Weekend Edition~How can I teach my children EVERY thing they need to learn?

The simple answer is, you can't! That's right, you can NOT teach your children every thing they will ever need to learn. The good/bad news is, neither can a certified teacher, a professor, a public school, a college, even a ivy league college, will NOT be able to teach your children every thing he/she will need to know in life. That's impossible.

First of all, no one, well except for Jehovah, can really know what will be important 15 to 20 years from now. Think about yourself 15 to 20 years ago. Could you imagine the things you would of needed to learn by now? How to use a smart phone, how to use a tablet, that most people would not have land lines. We would have our own broadcasting network. We would be using tablets in field service, showing videos at the door. That we would no longer have the Theocratic Ministry School and have a entirely different meeting sit up. That we would no longer have a midweek congregation book study in brothers homes! And that we would have "family worship night" in it's place. Not to mention when I was a child, very very few people had a home computer, by the time I graduated high school, every thing was computerized! All these things are just a very few things we have learned in the past 20 years. That I don't think any one would of seen coming, and could of prepared ourselves for. But, here we are, and we have learned totally new things and different skills.

Secondly, we do not stop learning once we turn 18 or graduate from school. We learn things as we need to learn them. As stated above. We have all learned new things as they have came up, as we have needed to learn them. We didn't stop learning when we graduated high school, and/or college. And public school and schools in general did NOT teach us every thing we needed to know either. So it's unrealistic to expect that we can teach our children every thing they will need to know. So let's take that off the table completely.

So what do we need to teach our children? It can be boiled down to simply three things.

1) We need to teach our children to love Jehovah. We need to teach our children Jehovah's ways.

Deut. 6:7- You must inculcate [God’s commandments] in your son and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up

Matt. 4:4-
Man must live, not on bread alone, but on every utterance coming forth through Jehovah’s mouth.

2 Tim. 3:16-17-
All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.

2) We need to teach them to love learning. If we teach them a love of learning, they will be excited to learn, and will initiate learning on their own. Jehovah created people with a love and thirst for knowledge. Often times it is squashed though by exasperating a child, in expecting a child to learn things that are developmentally inappropriate for their age and emotional development. When we teach at home, we can settle down and teach at a developmental appropriate ages and stages in life. We are not trying to pass big test to make more money, as public schools are. We also are not tied to a schools agenda. So when a young child wants to explore a new interest instead of stunting that so we can get more social studies homework in, we can put social studies (or what ever subject) on the back burner, and dive into the child's interest as much as he/she would like. Encouraging and cultivating their thirst for learning!

3) Teach them how to learn. If they have a love for Jehovah, and a love for learning. Then the only other thing they need, to be independent from us eventually, is to know how to find the answers to the problems that may come up in their lives. We have hopefully already did 1 and 2. And so then they just need to know how to find the answers. It's kind of like you can give a person a fish and feed him for a day, or you can teach him to fish and feed him for the rest of his life. When we teach a child where to go for reliable information-books from the Faithful and Discreet Slave, libraries, people who are actually doing the work-ie they want to learn about farming, you can look up articles on JW.org, you can go to the library and check out books on farming, you could visit the Watchtower Farms, or any Farms that may be accessible where you live, and ask farmers directly your questions. A local farmer to me, even holds a yearly homeschool day, and welcomes us to come, and learn about his farm. Even watching live surgery on one of his sheep once! This can also turn into apprenticeship which is very valuable in learning real life skills. So this line of thinking/learning can be applied really to anything the child has a interest in, or want to learn about. Help them figure out how to learn about it.

I'm in my 40's, and still am having to learn things. Our washer had a error message a few years ago. I used youtube and searched the model washer we had, and the error message I was getting. And Youtube told me exactly what the problem was and how to fix it!

So in the same manner we can teach our children how to find answers to things, when the need arises. I didn't melt into a puddle cause I wasn't taught how to fix my washing machine in school. I was able to use the tools I had available (youtube) and find the answer and fix it! Furthermore, the style and kind of washer I currently have, was not even available when I was in school. haha So even if they had taught me washing machine mechanics, most likely would not of helped me with my current washer. Going back to full circle of we can not predict what our children will need to know 15 to 20 years from now.

So take a deep breath of relief. And remember, it's ok. You don't have to teach every thing. Jehovah created us to be able to continue to learn for a life time! Not just the brief first 18 years of our life.