Be Patient With Your Daffodils

 By Barbara Frank

 

 I guess it’s only natural for those of us who have been homeschooling a long time to try to encourage newer homeschoolers by citing homeschool success stories.  I do that even on this Web site.  It must come from years of having had to defend ourselves to relatives, friends and nosy acquaintances who seemed to need proof that homeschoolers “turn out ok.”

 Recently, after I spoke at a homeschool group meeting, a woman came up to me and said that she thought that the examples I gave of young adults who had been homeschooled and were now doing very well was nice, but that she didn’t think it applied to her family, because she doubted that her kids were going to be above average like the young people I described in my presentation.

 True, I had mentioned the recent triumph of the Patrick Henry College debaters, all former homeschoolers, over the famed debaters of Oxford University.  I had also mentioned Christopher Paolini, homeschooled teen and author of the best-selling novel Eragon.  But I had also included my children, one of who is living her dream of life in a large city and is totally self-supporting, and the other, who is a junior in college with hopes of entering the ministry after graduation.  I also mentioned a few of their childhood homeschooled friends, one of whom is now an engineer, another who is an airline pilot,  a third who is doing very well in her college major of biorobotics, and two others who are urban missionaries.

 Apparently, my efforts at encouraging the moms I spoke to that evening had the opposite effect on this woman.  I’ve thought a lot about her since then.  At first, it bothered me that she apparently didn’t have big dreams for her children.  But since then, I’ve come to a different conclusion, and it has to do with daffodils.

 If you’ve ever planted daffodils in your yard, you know that you plant the daffodil bulbs in the fall, wait through the winter months, and come spring, you’re rewarded with sturdy green shoots that soon produce lovely yellow flowers.  It’s sort of like pregnancy; you know something is going on that you can’t see, and after several months, your patience is rewarded with something beautiful.

 Once your daffodils have bloomed, however, they shrivel up, as do the green shoots, and all you have left is some wilted yellow stems drooping in your garden.  Some people cut these down to the ground, but an experienced gardener will tell you to leave the stems there; they are gathering energy from the sunlight to feed the bulb so it can produce more bright yellow daffodils the following spring.  So for a while, you learn to live with the wilted stems, knowing that something spectacular is in the offing.

 And so it is with children.  When they are little, they are irresistibly cute and incredibly lovable.  This goes on for some time.  And then they get older.  Soon they go through a gawky stage; for some it lasts longer than others.  The teeth become too large for the jaw.  Bangs grow out awkwardly.  Pimples erupt en masse.  Feet seem to double in length.  Hygiene may become an issue, usually right around the time the sweat glands go into overdrive.  In short, our adorable little ducks turn into ugly ducklings.  Like the wilted daffodil stems, their former glory is just a memory.

 (Don’t get me wrong; we moms love our kids every bit as much when they reach the awkward years as we did when they were beautiful babies.  But if we’re honest, we’ll admit these can be difficult years.)

 Ten years ago, the young people I mentioned earlier (the engineer, the pilot, the biorobotics major, the missionaries, and my own two oldest children) were in a homeschool group together.  I can still picture them in the weekly gym class they attended.  Some wore ill-fitting clothes because they liked them that way.  Most were gawky; some (primarily boys) didn’t smell too good, especially after class.  All of them said silly things in an effort to impress each other, while we moms just rolled our eyes.

 I remember them at our monthly roller-skating events.  The boys speed-skated in a herd, swooping around (and much too close to) their younger siblings, ignoring the moms scolding them.  The girls didn’t spend nearly as much time skating, but whether they were on the floor or off, they were gossiping, giggling, and primping.  I can tell you that on the surface, there were absolutely no signs of the promising futures they had ahead of them.

 But just as the wilted daffodil stems absorb energy for the bulb hidden in the ground, these kids were just coming into their own.  Having seen it happen time and again, I truly believe that homeschooled young teens are like daffodil bulbs after they first bloom.  They may not appear to be blooming anymore.  But inside, they are absorbing everything around them in preparation for the time when they burst out into the world.  And then, look out, because they will amaze you with what they can do.

 So to the mom who felt her kids weren’t above average, I wish I had said that mine once seemed pretty average, too.  I think the moms of the engineer, the pilot, the biorobotics major and the urban missionaries would probably say the same thing about their children.  But now that I’ve had a chance to think it over, I also wish I had told her that once they hit the gawky stage, you can’t really picture how well they’re going to turn out.  But if you’re patient, and you learn to live with “wilted stems” for a while, you will be pleasantly surprised at what your children will become.

 © 2005 Barbara Frank

 Barbara Frank is the mother of four homeschooled-from-birth children ages 12-21, a freelance writer/editor, and the author of “Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers”.  To visit her Web site, “The Imperfect Homeschooler”, go to www.cardamompublishers.com.