Are you helping each other get to Heaven?

Around here we call it Post-Party Depression.  You know, that lull the day after Christmas, or the day you return to work after your honeymoon, or the "back to reality" after a weekend away with your girlfriends.  Whatever it is, we're not used to experiencing it the second week in September.  But we had the opportunity to go on an extremely inexpensive vacation to the beach (during what's considered off-season, in a house my brother-in-law bartered for doing some work through his tree service company.)  And fortunately my teacher-husband has an extremely understanding principal who let him leave during the second week of school, so off we went for a glorious week at the beach with my sister and family.

As everyone knows, the more glorious the vacation, the harder the return to reality.  This time, our "re-entry" was compounded by two sick kids and a longer-than-expected car trip home.  One transition day of nothing but salty, sandy laundry, then it was back to the grind.

If, as adults, we return to reality kicking and screaming, yearning for that sand still between our toes, I can imagine the kids must feel the same.  Or at least that's my hypothesis.  Otherwise, I have no way to explain the pure treachery that was the beginning of our school week.  We hadn't even cracked a book (in fact, I don't think breakfast dishes were even in the dishwasher) and two people had cried.  I was not one of them at that point, but I was close as well. 

In retrospect, I maybe should have just broken down in tears along with them, rather than performing the tirade that ensued.  I'm sure it was partly sleep deprivation from dealing with a sick baby for 3 nights in a row, but something just snapped. 

The constant bickering, the tattle-tailing, the negativity, the nit-picking, the antagonizing, it was more than I could take.  Don't get me wrong, these things exist on a daily basis in a house with 6 kids ages 1-12, but it pretty much came to a breaking point.  I think it was a strange mix of anger and sadness that these siblings, who are supposed to love each other, were treating each other so terribly.  I said, if you were still in school, would you treat your classmates that way?  What about your friends or teammates?  The answer to both questions was no.  Then why do you do this to each other?  Silence.

Rather than tackling the impossible task of figuring out why this was happening, I dealt with how to address the problem.  Ironically, this led me back to my general philosophy on homeschooling.  When we made the decision to homeschool this year, I got a lot of questions from family and friends like, "Don't they already go to Catholic School?"  Yes, and an excellent one that I would recommend to anyone looking for a school for their children.  So the follow-up question would be, "Then why homeschool?"  The obvious answer was the flexibility of curriculum to fit each child, the ability to go at a faster or slower pace as needed, the flexibility of the schedule, etc.  But it made me really start to think about what was the real driving force behind wanting to do this and really believing in it.  I remembered reading about a woman who said, "I'm homeschooling because I want our family to meet in Heaven someday, and I think we have a better shot at it if we journey together as much as possible."  I think this is where so many parents lose their children along the way.  They let them go on the journey by themselves way too early.  If we were traveling through Europe, would we let our three-year-olds go with a group of other three-year-olds?  What about our four-year-olds?  Seven-year-olds?  Twelve-year-olds?  Not that we should shelter our children from the world, but I have to believe that the home environment is so much more conducive to encouraging kids to excel, both intellectually AND morally, cheered on (and held to higher standards) by their siblings.   Everyone knows that the most well adjusted families and kids are the ones that actually spend time together - even something as simple as families sitting down to dinner together apparently makes such a huge difference.

I tried to point out to the kids that their relationships with each other and their interactions shape who they are.  The world has plenty of smart people.  The world needs nice people.  Kind, compassionate people.  Ethical people.  Holy people.  So as much as I want them to learn math and grammar, my PRIMARY JOB is to try to get them to Heaven.  Which is why I care WAY more about how they treat each other than I do about their Latin declensions (although they still have to learn those too, as I was quick to point out!)  Our primary goal needs to be sanctification.  Whenever we interact with people, whether that be family or strangers or people we pray for, we should be thinking about how to bring them closer to God.  And fortunately, it often works in the reverse.  Those people are helping us grow closer to God as well.

So their main assignment for the week was this: Whenever you feel like snapping at your sister, rolling your eyes at your brother, tattle-tailing on someone, calling someone something cruel, just STOP.  Ask yourself, "Am I helping this person get to Heaven?"  If the answer is no, then react another way.  As simple as that.  And as a parent, instead of screaming at them to stop fighting, scolding them to give back that toy, help your sister if she needs help, etc., etc., etc., I've used one phrase...

"Are you helping each other get to Heaven?"