One of the many advantages to homeschooling is building relationships with your family. I grew up going to public school and remember being away from home more often than being in my home. Guess who had the bigger influence on my thoughts and experiences. That’s right, my peers. Homeschooling allows for the parents to have say over the peers of their children. This can be a great thing.
The most important peers to a child are their siblings. I have all boys and they tend to be very close most of the time. We don’t allow too much outside influence as we don’t want to tarnish their relationship to one another. They have many cousins and a few friends. We see friends and family at church each Sunday (and Wednesday before the pandemic). We feel the most important relationships for our kids to have is those in their home.
Although my boys can get into some scraps over the most ridiculous things, they love each other very much. They show it in different ways such as playing with one another even when they don’t feel like it, helping one another with tasks, and laying next to each other when one has a bad dream (my middle son does this with my youngest who has bad dreams sometimes). They make each other feel safe and loved.
Outside friendships are important as well. I don’t want to minimize those but my focus is on sibling relationships. Between my husband’s sister and my many siblings (I am one of six), we have almost 20 nieces and nephews ranging in age from 28 to 3. We see certain ones about once a month or so. I have a cousin my own age and we are very close. Her son is my oldest son’s age and they are as close as brothers. Her son adores all of my boys and plays with them equally. That is who we actually spend the most time with outside of our own home.
Building sibling relationships in my children is important to my husband and I because neither of us is close to any of our siblings. Although we see them a few times a year and we get along, we don’t do much else. Life has taken over and past hurts have come up that, in some cases, can’t be repaired. My hope is that my boys will have a stronger bond than we had with our siblings and be able to work through issues that may come up.
The way we are building those stronger bonds is by praying together, doing things together (hiking, biking, playing board games, reading books), and talking to them about what’s important in life. We tell our boys that after God and their future families, there is no greater bond than a brotherly bond. They should be there for one another and build one another up. Life can be hard. Knowing you have a brother (or sister) who is there for you can make all the difference.
My prayer is that when my boys grow up and have families of their own, they will still lean on one another and be friends. Friendship is important in life and there is no better friend than that of a sibling. Building that relationship when they are young equips them to be able to continue that when they are older. No matter how many other friends come and go, a brother is for life.
