Yesterday we began a series about how to begin home educating a child who is acclimatized to the collective school situation and may be reluctant about this big change in his life. You may want to catch up, here.
The second step is somehow to teach your child also to care more.
Unless your child has begged for rescue from the collective system, he may not see what you see or care about what you care about (his welfare).
He may not be comfortable with the idea that his education or his life is worth caring about.
He may not realize that it is now safe for him to care about life.
Affirmations of thankfulness and celebration about his new presence in your daily affairs will help him see a glimpse of it. As your actions follow your words, he will begin to believe it, and to feel some of the same, himself.
The third step is to help your child understand what is happening in his life.
Even if he begged to home school, he is accustomed to a regime of bells jangling and other buffeting noises, dependent upon someone else telling him every move to make, and missing his old friends.
Now someone (you) must deal with this regimented, buffeted, dependent, and friendless soul who is moping at your kitchen table.
How do you explain? You start with God. If you have not had much time to minister God to your child, take it easy—you do not want to overwhelm him and you cannot force him.
You will have a long time to get your whole school right, but you have only now to get now right. Proceed humbly. Pray without ceasing.
If he does understand the concept of knowing God’s will, you can tell him that you are obeying God, and that sometimes that means changes that do not feel comfortable. There always is some other way that seems right to us. (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25)
Confess that you could not or would not hear God, before, which is how you both got to where you are now. Yes, confess. Apologize and ask for forgiveness. You, dear parent, have wasted a portion of the life of this child, who was at your mercy, leading him to learn to enjoy the world’s ways; you have seen the coming consequences; and you have repented. Now you must woo a child of the world to see the light of God’s glorious way for His people. Your humble, repeated apology will help him see that the old way was wrong and that when he longs for it, he too is wrong. Do not expect him to see it at first, but do tell him, often, how sorry you are and do not merely tell him. Show him. Make amends, somehow. Often.
Home's Cool! 
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