The Next Few Feet of the Path

Six years in, and I still catch myself planning for the wrong child.

It happened Tuesday. Term plans all over the table, three tabs open about credit requirements, a legal pad with a column of books she is supposed to have read by the time she is no longer the age she currently is. And the actual child was outside past the fence, squatting in the grass over something I couldn’t see from where I sat. A beetle, probably. It’s September in Texas. There is no shortage of beetles.

I was planning for a person who doesn’t exist yet.

That’s the strange thing about educating your own children. Somewhere along the way you start believing you ought to be able to see the end from the beginning.

We pick a math curriculum and find ourselves thinking about calculus. We notice a kid avoiding books and wonder whether he’ll ever become a reader. One bad morning turns into evidence about the whole year. A hard year turns into evidence about childhood itself. And before long we’ve stopped educating the twelve-year-old sitting across from us and started trying to secure the future of someone we’ve only imagined.

We want the whole road. We get the next few feet.

So I’ve been asking a smaller question lately, and it’s turned out to be a much harder one. Not how do I guarantee she’ll be ready. Not how do I make sure there are no gaps. Just: what is mine today?

Maybe the next few feet are all we get because that’s where the real child is standing.

Because here’s the thing I keep running into. When I’m educating toward some imagined future student, I’m not actually looking at the one in the room. The one in the room might need another month with fractions. She might need to put down the book everyone insists she ought to love and pick up one she actually does. He might need an afternoon at the creek. But I can’t see any of that with my eyes fixed twelve years down the road.

Now let me say the other half

Because I’ve watched “follow the child” turn into something it was never meant to be, and I don’t want to add to that.

Not seeing the whole road is not permission to stop building it.

We still do the research. We still read the book before we assign it. We still figure out what a credit is and what our state wants and what belongs on a transcript. We still teach the math lesson on the morning nobody wants to teach it, including us. We still keep the records.

I can only tell that my daughter needs another month with fractions because I know what comes after fractions. I can only set aside today’s narration for a question about the Romans because I planned the narration in the first place and I know I’ll come back to it Thursday. That afternoon at the creek was a decision. It wasn’t a collapse.

Preparation isn’t the opposite of attention. It’s what makes attention possible. Without a plan I’m not paying attention to my child. I’m improvising and calling it freedom.

What we can’t do

Mason’s definition already pushes against all of this. Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. Notice that every part of it is something we provide. Not something we produce.

We set conditions. We cultivate habits. We spread the feast. We put worthy ideas in front of our children and we expect something back.

And then we wait, which is the part nobody warns you about.

I have put a lot of hours into a garden. I can work the soil and water and prune and stake and cover things when it freezes. What I cannot do is take hold of a plant and pull upward.

We tend what’s been given to us. We don’t manufacture its final form.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

That has never meant don’t use your understanding. Use all of it. Study the methods, build the scope and sequence, keep the transcript current. Then hold the outcome loosely, because the outcome was never the part that belonged to you anyway.

We don’t release the work. We release the guarantee.

We don’t have to see the whole road. We need enough light for today’s portion of it.

Tomorrow the path will stretch a little farther. Another decision, another book, another conversation, another chance to pay attention. But that’s tomorrow’s portion.

Today I only have to ask one thing. What is mine today?

And then be faithful there.

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I built the Tend planner because I needed a plan I could hold with an open hand. One term at a time, with room to move.