My sweet girl. This is Taylor starting 2nd grade … yesterday eight years ago. Life was simple then … easier. Small worries, small hurts, small fears.
But she grew.
And now we have big worries, big hurts, and big fears.
Taylor had been in the same school since kindergarten, but in 8th grade she started having problems. It’s a long post, but you can read more about it here. Her freshman year, we decided to send her to a new school and you can read about that here. And while she liked her new school, she definitely had her ups and downs. Overall, she had an okay year and made a couple of new friends.
So why have I decided to homeschool her? So many thoughts and emotions, that I’m actually going to put this into two posts. Today’ll be about Taylor and why I feel it’s best for her. Next week’ll be about CJ and how God is in the miracle business.
Bottom line :: I want to offer Taylor the chance to succeed. And I don’t think that can happen {for her} in a regular school environment.
Another bottom line :: It’s so important to understand who your children are and meet them there. I’m not jumping on a homeschooling bandwagon here. I’m just recognizing that Taylor needs more and I want to give her that opportunity.
Academically, Taylor didn’t have a super great year … in fact, I don’t think she got over 2.0 until the 4th quarter. In March we had her go through a series of tests with a counselor. We found she has ADD and some minor learning disabilities … one of which is an auditory issue. In a classroom environment, she has a hard time hearing and processing information … given her ADD issues on top of that, she’s got some challenges in a standard classroom.
Socially, Taylor doesn’t have much self-esteem, she’s not super outgoing and quite honestly, has a hard time making friends. No one was mean and bullying her … but they didn’t go out of their way to include her either. And seriously, not the end of the world and something she could definitely get through and deal with.
But when her counselor met with me in May and asked me to, “think outside of the box in educating Taylor.” Because she’s currently, “just getting by.” It really spoke to my heart. Actually, it tore my heart apart.
What I’ve learned is that girls are quick to believe bad things about themselves. Seriously … think about us as women … when someone compliments you, do you say “thank you” or do you shrug it off and end up saying something negative about yourself?
Anyway … when young girls think negative things about themselves and say these negative things, they become strongholds in their lives. Taylor has many, many, many negative strongholds she believes about herself … and while she’s sitting in a classroom 8 hours a day hearing from teachers, “You could do better if you tried. You need to apply yourself more. You just need to get motivated.” And then socially, she’s “feeling” no one wants to be her friend …
These strongholds grip her even more.
My goal for this year? Through intentional parenting, prayer, faith, encouragement, and love … we are going to break these strongholds. Of course we’ll educate her too and I strongly believe she’ll start seeing success in her academics, which in turn will help feed and change the way she views herself.
Children are not a one size fits all. And I just can’t stress enough, how important it is to know each one of them as individuals. Open your eyes, your ears, your heart … to understand what each of them need as individuals.
Parenting takes sacrifice. Love is sacrifice. This isn’t going to be easy … for any of us, Taylor included. But I love my girl enough that I don’t want to look back someday knowing, that because I couldn’t make a hard decision, a sacrifice, a risk … that I ended up leaving a child behind.
This post is linked up with Emily at Chatting at the Sky
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