Letting Go of “Am I Doing Enough?”

Thank you for reaching out with your questions and being vulnerable enough to share all of your fears with us! The pressure to “do it all” or follow a certain implementation of Charlotte Mason’s methods can be a lot especially if that is what you are surrounded by and everyone else makes it look easy. The Charlotte Mason method is just that a method and you as a homeschooling parent have the freedom and flexibility to implement this method of education as you see will best fit your individual child and your family as a whole. What this looks like in terms of your curriculum choices and the books you finish may vary based on the season of life that you are in as well and that is ok! As Charlotte Mason encouraged us: “Let us try, however imperfectly, to make education a science of relationships—in other words, try in one subject or another to let the children work upon living ideas. In this field small efforts are honoured with great rewards, and we perceive that the education we are giving exceeds all that we intended or imagined.” School Education, p. 163.

Personally, I started learning about the Charlotte Mason method when my children were toddlers. I read about a couple curriculum options at that time but really dove into the methods more than choosing a curriculum. SCM’s website and this forum were such a source of information and encouragement that I started reading up on the curriculum offerings as we got closer to school age and decided that is what I would use.

We started officially when my oldest was in first grade and we are finishing up his sixth grade year now. While homeschooling has definitely come with its questions and challenges I have always felt very happy with this as a curriculum choice. I have six children ranging in age from 1 year old-11 years old. The early elementary years with only a few school aged children were such a joy! They were short and simple, but our children grew and thrived in this environment. Our days are certainly busier now as we add in more children to our school day and enjoy life as a family, however I still feel like we have a balance and everyone’s needs are being met. As I have watched my children learn and grow over their homeschooling years so far, I have been amazed with how much they have learned. I have never felt like they have gaps that I need to fill or that I need to add in more to adequately challenge them. Short, focused lessons have given us a lot of freedom in our schedule and I have always thought that if I want to add in another book on a topic or add more to our schedule I have the flexibility to do so. I can’t say that I have done that to my recollection as I have been content with what my children have been learning. I do sometimes check out extra books on a topic we’re studying as free reads from the library and/or for summer reads as I have several children that love to read and be read to. I feel like SCM’s curriculum gives us variety, the challenge that my students are ready for in all subject areas, and it is simple for me to implement! I love that we get to learn so much as a family and I do not find that my older students are “held back” by learning things alongside their younger siblings. There are grade level booklists for subjects like history as well as ways to level up/down subjects to meet your individual students’ needs. I also love that while SCM provides a complete curriculum with recommendations and plans for all subject areas, you are given the freedom and encouragement as the parent to choose what is best for your children and your family. There is structure but also a lot of flexibility and freedom within this curriculum. Please reach out with any specific questions that you may have about this curriculum and I would be happy to answer them!

Here are a couple of blogposts to encourage you:

You Do Not Have to Be Charlotte Mason

https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/you-dont-have-to-be-charlotte-mason/

How to Know That You Are Doing Enough

https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/how-to-know-you-are-doing-enough/

Hi Casey,

I understand your battle with those ideas. You are right, they’re just lies, however, that doesn’t negate your feelings. Personally I can say that SCM is wholeheartedly beautiful, complete with regard to a CM curriculum, and enough to educate a whole child well.

Our oldest graduated 3 years ago and our youngest will graduate in 7 weeks. Both of our girls are flourishing in their own persons, they know how to reason well, they care much about what they know, and are young adults who have had an “intelligent education that has made for their general stability, given them joy in living (and caused them to be a joy to those around them) and given them both personal initiative.” –my paraphrase of Charlotte’s words in A Philosophy of Education pg. 8.
My girls are “persons of generous impulses and sound judgment, of great intellectual aptitude, of imagination and moral insight.”–A Philosophy of Education pg. 9

We have always homeschooled them. When we first began I joined a co-op. It wasn’t a CM co-op, but a rigorous classical one. There were many moms there whose children seemed to be on a path of highest esteems based on the curriculum. They were most likely not being prideful, but for sure a lot of my lack of confidence and insecurities perceived that picture. One mom told me about CM, and pointed me to the SCM Scripture Memory System she was using in her own home. She had children same aged as mine. I did go down a CM rabbit trail from there. We started using the scripture memory system in our home, but I wasn’t sure if SCM would be all we needed, especially comparing it to the only other CM list I knew at that time, which happened to be AO.

We left the co-op the following school year my oldest was 5, turning 6, because it didn’t resonate with me like a CM education did. I decided I would just mesh SCM with AO, and that way we’d get the “best of both,” and that way it would be “enough.”

We tried that for the first two terms of 1st grade. I felt the same way you described, although I wrestled with this idea that because SCM’s booklists did not appear to be as heavy and the content of the books were more age appropriate that my girls would somehow have to settle and ultimately be a little less than those children I kept comparing mine to from the co-op. That idea did not come from anywhere except my own fears. We were so mentally fatigued by the end of Term 2, and honestly my oldest had no real connection or recollection of what we were actually reading, even though she was learning how to narrate and did that as well as a 6yo can. I remember needed naps after each school day because I was so mentally drained.

For me it took lots of faith to lay those ideas down. I tend to lean toward being a perfectionist but that’s a weakness I have gained strength in. While we were no longer in a co-op setting being looked upon or compared, I had a small grouping of extended family members (from both sides) and friends making judgments–some verbally and some perceived. I constantly felt like I had to prove something to them, which again, had nothing really to do with my girls.
I abandoned trying to over-cram and add-to in order to commit to SCM solely by my oldest’s 3rd grade year, and it was such a breath of fresh air. I felt a lot like how Bunyan describes Christian when his burden finally fell off his back. Not that I still didn’t wrestle with the comparison monster. I had to continually lay it down. Honestly, looking back over all these years, what we have covered through the SCM curriculum has grown my own person so much that now I have a much easier time surrendering false ideas. That is one thing, out of all the other major beauties that have come out of our SCM education, that pretty much stands at the top of the cake; this ability that we all have gained to know things, and one of those being knowing how we combat ideas that bring about anxieties.

I have so much good to say about SCM. For a long time I felt like I was their biggest groupie, but it’s just because I didn’t have a circle of CM friends 🙂 My most favorite parts include the Bible schedule. This was the highest of highs IMO. I really appreciate how SCM schedules it in a way that you are able to go through the Scriptures and actually follow the big picture. There is time to digest the parts of the whole and see what God was doing and what man was doing. We all learned so much from that time spent reading, narrating and discussing. My girls today are products of great spiritual fortitude and a deep and intimate walk with the Lord (I am too), and that for me was my main goal in choosing to home educate. It’s why I can now stand and not be easily swayed by ideas. Which, that teaching is really caught too in the scheduled readings of Ourselves, by Charlotte Mason beginning in 7th grade.

We all also gained so much in this close relationship we have always shared because we did so many subjects together. I could probably write you a book on all the gifts we have from SCM, haha.

Academically speaking, SCM well-prepared our oldest for a university setting. She did some dual enrollment classes her senior year, and her professors could not stop letting her know how much they noticed her integrity both as a person and as a student, and also how much she stood out from her peers. Their observations came from years of teaching at the college level and they would let her know that. From there she easily got into a private university with a very high standard of admissions in their presidential and honors scholarship programs. The honors program took the place of standard pre-req. classes. In that program all they did was read and write papers. The very first thing her professor told her class was to forget everything they knew about the typical “five-paragraph essay.” Narrating from good quality books gave her a huge advantage and she easily maintained a high GPA in those classes and throughout that year. The only reason she didn’t stay after the first year is because she wanted to explore a different path and had the confidence to do that. I also attribute that to what she gained in her SCM education. The books are high quality and do increase in reading levels appropriately, but the healthy amount of balance afforded in a school day/week allowed her to always have room to continue exploring different avenues on her own. She wasn’t bogged down with an excessive amount of reading and work that was unnecessary to providing her with that wide and varied feast Charlotte said that children are owed.

My youngest does not care to go on to college, but she enjoys working at her PT job at a local Christian bookstore that also serves as a homeschooling curriculum store. She plans to continue working there more once she graduates. While she doesn’t love everyone always asking the expected question of “So, what are your plans for college?” she replies in confidence each time that she enjoys working and plans to continue that for now. She recognizes that’s a cultural expectation, but she also has the confidence to march to her own drum. Both of my girls live in that sort of confidence. Something that took years for me to gain as an adult.

Neither one of my girls ever always made it through every single book or reading scheduled. We tried, but some years life just took its fair share of our time.

I guess my encouragement to you would be to enjoy who you guys are as a family and what you want your homeschooling journey to be. Figure out your personal why to why you chose to homeschool and honor that. You only get one shot, and it does go faster than you realize. You’ll always have some “I wish this looked different” but by and large live in such a way that you have no regrets. Do what resonates with your heart and don’t worry about others and their opinions, if those exist. Choose to stand so confidently that you don’t even assume others have an opinion. If they do, discern whether you want to stay in that environment long term, and if you do, live in so much grace for others that it doesn’t matter what they do and what you do differently or the same. The comparison monster is the thief of joy.

As far as dyslexia, make sure to check out the podcast with Sonya and Richele Baburina: Does Charlotte Mason work for a dyslexic child. 

Charlotte never meant for her methods and ideas to be a burden to us and our children, but a liberating blessing instead.
SCM is not rigorous by definition. Rigorous according to the dictionary is: given to exacting standards of discipline and self-restraint. That by definition feels harsh and unhealthy. SCM is life-giving, and plentiful. There is much discipline gained by it in the course of working on those good habits, and disciplines of studies. It is more than enough and in some seasons of life it is more than we could do in a day. We all have intimate relationships with some of the people and events we learned about along the way and are better people ourselves. You cannot go wrong with it.