In this sermon, the speaker addresses the anxieties and fears that arise when faced with the task of choosing curriculums and wondering if one will succeed in their educational journey. The speaker refers to a biblical passage in Mark chapter four, where Jesus calms a storm and questions the disciples' fearfulness. The speaker emphasizes the importance of setting priorities and having the right attitude in homeschooling. They also encourage listeners to share any strategies or examples that have helped combat frustrations and anxieties in their own homeschooling experiences.

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold. You are welcome to make copies for your friends and neighbors. If you would like additional messages, please go to our website for a complete listing at www.charityministries.org. If you would like a catalog of other sermons, please call 1-800-227-7902 or write to Charity Ministries, 400 West Main Street, Suite 1, AFPA, 17522. These messages are offered to all without charge by the free will offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Let's bow our heads and pray. Father, tonight we bless You, we praise You, we thank You that You love us, Father, and that You have changed our hearts so that we can love You and we can love one another and that we can even love our children the way that we should, Father, the way that we never could before we knew You, before You changed us. I pray that You would bless this meeting now, Father, and we all want to hear from You tonight. We want Your Word to be alive and be real and to help us, Father, because we do love our children. We take this matter seriously. We know that You love our children. We take a peace and a comfort and, Father, yes, even a pleasure in knowing that. I pray for each one that is here tonight, Father, especially myself, that You would use me, Father, that the words I speak would be pleasing to You and edifying. I thank You for Your grace and Your mercy tonight, in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. I'm thankful that Brother chose the song, They're Greatest by Faithfulness. We could probably meditate on that and be able to combat a lot of frustration and anxiety right there, couldn't we? As I sat there singing that, I just kind of, you know, just felt better already, thinking about that, that there is no shadow of turning. As we developed this topic and looked at it, we realized that in our circle that we have here in our churches, that homeschooling is a big part of what we do and a big part of family life. But there are many other parts of family life, isn't there? It's not just teaching our children or training our children. And so, therefore, there's a lot of demands on our time. Especially it seems to me to uniquely fall upon the mothers, our wives in this situation. As they've taken on many duties, they do the sewing, the cleaning, the laundry, the meal preparation, the meal planning, have hospitality, many, many other activities. But instead of the children leaving during the day and going to an institutional school, they also have to fit in a full-time job of teaching the children. And so when you have all of these activities going on, there are going to be some frustrations, aren't there? And there's going to be some times where things don't get done when we want them done. There's going to be anxieties. And there's going to be times where we just don't feel like we're getting done what we should get done. But tonight we want to look at that a little bit and talk about it. And, you know, as I look at the word homeschooling too, sometimes we have a good idea of what the home is, don't we? We can form a mental picture. That's where the family lives. That's where we eat, sleep together. We have devotions. You have parents and children and all the home activities. And then we can also separate in our minds and think of a school. Most of us went to a school. You go there, there's teachers, there's a principal. There's desks and classrooms and all the activities associated with school. But what we've attempted to do is to put both of those two seemingly separate concepts together into one and call it homeschooling. And I think sometimes that's part of our frustration because as Brother John Ray mentioned, really our primary goal is the training of our children. You know, teaching is the giving of facts, isn't it? Teaching means to give facts to someone so that they can learn additional information. But we want to do more than that. And I don't believe that God has called us to duplicate what the institutional schools have done. If we're really convicted and convinced that we want to teach our children at home, what we really have to start with is the right perspective. And the perspective is that what we really want to do is use this as an opportunity to train them in the ways of the Lord. And I think as we keep that foremost in our mind every day, that will help in combating the frustration and anxiety right away. Let's just look at the words here, frustration and anxiety, for just a minute as we start. Frustration. Frustration is to prevent from accomplishing a purpose or fulfilling a desire, to thwart, to cause feelings of discouragement, to make ineffectual, to labor in vain. And sometimes we can feel that way, can't we? We can get frustrated. We try to accomplish something and it just doesn't work out. And when it doesn't work out, we have feelings of frustration. Things didn't work out. We have discouragement that goes with that. Anxiety is a state of uneasiness and apprehension as about future uncertainties. We want our children to be schooled, don't we? We want them to read and write properly. We have ideas and goals for them that are very important. And so with this homeschooling comes a whole new set of frustrations and anxieties that can come into the home. But what we want to do is make sure we have the right perspective on these frustrations and anxieties. I know that our perspective is so important. I know at our brother's meeting this week we were discussing several different topics and a couple of them were fairly serious and important topics. So there was different opinions on both sides and kind of weighty issues, if you will, and makes you perhaps get a little tense about some of them as you think about them. But then at the end of the meeting, a brother raised his hand and he was acknowledged and he said, you know, what a joy, what a blessing, what a privilege that we can talk about these topics here together as a brotherhood. And as soon as he said that, you could just feel like the air, you know, just everybody put it in the right perspective of why we were together and we just felt better about it. We knew that we were doing what we should be doing. What he's passing out there now, we're going to get to in a minute, so just hang on to those. As I go through both topics tonight, the way that they're going to be approached is from more of a teaching mode rather than a preaching mode. Now, I may get a little preacherish sometimes or may be a preacherish teacher, but it's going to be more in a teaching mode so that we can have... The purpose for that is to have more of a classroom forum here tonight so that during the topics, feel free. And in fact, I would greatly encourage and really need some of your questions and even some of your comments. And as these topics are for the homeschooling activities, we feel like it would be appropriate if the sisters also had questions and even some comments, particularly as we look at this first topic, they're the ones that have a lot of the frustrations and anxieties. That doesn't mean that the men don't, but a lot of it does seem to come forth in this area as the pressure is brought to bear there during the activities of the day. So please, I would encourage you to do that. And we don't have microphones for you, but if you ask a question, I'll repeat it up here to make sure everybody hears and even do the answer that way so that there will be some time for that during as we go along. And if you have any questions you want to say to the end or comments, that'll be fine. But again, in this area, I know many of you have experiences where you've had a victory, if you will, or a success in overcoming some of the things we'll talk about tonight, and it would be beneficial and edifying to share that. So I'd encourage you to do that. The first thing I want to look at in combating frustrations and anxiety is to look at the symptoms. You know, if you were to go to a doctor, he's going to ask you what's wrong, isn't he? He's going to say, what are the symptoms? How do you feel? So that he can determine what to do about it, what medicine to give you or what therapy or remedy or what you should do to change your life or your schedule to get well, to make yourself healthy again. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on each one of these symptoms, but as we look at each one of these symptoms, and you don't have a copy of this down there, what you have there, again, we'll get to in just a minute. But as I go through these symptoms here, in recognizing the symptom, we can also sometimes see the cure, can't we? We can see what we need to do about that symptom to overcome it and to push on and get the victory or get the answer that we need to help in that situation. The first symptom is focusing on trouble, therefore not getting anything done. Focusing on the trouble or the problem, therefore not getting anything done. Let's turn to Philippians 4.6. Alright, it says, Be careful, and the word careful there is the same as anxious. So be careful or be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. You know, a lot of times we are anxious and we tend to focus on the problem, don't we? It just keeps coming up. What am I going to do about this thing? What am I going to do about this thing? And it can even then turn into worry, can't it? You can say, you know, I'm not getting my homeschooling done. The schedule is not working. Why isn't it working? Oh no, what am I going to do? And we tend to then, you know, as human beings, we just get in a rut, don't we? And we tend to focus on the problem rather than getting anything done. And we'll talk more about that in the solutions that you have out there with you. But we can see in this verse here that worry and being careful or being anxious about things is not productive. And you know, as I looked at that verse, one of the things that struck me is that says, be careful for nothing. Or again, be anxious or worry about nothing. But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. It's really difficult when you're really in the middle of worrying about something to pray. If you think about it, you have to stop the worrying and start the praying. Likewise, if you're really in prayer, if you're really in the prayer closet and your mind's not drifting, maybe back to the problem, but you're really praying, the worrying is over too. So there's something to this, to our mindset in this, and focusing on the problem. We need to think through the problem. We'll talk about this more later rather than just thinking about the problem. So just start with that symptom there. The next symptom is not feeling or looking peaceful. And going along with that is losing our joy. And if you sense that you have this restlessness, you've lost this peace, that passive understanding, and you seem to be going to and fro and fretting, and that peacefulness is there, that's a sign, obviously a symptom, if you will, of frustration and anxiety. And as we were singing that song tonight, I know that's something that we do a lot of in our home, and I would just offer that as one thought. But when you're not feeling peaceful and you're losing your joy, one of the things you can do, and the children really respond to this too, is sing. They sing a song like, Great is thy faithfulness, it is well with my soul. We need to remember where our peace comes from. I call it going back to home base. You have to go back to the foundation. Wait a minute, I'm born again. The Lord loves me. I'm in the family of God. And then you realize as you start to rebuild your thought process, where you are. That you're in the family of God. And you realize that the weight of the world really isn't on your shoulders. And you can restore your peace because if you're fretful and unpeaceful, it's very difficult to start solving the problems. Because we're not denying that there's problems. And by bringing up these symptoms, I am not denying that there are not problems in homeschooling. Again, we're going to look at some practical solutions on those papers. But again, our perspectives or our attitudes, if you will. As Paul said, he had learned the secret of being content in each and every situation. Our attitudes and our perspectives about what we're doing, as we talked about earlier, God has not called us to just teach our children, but to train and to, if you will, I prefer the term home discipling actually. My wife and I use that term a lot in our home. We get the opportunity to disciple, in our home there happens to be ten children, ten people. They're not just children, are they? They're people. Can you imagine if the Lord said today, you get to disciple ten people. They're yours. I'm giving them to you. I mean, first of all, you'd be very humbled, wouldn't you? But then you'd say, well, praise the Lord. You know, what an opportunity. Because you know what happens when you disciple others. You know who gets blessed. Don't you? You do. And so, again, our perspective on this is very important. Let's go on with some more symptoms. Thinking that the load is too great. Becoming unthankful. You know, it's really easy when we become frustrated and have anxieties about homeschooling to lose our thankfulness. You know, the Bible warns us of that in 2 Timothy 3.2. And of course, there's many admonitions to be thankful. But you know, in end times there, it talks about being unthankful. And it's easy as we get busy again and as we become frustrated to forget verses like, you know, be thankful in all things. We just need to be thankful. And if we become unthankful, our children will see that too. You know, again, we should look at this as a privilege. Another symptom is failing to see the pleasures and privileges of homeschooling. You know, it's only for a season. I know as a parent, I know the feeling very well and I can describe it. What it feels like to have an infant tucked under my arm here and a soft head right here. You know, to have that baby smell. But you notice it doesn't last very long, does it? And it's gone. And that child is out of that stage. The feeling of rocking that baby to sleep at night. You know, it's a beautiful experience and we love it and we miss it when it's gone. And it's the same way with homeschooling. When we fail to see the pleasures and the privileges because we're frustrated, that's a big symptom. It's something we need to look at because your child will only learn to read once, won't they? And when you're there that day where it finally clicks and the phonics click and that word slides together and you see the joy in their face and you receive the joy. You know, I mean, it's beautiful, isn't it? And when they finally get those multiplication tables, it only happens once that they get it. After that, they've already got it. So we need to see the pleasures and the privileges of it. Sometimes if we have frustration, we have a breakdown of relationships. You know, we begin to distance ourselves even from family members because we withdraw as we think about some of these things. Again, we feel overloaded. And often the ones closest to us suffer, don't they? Another symptom is we begin to lose the sight of the problems of others. Even though we're called to disciple our children, we also need to have a heart for ministry to others. You know, for our neighbors. We lose sight that our neighbors are watching us too. Most of our neighbors probably don't disciple their children at home, do they? And they're watching. And if we have a lot of frustrations and anxieties and we're losing a heart and a vision for those, that's noticed, isn't it? So we have this problem. Another symptom is a breakdown of discipline in the home. The second topic tonight we're going to talk about is setting standards and having discipline in the home with the children. Another symptom that happens so often times during these times, of course, is our prayer time deteriorates. Okay, at this time, what I'd like to do is go to the charts there. And let's look at the spiritual chart first. You should have two charts that are turned sideways like this. Can we get this fan off? Maybe it's blowing my notes. Okay, let's go to the one that says spiritual reasons there. The first one, let's go to 2 Corinthians 10-12. 2 Corinthians 10-12, For we dare not make ourselves of the number or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves, but they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise. So comparing ourselves with one another, even comparing ourselves with schools, institutional schools, when we start doing some of these things, it can lead to frustrations and anxieties. And we need to be very careful in this area. Now, surely it's good to notice what someone else is doing or ask them how they do something in their home school. And we can learn and we can share that information, can't we? And that can be a real blessing because someone else maybe has had an experience very similar to what you're going through and they share with you and the light goes off and you say, oh, I see now. That's a good idea. I think I'll try to find a way to incorporate that into my family and into our training and our teaching time. But when we just look and we start comparing, note the two words in that verse that says you dare not and it's not wise. And one of the problems that happens with this is when we do this, it can be a crutch, can't it? To go in either direction. You can say, well, we're doing pretty good. I guess we can slack off and we don't have to maybe do as good a job. Or if you're not doing a really good job and you feel like everybody's doing a better job than you, you can feel really defeated. So, this comparing with one another can be very dangerous. It can also develop a spirit of competition. And whenever you have a spirit of competition as Brother Roman shared during Revival, it can lead to frustrations, can't it? Because if what you're doing is measuring yourself among yourselves, then there is going to be a feeling of frustration. So we need to watch out for that spiritual reason for frustration and we need to combat it in a spiritual way and call it what it is and pray about it and ask the Lord to help us and take that from us so that we can then focus on what we need to be focusing on, which is the training and the discipling and the teaching of our own children. Because those are the ones that God has lovingly entrusted to us. Okay, the next one down is a fear of failure. You know, a lot of people when they start homeschooling have a feeling of inadequacy because you think, what can I do? I went to school for years and I had all these teachers and they had all these books. You know, am I going to make it? What's down the road, you know? And how do I choose all these curriculums? And this anxiety comes up and you think, well, what if I don't make it? And this topic is in the Bible in different places. So let's just go to one. Mark chapter 4 there is marked in your notes there. And look at this for just a minute. Okay, we'll go to verse 37 as it's marked there. And there arose a great storm of wind and the waves beat into the ship so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow. And they awake him and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? And he arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, Peace be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith? And they feared exceedingly and said one to another, What manner of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? You know, we need to remember that we're a child of the King. We need to remember that when we have these fears that where it really comes from. You know, it doesn't come from really even our wanting to do good. It's condemnation, isn't it? And condemnation does not come from heaven. It does not come from our relationship with Jesus. It comes from the devil. And it's a very defeating thing. So we need to realize what this is, where this fear of failure comes from. And we need to set it aside and have faith, not in ourselves necessarily. That's not what I'm saying. We need to have faith in Jesus. Faith that we're doing the right thing. Faith that God has called us to this role as parents and as the ones who are to train and disciple. And again, we need to reestablish in our own minds what it is that God has called us to do and why we're doing it. Okay, the next one is placing academics above spiritual things. Again, we've kind of covered this already. But when we do that, I think there's a natural consequence of a frustration that comes in. You know, the so-called Christian school movement in America started in a big way in the 1950s. And when it started, the primary reason for it was not academics. The primary reason was a lot of Christians thought, you know, the public schools, they're not really doing a good job in the areas of training our children. The academics were fine. What their concern was was the morals and the ethics and the conduct and all these other areas that related to their values. And so it started in that vein. But you know what happened? They ended up doing a really good job in the academics. And pretty soon, they were able to say, even truthfully, you know what? We do a better job than the public schools. Our children get better grades. They place higher on tests. And they got kind of caught up in that thing. And if you were to go to most, and I certainly wouldn't want to stand here and say all, but if you were to go to most Christian schools today, you would not be able to recognize very much difference between the way they're run and the way a public school is run. The children would look the same. They would act the same. In other words, the original purposes of that Christian school movement that began in the 50s have all but evaporated because they got caught up in the academics. Now, of course, I'm not saying don't teach your children anything. Again, I hope no one misunderstands me in that. But if we place it above spiritual things, then it can lead to frustrations because I believe that our focus will be off. The next one is thinking we have more than we can handle. Let's go to Mark 6. Mark 6. And we'll look at verse 49. Thinking we have more than we can handle. Okay. But when they saw Him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit and cried out. For they all saw Him and were troubled. And immediately He talked with them and said unto them, Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid. And He went up unto them into the ship and the wind ceased and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure and wondered. And here's the verse I want you to think about. For they considered not the miracle of the loaves for their heart was hardened. You know, when we get into difficult situations and homeschooling and all the activities that we do in a family that are pressing and are busy, and we have these feelings of frustration and anxiety and stress and all that comes with it, we can forget really what has come before that. And our hearts can become hardened to that. And that's what happened to the disciples here is if you were to go back earlier in this same chapter, they were there. They were present during the miracle of the loaves. And they saw who Jesus was, what He was capable of. And yet, in this storm, in this problem, if you will, in this stressful situation, it's as if they forgot everything. You know, they forgot that. I mean, this was just right after that miracle, but it's as if it was out of their mind. And not only did it go out of their mind, the Bible even says where their heart was hardened. And you know, when we have a lot of problems and frustrations and things are bearing in on us, our hearts do get hard because we begin to focus on the problems and begin to focus on those things instead of remembering what God has done in our life. Remembering that He has given us these children. Remembering the grace of God that has helped us in so many other situations. And it's a good spiritual exercise when we're feeling this way to recall what God has done in our life. Another spiritual problem is seeing homeschool as drudgery. And again, we've talked about this when The Solution is homeschooling His disciples and souls for the kingdom. I would just say a word here specifically to the sisters is that you know, the Bible has not called the sisters to be preachers. It's not called them to be teachers of the Word of God, have they, in the congregation. And yet, I've heard my wife and many mothers in the training and discipling of their children give godly counsel and give godly training to their children that is just beautiful. And God gives them wisdom to nurture, to love, to admonish, to correct, and to do all the things. And you know, if we see that this is part of homeschooling and as the sisters, I think, think about this, they'll think of many times God has given them the grace and they thought of a verse or an application when they were dealing with a situation with their children and they used it and God blessed it and it worked and you know, their relationship with their child was better. You know, God really did a work in their child's life through that. So, we need to see what that calling really is and what an opportunity to exercise that calling, if you will, to be a discipler which is, you know, both parents are disciplers of their children. It is in this homeschool or home discipling arena that we're talking about. Okay, let's go to the next sheet which we could call practical solutions or practical things. We'll give some physical reasons here for frustrations and anxiety. Like I said, I've spent a lot of time as we started here talking about the spiritual things which I still believe are the most important and our mindsets and our perspectives. But we want to just spend a little bit of time looking at some of these and talking about them. And again, particularly at this, during this time, I would encourage your thoughts and comments, your, some of the examples maybe of things that you've experienced that have helped you to get through this time. Okay, this one we kind of mentioned at the beginning with the first symptom. That's constantly thinking about homeschooling instead of productively thinking through it. Now, the solution over there says don't allow unproductive thoughts or words such as what am I doing? I just can't do it. Instead, quietly think through how you are going to do it. You know, this area is so important because when we become overwhelmed, we again tend to focus on the problem. And one clue here in thinking through a problem is you need to break it down into bites you can handle, don't you? You know, you might say homeschooling is a problem and it just seems huge when you use that big term. But what you need to do is ask yourself, well, what specifically is it that's not working? And you might say, well, Thursdays are a bad day for me because, well, we go to cell group, we stay up late and we get started late and the rest of the week goes downhill. We say, okay, well, now that's an issue that we can deal with. If the problem is going to bed later that night is the problem with the schedule, don't say, what am I going to do? Homeschool isn't working. Let's think through that problem specifically of what we need to do. And it may be you need to go to bed earlier the night before, start school earlier a half an hour and finish up an hour or two before cell group. Whatever it is that you need to do your ordering your schedule to fix the problem rather than just saying, what am I going to do? Homeschool is a problem. It isn't working. My week isn't right. So, we need to have a mindset to sit down and look at a problem and it's worth our time. That's the thing I'd also encourage you is sometimes we don't take a minute. If you just take 15 minutes to stop and pray about it and then ask the Lord to give you discernment and wisdom and say, why am I feeling this way? And think, what is the problem? What is the bottleneck in this thing? And think through it. You know, in so many other areas we seem to apply this principle but for some reason in homeschooling it seems to be a bigger issue and we get kind of caught up with it. Okay, the next problem is the children not being in order. Of course, the key to that solution is consistency. Again, I'm not going to spend a lot of time right now talking about that. We're going to talk more about that because order in the home and having clear standards, which is really what we'll talk about in the next topic is standards in the home. Having those standards set appropriately and clearly is critical to the smooth running of the home and of the training and the discipling. Okay, another thing is curriculum is not in order. You know, it's very important as we look at the solution over there on the right that we organize it and go over it with the children. We make lists of what is being used, save lists for when your next child is that age and so on and so on. There's many other things that you could do about organizing your curriculum, but the key here is that if your curriculum is not in order, if you start the year and you just grab some books and think, we'll just kind of work through it as we go, you just get in a rut and a circle and, you know, you're two or three months into the school year and you're feeling very frustrated, you know. What you need to do is, again, stop, have a planning session at that time if you didn't have one in the summer before. What you really should have done, of course, is before the school year started, sat down and had a planning session and really thought through the curriculum and seen the needs for each child, where they really are, what you need to do with them, what are your goals for them, what curriculum would best accomplish those goals and meet those needs for that child because, as we know, each child is very different and, you know, one set of curriculum and one program may work for most of your children but you may have that one or two and it just doesn't seem to click. You know, it just isn't working right so you need to have a change but, again, you need to think through that and be ready to change that and be ready to have it put back in order and organize it. You know, your house is not neat and organized. Again, I'm sure Brother Myron will share more on this but, you know, one thing that I've seen helps is at the beginning of the school year it's really important to almost have, you know, you hear the term spring cleaning. We call it casalindo, it's just Spanish for house beautiful but it's like a fall cleaning. We have a big cleaning in the fall to, like, orient the house toward homeschooling and it's like you, everything that over the summer got put into the summer pattern of your life, you reorient it and schedule the layout of your house, the supplies, where everything is and how you're going to do things but not just the supplies but how everything is set up in your house so that it's very easy to maintain. Brother John Ray talked about maintenance and maintenance in your home can overwhelm you unless you have a system or an order that is easy to maintain because you're not going to have as many hours as you know during the school year to do those things that you would really like to do as maybe you did in the summer or at other times and so it's very important to prioritize what is important and priorities are important here too. I would put that under here, you know, we cannot do everything, can we? You know, it's nice to think that you could bake everything that you eat and grow everything and have everything came out and have everything downstairs and sew every piece of clothing for your family and have hospitality every week and on and on and I can make a list that seems silly but it's really not, it's really what a lot of people are trying to live up to and I'm not against that but I'm just saying what's important? We need to have an order and a priority for how we're going to spend our time because there is only so much time and this is a real practical reality and some things may have to go and I'm not going to stand up here and tell you what to take off of your list. I'm going to be talking to the men a little bit specifically about that tomorrow during the men's session as we get down to some practical things that the husbands can do but this is an area where the husbands can help because they should be setting the priorities, shouldn't they, shouldn't they, for the home and they should be the principal in the home, shouldn't they, the principal for the school to decide this is a priority, this is important, this is not as important, we're going to set this aside or at least on the back burner and not emphasize it as much because it's just taking so much of our precious time that should be diverted to this area of training and discipling our children. So that's just a few words on that. The next one is failure to go to bed and rise up at a consistent and practical time. You know, the key word here is early. You know, during the school year, you know, we kind of get in the habit, or at least I know we do at our home, the summer, the sun is out, you know, later, it doesn't get dark until 9 or 9.30 and you just kind of, you all do that, you get in the habit, you just seem to stay up just a little bit later, it's so beautiful at night to see the sunset, and then the school year comes. You know, can we do that during the school year? I know our family can't. So, you know, it's important that you, again, be consistent in this area. Of course, there's flexibility because there's things that come up that are special things that we want to go to, whether it's revivals or whatever, but the general rule should be, we need to really have a discipline in this because, you know, our children need that extra rest and so do we because there are more demands on us during the school year. Jumping from one thing to the next until everyone feels frazzled, it's very important to have a schedule and I would even recommend that you write it out. You learn how to have children working on different subjects at different times that don't conflict. In other words, you may not want to have all your hardest subjects. Let's say everybody in your family has trouble with math. It's not a good idea to have everybody doing math at the same time if that's a weak area in your home because everybody's going to be coming to the mother if she's the one teaching and asking questions at the same time and it's just going to become too much. You're going to get very frazzled. So scheduling what you're doing and when you're doing it is very critical in the area of homeschooling and training. Babies and toddlers, the same thing here. We need to schedule regular times with the little ones and allow some spontaneous interruptions. It's going to happen. You need to learn how to rotate the children with the toddlers, use the playpen. There's lots of other ideas we could talk about here, but we need to remember that homeschooling is not a time that we just stick the baby in the crib and say, okay, homeschooling. There are children too, aren't they? And they're part of the family. So the point here would be instead of getting frustrated about it and saying, oh, the baby's crying again or whatever the interruption may be, we need to realize that that's part of it and we need to schedule them into the day as if they're part of the schedule, as if they're part of the homeschooling because they are, because they're part of the home training. So we really need to look at that not as a problem, but as just part of the schedule. Handling interruptions is important. You know, we have a lot of interruptions in our days, don't we? There's phone calls, neighbor comes by, there's a problem, whatever. You know, a phone machine is an idea. Another idea is don't try to balance too much. In other words, if you know you're having a difficult week coming up in homeschool, maybe there's going to be some tests or some subjects that you really need to spend some attention on, that's not the best week to have a major sewing project going so, you know, eight new dresses that week or whatever it might be. You might want to look at some of that. You need to train your children to work through interruptions because interruptions are going to occur, whatever it is. Mama needs to go deal with this child. There's been a training problem and maybe she has to go spank this child and maybe it's going to take 15 or 20 minutes. Does school stop and just, you know, anything starts happening? No. So, the phone rings and it's one that she needs to take. So, interruptions are going to happen and the key here is to have a plan ahead of time. If there's a plan ahead of time on how to handle interruptions, then there can be something done about it. I had a little chart here that my wife does. You know, you can hang something like this up, what to do. You probably can't read it from back there, but I know what we do is, you know, we just have, if there's an interruption, there's just a list of things to go do. Read the Bible, copy a Bible verse, fold the Bible, wash, find a toddler and read to them, sweep the front porch, and that can vary with the season. Rake leaves for 20 minutes, you know, this time of year, whatever it is. But if you have a plan ahead of time, what to do about an interruption, then it will be handled and you'll be able to go on with the school the rest of the school day without causing a major problem. This list here, again, was some practical things to some frustrations and anxieties. The one before was of a more spiritual nature in our perspectives, and I guess that's the main thing that I think has helped in our homeschool, is to have the right attitude and to realize what we're called to do. And, you know, we do need to have good order. We do need to have good schedules. We do need to be able to think through problems, reduce them to something we can handle. But, you know, if our heart isn't right in this area, if we don't have the right perspective of what we're really doing, if we don't see it as the privilege that it really is, then all those things aren't going to work. They're just going to become mechanical, aren't they? And, you know, I don't want to duplicate what they do, again, in an institutional school and just have a mechanical school. I want it to be, you know, alive. And I want the Spirit of God to have the freedom there for those teachable moments, those trainable moments, I even like better, to use those. Because, you know, I have a feeling that if Jesus were to come next week, He wouldn't ask, My son, did you finish your geometry lesson? You know? But He might want to know where His heart is. You know? He might want to know, you know, those kind of things. What did He think about? What did He do about prayer and visiting the sick? And where was His spiritual life? And, again, I'm not setting aside academics. Please don't misunderstand me. I know we need to do those things. But I think if our heart is set right, it'll really help tremendously in this area of frustrations and anxieties. They do come. They are real. And, again, I think that's where setting priorities is a big part of it. And, again, tomorrow with the men's session, we'll be talking a lot about that because I believe that's the responsibility of the papas, is to look at this thing and get a vision and get a big picture and set the priorities of what is important and what's maybe not so important that we can move aside or set aside. Why don't we, if anyone has any comments, I would encourage them to give them or any examples of something that they do in their home that seems to work, that helps in this area of combating frustrations and anxieties to make their schoolwork easier. This is your time, so if anybody has anything that would help all of us. All right, we'll just leave it there then and John Ray will tell you where we go from here.