Seven Important Tips for Homeschool Fathers

As a father of seven very opinionated children, ages 4 through 14, I have my hands filled with just keeping up with them. Of course I also need to hold down my job and provide for my growing family. And my wife Tracy and I homeschool.

I could simply delegate all the tasks of training my children to my wife. Some homeschool fathers do. But such an arrangement is a recipe for failure. We fathers need to be seriously committed and involved in our homeschooling to truly fulfill our responsibility before God, adequately demonstrate love to our children, and unconditionally love our wife.

In Ephesians 6:4, God makes it clear: “Fathers provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The command is to us fathers–not mothers. The responsibility is on us “to bring them up.” This requires action on our part. We can delegate the authority to train and bring up our children to someone else but never the responsibility. One day when we stand before God, we fathers will have to answer for how our children were trained.

Homeschooling happens to be the best way to fulfill this responsibility and the commands that God has given us. We must realize that homeschooling is not the end in itself – it is the means to the end. The end we are aiming for is that our children will be “arrows” carrying God’s truth to this world and one day living with us in heaven.

The responsibility of nurturing these never-dying souls is great. As you read in this article about the time and tasks required to fulfill this responsibility, you will feel overwhelmed! It truly seems impossible that we can ever be adequate fathers who please the Lord.

But remember, when you feel weak, then you are strong. WE can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). God wants us to realize that we cannot accomplish theses things by our own strength, but by His.

Here are seven tips I believe will help us be faithful homeschool fathers.

1. Administer Discipline When You Are at Home
I make it a practice that when I come home I am in charge of all discipline. This way I am demonstrating support for my wife. I don’t want to be known simply as the dad who is all “fun and games” and my wife known as the “bad guy” because she has to do the disciplining. I want my children to respect my wife and realize that I will enforce the same rules. The message is clear: my wife and I are one.

2. Go Through Proverbs With Your Children
I believe this is the best method of spiritual training and instilling moral values. As fathers, you should be in charge of teaching Proverbs to your children. If you’re not able to do anything else mentioned in this article, but you teach your children Proverbs, you will be teaching them wisdom and teaching them life.

3. Nurture Your Own Soul
The most important thing you can do for your children as you bring them up is to nurture your own soul. Matthew 6:33 tells us, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” The condition of our own soul and how closely we walk with the Lord will directly influence our ability to train our children. I don’t believe we can lead our child closer to God than we are. So we need to walk closely with our Lord, surrendering daily to His will and begging for his mercy. Matthew 22:37-38 commands, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” Jesus says this is the greatest commandment. Loving God with our all is more important than anything else. We cannot let the busyness of our lives squeeze out our daily communion with the Lord, keep us from reading the Bible, which is His word to us, or prevent us from praying, which is our words back to Him. Jesus wants a personal relationship. This requires a daily commitment of time. The time we spend or do not spend with the Lord each day will infect or affect the effectiveness of our homeschool.

4. Shepherd Your Child’s Heart
It is important that we shepherd our child’s heart and not just control his or her actions. Our children can’t see just rules– the rules have to be covered with our love. We need to come alongside our children and take time to understand them and to know their hearts. One thing we can do is to have a regular time scheduled with each of our children.

My schedule is as follows: I read nightly Bible stories or read directly from the Bible to my children between the ages of 4 and 7 years old. I’ll often read the Bible with a flashlight, with all the lights turned out. I’ve found that children, especially my twins, will completely quiet down and listen to the Word of God this way. I’ll ask them questions and we’ll interact. Each night they actually beg for me to read a Bible story to them.

For some of my other children I’ll spend a few minutes reading the Bible in their rooms with them before they go to bed. When my son Jesse was 6 he stated that, “My favorite thing I like to do with my dad is read the Bible with him.” That’s where I want my children to be, now and throughout their lives: lovers of the Word of God.

In addition, I schedule appointed times early in the morning four days of the week with my older children. On Tuesday morning I meet with Jesse, my 9-year-old son. On Wednesday morning, I meet with my 11-year-old daughter Megan. On Thursday morning, I meet with my 14-year-old, Bethany. And either Monday or Friday mornings I meet with my 8-year-old, Susanna. With each of them I go through a book that directs them on how to develop godly character.

For instance, each of the girls has gone through with me the book Beautiful Girlhood, edited by Karen Andreola. This is a wonderful book because throughout its chapters it deals with many character traits of a girl and issues that they face transitioning from girlhood into womanhood. It is especially helpful for a dad to use this book since there are many things discussed that, as a man, he would not have realized or discussed with his daughter. For my son who has had trouble with conflicts with his sisters, I’ve been going through the Peacemakers series for children. This is an easy–to–read series of booklets with many illustrations that summarize the biblical principles of dealing with conflict and applies them to siblings and friends. Other books that I have gone through with my children are in a list of resources at the end of this article.

5. Control the TV Set and Sports
In my experience working with many fathers across the country, I’ve found that there are two weaknesses. Fathers tend to like watching sports and others like to watch the television set in general, especially the news. Of course, the news nearly always leads to watching other useless shows and programs. Now, nothing in and of itself is wrong with this. However, in living with multiple sclerosis I realize how important it is for us to redeem the time with our children (Ephesians 5:16). I’ve also received many letters from parents whose husband, wife or child has died suddenly and tragically in one way or another.

My point is simply this: our time is too precious to waste in watching television and most sporting events. Life is too short. We need to make every day count with our children; there is so much training to do–so much molding and shaping of their character. There is so much we can do with this time to homeschool our children. We unplugged our television 10 years ago and I have not missed a thing–but I have gained thousands of hours of quality time with my children, wife, and in ministering! Let us make certain our priorities are in order. One day we will be standing before our Creator and Judge to answer for how we spent our time with our children. Our culture is obsessed with sports and T.V. Let us not open the door of our children’s hearts to these idols.

6. Teach Your Children to Develop the Habit of Personal Devotions
We, as homeschool fathers, in order to be true spiritual heads must teach our children how to have their own private devotions with the Lord God Almighty. It is important that we make them accountable to us as fathers and as spiritual heads. I’ve learned a method that really seems to help my children form a lasting habit of having regular, daily, personal devotions in communion with God. I want my children to learn to nurture their own soul and develop a close, personal walk with the Lord.

The way I keep our children accountable is I have each child who can read and write, read a particular passage in Scripture which I prearrange with him according to which book–or chapters–of the Bible he should be reading. Then each day the child must write in a notebook, according to the day of the week, a verse. He must also write a sentence or two describing in his journal what this verse means to him. At the appointed weekly time I meet with each of my children, and review the Bible verses from the personal devotion time and the comments written in the past week. What a joy it is to peddle through the Scriptures and review what the child read in the past week. If the child diligently has personal devotions every day for a given month, he gets a special treat from Dad or breakfast out with him. These incentives help particularly the smaller children as they begin developing their habits. The incentives are not needed as much with the older children as they generally are motivated from their heart to have daily personal devotions with the Lord.

7. Take Care of All Your Legal Troubles
This next point I do not take lightly. I urge you to make sure your family is a member of Home School Legal Defense Association. As Senior Counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association since 1985, I have seen how God has used HSLDA to literally change the legal landscape across this country. In 1985 when I started working at the Home School Legal Defense Association, it was only clearly legal to homeschool in about five states. After many years of work before the courts and legislatures of this land, God has blessed our efforts with many victories. WE can now state with great thankfulness to God that it is legal in all 50 states. This was not always so, and there is no guarantee that it will always be so.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Your investment in the Home School Legal Defense Association not only will enable you to protect your family if you ever get an unwanted knock at your door by a truant officer or a social worker, but more importantly your investment will help the many thousands of families who are members of HSLDA that we help each year who do have legal troubles and conflicts. Many homeschool moms have told me how their membership has given them peace of mind to concentrate on their homeschooling.

Do You Feel Overwhelmed Yet?
I do not know about you, but being a homeschool father seems quite overwhelming. You might be saying to yourself, “There is no way I can do this.” You are right. You can’t. I can’t. But God can. You also need to ask yourself, “How badly do I want it? How badly do I want to be a godly homeschool father?” Then put forth the effort, planning, prayer, and emotion to make it happen–never-dying souls are at stake.

Recommended Reading List for Homeschool Fathers
1. Heart of Home Schooling: Teaching and Living What Really Matters, Klicka, Christopher, Broadman and Holman, Nashville, TN, 2002. Available from the Home School Legal Defense Association, 540-338-5600 or www.hslda.org.

2. Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens, Tripp, Paul David, P & R Publishing, Phillipsburg, NJ, 1997.