Stories from the Homeschool Table

I was 24. I was getting married in just a couple of weeks. I was so excited to start my married life and build a home for my husband and future family. Somehow, my fiancé, my mom, and I ended up at the furniture store one day. I saw a dining set that really struck a chord with me. It was definitely beyond what we were willing to spend, but I was excited to have found something I liked that my future husband liked, too.

Fast forward a few days, and I went over to my fiancé’s house, where my family was staying before the wedding. To my surprise, the dining set I had seen was in the dining room! My parents had collaborated with my in-laws and our grandparents to buy the furniture for us as a wedding present! It was beautiful, and I loved it!

Fast forward sixteen and a half years. That same dining table is in our current dining room. It has been in 4 different houses and 3 different storage units as we’ve moved over the years. When I look at it now, I don’t see the smooth, unmarked surface that I saw that day before our wedding. I see water rings, worn spots, and little divots where something was handled a little too aggressively or with too little care. Frequently there are sticky spots or spilled food. It’s not quite the same table. It has seen a lot.

In the early years, the table was where my husband and I ate dinner together. When we started having children, we pulled the high chair up to the table and fed the kids at that table, usually before we ate our own food! In the toddler years, the kids fell asleep with their faces falling onto their plates at that table.

As time went on, the table was where I did our budgeting and expense tracking, with the computer in front of me and piles of receipts arrayed across the surface. It was where I sat to browse cookbooks, write up meal plans for the week, and make the grocery list. It continued to serve the family as a place to gather for meals, but its use expanded to include the business of running a household.

Six years ago, we became a homeschooling family. Let me tell you, the kitchen table takes on a whole new role when you’re homeschooling! It was where I sat to coach my kids through the beginning stages of making notes and outlines to write papers. It was where they sat, painstakingly writing rough drafts or practicing cursive. Frequently, the surface was covered with math books, spiral notebooks, workbooks, and print-outs. My children learned to type by sitting at that table, with the laptop open in front of them.

With so much schoolwork going on around the table, it is inevitable that there would be outbursts of emotion. Sometimes these are exciting and exuberant. I remember when my oldest daughter had a “lightbulb moment” one day and exclaimed, “Latin is fun!” However, there have also been days when nothing makes sense. Sometimes these days involve teenage emotions boiling over. In these moments, the table sometimes becomes a place of anger and conflict. Other times, it’s a place of tears. Sometimes stubbornness or pride is the prevailing trait that surrounds the table!

But as we work through the emotions and the issues, the table also becomes a place of reconciliation. My kids are in the junior high and high school years now, with the challenges of both adolescence and higher level academics, and we see plenty of these ups and downs of emotion around the school table.

That 24-year-old in the furniture store would have laughed at you if told her that she would be a homeschool mom guiding her kids through Latin, physics, algebra, and persuasive essays sixteen years later. It was just not on her radar. However, today I’d tell you that sitting with my kids at the table working through schoolwork together has been one of the biggest blessings of my adult life. It has given me an opportunity to see into their minds and learn what makes them tick, both emotionally and intellectually.

I’ve been able to help them work through the frustration that comes with a lack of understanding, and I’ve been able to help them gain that understanding as we talk through the school material and connect it to the world around us. I have had precious moments with them where the challenge that surfaces through schoolwork reveals something they are dealing with on a deeper level, and they let me into their hearts in a new way. None of this is what I imagined would happen around my dining table. But it has been beautiful nonetheless. Sometimes the unexpected has a way of working out far better than anything we could have imagined.

That table is old now. It’s dinged up and scratched. It’s not the same table it was in the furniture store. But then, I’m not the same person I was back then either. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Becca Langworthy is Washingtonian turned Minnesotan. She lives in rural southeast Minnesota with her husband Rodney and daughters Haydynne and Samantha. She homeschools her children and leads a weekly high school class through Classical Conversations. Her hobbies include reading, cooking, running (especially Ragnar relays), and doing anything outside in the summer.

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