As a mom of teens, I find myself in the car more often than I prefer. I am learning to reframe this time as an opportunity to connect with my older children, hear their hearts, sample their questionable taste in music, and listen to their discourse with friends. Sometimes, when there is bickering or deadpan silence, I fill that void with great podcasts. Recently, I listened to a podcast called "Human Dignity and the Classical Tradition". As my eldest daughter and I traveled the winding, rural roads that lead to town, we listened to Winston Brady, from the podcast Developing Classical Thinkers, explain that "classical education asserts the proposition that human beings are image bearers, having been created by God with the capacity for reason and contemplation, the drive for creative self-expression, and the capacity to make free, meaningful moral choices." I furtively glanced over at her several times, delighting in the fact that, as a result of the past three years of classical education, she understood the lecture. Neither of us understood foreign concepts like syllogisms, premises, Latin phrases, natural law, or common law a short time ago, but now these terms are rich with meaning.
While homeschooling is HARD, there is a richness that I am only beginning to enjoy as I watch my littles transform into young people who think critically and have a firm sense of who they are in the world.
