Charlotte Mason said that the outcome of her curriculum was character. We breathe a sigh of relief, because we sure know our children’s character needs work. I think she was chuckling within herself when she wrote this because she knew what I suspect she also meant. For me, it is teaching with her method and her curriculum that produces character—character in me, that is. Our children are a joy, they are a blessing, and they are also a source of anxiety, friction, frustration, insecurity, fear. In short, they try our patience. I am fairly certain that not a day goes by that I do not receive a query about the progress of someone’s child. Their child isn’t making any headway, or so small a degree of progress it is easy to overlook. Doesn’t it seem that they are not getting anywhere? Honestly, does it take other children a year to learn their multiplication tables? And what about spelling—when will they show any sign of improvement there, we groan within. The handwriting seems menisculely less sloppy, the narrations, well, they are actually worse. Surely my seven-year-old should be reading smoothly and steadily by now. What am I doing wrong, we wonder. We fret. We despair. We have given this Charlotte Mason stuff a good six months and, well, it just doesn’t seem to be working.

(As an amusing side note, I also often hear of a mom’s concern for her child who “gives up so quickly”, “gets frustrated if they can’t do it perfectly the first time”, “stubbornly refuses to continue.” I wonder where this attitude comes from?) Okay, so to be honest, it’s not just that I hear this from moms nearly daily, I feel this way myself. Often.

One reason we fall into these no-progress pits is that we live in a culture where everyone’s business is everyone’s business and it’s all out there, constantly, on social media. We have access to glimpses of so many other people’s families, or the glimpses they wish to portray, that it is literally mind boggling. Our grandmothers worried about keeping up with the Jones’s, but we worry about keeping up with the Smiths, the Bakers, the Browns, the Johnsons, the Mitchells, the Wilsons…and hundreds of others whose names we don’t even know. Was it Jane Austen’s Elizabeth who commented, “Comparisons are odious?” But we can’t help ourselves. We are expert measurers of ourselves against everyone we see or hear about.

And here is our child, ignorant of the imperative of spelling correctly to get through life without causing offense, blissfully oblivious to the necessity of multiplying decimals for his future mortgage options, unconcerned whatsoever about why it matters to remember why Rome fell to guide him in his future voting. How are we to get this child moving? So besides caring way toooooo much what others think, our fundamental issue is just plain impatience.

It does not escape my attention that the first word used to describe love in 1 Cor. 13 is…you know it: “Love is patient.” It appears as a fruit of the Spirit before halfway down that list. We are constantly admonished, commanded, and exhorted to persevere. In case you haven’t done much meditating on that old-fashioned word “perseverance” of late, it means long-suffering (emphasis “suffering”), bearing up under a load, endurance. The folks to compare ourselves to are Joseph learning patience while forgotten in prison, Moses bearing with those rebellious children of Israel, Annie Sullivan taming Helen Keller, Joni Eareckson Tada’s 50 years helpless in a wheelchair, Columbus getting to India, the pioneers crossing the prairies and mountains…Christ with his disciples in the Garden, “Will you not stay awake and pray with me one hour?”—three times he asked them without success. For that matter, consider God, who is love itself, and the thousands of years he has put up with all the generations of men!

Can you remember how long it took you to learn to read? Did you get it in a month? Or how
about fractions? I was a good little math student, but I am quite sure that from conceiving of one-half and one-third to algebraic equations, my facility with fractions quite literally took eight or nine years. I grew up in the era of Friday spelling tests, I’m pretty sure had eight years of those weekly. I still have to look up how to spell words. And just the other day, I realized for the first time that Woodrow Wilson’s wife ran the country for awhile—missed that somewhere.

I got pondering these things because of my son, my youngest. He was slow to read, slower in math, even slower to write, and still reads painfully slow through his high school books. I know I’m supposed to let him figure out the math principle himself, but seriously, waiting five minutes is a trial when it is the simplest thing he’s forgetting to do, right? Being brutally honest, I am just not always willing to wait. And, I am fully convinced I would be more successful in math to this day if one teacher throughout the years had let me just think a minute longer on some of those math puzzles.

The really disheartening part about our child’s ineptitude with a paintbrush or his Latin verbs is that he becomes slowly and steadily convinced that we are dissatisfied with him, displeased. Which one of us does not want to quit trying when we are convinced by others that we just don’t have what it takes for that particular skill? We may say these children are born persons, but are they convinced of the preciousness of themselves?

I have been humbled in the past three years by that same “slow” son. He came to the game of basketball late. He was 13 when he first joined a team. His fellow players had been shooting hoops for years. He never had. I am no sports sympathizer, and simply could not understand why most of his free afternoon and evening hours were spent out there shooting, and shooting, and shooting. I cannot imagine a more boring occupation. Still, his perseverance, all uncomplaining I might mention, has paid off. He has won the admiration and attention of some great coaches. He has caught up and surpassed most of his peers.

So, since I do not value basketball as a crucial life skill, I was humbled to consider the other day what amazing perseverance and patience has developed in this apathetic student. I could learn some lessons—not in basketball, but in patience. I almost broke down weeping the other day to notice how patient he is with himself in plowing through books that seem way too hard for him. He never complains while tediously poring over a map to find the answer to one of Miss Mason’s questions. The child I could have given up on innumerable times over the years is actually excelling in writing poetry!

We tell our children on occasion, that if they want something badly enough, they must work for it. Perhaps we should sit ourselves down at the school table and give ourselves that same lecture each day. We must work at seeing progress, at having the perspective of years when we consider individual skills, of asking the Spirit to help us tackle a quiet, encouraging attitude just one more day. And another. And another after that. God does not stand over us with a whip. He does not chastise us daily that, though he’s shown us and taught us and told us many, many, many times before, we are still stumbling over the same sins. We are His ambassadors, representing his character to our children daily. How? And our patient heavenly Father is always there when we look up, ask for help, need the strength to take just one more step. How many times while in the midst of waiting for a child to figure out a word, a problem, do we “glory in our tribulation?” Romans 5:3 says we should, “knowing that tribulation produces perseverance.” Perseverance is what we need for this long haul.

At the end of his fighting that good fight, Paul reminded Timothy of the perseverance of athletes to win the prize, the soldier’s endurance, the time that hardworking farmer puts in before harvesting the crop. Charlotte Mason said we go out every morning to sow seeds. Every morning. Seeds are tiny. Some take years to germinate. Even the quick growing ones take time to mature. Seed sowing is long, slow, waiting work. Our children’s bodies take nearly 20 years to go from six pound newborns to full-sized adult bodies. Their hands and minds and hearts grow slowly in that body all that time, too.

Since I have been at this homeschooling and parenting thing nearly 40 years, and still have a
teenager in the house too agonize over if he will ever make truly wise decisions, I pray this
prayer for myself as well as for each of you who labor in the endlessness of waiting for good
spellers and multipliers: “Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.” (2 Thes. 3:5)

We’re not working for the quick digital picture here, after all. We are nurturing souls for God. This is a waiting game. Educating children is not for the fainthearted or impatient of spirit. It takes a long, long time.