So many people who criticize homeschoolers and homeschooling really have no idea what they’re talking about. They come at us from such a position of fear and ignorance that it’s easy to dismiss their complaints and judgments. On the other hand, they are not always wrong, not by a longshot, and it’s all too easy for us homeschoolers to be so used to living in a defensive crouch that we don’t examine our own lifestyles and consciences to make sure that we are living a balanced life, and giving our children true nurturing, as opposed to a fearful, controlling experience of childhood.

A homeschooling friend and reader just passed along this sobering essay by a pastor and homeschooling father, reflecting on failures he and his family had with homeschooling, and warning other homeschooling parents to watch out for them. The whole thing is quite good, and will sound familiar to many of us who homeschool. It’s also full of wise caution about the imbalances that we who are critical of the common culture today, and who wish to raise our children counterculturally, can be prone to. For example, I really appreciated the pastor’s unsparing discussion of how he was too hard on his teenage son:

When my oldest son was almost 16 we let him get his first job washing dishes at a restaurant managed by a Christian friend of ours. As diehard shelterers we wrestled with whether or not our son was ready to enter the world’s workforce. We knew we couldn’t shelter him forever, and so finally concluded that he should be old enough to send into the world two nights a week. What we didn’t realize was that he would be working with drug-using, tattooed, partiers, and our Christian friend was never scheduled to work our son’s shift.

Within a month it became apparent that our son’s new work associates were having an effect on him. He came home one evening and asked, “Dad, can I dye my hair blue?” After my wife was finally able to peal me off the ceiling, I laid into him, reminding him whose son he was, and that I would not have people at church telling their children not to be like the pastor’s son. I explained that just because he wanted to use washable dye, it didn’t make me any happier. (Note that my intense reaction had to do with “outward appearances” and the impact on me.)

Of course, my wife and I immediately began to evaluate whether we had made a mistake by letting him take the job. After an intense discussion we decided to coach him more carefully and let him keep his job.

Two months later he came home from work and asked me if he could pierce his ear. Again, my wife had to peal me off the ceiling. He thought it might be okay since he wanted a cross earring — like I was supposed to be happy, because it would be a “sanctified” piercing. If that wasn’t enough, he also wanted to get a tattoo! But it was going to be okay, because it would be a Christian tattoo!

As I was looking back on this experience several years later, something my son said shortly after he started his job kept coming back to me. When I picked him up the second night of work, he got in the car with a big smile on his face and said “They like me!” As I dwelt on that comment, it suddenly came clear to me – my son had finally met someone who liked him for who he was. Few others in his entire life had shown him much acceptance, especially not his mother and I. It is no exaggeration – in our efforts to shape and improve him, all we did was find fault with everything he did. We loved him dearly, but he constantly heard from us that what he did (who he was) wasn’t good enough. He craved our approval, but we couldn’t be pleased. Years later, I realized he had given up trying to please us when he was 14, and from then on he was just patronizing us.

The reason our son wanted to adorn himself like his work associates, was because they accepted him for who he was. He wanted to fit in with those who made him feel significant. He wanted to be like those who gave him a sense of identity. The problem wasn’t one that could be solved by extended sheltering – he could have been sheltered until he was 30 and he still would have been vulnerable. The problem was that we had sent our son into the world insecure in who he was. He went into the world with a hole in his heart that God had wanted to fill through his parents.

There’s another great part in the essay in which he quotes a veteran homeschooling mom as saying she wishes that instead of baking bread all the time for her brood, she had just bought the bread and spent more time with her kids. The point here is to caution parents against pouring themselves into doing all the “right” things to create perfect experiences for their kids, when there were better ways to have done things. Mary vs. Martha, you know.