Motherhood is hard. From morning sickness to teenage meltdowns, the challenges are endless. The world offers mothers criticism and guilt, but rarely praise and encouragement. Social media is filled with fake glimpses of people’s lives, shielding us from their reality, but giving us a false picture to aspire to.

Some mums seem to have it all together and if only we follow their suggestions we too can have children who fall in line. Really? I’m not buying that. Children are unique and so are their parents and therefore each family will need to go to their creator, our Lord Jesus Christ, and ask him for parenting advice. The Bible is full of parenting advice but it’s also full of grace.

If we are to use the Bible as our number one parenting handbook, then we need to submerge every rule in grace. We need to allow the living waters of God’s love to become the conduit of those guidelines, as they soak into the hearts of our children.

Yes, we need rules, but rules without grace will only harden the hearts of our children and give them a false picture of the God of all grace.

God forgives us and shows us endless mercy, he also disciplines us out of love, but thankfully not for every misdemeanour, and so that’s our parenting model.

I recently learnt that the ‘discipline for every misdemeanour’ school of parenting was still alive and thriving in parts of the Christian world. I naively was shocked by this because this is definitely not my style of parenting.

So the question is, how to discipline a child without harsh punishment? And how does discipline work in the Goldby house? Our approach is that we explain something is wrong and that there are consequences (often extra household jobs) for wrong behaviour, we model what is right and explain what the behaviour we expect is. It might involve removing a child from the situation and then setting them up for success by changing the ongoing scenario. For example if the children are arguing over toys I would explain that it’s wrong to argue, I would encourage sharing, but if that fails then we change the activity. I would probably set them an age appropriate household job to change the mood. I also use this as a time to share the gospel story about giving extra to the one who asks.

I know that Christ has shown me so much grace, whenever I’ve taken a wrong turn, he has lovingly guided me back to the narrow path and this is how I choose to parent. I guess the phrase might be parenting by grace, not legalism. I fear that the harsh disciplinarian style of parenting teaches children to be outwardly well behaved, but doesn’t transform their hearts, only grace can do that.

The gospel is all about grace and so that is at the centre of everything I want to communicate to our children.

I’m writing this as a way of thinking through these concepts, as I never feel truly confident that I’ve figured parenting out. I know I’m a soft touch, as I really struggle with confrontation, but I do expect obedience and mostly we get it, even if we get grumbles first! We don’t get obedience through harsh parenting, but through trying to set a good example, reminding them of our expectations and reminding them that there are consequences if they step over the line, like removal of phones for the teens or no screen time for the littles, or straight to bed if necessary. We focus on the big issues and let go of some of the petty squabbles.

I also think that bad behaviour has causes other than just sin. Often children are more badly behaved when they are tired, hungry or bored and so, where possible, I will try and make sure these needs are met and thus avert many issues that would otherwise occur.

I haven’t mentioned Phil much in this and I think fathers have an essential role to play in discipling (yes discipling, not just disciplining) their children. The route word of discipline is disciple and so that would be our goal, to have children who want to follow our example, as we try to lead them on the narrow path, pointing them to Christ. Of course we do have boundaries and Phil is better than me at maintaining them, I’m grateful everyday to be a team in this parenting challenge.

For us, our main goals would be that our children love God, love one another and are servant hearted, so everything we do would be to encourage those things.

How about you, what are your childhood experiences of discipline or your parenting discipline choices? Maybe you don’t agree with our way, that’s ok, we’re all different. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Blessings to you all.

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I’m Vicki and I’m a perfectionist. I can’t do anything by half, I’m an all in kind of girl. I gain no pleasure from a job done quickly but which is rough around the edges.

Motherhood has given me many opportunities to express my perfectionism, be it washing Terry nappies instead of using disposables, cooking everything from scratch, making dressing up costumes, making cards or Christmas presents. I love to grow, pick, prepare and eat our homemade produce all the while passing on these skills to our children. For years it seemed I was doing quite well, holding it all together.

And then we moved to the country, we built a much bigger house, fitted a new energy system, had another baby, got livestock and we’re still not finished. Everyday is different, perfectionism has become impossible.

My perfectionism is dying by a thousand tiny cuts, a thousand letting goes, a thousand moments of grief. Each time I see a drawer full of unfolded clothes I wince, or books on the floor, or shoes left out, or a vegetable garden hiding beneath the weeds.

Caring for my family brings me so much joy but I’ve realised that my desire for perfection is stealing that joy.

Thankfully, but painfully, God won’t leave me wallowing in my pride, taking pleasure in my achievements. He’s calling me to something deeper.

He wants the deepest parts of me, the parts that lie beneath the achievements everyone sees, to let go and to let God do all that I can’t do. I’ve spent years believing that through sheer effort of will I can make everything beautiful. Who was I fooling? Certainly not God. He’s bided his time, allowing me to enjoy the temporary satisfaction of my labours and then he’s swooped in, pulled the rug from under me and I’m still falling.

I know I’ll keep falling until I stop looking at the unfinished jobs around me and start looking up, up to the One who has given me all these tasks.

I know in my head that God doesn’t expect me to do everything perfectly this side of Heaven, so why do I expect it of myself? I think it’s a heart issue, it’s asking myself the question, is my joy found in my achievements or is it found in God? I’m learning that I need to let him into the mess, let him see what he already sees, and admit I can’t do it.

Admit my failings.

That’s hard to say and the difficulty I have saying that, shows my pride. I often think that I’ve done that, told God how hard this is, but I’m not sure the deepest part of me has fully relinquished everything to Him. I need to only do that which I can do, all the while praying to the One who will multiply my efforts and create more beauty than I could ever dream or imagine.

‘God is the God who makes all things beautiful in his time’ Ecclesiastes 3:11, He is the ultimate artist, the perfect creator.

I love to create beauty in everything, from my words to the children’s clothes, hairstyles, soft furnishings, homemade gifts, home cooked meals or cakes. I know that the desire for all of this beauty comes from God, but I suspect I am looking for beauty in all the wrong places.

I was out taking pictures for this blog post when I happened upon the raspberry canes. I thought they were finished for the season and now it was just weeds and thistles taking over but on closer inspection there were multiple sweet raspberries just waiting to be picked. I’d been so busy looking at the weeds that I almost missed them.

I think that’s the lesson God wants me learn today. He doesn’t want me to look at the mess, to focus on the big picture, he wants me to see the beauty that I’m missing whilst I’m stressing about the mess. I suspect that beauty will be found in the faces of the people living in this home. If I can pause long enough, I might just see what God sees and I know that will bring me real joy.

Sending blessings to you all, Vicki

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Our home education ethos can be summed up with the phrase, ‘Raising children to embrace their place in the Body of Christ’. In fact this is the topic we will be sharing about at the ‘Chess’ home education conference, at the end of the month.

So how does this play out in our day to day life? Education begins the moment our children are born. In many ways I wouldn’t call it education, more facilitation, for my job is not merely to impart knowledge upon these new creations, it is to reveal their hidden characters and then foster the skills God has graciously imparted upon them. For none of us really ‘teach’ our children to feed, walk or talk, but we live alongside our children, demonstrating how to eat, encouraging their efforts to step forward and embedding them in a world of conversation, including them before they can reply. Is that education? I think so, but not in the traditional sense. And so begins the journey of raising and educating our children, without sudden interruption at 4 years old, the age of formal schooling, but an organic process where they lead the way into the next stage they are ready for.

So how do I help them uncover their God-given gifts? It is in the silence of those moments, the ones when they don’t know you’re watching them, that you can see the early formation of their personality. The activity that draws and holds them, consumes their unplanned time, that is the beginning of seeing the unwrapped present hidden within each child.

Here’s a real life example. When our eldest was about 7 months old he started crawling and from that moment on I couldn’t keep him away from the tech equipment. Once, when he was 9 months old, we had a 5 hour car journey and I knew I needed to keep our wriggly boy still and quiet for a long time. The week before we left I popped into the jumble sale and bought an old Walkman, with headphones to push in and pull out, a tape to put in and out, a travel plug and adapter to put together and separate, an old calculator and a remote control with no batteries in it. It was so obvious at this stage what he was ‘into’ and baby toys were just not going to cut it. Moving forwards ten years and he was setting up the hifi amps and rigging torches to the ceiling lights for the sound and lighting for our family ‘shows’, which the children used to put on daily.

Moving forward to present day and he has recently spent a week organising the sound and lighting for our Christian home education holiday for 400 plus people.

Our other adult son is Jonathan, who is now 18. When he was 3 he was junk modelling buildings, colouring immaculately and doing huge puzzles upside down. I remember saying to Phil that he might have the skills to be an architect. He spent much of his childhood building go carts, treehouses and models. This term he has started his Degree apprenticeship in Architecture.

Not every child has such easily discernible gifts, but every child is gifted at something. I see it as my job to help our children unwrap their gift and then help them to develop it.

Each child we home educate will have a basic grounding in the 3 Rs, but they will also have many free hours to pursue their individual interests.

Coming forward to look at our current home educated children and again I can see particular interests on display. Matthew, Hannah and Stephen have been making costumes for their battle re-enactments. They were inspired by a reenactment we recently attended at a nearby castle and since then all things historical and battle-worthy have consumed their free hours. They learn so much more when they lead than they could ever learn when I ‘feed’ them information. Home education is often described as lighting a fire rather than filling a bucket.

One of the most fun parts of parenthood is when I get to see the creativity of God in each unique person he’s created. What a privilege it is to have a part in watching him ‘sculpt’ one of his masterpieces.

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Sending blessings to you all, Vicki

We’re currently away on a Christian home education holiday. There are hundreds of us here, all forging our own paths in a world going in the opposite direction. I’ve been speaking to many new home educating mums this week and their questions often remind me of questions I asked many years ago, when we began this journey.

I thought I’d answer these questions on the blog, so that the answers are here for me to point anyone to, should they ask. I’ve started at the beginning…

What led you to home educate?

First and foremost it was a God led decision. I was always somewhat alternative in my thinking and having trained at Norland I could see that play was indeed the very best way for young children to learn. I passionately believe that children don’t need to start formal education until around 6, which is when they start in many European countries, with excellent long term results. I also feel that children are all unique and their education should ideally reflect this.

With all these high ideals in mind I posed the home education question to Phil. He cut me down at the first hurdle, telling me, in no uncertain terms, to leave the subject alone. So I committed to not speaking about home education to Phil, but praying fervently for God to put us on the same page.

Phil put up several hurdles, which he only told me about months later, God knocked each and every one down. Hurdle one was about his working hours. He was very concerned that I wouldn’t have time to teach Maths adequately and he would want to have an input into this subject, as it’s his area of expertise. He therefore would want to work at home a couple of days a week. Within a few weeks of my prayer mission his boss asked him, out of the blue, if he would like to work part time from home!

Hurdle two was money. Phil was aware that resources for home education would come with a cost and he would need a pay rise to cover that. Again within a few weeks he had been given a very generous pay rise, and this occurred around the time of the 2008 financial crisis, another miracle.

Hurdle three was university. He wanted our children to have the opportunity to go to university, should they be academically inclined. Phil was, at the time travelling frequently to America, he happened on this occasion to be in Boston and met up with a friend who worked at Harvard. He posed a home education question to his friend, this question was about what universities thought of home educated students. The answer he received was not what he expected. He was told that the university loves home educators because they are self motivated thinkers who ask great questions. From his friend’s perspective the unique home based environment had better prepared these students for university than elitist schools! God was certainly on the move, not that I, as yet, knew anything about this.

I had asked God not only to change Phil’s heart, if home education was the right path for us, but I had also laid one more fleece. I was determined that this decision must be mutual, for we would come across difficulties and I never wanted to have Phil say, “this was your decision, you deal with it”. So I asked God to get Phil to ask me if we could home educate, then I would know for sure that this was God’s will.

Well….two months after our initial conversation, I experienced one of our first amazing answers to prayer. Phil sat me down and asked me if we could home educate the children, just like that! Well you could have knocked me down with a feather. I’d prayed with just a mustard seed of faith, but God had answered and had shown Phil his heart for us on this matter.

Now everyday that we have a struggle I can look back on that evening knowing that God chose this path for us and I can move forward without doubt, safe in the knowledge that this is God’s best plan for our children.

Long before the days of social media, and LGBTQ rights taught to infants, long before lockdowns were even a thought, God called us to home educate. Long before these challenges came along he protected our children, he knew what would be best for them. In many ways we were just following God, unsure of of the path ahead, but simply trusting that he promises good things for those who trust him. He hasn’t let us down. He has good plans for us and good plans for you. What’s he calling you to today?

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Sending blessings to you all, Vicki