“CAUGHT NOT TAUGHT”
Make every moment count …
before it passes
That’s right… Reading time! As a home school mother I have been convicted lately and I thought I would share. As I have been planning the new years activities, curriculum and those sort of things… I felt a conviction to change-up the schedule. You see while we read a ton at our house… there hasn’t ever been a need for a “scheduled time where everyone just sits down to read for a chunk of time, all at once. I usually find my reading time early in the morning or late at night after most of my chores are done… which isn’t every day… depending on how the day went. Got to be flexible over here at the Tolpin House since we’ve got 6 kids under 11 over here! 🙂 It’s a good challenge for a control freak like me!
The kids have reading time throughout the day. They read of course when they are doing school work and when we do our Bible time, stuff like that. And I have a daughter who is ADDICTED to reading, which is great except that when I need her to be helping with other things, she is usually off reading somewhere and then finds herself in trouble for reading… crazy isn’t it… I know!
So I have been feeling a conviction for a while now to dedicate an hour to just reading. All of us at the same time. We can all be in the same room, but we don’t have to. This is a separate time from doing our devotion time… it is dedicated to just reading… whatever they want to read. If they want to read the Bible more, great, that is FANTASTIC. But this way it will force me to read during the day with them.
One of my favorite quotes is this:
“It’s CAUGHT, not TAUGHT”
I don’t know who said it originally, we’ve all heard it, but I believe this is so true for so many things in life with children. Learning to Love learning, love reading, love knowledge and understanding, to love the Word of God, all of those things are going to be caught, not taught and how can my kids “catch” the fever of loving to learn and loving to read if I am not doing it.
I want my kids to remember mom reading the Word of God, being on my knees, reading, excited to learn new things with them and discover new things with them.
The best test to see if your kids are seeing you model something is to ASK them. The other day I asked Kelsey, Austin, & Megan how important they thought reading was to me? Their response was shocking, they said not as important as email mom. Woooooooow! Convicting eh?! Right??!!
Then I asked them how often they see me reading, just for the joy of it, not in a cook book or homeopathy book, those don’t count… they said, “not very often.” It shocked me bc I read a lot… but I realized I read when they are sleeping. Most parents do, you don’t get interrupted as often, right! But NO, this isn’t right. If we want them to love reading, its caught, not taught. So now we are going to allow for an hour a day for just leisure/ knowledge/edification reading. I’m super excited! Now when one of my children is reading and gets stuck on a word, I won’t sigh that sigh of “your interrupting me I’m doing the dishes”… instead, I will be reading too and won’t be distracted by doing other things because its “reading hour.”
See how I just freed myself up to be a better mom that’s not so snappy!
CAUGHT, NOT TAUGHT!
Together We Lead,
Angie T
