One Step Ahead

One of the best pieces of parenting advice my mom has given me is: stay one step ahead of your kids. Stay ahead of them and they will have somewhere to follow (by implication: don’t, and they’ll hang out and bicker all day).

There’s some truth to that. I think I’m naturally inclined to do what strikes in the moment, or let the kids have free play, so it takes some planning to think ahead. Every Sunday, I try to sit down and update the dry-erase board with their weekly lesson plans. We do a few categories that are easy: catechism (I just use the next question on this new city catechism tool from Tim Keller), memory verse (I pick a song from the GT Halo series—memorizing to music is incredibly quick and effective), Chinese (pick a few new characters). Then math, science, history, art, and/or music: if I know what they’re learning at school in those categories, I teach those. Otherwise, I pick whatever topic strikes my fancy (this week: food groups and shapes; last week: history of Taiwan to go with the presidential elections). Typically this involves some online research and preparing some diagrams to put up on the wall or handouts to color. Lately I’ve gotten into looking up fun science experiments. It helps to check out related books from the library.

Generally, we try to do one lesson per night. Last fall, we were shuttling the older two to all kinds of outside lessons, but it just felt too busy; it was probably fine for Ellie, but Eric was clearly tiring out, and it split up the family too much. We decided to just stop everything for now and focus on teaching things at home. The range of ages is a challenge, but generally I teach to Ellie’s level and find the boys tag along fine, as long as I keep the activities varied.

Thinking ahead is good too in terms of stepping back occasionally and assessing how each child can grow in terms of their personality, character, and habits, and how to help build up their strengths and redirect or work through weaknesses.

Definitely takes some discipline, but it pays off: the kids have something to look forward to, or something to redirect them when they’re bickering from boredom. They’re like sponges; pretty much able to soak up whatever I teach them. And any forethought I’m able to give about their character growth equips me to make the most out of random conversations during the day.