. My three boys the happiest I've ever seen them in their entire lives is when they were allowed to take shovels out of my shed and dig a hole deep enough to like stand in, you know, just outside the boundaries of my yard. You know that whole two feet one direction might've meant the end of their lives, but you know, two feet the other direction was like, okay, you know you're in a flowerbed somewhere, but they dug this hole. And then another mom came over for a play date whose kids are in school, and I knew they were coming over that afternoon. And by the time I got home I saw that her boys had been introduced to the hole and both kids were energetically digging in this giant hole while the mom stood nearby and talked. And I just thought, you know, in our modern age where we're all like I wish I had enough money to buy my kid an iPad so that he could get into Harvard, you know it's like if you only knew that all they really want is a shovel and a place where they can dig a hole without being murdered by their parents. You know, it's like kids really love being outside, they love getting dirty, they love finding bugs and catching things, and then there's all this other magical stuff happening that they don't need to know about, like breathing fresh air and getting sun on their face and wind, and the feeling of vastness when you look up and see the sky instead of a ceiling, and looking around and seeing things God created and not man made things like walls and lamps. So there's all these benefits. I've noticed my patience for my children is higher when we're outside. Yes, because indoor spaces are not really made for little boys. So in my house, which isn't even really that nice, like we've got a couple nice things. Like we have this one couch. That's pretty nice. You know, if I was gonna rob me, I'd probably try to load up that couch, and then there's not too many other things. You know we joke.
J.J. Seid:There was a time where our daughter heard a raccoon jump on the trash can in the middle of the night outside her window and she thought it was robbers and she had a hard time sleeping. I hope that she would be embarrassed by the story. But you know, the irony is, what helped her was me explaining to her one night Isley, you know, nobody's really gonna wanna rob us. There's not, there's not really that many nice things here. You know, if a robber came in he'd be pretty bummed out because it's mostly books, you know. And she was like you know, dad, that's a good point. And then she slept better after that. She's very rational, you know. She didn't want me to give her a devotional or read her a song, she just wanted me to explain. We don't really have that many nice things. I don't think anyone would work that hard to try to rob us. You know she was like good point, dad, good point. But all that to say. When they're in my house I can get mad at them much easier, you know don't break that lamp.
J.J. Seid:Don't knock that over, don't stab the couch, but you put them outside and all of a sudden I'm like, well, they're such good boys. That's right, because in nature, outdoors, it's just a lot of them to do something wrong and their energy looks far more appropriate because it is appropriate, they're meant to run around and skin their knees and climb trees and chop things and throw things and dig.
J.J. Seid:And so I'm sort of chasing every time where it's like hey, jj, your job as a parent is to say hey, let's go outside, you know, and because I'm tired and I want to sit on the couch and read, I'm not thinking that way.
J.J. Seid:But they need me to lead them outdoors and help them enjoy being outdoors and have fun outdoors and fall in love with being outdoors, whether that's in our yard or whether that's going on a nature hike, or what I've done with them now the last two years, and now they're getting older, which is I take them on wilderness expeditions, you know, which is a big undertaking and it takes a long time to plan the menu and get enough gear together so none of us freeze to death. And on this last trip my six year old tried to get himself lost in the wilderness and his brothers came around to rock and found him crying and you know that taught him that oh yeah, you need to listen to dad and he says don't run off. But you know I, once a year at least, we try to actually go on a wilderness expedition and it's worth it. You know they're just filled with wonder when we're out there.
J.J. Seid:Everything's exciting to them and we're filling up our water bottles to run through the water purifier and they look up in a bison, you know, walks into the pond where we're filling our bottle and they're watching the sunset while we eat dinner and they're scrambling up these 2,000 foot hills and they feel like they just climb out of Everest. And you know it's like it takes effort to do those kinds of things that I often feel too tired to do, but I know in the back of my mind it's worth it. And then they spend the rest of the year talking about that trip and it shapes them, you know. So last year I took the now eight year olds and left Brinker because he was still five. You know, this year Brinker knew this was his first year that he got to go and he was just. I mean, he talked about it all year. I know, being out there with all three boys was pretty amazing. You know, the first night Ryland's chaff were in the tent it's a small tent and so Brinker and I slept in bivvy bags under the stars and it was you know, like 20 mile an hour winds it was very cold it was
J.J. Seid:very unpleasant. But he was in a really expensive, well-made down sleeping bag and so I keep rolling over and peeking at his face pinched up in the mummy bag and I'd be like you're doing a good buddy, and he'd smile and nod. You know he was. He was so happy to brave the elements. You know it's like boys, girls, kids are made to be outdoors, but we live in a world where you have to be really intentional sometimes to make that happen. Tell the story about Susan Shae from Macaulay and the weekend nature hikes, cause that always helps me when I fall into self pity about the fact that God has called me to live in the suburbs. You know I'm going man Lord. You know I live in a landlock state. You know, in the suburbs this is not an easy place, so I always try to remind myself of the story you tell, cause it's a reminder that we all be creative, wherever we live.
Carole Seid:That's right. So Susan and Randall Macaulay were running the livery in London and had no money, no car, no privacy. They had people with them every meal and living, you know, in the manor house there in Gretham, england, and excuse me. And they had one day off and on that day off they would buy a bus token or whatever you call it in England, and they would take that bus till the next transfer one, take that to the end of it, then take another one to the end of it until finally, for that one bus token. They were really more in the country. You know they weren't in London anymore and they had their kids.
Carole Seid:And we used to have, when you were little, like an aluminum backpack that you carry your child in it's. You know it's like a backpack. And each child had their job. You know, you carry the books, you carry the food, you carry the water, I'll carry the baby, whatever.
Carole Seid:And they had a rule for every year of your age you had to walk one mile.
Carole Seid:So if you were a two year old, you walk two miles, if you're a three year old, you walk three miles, but it wasn't all at once. So they would walk a little while and then they'd have a snack and then they'd walk a little while and then they'd read a book and then they'd walk longer, and then they'd have lunch and they'd walk some more, and then they'd take a nap under trees and then they'd walk some more and get back to the bus, you know. And they had this whole ritual of creating nature in a very urban setting where they had very little freedom because they didn't even have a car. So they were kind of and they had to be back, so they couldn't take like a train, you know, to Oxford or something. They had to be back. And so in one day they gave their children a nature experience. They built their children strength and stamina and gave them like a Sabbath away from ministry because they were sharing their parents all week long, and this was a time where they had their children, their parents, completely to themselves.
J.J. Seid:And for listeners who don't know, this is the adult daughter of the famous apologist Francis Schaefer and his wife E Schaefer, and I just finished reading a biography of Schaefer, and their kids often talked about having to share their parents with other people. So I think Susan probably was even more intentional when she became an adult to not necessarily repeat some of those mistakes and going hey, we wanna really get away and give our children our full attention. So, yeah, I love that story. I wouldn't have known it if you hadn't told it to me, but I think it's really encouraging because it's a reminder that wherever we are, we can be creative and make an effort.
J.J. Seid:And studies have come out that show that even doing something like that once a week, even if that's the most you can do, reduces cortisol levels to such a noticeable degree that it lasts for an entire week, which I think pairs well with your story. You put your kids on a nature walk and for seven days their cortisol levels in a lab would be detected to be far lower for seven days. So just one nature hike a week has chemical impact in your kid's body the whole week. So all of us can do something, even if we can't do everything, even if that means take him to a park to feed the ducks. But there's ways that we can be creative with the time that we have. Even as a single parent or someone who works two jobs or who's in a highly urban environment and has to use public transit, we can be creative and we can expose our kids to nature. I know that we're pretty much at a time. Why don't we each give a few quick hits of additional things we haven't named? How does that sound?
Carole Seid:Well, last thing I wanted to talk about let's see if we can close with this is Dr Moore taught Danny and I that work was the key to everything. That if you wanna build character, if you want godly children, if you want children that will be successful in life, teach your children how to work, and I have seen the benefit. I'm just gonna tell a fun story on you, jj, don't be embarrassed about this, but when you were at Bible college-.
J.J. Seid:As long as it's not a story about me pooping my pants or something like that.
Carole Seid:No, no, no.
J.J. Seid:Okay.
Carole Seid:No, no, it's when you were at Bible college over the summer and you worked on the construction crew. You worked for a precious man who is also a pastor. His Bible occasional called Manny and he had you in 110 degree heat in the high well. Is it called high desert where the Bible college was, or inland empire? I don't know what?
J.J. Seid:you're talking about. Yeah, so the inland empire about an hour in from Orange County. Yeah, about an hour in.
Carole Seid:Much, much, much hotter than Orange County and you were digging ditches with a pickaxe, so they were doing like landscaping.
J.J. Seid:Concrete construction Yep.
Carole Seid:Okay, okay. So, when it was time for you to leave to go to college after you graduated from the Bible college, they wanted you to stay and work there full time and you were tempted, cause it was just you were in your element, you know, and oh, and the other guys had all quit. You were the only one that made it through the whole summer Because-.
J.J. Seid:One of the only ones. Yeah, this is growing into legend, but you're right, there were some people that couldn't hack it and there were some guys that stuck it out.
Carole Seid:Yeah, yeah, so I remember Manny telling me this, so he told me about it. So the point is, jj, that at the end of the summer Manny took a basin of water and called you into the shed where you guys, all you know, got your tools and everything. And all the men were in there the staff, guys from the construction crew and they all washed your feet and spoke prophetic words over you and prayed over you and they were crying and I think you know that is the fruit of Dr Moore, because I would have not known how important teaching a child to work is. He used to say to us your children can work as soon as they can walk. Yeah, and that Maria Montessori said work is a child's play. They want to work, but we rob them of that Because obviously it takes longer. They make a mess. You know they're trying to be helpful.
Carole Seid:They break the dishes. But Dr Moore used to say, put away the good dishes and get out the plastic dishes and let your little toddlers unload the dishwasher. They can do it. They're dying to do it, and your kids are dying to cook. And I can remember when you were a little boy we'd put you in your high chair and put a bowl on top of your high chair and we'd pour the ingredients in and you'd stir, even before you were old enough to stand on a stool. And so the importance of work is the other piece that I just wanted to emphasize, because I have seen people fight over you for you to work for them, like when you're a teenager, and that's because you had a work ethic. Things like you had to walk our golden retriever twice a day in hail, sleet, snow, rain, but nobody else could do it Like that was you, that was your job, nobody else ever did it for you. And just how that has created a work ethic in you now that I think your family are reaping the benefit of, and everyone who did.
J.J. Seid:Well, well, that's kind and I don't know if I had a truly unique work ethic, maybe amongst other homeschoolers, but I will agree with you that homeschooling provides unique opportunities to be exposed to work and when I do think back to those high school years, I apprenticed with a master cabinet maker. I apprenticed with a master painter and I don't use that term, master, lightly. These are some of the most skilled tradesmen I've ever met and they were working in multi-million dollar homes for highly affluent clients, because they were the best at what they did and it was fascinating to learn from them and apprentice with them and watch them work. And those were jobs that I was able to do almost in a journeyman kind of setting because of some of the availability in my schedule, and it created some unique opportunities Even before I had a driver's license. These guys were either picking me up or you were driving me to work with them and it just opened up new worlds for me in the trades and I still remember some of the things I learned from those men and the great respect I have for men who work in the trades and work with their hands, and homeschooling afforded the margin and the flexibility and the creativity to even be exposed to those things at that age, at an age where a lot of kids haven't even had a job yet. So that was beautiful, and, and the last thing I wanted to say matches up nicely with that, which is just spending more time with adults and spending more time with your parents.
J.J. Seid:What what homeschooling does is not so much radical as it's the restoration of a balance that's been reversed, which is for most of human history. You spent far more time with your family growing up than you did with other people, and now people are writing constantly in magazines and in newspapers about how little time parents spend with their kids. That's often an average of 15 minutes a day is now what people are saying. You know 15 minutes a day of actual attention that a parent is giving to a child, and we know that we come home from jobs where we're tired. The world can feel impossible. You don't feel like you have a lot to offer. Dipping into a screen, looking at something on your phone as a constant temptation because you're exhausted, and that offers an escape, and paying attention to a kid can feel draining. And yet what that means is that we're spending even less time with our kids and we ever have in history, because now screens are even competing for that little bit of attention that was there to begin with.
J.J. Seid:So, again, homeschooling is not inherently superior, but it offers a unique opportunity to reverse that dynamic, where you're now spending more time with mature adults who actually teach you how to be kind and to cultivate virtue and to work hard and to not complain, as opposed to spending the majority of your time with your peer group, a group of people who, frankly, are not really great at any of those things yet, because they're still growing and learning. And what? And? If you sat in a room full of those kids, your first thought would be man, I wish I could take all these kids and put them around some mature adults, so that they would rub off, you know, and so homeschooling opens up some unique opportunities to get to do that.
J.J. Seid:that should, that should not be taken for granted.
Carole Seid:You're right. You're right. And as I travel the world with homeschool families, 35 years of knowing them, homeschool teenagers are the joy of my heart. They look you in the eye, they have respect, they call you Mr, mrs. You know, whatever the case may be, they're unpacking the books before the seminar. They're running very often the booktables, the seminars, and they think it's a privilege to do that. And I just love homeschool teenagers because they're the hope for our future as a culture.
J.J. Seid:Well, and I have to say I mean this will be my one hot take. I think, as a pastor, diplomacy is an important part of my job, but if I was going to have a hot take, it would be this we still are talking about socialization after all these years, which is which is so silly, because no one is more socialized than a homeschooler, where in society you encounter age segregated herds, as one author said you know, homeschooling really brings you into contact with people of different ages and different backgrounds in a way that prepares you for the real world, because that's what the real world is like.
J.J. Seid:You don't hang out with the seventh graders when you're 42. You hang out with young and old, rich and poor, people from all different backgrounds. Homeschooling prepares you for that really well. But I think the irony is sometimes, if people are really honest, they're afraid that if you homeschool, your kids won't be cool. And when they say socialize, I think sometimes that's become code for cool. And I just want to say, if you're an employer, how often are you worried about whether or not the people you hire are cool and how often are you worrying about whether or not they have a work ethic and have virtue and integrity and character? So it's just we've got it all backwards. It's like I think coolness is overrated and I think virtue is underrated and I think homeschooling and that stuff probably will end up being cool, but that's not our target. We're not aiming at being cool. You know, the kind of socialization we're aiming at involves the cultivation of virtue and the ability to relate to almost anybody and I think if that's our definition, homeschool kids are positioned really well.
Carole Seid:They really are. And the research shows shows that homeschool kids are the most socialized of all children in America. So who socializes you? Oh, your parents da, like other two year olds, don't tell other two year olds how to share, and six grade girls don't tell them each other how to be kind, like we are mentoring and discipling our children for the kingdom of God. And whether you're better than we can.
J.J. Seid:Right and and and again, whether you're in private school, public school or homeschooled. Ask anybody who is formative in their growth and formation. They're not going to tell you about their buddy Charles from seventh grade they're going to. They're going to point to teachers, coaches, bosses and mentors who took a particular interest in them and who are self sacrificial. It's always adults that are cultivating virtue and offering counsel and wisdom to young people in formative stages of their life.
Carole Seid:So true, jj, so well put.
Rachel Winchester:You've been listening to the homeschool made simple podcast with Carol Joy side. If you want to learn more about the homeschool made simple approach, you can visit our website homeschoolmadesimplenet and click the start here button on the homepage. From there, you can get our free ebook that details the five essential parts of a great education. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with somebody you think would enjoy it as well. And thanks for joining us this week on the homeschool made simple podcast. Until next time, remember Jesus's commandments are not burdensome. What he calls you to do, he will enable you to do. Blessings.