There is No Substitute for Doing the Work

...and there are not always shortcuts.

In my opnion, these are the underlying principals and the two best answers to most homeschooling questions. This has been an evolving idea that kept coming to me over time, and they seem to be taking over as being more and more true the older my kids get.

If you listen carefully to the questions homeschooling parents ask and if you take apart their statements to boil the issues down nearly every time those are the two issues that solve their problem.

Those are not the answers that most people want to hear. Most are looking for an easy way out. They think there is some magic bullet or something fun, entertaining and exciting that will make the learning happen. If I tell people the above statements as my reply some dismiss it and declare me wrong. I may be accused of "not getting it".

Others who ask for advice but are clearly not open minded to hearing all the possible solutions declare I have a different educational philosophy than they do and so my ideas are shot down. They will only consider advice from those with the same labels; they are being closed minded. They use the label to compartmentalize people and close them off rather than listening to the similaries in life experience and opening their minds to see that if they try something new that the other person proposes it might actually work. They also may not realize there are multiple paths to the same goal and since the road they are on is not getting them to their intended goal maybe they should consider switching paths.
Well, in most cases my kids are older and I've been homeschooling longer. I've gone down the paths those others are on, trying to find an easier way to accomplish something that takes harder work than I was having my kids put into it (and I found the same was true for various things I was teaching myself).

In the end  I have come to embrace the fact that good things come after putting in the time and doing the work. Learning sometimes takes more effort than someone had imagined it would. And as I've said many times before, sometimes it gets to a point where learning is just not always fun.

Sometimes the rewards come after perseverance and truly pushing through perceived barriers and after learning to jump over hurdles. Once the goal is achieved the stress of the process dissolves and the learner is ready, willing, and able to do it all again for the next thing. This is not unlike the pain and stress of pregnancy and childbirth. Why any woman would do that more than once says something about how the human brain works. What happens is we both love the outcome and wish for more of that end goal thing. We declare that the process was worth it in the long run. At the same time our mind decides that although we found the process grueling in the moment we already are forgetting how hard it really was and decide that since we did it once we can do it again and in fact are more prepared the next time.

The next time you find yourself grappling with a challenge with education and learning ask yourself if the answer could possibly be just doing the work, putting in the time, and pushing through the learning stumbling blocks. Try those things and see if they work.

You may be surprised to find that the solution was simple: just try harder, keep at it, and don't give up.