For the Hard Days

One of the prayer requests around the dinner table on the first day of school a few years ago was “that school this year would be better than last year.”

Ouch.

My daughter wasn’t wrong in her implication that the previous school year wasn't a great one. I knew it had been filled with more frustration and adjustment and discouragement than we all would have liked. The hard days were fresh in my mind too.

I had been reading The Call of the Wild + Free around the time of the dinner table prayer request drama, and I couldn’t have said it better:

“Homeschooling is hard...And many times, we mistake that difficulty as an indicator that we’re doing it wrong. Floundering feels a lot like failing, but they’re actually very different. No matter how much you know about educating your children beforehand, educating your children at home is something you have to learn by doing. And only by doing it over and over again will you learn what works for your family.”

Here are four things I try to remember to get us through those days.

1) Everyone has hard days. Unfortunately, it’s easy to feel like we’re the only ones. It doesn’t help that everyone is on their best behaviour at co-op and that social media tends to feature cooperative children, tidy living rooms, rainbows, and unicorns. I have learned that one of the most damaging assumptions someone can make of me is that I “have it easy,” and it’s not helpful for my attitude if I assume that someone else only has rainbow and unicorn days in a tidy living room either.

2) Never quit on your worst day. I recall hearing this from a lactation consultant in the early days of breastfeeding, and I think it has potential to be good advice for life beyond infant feeding. Just as our best day isn’t a reflection of reality or ability, neither is our worst. Bad days are not proof that we’re not cut out for this.

3) Less is more. Sometimes less really is better. There are limited rules in our province for what we do and do not have to accomplish on a day to day basis. Sometimes, pj mornings, toast and fruit for lunch, and skipping spelling are not only perfectly ok but might even be better for our family than alarm clocks, scheduled days, and spelling tests. After all, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

4) Expect hard days. I’m setting myself up for disappointment if I assume every day should fit some arbitrary definition of good. Even the Bible promises hard days. They are a given. I will not be blindsided by them.

By: Kate Croft

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P.S. Hard days are normal and so are hard weeks, but if you are finding every day is so hard that it’s interfering with your ability to enjoy life, please reach out to someone for support!

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