You have listened to seminars. You have read the materials. You have weighed your options. You have learned about different methods and approaches to teaching. You have studied your children and puzzled out their individual learning styles. At this point you may feel you are ready to jump into homeschooling, but you may not have taken into account the key factor that will determine whether you are successful or not.

Jeff Allen, a professional comedian, has built his career around one simple saying. He sums up his hard-earned life experience into one four-word phrase-”Happy wife, happy life.” This is an example of how sometimes the simplest statements are the most profound. Beyond comedy and the realm of personal relationships this motto encapsulates the key to a successful homeschool experience.

The single most overlooked ingredient of a successful homeschool is the positive attitude of the teacher (who, for the sake of brevity, we will simply call Mom). Is Mom happy and motivated? Does she look forward to getting up most mornings to spend a great deal of time with her kids? Is she having fun? Does she enjoy teaching homeschool? Is she enthusiastic about how things are going? Or does Mom feel like she is slogging through each day, struggling to keep her head above water?

Somehow this simple ingredient to success gets all but ignored as we step into our family homeschooling adventure. We focus on what material best matches each child’s individual learning style. We choose a unit study or a living books or a classical curriculum because we feel that our children will benefit the most from that approach to teaching. Yet if we look back in our own lives it is clear that curriculum choices made or the teaching methods used pale in significance compared to the attitude and the zest for teaching that the best teachers brought to our lives. Of all the factors that can lead to less successful results from our children and reduce homeschool burnout, I am convinced that the attitude of the person teaching is far and away the most important and most frequently overlooked.

This is a not meant to be a wag-of-a-finger or yet another burden to place on the shoulders of the mothers teaching their children at home. After all it is easy to tell someone that is their responsibility to buck up, but experience shows us that telling someone to be chipper very seldom leads to cheeriness. We can learn to be content in any circumstance, but truly exceptional results require more than just that-they require joy.

No one has all the answers as to how this will play out in any single family. This article is meant simply as a request for each of us to take stock of things beyond our children when it comes to homeschooling. We need to be reminded that the key factor distinguishing homes with highly motivated children who are happy to learn is the presence of a highly motivated mother who is happy to teach.

Matt, the father of three and a husband of 23 years, has been writing online for a while now on a number of different topics. If you enjoyed this article you may be interested in his web site that helps parents select homeschool curriculum packages that work for their family.

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