491 | Work Together! (Sean Allen)
Show Notes:
This episode emphasizes the importance of working as a couple as you raise your children. Come together and talk about what you're seeing respectively, what you're hearing. Compare notes and consider each others perspectives. You have to work together as opposed to pulling in opposite directions. After all, nothing less than the welfare of your children hangs in the balance.
About Sean
Sean Allen is the founder of The Well Ordered Homeschool, husband to his beautiful bride Caroline and a proud father of eight. He has a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design and is passionate about creating materials to assist parents in the incredibly challenging, yet surpassingly beautiful, work of schooling and training their children at home.
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Show Transcript:
Sean Allen Hello. Welcome to the Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Sean Allen and I am one of the many hosts here on the podcast. Since you're listening to this, I'm guessing you already know that homeschooling is both incredibly challenging and incredibly beautiful. Every week we're here doing a little guidance, some helpful counsel, and a whole lot of encouragement your way as you navigate this busy, yet blessed journey of educating your children at home. Now, even though the show is called Homeschool Solutions, it should come as no surprise to you that we do not have the answer to every homeschool related question. But if you come away with nothing else, our hope is that today's episode will point you to Jesus Christ and that you will seek His counsel as you train your children in the way they should go. And now on to today's show.
Hello everyone. Hope you're having a good day. Thank you for joining me today. Today I wanted to talk to you about your relationship with your spouse. Because in all of these episodes that I'm recording now, we've talked about singing in your home, we've talked about family devotions, we've talking about talking to your children. These are all very, very critical issues, very important. And if you do them right and you commit yourself to them, they can have such a profound effect on the welfare of your home. Just try it. Just try it. I dare you. I dare you to do this stuff. Just wait and see. See what happens. And you think, okay, singing, okay, devotions. I mean, you think you can do with or without it, but you can't. I mean, you can. You can, but you are missing out. You're really missing out. And talking to your children, you think you know, you think you've got it figured out, and then you talk to your children and you allow them to talk to you, and you're like, whoa, whoa. I didn't know that they were thinking about that. I didn't know that they had that hope or that they're dreaming about that. I didn't know that there were so many beautiful things in this heart of my child. I didn't know that there were also these struggles. That's a little scary, it seems a little soon, you know, that sort of stuff.
All of these things are so important. And they're important for you, whether I'm talking to the mother or to the father, and they're important for your spouse. And again, you can do without this but—just as it is with, you know, refusing to sing in your home or refusing to have consistent family devotions or refusing to take the opportunity to talk to your child as much as possible—if you refuse to work together as one man, so to speak, as one unit, you are missing out. Your children are missing out. And they will suffer, they'll stumble, they'll be negatively affected to that direct degree. I've met so many couples who, you know, one of them is engaged in in this process, and they see what needs to happen and they're doing what they can, and then the other one's just not on board. You know, they come to the conference and they take in the sessions and they're like, "Oh, I wish my wife was here to hear this." "I wish my husband..." Actually that's what I hear the most is, "I wish my husband was here to hear this, because he has different thoughts about this, and he doesn't necessarily agree..." And that's rough. That's rough, but at least there's one in the home, but of course you're hampered by the fact that you're divided against yourself in some respects.
And there are some issues where it's like you're at loggerheads, and the child is in the balance. And you know, it's anybody's guess as to who is going to get the upper hand, but it's the conflict. It's the very painful degree of disagreement that exists, and the way in which that manifests itself in the home, let alone the fact that you can't move forward on that issue because there is a disagreement. But it's the nature of the disagreement itself, the way in which you carry that out that is also like double, it's a double negative in the life of your child. So it's so important that you all get together on the same page as much as possible. As much as possible. And so as you need to talk to your child, you need to talk to each other. You've got to talk to each other. Take some time to talk. Now, you can do too much of this, and I've been guilty of this. Sometimes when Caroline and I will go out and it's been a while, and we get on the road and it's almost like instantaneous—we're talking about the children. Well, this is happening, and that's happening, and they did this and they said that. And you know, my poor wife sometimes she's like, "You know what, can we not talk about this right now? Can we talk about something else other than the children?" Because I'm over there just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I totally understand. I totally get that. But that just means that again, that's just a sign that you're inconsistent with probably date nights, you're inconsistent with those...
There needs to be a time set apart. And just as it is with devotions, there needs to be a time limit. You can't go on and on and on about it. You need to assess the situation, you can discuss it, and then you devise a plan of action, then you go to it. But it is important that you be on the same page, that you're not sending mixed messages. And again, I've seen this so many times. I've even talked to women who are just like, "I want to bring them home, but my husband doesn't think I can, and I'm here not to prove him wrong, but to kind of research and do my due diligence and bring a report back home, and then we're gonna make the decision." It's like, "Well, you're divided on that, aren't you? But he's trying to come around." But in that situation, like the mother could not homeschool because there was not agreement on that issue. So when you when you talk, you can compare notes, can't you? Because you're with your children at different times and in different circumstances, and they relate to you in different ways. I've noticed this when I talk to my wife about our children, is that she'll tell me, like, "Well, so and so told me this the other day," and I was like, "Really? Well, they didn't tell me." It's like, well, that's because that's their mother. And so on that particular topic, they feel more comfortable in sharing that information or what have you, for whatever reason, and vice versa.
It's gone the other way as well. It's like, "Well, I heard this the other day from our son," and she's like, "Okay, where did that come from?" And my older children in particular, I mean, they've admitted as much. It's like, "Well, we talk to you in one way, dad, and we talk to mom in another because that's just the way it is." And that's totally understandable. It's perfectly fine. There are some subjects I don't even want to talk about with my children. I'm like, "Go talk to your mother." And she's the same way. She's like, "I don't want to deal with this. You deal with this, Sean." I'm like, "Okay, I will." And that's just the way it is. You're two different people, but we're united in our objectives. That's important. And that's one thing that I'm so thankful for in my relationship with my wife is that we set that down early, like from day one. What do you think about this? What do you think about this? What do you think about this? And a lot of it was her teaching me, frankly, in those early days, because she kept bringing all of these crazy wild ideas. I don't call them that now, but to me at that point in time, I was just like, "Huh? Where did this come from? Never thought of that before. Okay." And it was just like one thing after the other. And I was like, "Okay, more than two children? Okay. Schooling at home? Okay." You know, all these things, it's like one thing after the other. And it was like drinking from a fire hose.
But she was testing me, and it wasn't... She's very discerning. So if I would have been like, "Okay, whatever you want," as in, "I just want to be with you sort of thing, you know, you can have it your way." Well, she wouldn't have accepted that. She could tell whether or not it was really in my heart, and I think she could tell I was genuine, like, "Wow, I love that. Let's do that." And so it needs to be that way with you as much as possible. And if it's not, you need to try to plumb those depths and and examine the reasons why. Like, why aren't we on the same page with this? And a lot of it's going to have to do with your personality. Men sometimes are often very short with their patients, and they got a lot of things on their mind, and they have their job and their mission and their responsibilities that are unique to them. It's like, "You know, I can only do so much, and so that's your job. It's your job to talk to them and to counsel them." It's like, No. No, there's some areas that your wife can't get to. You know? It's like scaling a mountain. And that really is representative of your child's heart. It's a great, big, grand, high and precipitous thing, and it takes more than one person to scale it. And so she's like, you know, there's this rocky ridge, and the ground was kind of loose under my feet, and I wasn't tall enough to reach this one space, like you're gonna have to do it. It's kind of like that. It's not something where you want to pass off to your wife or pass off to your husband because your children think that he's cooler or that he's more relatable or whatever. Like, no, like there's some crevasses or there's some spaces that are a little tighter or take a little more subtlety, or there's just a different tactility to that endeavor. And only your wife can get into that spot, you know? And you need both of you together to scale that mountain.
And then you come together, you're like, "Well, what did you see? What did you observe?" And that's gonna help you, isn't it? The next time. See, because it's funny. I mean, your children know probably that you're talking, but they don't know when, they don't know how often, and they don't know the nature of the conversation. It's not conspiring, it's not like that at all, but they might view it that way because you all are coming together, like, "What did you see? What did you hear?" It's like, "Well, I saw this, I heard this," "Interesting, interesting. Okay." And then the next time you get an opportunity alone with your children, you come equipped with that information. That just helps you in reasoning with them and leveling with them and all these different things. You don't have to let on, like, "Well, mom told me this." You can if you want, but it just helps both of you, because you both want the same thing. You want your children to go far. You want them to realize their full potential as it relates to the will of God.
And so that's so important. Don't cut this out. Do not sidestep this. Take those opportunities to sit down... And by the way, it's an excellent excuse for you two to go out and just have a date, right? I would not recommend that you do this in front of your children. Do not talk about your children in front of your children. We've been guilty of that in the past. It's hard for us sometimes because you have so many children, there's always a child somewhere. We always say there's three children right around the corner. And it's true. We have days where you're like, okay, I'm gonna go to my room. Oh, there's two children there. Okay, I'm gonna go to their room. Oh, there's a child in there. I'm going to go outside in my van. I open the sliding door, there's a child in there. It's just like that. It's so funny. And I'm not complaining because I think it's wonderful, but there's times when you need to step aside. So I wouldn't recommend doing this in front of your children. There might be times when you need to sit down with them together. You know, you've had a conversation, you understand each other, you think you know the way in which this needs to be handled, and you bring the child into the room and you're gonna talk to them together as a couple. Or maybe it's decided that it just needs to be mom or it just needs to be dad for whatever reason. There's all kinds of different reasons for that, but you're never really gonna know unless the two of you get together, have a conversation, and compare notes.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, you can do too much of this because, you know, I can go on and on and on and on because I'm always trying to observe. And I find it fascinating, you know, and I'm not saying that Caroline does it, but she's more of a "okay, this is what we're dealing with, all right, go team" sort of thing. Like we don't have to analyze this thing to death. And I think there's positives and negatives to both approaches. Sometimes you can get a little too simplistic, and then there are other nuanced considerations that you need to be aware of, and then also of course you can analyze the thing to death. And it just becomes kind of paralyzing and you're not taking the necessary action to tend to the whatever the issue is that you're dealing with. But that's why you're a couple. That's why you're different. So you've probably got the analyzer and you've probably got the action person. You need both. You need the analysis and you need the action. You've probably got the right-side and left-sided parent. You've got the, "Well, he or she needs correction, he or she needs justice, they need to feel the the pain of what they've done," and then you've got the other who's like, "Well, let's give them more time, let's give them the benefit of the doubt, and I don't know, I don't really want to discourage them.".
And it seems like you're pulling two different directions, and you could. You may be pulling two different directions, but in reality, you need both of those approaches. And hopefully, instead of pulling away from each other, you're pulling inward. You're pulling each other to the center because you need both perspectives, and hopefully you can respect and honor both perspectives. Someone says, "You know what, they've been getting away with this for weeks now, and you didn't know it, and I think it's probably... it's high time that there be some correction." And they're like, "Oh, well I wasn't aware of that. I think you're right. I respect your decision," or vice versa. It's very, very important. So consider both sides because there are two sides, and the reason why there's two sides is that that helps, or it's intended to balance each respective side out.
If you were both exclusively right-sided... Oh. I've seen that on rare occasions, but it is not pretty. It is not good for your children. Or if you are both left-sided. That also is equally not pretty. But usually that's not the case. You've got differences and the differences are what actually prove to be your strength as a couple. And those differences were brought together because God knew that your children would be the most benefited by them. And you don't want to be disrespectful to the other side, like, oh, you don't respect me, you don't like the way that I approach this, you don't like the way that I assess these situations, you think I'm too harsh, or you think I'm too soft or whatever. Like, no, no, no, no. No, God wants you to love and to respect one another and to consider the thoughts and the perspectives and the intuitions that you both uniquely possess. So that's enough for now. That's enough for now. So get together, talk it over, compare notes, and then raise your children accordingly. It's such a blessing that God has provided these helps to us. He provides them for a reason because He loves our children so very, very, very much. So thank you again. God bless you all, and we will talk to you again very soon. Bye for now.
Thank you for joining us this week on the Homeschool Solutions Show. You can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at Homeschooling.mom. That's GreatHomeschoolConventions.com/Medi-Share. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. And while you're there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show. This will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected to our community. And finally, tag us on Instagram @homeschooling.mom to let us know what you thought of today's episode. Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? The Great Homeschool Conventions are the Homeschooling events of the year offering outstanding speakers, hundreds of workshops covering today's top parenting and homeschooling topic, and the largest homeschool curriculum exhibit halls in the US. Find out more at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com. I'll be there. I hope to see you there too.
