How Homeschooling Can Heal Your Family

Written By: The Good and the Beautiful Published On: January 13, 2025

Jenny Phillips, the founder of The Good and the Beautiful, shares three profound ways homeschooling can build and strengthen family bonds in this encouraging video. As our society becomes more and more peer influenced and morally confused, parents are often finding parenting incredibly difficult. Parents are losing influence and unity with their children. But there is something that offers profound healing power for families—homeschooling!

Homeschooling is obviously not the only way to connect with our children and to create strong families. But for many families, including mine, homeschooling makes it so much easier to build strong families amidst the crazy-busy, confused, difficult world.

When children spend a massive amount of time with peers and not enough time forming meaningful and close interactions with mature and caring adults, a peer-driven society is created. In a peer-driven society, children attach to peers more than family. Children look to peers for acceptance and guidance. But the problem is, peers do not raise each other well. Children are not able to offer other children the unconditional love, modeling, and maturity that a loving and supportive family does. Children model themselves after the people they spend the most time with and value most.

My husband and I have always been loving, devoted, and very involved parents. However, when our kids were in public school, we felt a little twinge of warning that we were losing connection and influence with our children. We also felt that the beauty of our relationships wasn’t quite what we wanted it to be—or what it could be. I am forever grateful that I listened to that feeling and started homeschooling my children.

Looking Back

Now, looking back, I realize just how profound an impact homeschooling has had on our family! Like everyone, we have had and continue to face many struggles and imperfections in our homeschool. But I am astounded by the beauty and power of the family relationships that homeschooling has allowed us to develop.

My children have wonderful friends, yes, but I am also best friends with my children. I have been able to hugely influence their lives. There isn’t just beauty in how our relationships turned out in the end; we have also experienced profound joy through homeschooling.

Before we started homeschooling, my kids had to get up, rush to get ready for school, and leave right after breakfast. By the time they returned, it was nearly 4:00. Then they had music lessons or other activities. And some of the only time I got to spend with them during the week was doing homework with them. It was work that I often disliked doing and that they resisted. Most of the time it was a frustrating experience that didn’t build our relationship. My only educational time with them was dictated to me and was not joyful for any of us.

The Gift of Time

The first way that homeschool can heal families is with the gift of time. It is such a precious gift to have a peaceful, non-rushed morning with your children.

Homeschooling offers time to:
- study God’s words together,
- study God’s words on their own,
- exercise,
- dive into the world of beautiful books,
- be out in nature,
- pursue interests,
- explore the world,
- do things with your family,
- Go on adventures,
- make friends that encourage strong values,
- teach them life skills, and
- explore the joy and wonder of learning with them.

If you are saying, “But I can’t handle being around my kids all day; it’s too hard,” you are in good company. Many, many good parents feel that way today. Eva Burrows said, “The love of a family is life’s greatest blessing.” And truly, if you are not finding joy in spending time with your children, please know this: you can. You can feel joy in spending time with your children.

You can learn to truly love being around them all day. You can learn to not only get along with them, but to find incredible joy in your relationships with them. If children roll their eyes at you and act like you’re in the way of their fun, or if they resist you being their teacher, that all can change. It may take a journey to get there. Things that are broken will need to be fixed, and it will take a lot of work. But it is worth the effort.

Get Motivated
- pray for guidance,
- follow your impressions,
- study and learn by reading books,
- watch other YouTube videos on this channel.

As you change the media and the books your family watches and reads and the way your family spends time, you can feel change start to happen.

The joy of family love is incredible! No career, no worldly endeavor, no convenience can ever replace the profound joy of being deeply, beautifully connected to your children.

The Gift of Influence
The second way that homeschooling can heal your family is that you as the parent have more influence over which books are read to your children, the books your children read, and what is taught to them. You can more easily immerse your precious children in books that strengthen rather than weaken family.

Public school libraries are unfortunately packed with books that weaken families by making parents and siblings seem stupid and annoying. Look at the opening lines of this very popular book, which children check out from public school libraries every day: “Sometimes I wonder if my mom is brain dead. Then there are other days when I know it.”

In the books that we review for The Good and the Beautiful Book List, I have found that the majority of popular books today make fun of family and demean parents or siblings as being annoying or stupid. Often teachers read these books aloud to their classes, or children check out these books. And parents are unaware. It matters much more than we realize. The attitudes your children have about the value of family and how they feel about you are largely being shaped by what they read and the media they consume. Popular books with appealing covers are often acting today as guidebooks for how to think your parents are stupid and annoying.

Homeschooling allows you, the parent, to choose curriculum and books that support strong families. These kinds of books act as inspiring guidebooks on how to value family and find joy in beautiful family relationships. I am a witness to the truth that immersing your children in this kind of curriculum and books will, over time, strengthen your children’s views on family and their level of respect toward family.

The Gift of Connection

The third way that homeschooling heals families is simply by helping you, as a parent, be more connected to your children. Homeschooling gives you a lot of discussion time as you read and explore together. When you use a curriculum that promotes good values, you and your children will have opportunities for even more meaningful discussions. Children will become used to and comfortable talking with you about meaningful things. Conversations with your children will become natural and beautiful and common.

Also, when children spend more time with you—a mature adult who cares deeply about them and models respectful behavior, love of learning, and faith—they will grow more respectful and mature, and they will develop a deeper faith and a love of learning. Children become so much more enjoyable to be around as they learn to love beauty and learning and develop beautiful character traits.

In addition, being more connected to your children allows you to quickly detect any warning signs of things going on in their lives. It provides you the time to walk with them through their problems and to nourish the things that they love. You are able to give them time and space to strengthen their weaknesses.

The Gift of Joy

The relationships we have with our children offer some of the most profound joys we can experience in this life. These relationships should be guarded and pursued with earnest effort and focus.

Like I said earlier, homeschooling is not the only way to create strong families, but many families find healing and are saved through homeschooling. That was the case with my family. Homeschooling definitely offers the profound blessings of time and connection that make it so much easier to heal and strengthen your family.

We know, and we have seen, that homeschool fundamentally changes families and lives and will change generations to come. This is why we want to make it easy and enjoyable for you to start and continue homeschooling. Visit the links below for more information about getting started with homeschooling.

May you be blessed in your efforts and your sacrifices as you work hand in hand with God to raise your children in light and truth.

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