Understanding the difference between a performance drive or grace based homeschool will determine whether you are failing or succeeding in your calling to homeschool.

Our hearts are where this issue arises - if we are performance driven in our own lives, Christian walk and relationships, it will undoubtedly infiltrate your homeschool ethos.

How do you know if you are tending to a homeschool driven by performance?

Stars, stickers and reward charts are all an indication of a performance driven homeschool. You will also know that you are performance driven when you feel that everyone is doing a better job than you are. When you walk into another’s home and feel like you are suffocating because of all the art work on the walls…when you face jealousy when another’s child excels at sports or in art or music.

This is because you are measuring your children’s performance against theirs. It is also that you are measuring your worth by what you achieve in your homeschool and in the visible effects of education in your children.

Performance driven parents also battle with their children’s behavior. They get embarrassed when their children misbehave. They take misbehavior personally making all sorts of excuses for their children – “oh it’s the sugar” or “he hasn’t slept”. But the issue actually just is a simple – "my child is still learning to control his actions and choices.”

If we are performance driven we are more focused on getting the job done than training our children. We need a certain amount of tangible work done daily that we can measure ourselves by. We need to feel that we have achieved something in our days. We spend time hurrying through certain academic pursuits to work for an exam or a test.

Performance driven parents will create performance driven children or even worse children who are unable to meet their parent’s expectations and will thus give up.

On the other hand we have the grace based homeschool. Here the children are the same – sinners, yet are given the tools to overcome their weaknesses and strengthen their wills. Here the parents do not take personally their children’s failing, their difficulties but rather they come alongside and mentor their children.

The parents have set aside their agenda in favor of what God wants for their family. They do not seek to cram their children’s head with knowledge because the highschool years are approaching. They are not working towards an end of year exam; they are living and learning with their children in their grace based homeschool.

How to be set free from a performance mentality?

When we become born again we become adopted children of God. We then can get busy doing things because we are so grateful for what He has done. But no amount of doing will re-do our salvation. We are adopted just because He died for us and we accepted His life.

But we can also be a slave. This means someone who is told what to do, and obeys his master out of service not because our heart is his. We need to ask God to show us if we are being slaves or adopted children. Are we being lazy children or are we truly seeking God for his will in our lives and the lives of our children. We need to acknowledge that God knows our children best. And from there we need to be set free from a performance mentality and be released into our grace based homeschool. We need to become His children who seek to do his will.

How this relates to your children

As they begin to see that you accept them and love them without any conditions they will begin to flourish under your parenting and “teaching”. No they are not going to be perfect, but they will know that they do not need to perform to get approval from you. They will begin to be set free in the grace based homeschool to be who God created them to be.

They see that they receive rewards for good behavior or work and are punished for bad behavior and works. So we slowly go about modifying their behavior instead of reaching their heart. They learn to suppress their feelings and their anger but come the teen years, it erupts. Punishment for badly done work will not bring good work. What will is the mentoring or coming alongside our children in their weaknesses and helping them reach an acceptable standard to get by.

Relating this to your homeschool – when we use a boxed curriculum with deadlines you will be consistently pushing your children to work to a predetermined pace that allows little or no time for grace based parenting.

Dr Timm Kimmel in his book Grace-Based Parenting says, “We are to groom our children according to their natural bents. This means coming alongside them with a plan to help leverage their natural and unique gifts and skills into highly developed assets that they can lean on in the future.”

How much time on average does the homeschool mom have for grooming their children after the schoolwork and housework and cooking is done? Some may argue that they are together all day and that is sufficient, but I do not believe it is. When we are performance driven we send messages to our children that it’s not OK to be mediocre at some things - they need to excel in all areas.

Mel Levine author of A Mind at a Time says that children need to reach a level of operation in the skills needed to get by in this world and then achieve highly specialized skills in the area where they are natural achievers. This means that if a child battles with Maths they need only get by for day to day operations, and when they are older, they can use a calculator or hire and accountant. If a child battles with spelling, get them to a level where they can write and express themselves and show them how a spell check works on a PC.

The farce of chasing a “well rounded” curriculum will drain all the life out of mom and child. Being a diligent mom does not mean we do not help our children become the best they can be by relaxing the academic standards – it’s rather that we make sure we are working to their timetable.

At the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves: “Am I teaching my children to perform or love learning.”

Charlotte Mason says: "Our whole system of school policy is largely a system of prods. Marks, prizes, exhibitions, are all prods; and a system of prodding is apt to obscure the meaning of must and ought for the boy or girl who gets into the habit of mental and moral lolling up against his prods."

Other articles you may be interested in are:
Education - an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.
Different journey's, same destination

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