Hi friends, and welcome back to our "Top 10 Reasons Why You Can Homeschool."

So today we're gonna talk about avoiding the comparison trap in school and online.

Now it is a natural tendency for children to compare themselves to

others, but through homeschooling them and through getting them out of those

situations that can happen at school or on the bus, we can save them from the

detriment that these things can cause.

So Mitch Princeton, who is a psychologist from the University of North Carolina,

he said, "When we're reliant on others, for our sense of, only feeling good if

we get positive feedback or markers of success, we are at risk for depression."

Rebecca Weber wrote in Psychology Today that "social comparison

theory was first put forth in 1954 by psychologist Leon Festinger who

hypothesized that we make comparisons as a way of evaluating ourselves.

At its root, the impulse is connected to the instant

judgments we make of other people.

A key element of the brain's social cognition network that can

be traced to the need to protect oneself and assess threats."

So, at our core, we do compare ourselves.

It's what do we do as a result of that happening?

Where does our mind go?

And we have to help our children with comparing themselves with others, both

on receiving comparisons or if they are thinking them or giving them out.

We want our children to be safe of these things.

We want them to learn at their own pace, and this is where homeschooling

is connected to these ideas.

Subjects in homeschool do not have to be perfectly aligned with

the grade level of the student.

I'm gonna give you a couple examples here.

For my son, he was not reading right away in the kindergarten level,

and I taught kindergarten, full day kindergarten before, and this is

part of why I decided to homeschool.

Because I saw these children being forced to learn curriculum all day long.

It was way too soon, and many of them just weren't developmentally ready.

So for my son, I knew that I wasn't gonna push reading too soon before he was gonna

be ready and he was reading okay, but he didn't love reading longer fiction books.

I brought some graphic novels to him.

He absolutely loved them and then began to love reading.

And two of these graphic novels were Hamlet and even McBath, and

he started loving Shakespeare.

And so now that's lent itself into, he is gonna appear in

a Shakespeare play coming up.

He's gonna be in the Merchant of Venice, which is very exciting.

And so I allowed him to learn at his own pace.

I didn't force him to do exactly what his peers might have done in school,

and he didn't know, this is the key, he didn't know that he was technically

quote unquote behind in reading from his peers or what the grade level

expectations would've been because I was able to protect him from knowing that.

I shared in earlier episodes that all three of my children

have not attached to reading.

To the sense where I think that they would have sooner, because I know how to

teach reading and reading instruction.

It's a huge passion of mine.

But I've had to take my pride out of the equation and see

where are they developmentally.

And, for all three of them, they don't have to know that their development

in their reading journey has not had any pressure attached to it.

They're not being pushed before they are developmentally able.

Now, I do have a friend whose son, he was reading at age three, and I don't

think there was anything she did that was particularly special with him.

I know she wasn't doing reading instruction with him,

but he picked up reading.

He's quite brilliant.

But again, every child can learn at their own pace and she was able to

find age appropriate reading for him.

And that's always been something that they've been able to do.

But children in homeschool, they won't experience the same pressures

and that exposure to comparison that children in those public schools or

government schools will experience.

So there's not the peer pressures as well.

Let's jump into the schools where they have differentiated instruction

through guided reading groups or guided math groups, they separate kids.

Now, Princeton goes on to say that many people believed it is possible to use

ability grouping in that differentiated instruction to maximize achievement

effort, but it doesn't work in practice.

But if your child is gifted and at a higher level than others, then

they shouldn't be held back either.

So just like my friend's son who's three, he didn't need to be

in any of these reading groups.

If he was put into school, he would need to be in a group all by himself.

And so what's great about homeschooling is that you're not put into a group

with either the same level as you or kids who are lower or higher than you so

you're not comparing yourself to others.

The William T.

Grant Foundation talked about this further with those guided reading

groups where every child kind of knows where they are on the scale, and that

can be detrimental to their learning.

But they talk about when teachers have low expectations for weaker readers, they slow

down the pace even more than they need to.

So lower achieving students as a result will fall further and further behind.

I believe that's true.

Further they say "evidence suggests that practice of group instruction

based on skill level is less beneficial than teachers think.

It can exasperate achievement gaps and even slow reading growth

for some of those children.|

And so much research has been centered around this, that those guiding reading

groups, cause more harm than good.

And this is why I believe, and this is why we talk about this, is that homeschool can

work the best and you're at your child's own pace and you're at their own level.

Names on boards, knowing where to stand, behavior traps, things like stop lights.

All of those things are really negative and can imprint on a

child's soul in a negative way.

So can the state testing and those national tests that

the child has to sit through.

And now I understand a lot of 'em are computer on computers

where a child has to log in.

That's a big time waster, but it also can be high pressure for some children.

And I know parents can put the pressure on their children too, but I

just, I don't see a benefit to that.

I don't see a benefit to putting your child in that situ.

Another point of not comparing yourself to others can do with peer pressure.

So, we don't want our children to be exposed to things sooner than they're

able and when they're home, you're able to monitor what they are exposed to

more in their screen use in particular.

Much of the comparison trap today is due to social media and online use.

We know that children are so impressionable.

And they are taught so many things, and to include the devices that surround

them, they need to know that everyone has unique and awesome strengths.

This relates to, I wish it was just teenagers, but middle schoolers and even

elementary kids are on social media.

Where they're having the comparison traps happen.

And they're being exposed to various things and not even realizing too the

dopamine addictions that are happening on those screens where insidious companies,

they're paid by advertise advertisers and they want you to stay on their devices.

So extreme monitoring is needed, and we'll talk about this in future episodes

because it's a huge passion of mine to monitor our children with their screens.

Not only screen time, but particularly what are they being exposed to.

We have to be hypervigilant as parents to monitor and to be able

to turn away from explicit content.

Children aren't born with this strength naturally to turn away from

things that might negatively affect them or to be able, like we talked

about earlier, be able to understand what the positive feedback or the

markers of success could mean in relation to comparison with others.

We have to help them grow those cognitive skills, help them learn

the habits, and learning self-control and the way of the will and how

it is a loving guidance for us.

Most of us, myself included, we were able to grow up without social media

and those peer pressures that children and teenagers are experiencing.

It's part of a natural process, where we cultivate a sense of who

we are from how others view us.

But again, going back to Princeton, he states that hypervigilance

about how others see you is supposed to go away in adulthood.

But social media has created a lifelong adolescence due to those

comparison traps, essentially.

So adults are struggling with these things too.

There's a Ted Talk by Bea Arthur who talks about these impulses to compare

ourselves is the fear of missing out, the FOMO and the mindset that you're

not enough or you're not doing enough.

This is a difficult place for adults, but we have to remember kids are experiencing

these things at unprecedented levels.

And how do we help them avoid those things?

And I truly believe it is to take them out of the equation, to

take them out of that situation.

And I know that that's easier said than done, but when there's a will, there

is a way so we can align ourselves with the good things that we want,

with those beautiful and noble and true ways that we want to cultivate

in our children and influence them with, but also with our own goals.

We can fight that desire to compare ourselves with others and focus

on that growth mindset rather than fixing ourselves on that.

And we can teach that to children, and children can, if we continue day by day

to help emphasize that growth mindset.

Theodore Roosevelt said, "Comparison is the thief of joy."

Now this statement is used a lot, but it rings especially true.

When we compare ourselves to others, we rarely will experience joy and we

will instead experience inadequacy, despair, or even self resentment.

Instead, we want our children to humbly look to Christ for our identity,

and that's my prayer for my own children and my prayer for yours.

That we can help them to not compare themselves and see themselves

as Christ sees them so that they can thrive and also serve others.