When you go out into public and someone takes it upon themselves to "assess" our homeschool success by asking our 7 year old questions, how do you respond?
When this happens, every mother, regardless of the school her child attends, is suddenly transported into the middle school spelling bee. We find ourselves prodded to the front and center of attention as our child naively answers questions about the dates of famous wars, math facts, and grammar rules. How did it come to this? Didn't we homeschool in order to avoid these moments? While we can't completely eschew rude people, strangers though they may be, we can analyze what is happening inside of us in these moments and learn.
What are we really dealing with when someone starts drilling our children? Are we proud? Are we afraid?
For myself, I was afraid of being embarrassed. This is pride. I didn't want to look like an idiot. Children are children, I knew that the real person on trial in this situation was me. How was I doing transferring knowledge to my offspring? In these situations, I'd like to encourage you to stop, reexamine yourself, and embrace the moment. What's the worst that will happen? So our 7 year old can't spell "found", can they spell "kind"? The fact is that these moments not only give our children a lesson in dealing politely with people, but these moments also reveal to us things that every education has: gaps.
Every education is incomplete. If you have young children, please read that again: every education is incomplete. You can't teach everything to your children. It's not possible. God is infinite, therefore knowledge is infinite.
Embrace the gaps as an opportunity to learn more about God and His wonderful creation.