{"id":88009,"date":"2021-09-07T18:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T22:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setonshrine.org\/?p=88009"},"modified":"2022-08-31T18:11:31","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T22:11:31","slug":"beginning-a-new-school-year-with-our-lady-and-mother-seton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setonshrine.org\/es\/beginning-a-new-school-year-with-our-lady-and-mother-seton\/","title":{"rendered":"Beginning a New School Year with Our Lady and Mother Seton"},"content":{"rendered":"

This reflection was originally published last year.<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you remember that Staples\u00ae commercial that used to air at the end of each summer, showing parents dancing through the aisles, tossing back-to-school items into a cart, and singing, \u201cIt\u2019s the most wonderful time of the year\u2026\u201d?<\/p>\n

As a longtime homeschooler, I sometimes grimaced at the joke, but I get it. At the end of a lengthy summer, I can certainly understand parents being cheered by the fact that their kids are indeed headed back to school. In some ways, though, because of COVID-19 restrictions, it feels like this year the joke is on the parents instead. Many who were never before interested in becoming homeschoolers find themselves suddenly (and anxiously) researching curricula, writing lesson plans, and participating in various methods of remote learning.<\/p>\n

I understand the anxiety. I often choose the Nativity of Mary<\/a> (September 8) as a starting date for our homeschool year because leaning on Our Lady helps me fight off that feeling of dread that threatens to overwhelm me every year in early September. Though I\u2019ve been a homeschooler in some form for more than 20 years now, I still feel the need to call myself a \u201creluctant homeschooler.\u201d That\u2019s because it\u2019s a pretty challenging thing to do, perhaps the most challenging thing I have ever done, and I don\u2019t always feel equipped for the job.<\/p>\n

Year after year my husband and I have prayerfully determined that homeschooling is the best choice for us in our current circumstances, but I don\u2019t at all pretend that homeschooling is the ideal, or that it\u2019s for everyone. It simply isn\u2019t. No system of education is.<\/p>\n

There is something about the broad responsibility of homeschooling that makes me feel like, no matter what, I must be doing it wrong. I am using the wrong books, or I shouldn\u2019t be using books at all, or I have too rigid a schedule, or I have too loose a schedule, or I\u2019m doing too much housework at the expense of the kids\u2019 education, or I\u2019m educating the children at the expense of basic sanitation, or I\u2019m paying too much attention to the little kids and not enough to the big kids, or I\u2019m paying too much attention to the big kids and not enough to the little kids, or \u2026<\/p>\n

You get the idea.<\/p>\n

I find it encouraging to recall that the Blessed Mother was homeschooled. In my bedroom, I have a beautiful statue of St. Anne with a young Mary by her side as she holds open a book. I like to look at that statue and think about what their days together must have been like, reading and learning together. I picture an idyllic scene that is far from the reality I\u2019ve experienced as a homeschooling mom over the years, but it encourages me nonetheless.<\/p>\n

St. Anne was exceptional in many ways, but in the end, she was a mom like me, doing her best to give the best to her daughter. The Nativity of Mary, coming as it does at the start of each school year, is an invitation to remember that, and to pray for the grace to do our best as well.<\/p>\n

Like Mary and St. Anne, Elizabeth Ann Seton and her family are also good role models for struggling families everywhere. As a young impoverished widow and mother of many biological and adopted children, we might understand if Mother Seton had focused solely on her immediate family, but she did not limit the generous gift of her teaching to her own children. She founded multiple schools for poor young girls in her community because she believed in the importance of education.<\/p>\n

There are so many different ways to educate our children, but never have all the options felt as strange and imperfect as they do right now, in the strange and imperfect year of 2020.<\/p>\n

So whether you find yourself wiping away tears as your kindergartener boards a school bus for the first time, or you long to be dancing through the aisles like the parents in the commercial, perhaps it\u2019s time for all of us to take a cue from Our Lady and Mother Seton, and \u201cmom up.\u201d Perhaps the time for analyzing our decisions is done, and what\u2019s left to do is only hard work and lots of prayer.<\/p>\n

In the end, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s homeschooling that I find so hard, it\u2019s parenting in general. Like Our Lady and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, all parents \u2014 whether their kids learn at home or in a classroom \u2014 can lean hard on God\u2019s grace. Though our details might differ, God calls every one of us to sacrificial love through our family lives. And that\u2019s not likely to come easily to any of us.<\/p>\n

DANIELLE BEAN<\/strong> is the brand manager for\u00a0<\/em>CatholicMom.com\u00a0and former publisher and editor-in-chief of\u00a0<\/em>Catholic Digest. Danielle is author of several books for women including<\/em> Momnipotente<\/a>, <\/em>You\u2019re Worth It!<\/a>\u00a0y su libro m\u00e1s reciente,\u00a0<\/em>T\u00fa eres suficiente<\/a>. She is also creator and host of the\u00a0<\/em>Girlfriends\u00a0podcast and a popular speaker on a variety of subjects related to Catholic family life, parenting, marriage, and the spirituality of motherhood. Learn more at\u00a0DanielleBean.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

To view all the Seton Reflections,\u00a0click here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagen: St. Anne and the Virgin<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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