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10 Reasons You Can Homeschool - Reason 7: Avoiding Comparison
Episode 7 • 2nd May 2023 • Grace in Homeschool • AmyElizSmith
00:00:00 00:13:39

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7 : 10 Reasons You Can Homeschool - Reason 7: Avoiding Comparison

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Theodore Roosevelt

There is a natural tendency for children to compare themselves to others. Adults compare themselves too. Let’s set up for them an atmosphere where they can personally thrive and also serve others.

  • Learning at their own pace
  • Subjects do not have to all be aligned by grade level
  • Children avoid knowing what level they are in as compared to their age-group peers

This is why homeschool can work the best – your child learns at their own pace and their own level.

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Transcripts

Amy:

Hi friends, and welcome back to our "Top 10 Reasons Why You Can Homeschool."

Amy:

So today we're gonna talk about avoiding the comparison trap in school and online.

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Now it is a natural tendency for children to compare themselves to

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others, but through homeschooling them and through getting them out of those

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situations that can happen at school or on the bus, we can save them from the

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detriment that these things can cause.

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So Mitch Princeton, who is a psychologist from the University of North Carolina,

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he said, "When we're reliant on others, for our sense of, only feeling good if

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we get positive feedback or markers of success, we are at risk for depression."

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Rebecca Weber wrote in Psychology Today that "social comparison

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theory was first put forth in 1954 by psychologist Leon Festinger who

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hypothesized that we make comparisons as a way of evaluating ourselves.

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At its root, the impulse is connected to the instant

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judgments we make of other people.

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A key element of the brain's social cognition network that can

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be traced to the need to protect oneself and assess threats."

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So, at our core, we do compare ourselves.

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It's what do we do as a result of that happening?

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Where does our mind go?

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And we have to help our children with comparing themselves with others, both

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on receiving comparisons or if they are thinking them or giving them out.

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We want our children to be safe of these things.

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We want them to learn at their own pace, and this is where homeschooling

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is connected to these ideas.

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Subjects in homeschool do not have to be perfectly aligned with

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the grade level of the student.

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I'm gonna give you a couple examples here.

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For my son, he was not reading right away in the kindergarten level,

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and I taught kindergarten, full day kindergarten before, and this is

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part of why I decided to homeschool.

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Because I saw these children being forced to learn curriculum all day long.

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It was way too soon, and many of them just weren't developmentally ready.

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So for my son, I knew that I wasn't gonna push reading too soon before he was gonna

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be ready and he was reading okay, but he didn't love reading longer fiction books.

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I brought some graphic novels to him.

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He absolutely loved them and then began to love reading.

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And two of these graphic novels were Hamlet and even McBath, and

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he started loving Shakespeare.

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And so now that's lent itself into, he is gonna appear in

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a Shakespeare play coming up.

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He's gonna be in the Merchant of Venice, which is very exciting.

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And so I allowed him to learn at his own pace.

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I didn't force him to do exactly what his peers might have done in school,

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and he didn't know, this is the key, he didn't know that he was technically

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quote unquote behind in reading from his peers or what the grade level

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expectations would've been because I was able to protect him from knowing that.

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I shared in earlier episodes that all three of my children

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have not attached to reading.

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To the sense where I think that they would have sooner, because I know how to

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teach reading and reading instruction.

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It's a huge passion of mine.

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But I've had to take my pride out of the equation and see

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where are they developmentally.

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And, for all three of them, they don't have to know that their development

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in their reading journey has not had any pressure attached to it.

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They're not being pushed before they are developmentally able.

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Now, I do have a friend whose son, he was reading at age three, and I don't

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think there was anything she did that was particularly special with him.

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I know she wasn't doing reading instruction with him,

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but he picked up reading.

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He's quite brilliant.

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But again, every child can learn at their own pace and she was able to

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find age appropriate reading for him.

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And that's always been something that they've been able to do.

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But children in homeschool, they won't experience the same pressures

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and that exposure to comparison that children in those public schools or

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government schools will experience.

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So there's not the peer pressures as well.

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Let's jump into the schools where they have differentiated instruction

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through guided reading groups or guided math groups, they separate kids.

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Now, Princeton goes on to say that many people believed it is possible to use

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ability grouping in that differentiated instruction to maximize achievement

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effort, but it doesn't work in practice.

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But if your child is gifted and at a higher level than others, then

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they shouldn't be held back either.

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So just like my friend's son who's three, he didn't need to be

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in any of these reading groups.

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If he was put into school, he would need to be in a group all by himself.

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And so what's great about homeschooling is that you're not put into a group

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with either the same level as you or kids who are lower or higher than you so

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you're not comparing yourself to others.

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The William T.

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Grant Foundation talked about this further with those guided reading

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groups where every child kind of knows where they are on the scale, and that

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can be detrimental to their learning.

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But they talk about when teachers have low expectations for weaker readers, they slow

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down the pace even more than they need to.

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So lower achieving students as a result will fall further and further behind.

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I believe that's true.

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Further they say "evidence suggests that practice of group instruction

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based on skill level is less beneficial than teachers think.

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It can exasperate achievement gaps and even slow reading growth

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for some of those children.|

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And so much research has been centered around this, that those guiding reading

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groups, cause more harm than good.

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And this is why I believe, and this is why we talk about this, is that homeschool can

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work the best and you're at your child's own pace and you're at their own level.

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Names on boards, knowing where to stand, behavior traps, things like stop lights.

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All of those things are really negative and can imprint on a

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child's soul in a negative way.

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So can the state testing and those national tests that

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the child has to sit through.

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And now I understand a lot of 'em are computer on computers

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where a child has to log in.

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That's a big time waster, but it also can be high pressure for some children.

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And I know parents can put the pressure on their children too, but I

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just, I don't see a benefit to that.

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I don't see a benefit to putting your child in that situ.

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Another point of not comparing yourself to others can do with peer pressure.

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So, we don't want our children to be exposed to things sooner than they're

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able and when they're home, you're able to monitor what they are exposed to

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more in their screen use in particular.

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Much of the comparison trap today is due to social media and online use.

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We know that children are so impressionable.

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And they are taught so many things, and to include the devices that surround

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them, they need to know that everyone has unique and awesome strengths.

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This relates to, I wish it was just teenagers, but middle schoolers and even

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elementary kids are on social media.

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Where they're having the comparison traps happen.

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And they're being exposed to various things and not even realizing too the

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dopamine addictions that are happening on those screens where insidious companies,

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they're paid by advertise advertisers and they want you to stay on their devices.

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So extreme monitoring is needed, and we'll talk about this in future episodes

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because it's a huge passion of mine to monitor our children with their screens.

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Not only screen time, but particularly what are they being exposed to.

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We have to be hypervigilant as parents to monitor and to be able

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to turn away from explicit content.

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Children aren't born with this strength naturally to turn away from

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things that might negatively affect them or to be able, like we talked

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about earlier, be able to understand what the positive feedback or the

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markers of success could mean in relation to comparison with others.

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We have to help them grow those cognitive skills, help them learn

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the habits, and learning self-control and the way of the will and how

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it is a loving guidance for us.

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Most of us, myself included, we were able to grow up without social media

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and those peer pressures that children and teenagers are experiencing.

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It's part of a natural process, where we cultivate a sense of who

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we are from how others view us.

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But again, going back to Princeton, he states that hypervigilance

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about how others see you is supposed to go away in adulthood.

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But social media has created a lifelong adolescence due to those

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comparison traps, essentially.

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So adults are struggling with these things too.

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There's a Ted Talk by Bea Arthur who talks about these impulses to compare

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ourselves is the fear of missing out, the FOMO and the mindset that you're

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not enough or you're not doing enough.

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This is a difficult place for adults, but we have to remember kids are experiencing

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these things at unprecedented levels.

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And how do we help them avoid those things?

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And I truly believe it is to take them out of the equation, to

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take them out of that situation.

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And I know that that's easier said than done, but when there's a will, there

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is a way so we can align ourselves with the good things that we want,

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with those beautiful and noble and true ways that we want to cultivate

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in our children and influence them with, but also with our own goals.

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We can fight that desire to compare ourselves with others and focus

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on that growth mindset rather than fixing ourselves on that.

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And we can teach that to children, and children can, if we continue day by day

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to help emphasize that growth mindset.

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Theodore Roosevelt said, "Comparison is the thief of joy."

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Now this statement is used a lot, but it rings especially true.

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When we compare ourselves to others, we rarely will experience joy and we

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will instead experience inadequacy, despair, or even self resentment.

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Instead, we want our children to humbly look to Christ for our identity,

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and that's my prayer for my own children and my prayer for yours.

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That we can help them to not compare themselves and see themselves

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as Christ sees them so that they can thrive and also serve others.

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