Living the Dream

I have spent most of my life falsely believing that I must sacrifice my own individual development so that I could support my children to learn what the public school system required of them. Good parenting meant enrolling my children in every kind of extra curricular program I could squeeze in after-school hours and during the summer. I was so caught up in giving my kids every possible opportunity to excel that there wasn’t time to focus on real family life. The most important outcome was their accomplishments and not the focus on relationships.

It’s a painful realization that in many ways I was following the masses along a conveyor belt of compulsory education. I sent my children out the door each morning and didn’t see them until the late afternoon. Then my time was spent making sure they got to all their lessons and games. There was little time or energy left over to focus on the children’s real needs. My heart often cried out in quiet anguish, yet I had no idea there existed a different and better way of living. Pulling my kids out of school and staying home from work to raise them simply was not an option.

But extending my parenting time into a second season has brought new opportunities to enlighten me in ways I never dreamed were possible. Through my discovery of the principles found in the book by Oliver DeMille, “Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century,” I have had a major paradigm shift. I no longer sacrifice my own development. My children no longer have compulsory education and now have the freedom to choose what they’d like to study and have unencumbered time to do it. My focus is on my family and not my career and they get the best part of me each and every day, no longer having to get by on my left-overs.

Oliver DeMille said in a recent seminar that the biggest challenge of the 21st century is the “lost family” because most people don’t talk about classics, tradition, family history and stories anymore. There isn’t time because of over-commitment. Building and nurturing long-term relationships based on core values of right and wrong, true and false, good and bad through family work and play are fundamental to everything else.

In our home we are raising youth instead of teenagers. Youth who get themselves up early everyday to go out in the dark and cold to feed a variety of animals. Who chop wood, keep the fire going that heats the house, complete their stewardship without complaining, read and enjoy the classics and study for hours independently. Youth, who have no desire for television, video games, I-pods, cell phones and are not concerned about the latest fashions or fitting in with the crowd. It really is possible to say no to stuff and yes to family.

Our family life has never been better. We make the time to focus on what matters most. I no longer experience the regrets I had when our family was on the conveyor-belt. We are happy just being together day in and day out. We enjoy a much richer, deeper friendship with each other as we learn to serve and help our family relationships grow and thrive. This is what I have always wanted for my family. We are finally “living the dream.”