Family-Based Discipleship – Israel Wayne

Academics are only a small part of home education. The bigger part is relationships between mom and dad, parent and child, and child and child, and ultimately, our relationship with God. How do we nurture healthy connections with the most important people in our lives and prepare our family for relational success? Join us for a fun and engaging discussion with Israel Wayne as he encourages us with practical advice, and answers your questions about how to disciple your children and point them to Jesus!

Automated Transcript (Spelling and grammar errors are guaranteed!)

Yvette Hampton:           Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. I am here with Israel Wayne, who is a homeschool dad, the homeschool dad of dads. Well next to my husband of course, who is my favorite homeschool dad of dads, but Israel. Welcome. Hi, it’s great to be back with you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes it is. You are back with me cause we’ve hung out quite a lot, especially this way, right over video, podcasting, doing all sorts of things like this together. You guys are amazing at what you do and so it’s a blessing to be able to share with you. And I know you’ve been a huge blessing of the homeschool community so far and a great to partner together with you. Yeah, well thank you. Thank you. Only only. Only by the grace of God. I can honestly say that it’s not anything amazing that we are do.

Yvette Hampton:           It’s just what God has called us to do. And it is our passion to be able to encourage and equip homeschool families to homeschool well and to homeschool in general. You know, a lot of people don’t know what this whole homeschooling thing is about. They are confused by it. They’ve heard of it. They’re disillusioned with the public school system, the private school system, and they’re just not exactly sure. And so God has called our family to film this documentary, which we haven’t talked a lot about today, but we’re actually, you’re, you’re a part of it. We’ve interviewed you for the movie. We are in production on a documentary called Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution. And it has been an incredible joy for our family to be part of that ministry. And so we are now in the process of trying to pull it all together.

Yvette Hampton:           We’ve spent the last three years filming and now we’re in postproduction and trying to pull it together. And so, so most people know already, but for those who don’t, this event, the homegrown generation family expo really is a big fundraiser for helping to get that movie done and into people’s hands. And so we played one of the trailers earlier today before Kirk Cameron will play another one tomorrow, but people can go to SchoolhouseRocked.com and learn more about the movie and more about how to support production on the movie and just the ministry of Schoolhouse Rocked. So and people have asked, a few people have said, well, why didn’t you call this the Schoolhouse Rocked Online Expo? And the reason we didn’t call it Schoolhouse Rocked is because we didn’t want people to get confused with Schoolhouse Rocked. Is it a movie? Is it a podcast? Is it an online expo? What in the world is this Schoolhouse Rockedthing? So it really is a movie. We have a podcast and now we’ve got this online event. So it has been a fun week. And Israel, we told you coming in that you are following two pretty amazing speakers, actually several because it’s been an incredible week of encouragement. There have been tears, tears of joy, tears of conviction tears of encouragement. And I’m so I’m really, really excited to have you. Today. We’re talking about all things family. And when I think about the family, I think about especially in regards to homeschooling your, you’re one of the faces and people who just automatically come to mind because you have grown up in this homeschool world. You homeschool your kids, you’ve got a whole team of kids. And so I want you to introduce yourself and your family to us and then we’re going to talk just about some family relationship things.

Israel Wayne:    Sure. well my wife and I were both homeschooled back in the early days. My family started homeschooling in 1978, which is over 40 years ago now. It’s hard to believe. My wife’s family started homeschooling in 1983 so we were home educated pretty much all the way through. And then my wife and I have 10 children ages 19 down to one year old. And we have always homeschooled all of our children and by God’s grace always will. And so, yeah, we’re deeply entrenched in the homeschooling movement, the homeschool community. I started speaking at conferences, homeschooling conferences when I was just a teenager and have been doing that for well over 25 years now. And so I’ve written a number of different books on parenting and homeschooling. We named our ministry Family Renewal because we really view God’s heart as being one of restoring the family to right relationships with, with him and then with in the family structure, you know, with each other.

Israel Wayne:    And homeschooling for us, we don’t see as being a separate call apart from family. We see it as just being an extension of family. We see homeschooling as simply being one aspect of family life. We see homeschooling as just being kinda one more tool in the parenting toolbox. You know, we, we have all these tools that we use to disciple our children and prepare them for life and we see homeschooling as being just one more of those resources that we use. We add academics to what we were already doing. So my, my take is that everyone homeschools some people just quit homeschooling when their child gets to compulsory attendance age. And what we want to do is we want to encourage people to and just continue being as engaged as they possibly can and to disciple their children as effectively as they can, which we believe is best utilized when we actually give our time to our own children as opposed to outsourcing them to, especially people we don’t know, which is a common trend within our country.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah. You, you use the word discipleship and we’ve been using that word a lot this week with several of our speakers and I would love for you to talk about family discipleship. What does that mean and what does that look like?

Israel Wayne:    Well, Jesus said that when a student is fully trained, he will become like his teacher. So the biblical philosophy of education is not that our children need an information download. That’s really more of a humanistic worldview. The biblical view of education is the process of the student becoming like his teacher. And you know, we’ve talked about this I think in previous podcasts, but one of the things that we care a lot about as parents is being able to be an influence in our child’s life. We want our children to care about what we think, to listen to our words, to want to pay attention to the things that are important to us. And if we want to have influence in our children’s lives, then we have to have access to them. And traditionally typically what happens is that whoever has the most access to a child has the most influence to a child.

Israel Wayne:    And for most Christian parents, most parents in general, but even Christian parents we have less access to our own children than other people do. We allow, actually allow, in fact, we, it’s more than that. We actually go out and look for other people and delegate them to have more access to our child than we have, thereby ensuring that those other people, those other voices will be more influential in our child’s life than we are. I have a hard time in my mind rationalizing why Christian parents would purposely and intentionally do that and that they do. And our view is that as Christian parents, we want to be the most influential, impactful people in our children’s lives, more so than other people. It’s not that we don’t like other people. There’s are some other people that are great. They’re just not our children’s parents.

Israel Wayne:    And so we feel that if we want to be able to have more influence and more impact in our children’s lives, then other people, we actually have to spend more time with them physically, more, more hours with them than anybody else in their life. And they can’t do that if they’re not in the, if they’re not with us, if they’re physically removed from us, we by de facto are not the most important influential force in their life. Someone or something else is, we see that as problematic. And parents I think are waking up to that where their child turns 17 years old, doesn’t want to have anything to do with them, doesn’t want to have a relationship with them, doesn’t respect them. Doesn’t want their values or their morals back talks them, argues pushes back on their authority and parents go, where is this coming from? I don’t understand this. Well, it’s that you’re not the most influential in their life. Someone or something else is [inaudible].

Yvette Hampton:           Right. And that something or someone else can be so many different things. It’s not just school, it’s not their teachers. It’s, you know, it could be right. Their friends, television. Yep.

Israel Wayne:    Video games, comic books, novels, you know, the kids down the street, the soccer team you know, the, the kids they game with over in Thailand in the middle of the night, you know? Yeah. There’s so many, so many, but whoever they’re spending the most time with, usually it’s who’s influencing them the most.

Yvette Hampton:           Right, right. And like you said, it’s not that it’s wrong for them to spend time. I mean, some of those things are wrong, certainly, but it’s not that it’s wrong for them to spend time with other people and they should not be completely sheltered only under our roof and only within the confines of our family. But no one else is going to be able to prepare them the way that we will. You know, parenting is a high calling. It is a big responsibility. And I think oftentimes in our culture, we look at parenting as while we feed our kids, we provide them with shelter. We, you know, put them in a good school. We buy them nice clothes, we provide for all of their basic needs, but we’re missing the emotional need that kids have. Every kid has no matter if they’re an introvert, extrovert, what, you know, no matter what kind of personality. And I know you with 10 kids, you, you run a a wide range of personalities and and so I’m sure you see that yourself, that that time that we spend with them has to be so intentional. And let me jump in on that because is important

Israel Wayne:    Too. But what we do is we look for community that’s going to reinforce the values that we want to transmit to our children, right? So what we do is we think who is it that we know that believes the way that we do that thinks the way that we do that will reinforce the kind of value infrastructure that we’re trying to establish for our children. And then we purposely seek to spend time with those people and we want our children to be influenced by them. You know, there’s some scriptures that speak to the importance of hand selecting very carefully what kind of community our children have. One of those in, in Proverbs 1320 says if you walk with wise people, you’ll become wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed. And so we ask ourselves, well, who are wise people and what do those look like?

Israel Wayne:    Well, generally those are people that are older than the children. Because you know, Proverbs 2215 says, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. So we know that that children are born with foolishness. And if we want our children to gain wisdom, then we think, well, we don’t want to reinforce the foolishness by just having our children in a social environment where they’re just spending all day, every day around children, their own age. We want them to spend time with older people. So we think who are older people that embrace the same values that we do and will reinforce what we’re trying to teach at home. And then and some of those people are relatives. Some of our relatives do not reinforce those values so we don’t avoid them altogether. But we would seek for those people to have less influence in our child’s life than the relatives who do reinforce those values.

Israel Wayne:    In our church there are people who reinforce those values. And unfortunately there are people who don’t, just because you have a wide spectrum within a church community. And so they’re, you know, we will obviously have a, a summit fellowship with all of those people in our church, but we may have more fellowship with people who are more likely to enforce the values that, that we think are important. And so community is important and friends are important, but mentors I think are more important than friends for young children. And we want to select those very, very carefully because they have a huge impact on the life of our child.

Yvette Hampton:           Sure. And we want our kids to grow up to be those mentors to other people who are, you know, coming after them, whether it’s their younger siblings or whether it’s friends of family you know, family, friends. And so we want to raise them up to be those, those mentors as well. I want to talk about family relationships because that’s really when we think about homeschooling, you really think of it in terms of relationship with your child. It’s not just the academics, you know, and I love that you talk about, you know, academics is, it’s just part of homeschooling. And I feel like the relationships that we build with one another with you know, our kids relationship with the Lord, all of that is so much more important. And then the academics, they come, I mean that just, you just make that part of your, your daily life.

Yvette Hampton:           But sometimes we get so focused on the academics that we forget to nurture those relationships. So today, you know Kirk Cameron talked this morning and we talked about the marriage relationship and how to build that up and how to protect that. And then Ginger Hubbard just talked about parenting and [inaudible] is gonna come on after you and we’re going to talk about sibling relationships and I would love for you to kind of encompass all three of those things and bring some encouragement and homeschooling. And Kirk and I talked about this a little bit this morning, that oftentimes the, the homeschool mom, I’m not saying everyone, but oftentimes a homeschool mom is so involved with her kids during the day. Yeah. She pours so much into them that when her husband, it’s time for her and her husband, you know, in the evening after the kids have gone to bed or you know, even when he comes home from work, she’s exhausted. She’s got nothing left for him. I know I, I have dealt with that a lot and I’ve really struggled with that cause I’m just, I’m tired. I’ve, you know as much as I enjoy being with my kids, it can be exhausting to, you know, be training and, and homeschooling and just taking care of the home and doing all of the things that we do as homeschool moms. So how have your, especially cause your wife has 10 kids to care for, how have you learned balance that out

Israel Wayne:    With your wife, TIF to build up that family? Not the family, but the marriage relationship. [inaudible] Well a boy, a bunch of thoughts come to my mind. One of which is as a married couple, we scheduled time frequently to talk about our family schedule and what’s working and what’s not working. Being that I’m a little more objective and outside of the daily infrastructure of that I can sometimes see places where we’re bottle-necked better than my wife can. I can give a little bit more of the 30,000 foot view. And my goal there is the dad is not the critique and criticize. Because she’s already got enough pressure as it is. So that’s not my goal, but my goal is to try to find areas where we’re stuck and where things are not working and to be able to try to get the schedule for our family more under control.

Israel Wayne:    And I’ll get practical here. One of the ways in which our family gets bottleneck is when you have with a big family like ours, you have maybe two or three children who are not pulling their weight with doing their chores. And that starts to be reflected in the house. The, the house being messy getting behind in the laundry, you know, dishes not being washed, things like that. And what happens is that you’ll, you’ll find sometimes that there are excuses that are being made by the children as to why it is that they can’t do what is expected of them or whatever. And so we have to evaluate that. But quite often what it comes down to is, is either, sometimes we do have to just rearrange the schedule and make sure they have enough time to get done. The things that they need to do in the day so that sometimes it’s reasonable, but sometimes it’s just laziness.

Israel Wayne:    You know, you’ll find that they had three hours in the afternoon that they took off to play a board game or something. And then they just didn’t have time to get to the laundry. And so some of that then becomes an area where I have to step in as the dad because if my wife raises the issue, particularly with the ones over 10 years old what they tend to do is they push back on her in a way that they don’t with me. So if I can kind of back out, zoom in, back out, zoom in a big picture, his dad needs to be working with the wife to constantly reevaluate the family’s schedule and find out where are we bottleneck and what can we do to fix that. Cause I think dads oftentimes have a macro vision. Well the moms are really good at implementing the micro details of that plant family strategy.

Israel Wayne:    Okay. So then when you notice an area like, you know, chores are not being done, which is a micro issue then you have to assess why isn’t it getting done? You know, if we decide that it’s, it’s not merely a logistical issue, it’s a character issue. Then what happens is it sometimes becomes a discipline thing where they’re arguing with mom, they’re back talking mom. Well, what a dad needs to do. What I need to do in that moment is I need to get involved. So again, macro picture. I need to as a dad, make sure that I am taking responsibility for discipline because from a biblical standpoint, discipline is something that scripture assigns as the primary responsibility to fathers. I talk about this in my new book. Raising them up, parenting for Christians, which is coming out in April.

Israel Wayne:    I have a section in there on discipline. And I mentioned that in the Bible, the Bible never actually commands a mother to discipline a child. Fathers are commanded over and over and over to discipline children and mothers are never specifically commanded by God to discipline. And that should be instructive for us. That doesn’t mean that mothers are not allowed to discipline. It doesn’t mean mothers shouldn’t discipline. But what I believe that means is that God does not hold mothers responsible for discipline. He holds us responsible for what we’re commanded to do. Right? If we’re commanded to do something in scripture, then we’re responsible for it. Well, mothers are never commanded to do it. Fathers are. So my view is while mothers can discipline and really should discipline in many situations fathers are responsible before God for the discipline of their children. So when my children are pushing back on my wife, when they’re giving her a hard time and there’s an obedience issue there I’m not doing my job.

Israel Wayne:    And so I see a major place for a dad in family discipleship, but especially within the homeschooling context, his dad needs to be a firewall between his wife and his children to protect her from them. Maybe that sounds extreme. But some of you know exactly what I’m talking about. And if you, and if you don’t have boys that are 10 years old or older and maybe you won’t be able to relate to this, but when you get to that stage, I think you will. There’s just something about boys in particular that when they get to that age, they start entering puberty and their tweener years or early teen years and they pushed back on mom and a major way and they just, there’s something about a young man as he’s becoming a man, he does not want a woman telling him what to do.

Israel Wayne:    And it takes a, this is a general principle, you know, my mom and my teen years was a single parent. So, you know, God is gracious to us where we’re at, right? And he makes up for our lack based on our circumstance. But in general, as a general rule, it takes a man to teach a man how to be a man. And so, especially for those men in the household and sometimes for daughters too, you know, when they get to that age where they’re just being defiant and they’re pushing back on mom, that has to be that firewall to say, you’re not going to disrespect your mother. You’re not going to talk to her that way. You’re going to deal with me directly and, and give mom that space, give her the freedom to be able to not have to be the, the brunt of that.

Israel Wayne:    Cause I just feel like that in terms of what I observe is in terms of stress, weariness, just getting worn down. That’s a huge part of the homeschool moms weariness in this homeschool process is when she’s getting pushback from these kids because they know they can run over top of her. She just doesn’t have the same authority in some certain circumstances and situations. Again, everybody’s personalities are different. You know, some family dynamics are different. But in general you know, I as a dad, I can say something to my kids and they don’t give me grief and they’ll still give their mom all kinds of heck about it. So, you know, I think that’s, so as far as my wife, you know, making sure that she’s protected from just the onslaught of them feeling like they’re allowed to be disrespectful to their mom is something that’s really important to me that I, I set that bar and say, you know, you will always, especially for my sons, you will all, you will respect all women, but especially your mother, this woman gave you birth, you will respect your mom.

Israel Wayne:    And then making sure she has time, you know, that she gets some time alone that we get some time to gather. We try to go take walks together out in the neighborhood and it just gives us time to clear our heads a little bit. And you know, we’re, we’re in a luxury right now where we have teenagers, so we can do that. I feel sorry for all you moms that have like five little ones. Let me just throw that in there, that if you have, if you have three or four little ones like eight and under, that’s the hardest season of parenting. That is as hard as it gets. And then, well for us we found that when we got older ones, you know like 10 years old and so forth, like they became contributors and it got so much easier. So you know, we’re like winning at life now cause we have, we have four teenagers in a 12 year old, so it gets better. I’ll give you the hope. It gets better. You just have to survive that season

Yvette Hampton:           And it goes quickly. Right.

Israel Wayne:    Well it does, it does. When you look back on it, like right now I look back and go, Oh it goes so fast, but we’re also still in it because we have all these little ones. Right. And so there’s a sense in which it’s like this is dragging on for ever. I was joking the other night, my wife and I, we had our anniversary a couple of weeks ago and we went out and we took our one year old with us and we were commenting on how it seems like every anniversary we’ve ever gone out on, we’ve had a baby with us where they’re like expecting a baby or we have a baby sometimes both. Right? And so at one point I said to my wife, you know, well, we have to remember it’s just a season. And she’s like, it’s been a 19 year long season. Sometimes you just have to endure. But but there’s, there’s joy in the journey too, right? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a blessing in the midst of all that.

Yvette Hampton:           Yes. So, so much. I actually had thought of a question and then someone popped this up on here and it says, she says, I feel for some of my friends whose husbands do not step into discipline into the discipline role along with a lot of other responsibilities. Men seem to know, men don’t seem to know how to be men. I would love for you to actually answer that because I wrote that down and I said, you know, husbands who don’t discipline and lead talk to the mom. I would love you to talk to, to talk to the mom cause there are dads watching this or who will watch this later today. Talk to the mom whose husband doesn’t lead spiritually or discipline wise and how can you encourage her and then if you can talk to the dad and maybe encourage a dad who maybe he doesn’t know how.

Israel Wayne:    Yeah. Well I would say from a practical standpoint, if the dad will read my book answers for homeschooling I have a whole bunch of stuff in there for dads and like what’s the dad’s role? What’s a dad to do on the homeschooling front? Answers for homeschooling is a great book to get give to your husband and help him to see how he fits into the homeschooling process. And then my new book, raising them up, parenting for Christians. If, if you get that for your husband, again, I’ve got a huge section in there specifically for dads. What’s a dad to do? What’s the dad’s role? How is that supposed to lead in a spiritually lead his family in a loving and gentle way. And so both of those books, if your husband’s a Christian and if he’ll read get him those books and give them those books as gifts, if he won’t read read it to him when you drive together.

Israel Wayne:    Read it aloud so that he can hear it. My wife actually does that with a lot of books. I ask her to, you know, that we get to go through them together when we do road trips and things like that. But, but let’s just say you have a scenario where you have a husband who’s not a believer. He’s gone, he’s in the military, he’s deployed, he’s a truck driver, he’s gone for weeks on end. He maybe wants to be more involved than you. You just can’t physically because of his work schedule or whatever it is. You know, you have those, those dads who simply won’t lead because they’re not interested or you have some who want to, but physically they’re, their work demands are such that they’re just not in the home. They can’t be very involved. You know, I, I think the, the thing is you as the mom sometimes will have to wear both hats and it’s unfortunate.

Israel Wayne:    It’s not ideal. Again, you know, my mom being a single parent mom of six kids, homeschooling all six of us that’s a challenge and it’s not something that I envy for anybody. It’s very difficult. I know how hard it is for us to parent with two parents who are very engaged. I, it’s just, I can’t imagine being in that position where you’re functionally a single parent. You know, maybe you’re, you’re not legally a single parent, but functionally you are. But you know, God gives you grace. The Bible talks about the principle and the sanctifying spouse. And that has to be you. If your husband is not interested in discipline, he won’t lead or he just does it in a wrong or abusive way. Well then you’re going to have to be the sanctifying spouse in that situation and you’re going to have to carry that.

Israel Wayne:    And, and I just have a support base, a network of hopefully some close friends from your church, maybe your, your pastor’s wives or elders wives or something like that where, where you have people you go to for counsel and advice who know you and love you, can pray with you, support you. Maybe you’ll find that in a local homeschool support group. But try to have a a group of godly, older women who can help you navigate through that season. Cause that’s, that’s so difficult. And you know, you just have to do the best that you can in that situation. I wish that there was some easy way I could snap my finger and just, you know, cause all the men everywhere to see, first of all that they need to be involved. And secondly, want to, you know, third, you know how to that’s why I write books.

Israel Wayne:    That’s a big part of what my books are about. And so, you know, if people check out my books on our website our, our websites, FamilyRenewal.org. So if you go to our website, look at our messages audio, audio messages and books. It’s a big part of what I do. And I know there’s other great resources out there too. I mean talk to Wilson and there’s, you know, there’s a lot of great voices out there that you can refer to to help the dads learn how to get engaged. But and also, Oh, huge. Forgot this. Take them to your state homeschool conference. Oh yeah, we’re going to talk about that. Cause I definitely want to talk about that. We’re going to talk about state organizations and a little bit, yeah. Because I think that there’s almost nothing that says life changing or transforming as getting your husband to a homeschool conference and not just sitting in the vendor hall, go to the sessions and pick out the guys who really will talk straight to dads, you know, the, the Todd Wilson’s or the, yeah, I’ll, I’ll do it.

Israel Wayne:    Dennis Gunderson. You know, I’m trying to think. There’s so many great and the norm Wakefield, so many of these guys who, yeah, Davis Congress, these guys that have great voices Joe Tyler loved Joe Tyler. They talk straight to dads because they need to hear that, you know, they need to hear guys tell them this is what you should be doing. This is how to do it. I have seen just hundreds and hundreds of men who have this awakening of like, wow, I’m supposed to be involved in raising my children. I didn’t know that. I thought I was just supposed to go to work and bring home a paycheck. Nobody’s ever told me this before. What a radical concept. I mean, I was in a, I guess a state, I’ll leave my name. This last year at a conference I had four dads and one conference come up and say, I have never heard before this conference.

Israel Wayne:    When you said that dads are supposed to be responsible for discipling their children. I’ve never heard that before. I’ve gone to church for years. My pastors never said it. Nobody’s ever said it. Our men’s groups never said it. Like I’ve never heard anybody say that. It’s like a radical idea for me. And I don’t know why I’ve never heard that before and I’m going to have to think about that. I don’t even know what that looks like. Ah, but you know, you could tell it impacted them deeply. So, yeah, I absolutely, I think going to your state homeschool conferences, one of the best ways that you can help get your husband engaged and catch a vision for what you’re doing, not just in homeschooling but just in the family.

Yvette Hampton:           Yup. Yup. That is so true. We are living proof of that actually. I mean, Garrett was always engaged anyway, but we went to our first homeschool conference and the, the reason, I don’t know, I don’t know that Garrett would have been too excited about going, cause it oftentimes seems like a thing that mom does, you know, mom, all that curriculum. Right, right. But a friend of ours and the husband invited Garrett and said, Hey, there’s a bunch of us going, you know, there were I think three or four couples going, and he said, I really encourage you, just come. And it was the F it was the year before we even started homeschooling. So it was all new tests and this was nine and a half years ago. And and so it took that other dad inviting Garrett to go and we, we went together to that first homeschool conference. It was chia. It was a California and I mean it was literally, it was life changing, you know, this year. So shout out to chia calendar. Yeah. Yep. They’re, they’re fantastic with Kurt kehrmann as a matter of fact. Right. I think you’re keynoting with Kirk. I hope so.

Yvette Hampton:           I think so. That’s exciting stuff. Okay. Let’s see. We have a couple of questions and if you guys have questions, please feel free to write them in. And then you guys are doing such a good job of this. If you will write the word question in front of your question that helps us to sift through them a little bit easier. And separate the questions from the comments. So I’m not sure that I completely understand this, but it says I’d like this answered as well. And me letting him step in because it’s not the way I think it should be handled. So I think maybe she’s asking, you know, if dad handles discipline differently, then she would do it. How do, how does a mom deal with that? That’s hard. Hard

Israel Wayne:    To answer because I don’t know the dynamics. I guess what I would say is moms in general tend to be more lenient than they should be. They, they’re tenderhearted they’re nurturers and they want to protect their children. And so there’s a sense in which they tend to go soft on the children, which actually leads to a lot of times the pushback later when they’re in your face. So because they, they see you more as an equal as opposed to you being an authority figure, which you don’t have to be a tyrant, but you are an authority figure if you’re a parent. So in general, dads are better at discipline than moms. Although I think the moms bring a necessary balance to the whole situation, but there are situations where because our society is so broken, there are dads who have been raised with abuse and they discipline improperly and they discipline wrong.

Israel Wayne:    And so if, if that’s a situation, you know, no mother should ever allow her child to be abused. And so there are times I think where a mom has to intervene if the, if the father doesn’t know how to control his if he’s just out of control, then obviously mom can’t just say, well, I’m just going to be hands off and let him do his thing. But, but just in general I think there are times where the dad has a sense that the child knew. So it’s, here’s some guidelines, like, did the child know what was expected of them? Did they have the capacity to do what was expected of them? And, and what we do when we tell our children to do something is we have them repeat it back to us. Okay, so what is it that we’ve asked you to do?

Israel Wayne:    And they repeat it back to us. So now we know that they’ve heard us and they’ve understood and when they’ve heard us and they’ve understood, now they’re responsible. So there are times where the child knows what they’re expected to do. They’ve heard it, they’ve understood, and they have the capacity to do it because you’ve trained them how to do it right. You’ve not just told them to do something, but you’ve trained them in how to do it. When they don’t do it. There shouldn’t be second, third, fourth, fifth, 17th chances. They should be disciplined when they don’t follow through with their instructions. Oftentimes moms, just that soft heart that they have their, they advocate for their child. Well, I don’t know. I don’t think you should discipline. I mean, maybe he didn’t really understand it. Maybe he, you know, and that often knows. No, they’re just playing you and kids will do that. They’ll manipulate you. So that’s my long answer. You know, I guess I would say if he’s not doing something that’s sinful or harmful to the child, if it’s just a difference let him, let him do his thing. And I think most cases he probably has a better handle on it than you do. But if he’s saying something that’s sinful or abusive, then no, you can’t just sit by and let somebody harm your child.

Yvette Hampton:           Sure. Yeah. I, I’m smiling and chuckling over here because that, that is oftentimes the case with us. I love my kids and we just got off, you know, we, our last session was with Ginger Hubbard and I’ve, I have read all of her books and I, I have really tried to use her methods of, of discipline and child training and heart discipleship. But I am for sure the softie and I just, I, it’s so hard for me, not that I, it’s not that I don’t want to discipline my kids, I just, it’s hard for me. I don’t know what it is. But I did learn also, because I did a session yesterday with Linda LA Hobar and we talked about the difference between Mary and Martha and you know, Mary’s who homeschool and Martha’s who homeschool and you know, Mary’s are nurturers and I am definitely a Mary.

Yvette Hampton:           And so it’s, it’s just very difficult for me in my nature to, for, for discipline to take place. And so I don’t let my kids walk all over me for sure. But as a matter of fact, as we’re sitting here talking, my youngest is sitting right here next to me listening to all of this. Anyway, yeah, it’s hard. But what I’m saying is good to know that I’m not the only one who deals with this because it is you know, a lot of moms who struggle with the whole discipline. So or team, we balanced each other out, right? Yes. And, and, and we, we do as well. I’m grateful for a husband who is not as much of a nurturer as he is a nurture but not like me. I mean, he can bring the discipline. And so so here’s a question. It says she says currently my six year old is in public school. When is the best time to take them out to, to homeschool? I know my answer probably probably with tomorrow. Amen. Tomorrow would be a great time. Yes. I would say the less time they spend away from you and the less time they spend any school that is teaching them, that is everything that is contrary to the word of God, the better off they are.

Israel Wayne:    Yeah. I would recommend that you get in touch with your state homeschooling association that if they have membership dues, you pay and become a member of that state homeschool association that you get on their email list, that you get plugged into what they’re doing. Cause you’re going to want to get information on homeschooling and legal information in your state from them. You also want to pay to become a member of homeschool legal defense association [inaudible] dot org and so there’s a website called homeschool freedom.com.

Yvette Hampton:           I think so. Yep. It’s actually, if you go to the Schoolhouse Rocked website, you can link right to it. It says homeschooling in my state and just click on that link and it will take you straight to your state.

Israel Wayne:    That’ll link you with the state groups. And then HSL lda.org become a member of their group and they will provide information on the laws in your state and their curriculum offerings everywhere. Your homeschool conference state homeschool conference is a great place for you to find out about what’s available curriculum wise. But, but yeah, the sooner the better. There’s just you know, the, the thing is as parents, we don’t want to be undoing everything we’re trying to do. And so when you have a child in an environment where they’re being taught the opposite of your values, then you’re having to D construct all that and you’re just working against yourself.

Yvette Hampton:           Yes. And we I know that question came from Jackie and Jackie. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to watch any of the other sessions before this one. But go back and watch some of them because we talk a lot about that actually. Heidi st John talked a lot about that and Rachel Carmen talks about that. I mean there’s, all of them have been fantastic and we talk about the importance of, you know, you being the one to, like you said at the beginning, Israel, Luke six 40 a student will become like his teacher, you know, your child is going to become like those who are teaching her. And so I would say four and I actually, I don’t know if it’s a a girl or boy that you have, but whoever’s teaching your child literally tomorrow. I mean, if it were up to me and I, knowing what I know right now about the public school system and knowing what I know about the blessings and the benefits of homeschooling, I would not hesitate to right now have this be their very last day.

Yvette Hampton:           And you know, like you said, Israel, you go to your state organization, find it on SchoolhouseRocked.com. You can easily find your organization on there and they will help walk you through the process of how to do that. And that’s what this whole homegrown generation family expo event is about. It’s about really opening your eyes up to the blessings and benefits of homeschooling and bringing the encouragement that parents need, especially, you know, in the middle of the year right now when we’re feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and tired and just like, can we do this another day? We really want to encourage you to do that. It’s why we’re making Schoolhouse Rocked, the movie. It’s why we’ve got The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. It’s why Israel has his ministry to families, to homeschool families and has written all these books that he’s written. I mean, there are so many resources for you. The one thing I would say, and I know Israel, you’d agree with me on this, is if you feel like the Lord is calling you to take your child out of school, make sure that your husband is in agreement with it, with that decision because you do not want to create a wedge between yourself. And your husband, your marriage relationship is more important than what school your child is in because the foundation of your family is set with your marriage. And so make sure your husband’s on board.

Israel Wayne:    You know, I have two books, answers for homeschooling, the top 25 questions critics ask. And that book is very research and data driven. So a lot of times men want facts, they want to know well, do homeschoolers do well academically? And how did they do socially? And will they be accepted into college? And will this hurt their chance at a career? And they want facts. And so that’s what that book does. It provides research and data that confirms the decision that homeschooling is best for your child. So it’s called answers for homeschooling. Top 25 questions. Critics ask. And then there’s another book that I’ve written called education. Does God have an opinion? And those books I, in fact I’ll show you real quick. So this is the answers book answers for homeschooling top 25 questions. Critics ask. And then this one education.

Israel Wayne:    Does God have an opinion? This one is more theological. So if your husband’s a Christian and he cares about scripture and says, well, what does scripture say about education? I think it’s the most comprehensive book available today on what a biblical philosophy of education looks like. And I’ve heard from hundreds of people, hundreds and hundreds of people who’ve said, this book absolutely changed our worldview, not just on education, but you know, on what does it look like to have a biblical worldview and to think biblically about every subject, but specifically about education. So those books are the best resources that I can tell you about that. I think we’ll get your husband on board if he needs to process, you know, if he needs a, I’ve got to see descriptor support this and does research support this, those two books, I think we’ll do that.

Yvette Hampton:           Yup. Yup. And having watched some of these sessions from this online expo, I think they will be a great encouragement to him. Here’s another question. It’s a this is by from Lisa. She says, what do you say to moms who say, Oh, I could never be a homeschool mom. I’m not patient enough. My kids would drive me crazy, et cetera. Yeah. I have a chapter in here.

Israel Wayne:    I addressed that. In fact, I addressed all the major questions related to homeschooling in this book. So the question of I’m not patient enough. You know, I say that then you have all people need to homeschool. The people who say they’re not patient enough specifically need to homeschool. And the reason is because the, the context of family relationship is like a pressure cooker that God puts us in this home with people that are not like us people who rub us the wrong way to teach us how to become different than what we are. I don’t know if that makes sense, but we are how we are. Okay. And God wants us to become different than how we are. The biblical term for that is sanctification. It’s taking us from where we are to where God wants us to be.

Israel Wayne:    It’s a growth process. It’s a spiritual maturity process, and he uses our family for that. And what I find is that there are people who want to run away from the process that God has created and designed to help them to grow and mature spiritually. There was a lady who told me, she said, you know, my daughter is 12 years old. We don’t get along all that well. I don’t think I could homeschool her. I think it’d be better for me to have her in a school with other teachers cause she likes other teachers. She doesn’t like me. I think it’d be better for her to be in school than to be home with me. And I said, okay. I said what I’m going to suggest to you is that, that while you do that, you should also move out of your house and live in a different home away from your husband while you’re doing that.

Israel Wayne:    And she said, why, why, why would you say that? And I said, well, because it sounds to me like your goal is to reduce conflict. Is that correct? And she said, well, I guess so. And I said, well good, then you need to move out of the house that you’re in with your husband and live somewhere else. Because if you send your child away from you and you live in a different home than your husband and that will reduce conflict. So if the goal is we want to reduce conflict, that’s my advice to you. And she’s like, that doesn’t sound like good advice. I said, it’s perfect advice. If the goal is to reduce conflict. I said the problem with it is that while it does reduce conflict and almost completely and entirely re removes and eliminates the possibility of relationship. So the question is what do you want more?

Israel Wayne:    Do you want to reduce conflict or do you want to improve relationship? If you want to improve relationship, then you actually have to press into the relationship rather than running away from it. And so really that is what it comes down to. It’s that when feel uncomfortable with somebody, we tend to want to avoid them and send them away from us so that we don’t have to see them because then we don’t have conflict. So if your goal is simply that you just don’t want to have conflict, then yes, send all the people that are close to you, away from you because that reduces conflict. But if you want to have relationship, then you actually have to press into that. And God created the home. He created the family. The, the Deuteronomy six model of you spend time with your children from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed.

Israel Wayne:    You spend time with them. When you’re inside your house, you spend time with them. When you’re outside your house. And in that entire day and an entire context, you teach them God’s law. That’s what scripture prescribes. And that’s a prescription for sanctification. But we don’t like sanctification. We kinda like to stay the way we are. So sending our children away from us as an easier path. So I know what I just said is sounds very harsh, but it’s very direct. It’s very true that people who want to avoid having to deal with their impatience are very selfish and need and they need to homeschool more than anybody I know.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah. You know, one of the things that I observed, because I’ve, I’ve had many moms say, well, my kids would drive me crazy. I couldn’t stand to be home with them. Yeah. Well, when you think about that, the reason that their kids drive them crazy, and I’m not saying that when you’re, you know, every homeschool kid is an angel child and we enjoy every moment of the day with all of them. But think about this. If you’re putting your kids in under the care of someone else in your entrusting them to someone else for 40 hours a week or longer, if they’re doing before and after school daycare, you’re entrusting their, their character and their discipline and every part of, of their emotional being to someone else to train them. Then you’re getting someone else’s training. Well, a teacher, you know, we’ve met some of my best friends in the whole world.

Yvette Hampton:           We’re public school teachers and they, they will tell you they cannot, it’s not possible. No matter how much a school teacher loves their students. And many of them really do. It doesn’t matter how much the school teacher loves their students. They cannot take the time to spend with each student individually, training their hearts, discipling them, caring for their character, developing in them who God created them to be. And so you’re just putting them in this big group of kids and then you’re expecting your kids to come home and act the way that you want them to act. Well, you haven’t been the one who’s been training them. Why would you expect them to act according to your morals and your values that you’ve set in your home? Don’t expect that because you’ve put them in someone else’s care to do all of that training for you.

Yvette Hampton:           And so you know, that’s always my answer to those moms who say, well, I could never handle my kids. They drive me crazy during Christmas break. Well, that’s because they’re under the care of someone else and someone else’s training them. But I challenged those moms. Bring your kids home. You be the one and it’s going to take a little bit of time maybe, but probably not as much as you think you start pouring into them because it’s not enough just to do it for a couple of hours a night in between homework, dinner and bath time, and then a few hours on the weekend when you’re doing chores and going out and running errands and doing all of that stuff. That’s not enough time to pour into the hearts of our children. So anyway, that’s my 2 cents on it.

Israel Wayne:    This book too, my wife and I wrote this, it’s called a pitch and a fit, overcoming angry and stressed out parenting. And so we have an entire book for you, the parent that feels like I’m too impatient, I can’t homeschool. You need to read this book as well because this book deals specifically with that issue. How do you overcome this relationship where you’re yelling all the time, you’re frustrated, where there’s chaos in the home. How do you get past that? Well, that’s what this book is about. So we, we write really practical books that answer the questions and it’s amazing to me as long as I’ve done this, you know, that we have a, you know, I’ve been speaking at conferences for over 25 years and people come up with the same questions over and over and over. And, and I hate to say like, okay, I’ve written about that, write about that.

Israel Wayne:    That’s why we write books because we can address in more than just a 32nd soundbite, a comprehensive biblical theology of how do you get on the other side of that problem. And so again, that’s why I’m really excited too about raising them up, parenting for Christians, this new book coming out in April because it’s the big picture of parenting. It’s the big picture of how do we capture our child’s heart? How do we make sure that we’re not just training them toward behavior, but that we’re really pointing them toward the gospel and that really discipling their hearts.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah. Can people preorder that book yet?

Israel Wayne:    [Inaudible] Again, it is available@amasterbooks.com. You can get a master books.com and preorder it. We also have a Facebook group that we started called raising them up, parenting for Christians. If you go there and sign up, we will send you an email. Actually I would say go to this page, go to FamilyRenewal.org/subscribe. Subscribe and we will send you an email that will have a prerelease special. We’re going to be launching that in about a week and that will be cheaper probably than you’ll find it anywhere else and it will be a personally signed copy so you’ll get the best price on it. And you also get a personally signed copy if you buy it directly from Family Renewal. So if you want to do that, just go to FamilyRenewal.org for slash subscribe. Make sure you sign up for our email list and we’ll send you an email on that and then just check that Facebook group parenting for Christians, raising them up, parenting for Christians. Cause we’re answering questions about parenting and they’re in kind of a community setting. So,

Yvette Hampton:           Yup. Love it. And maybe Danielle, I know you’re watching right now. If you are able to put those those links in there, I would love that. What is, here’s another question. What are the options? I love this question and I love this question for you. What are the options for single moms? How can you homeschool without spousal support when you were working full time? Do you have any tips? Do you have a book for it?

Israel Wayne:    Your answers for homeschooling where I talk about how can I homeschool if I’m a single mom? Or how can I homeschool if I’m a grandparent or Afghan, I homeschool. If I have health problems, how can I homeschool if my child has special needs? I actually answer every question you can ever imagine about homeschooling in this book. So but to answer it here you know, logistically the money aspect is probably the biggest one. How do you work and, and so forth. I’m just gonna throw something super radical out there. And man, I hope that people will bear with me. You know, honestly, it will never be put in this scenario where this is an actual, you know, real case. But if you only had two hours a day to input meaningfully into your, the life of your child, I mean, let’s say that that’s you.

Israel Wayne:    You had to work and maybe you have a situation where your child can stay with the grandparents during the day, or you have a sitter or somebody that can, that can be with them during the day. And you could only put in two hours a day and meaningful teaching and instruction, you would be so much further ahead if that’s all you could do was, was two hours of really intensive teaching where they were the rest of the day in a safe environment where they were protected. Then to send them to school and have seven hours of deprogramming that you had to do every single night. I don’t know if that makes sense. Yeah. Send them to school. You’re going to have to deprogram seven hours of anti-Christian indoctrination that they got during the day. And that’s gonna take up most of your time. You’re not going to have the time to just input positively.

Israel Wayne:    So I don’t think that’s a scenario that, that probably most people will be limited to. But if that were the case where I just had somebody that could keep my child safe during the day while I had to go to work as a single parent and then I came home. And, and could only like folk you focus teaching instruction for two hours, I would so do that. I would make sure, cause I would be so much further ahead than trying to deprogram them from all the bullying. Just all the, the anti Christian sex education that they’re getting, all the relativistic thinking that truth isn’t absolute truth is whatever you make it. The gender is a fluid concept that God didn’t make you, that you evolved out of primordial slime et cetera, et cetera. You know, that God, that God didn’t have anything to do with history.

Israel Wayne:    That, you know, it’s just the struggle of man’s survival over eons of time. You know, you’re, you’re having unprogrammed your kids when they’re in a school environment, public school environment. Yeah. so what I would say is that there’s any way that you have people in your life that even if you have to work a job that you trust that you could could pay or that they would watch your kid just to keep them safe during the day and then you homeschooled them at night if that’s all you could do, you’d be so much further ahead just to do that. But you know, again, there are great resources. HSL DA’s website has some good information for single parents. And there are lots of parents who do it successfully. My mom started a publishing business, so yeah, there’s lots of ways you can stay home, have a business and be able to homeschool.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah. Kim saw was on the round table panel last night and she talked a little bit about that. And she’s a single mom and the Lord has done amazing things through her and with her family and, and he’s provided for her. She trusted him and he’s provided. And I, I want to say something else. I want to talk to the parents who are not single parents but who are homeschooling. We as a community need to come alongside those single moms and help them. And I, and you know, our society is so just private. Like, you know, we, we come into our garages, we close our doors, we come into our house, we close our doors and we wanna just be cooped up in our little family. And this is my family and we need our privacy and we need to just have our own, you know, family to ourselves that, that who says who, I mean, that is not the way of the Lord.

Yvette Hampton:           Hospitality is something that is definitely commanded in scripture and part of hospitality is us as the homeschool, as a Christian homeschool community. If you know of a single mom who’s struggling and she doesn’t want to have her child in school, offered to take her child for her. And I’m not saying that that’s going to be easy because oftentimes we have our own kids. But trust that the Lord will give you the strength and, and whatever you need to help that single mom out and any way that you can, if it’s babysitting one day a week or a couple of days, whatever it is, and rally around those moms and help them, you know, moms end up as single moms for a variety of reasons. You know, oftentimes, you know, husbands just unexpectedly pass away or sometimes, you know, they have an illness or you know, they, they walk away from them. There are many, many ways and there their dads, two single dads whose, whose wives, you know, end up losing their lives or walking away and and so now they’re, they’ve got these children and they’re like, what do I do? So we really need as a community to be so much better about rallying around these, these single parents and helping them. I know a couple, couple

Israel Wayne:    Of other resources to homeschool legal defense association has a nonprofit called the homeschool foundation, homeschool foundation.org. They have grants that are available for homeschooling parents, especially single moms who need to have financial assistance toward curriculum. So they help to provide assistance to help them to buy curriculum if they can’t afford it. And there are a lot of other resources. Again, if you contact your state homeschool association, a lot of times they have resources for single parents. I’d like to see churches take on the vision of Christian education in general as a part of what they do. I know of several churches where they actually will come alongside single parents that want to homeschool and they’ll assist them though. Good luck finding that. But there are a few out there. I just would love to see more churches that would actually say, if you want to homeschool your children, then we will come alongside and help you.

Israel Wayne:    There’s one mom who’s a veteran homeschool mom in Tennessee that I know and her son is graduated and he’s an adult now. And she found a single parent mom who didn’t want to send her child to government school and the child stays with this veteran mom during the day. She homeschools him during the day and then the mom homeschools him at night. And so you know, but it’s a safe environment where the child is protected and he’s loved. And what a wonderful service for this for this retired homeschool mom who has all this experience, who knows how to homeschool, who’s done this to come alongside and mentor this mom who, who has to work a job but is doing the best that she can. And wow, what a, what a gift of mercy. You know, for somebody who has the ability to, yeah, it’s a sacrifice, but, but wow, what a, what a great gift.

Israel Wayne:    So yes, let me just say this too. I think God never calls us to something and then fails to equip us. Yeah. If you go through scripture and anytime God called his people to do something, he showed up, but they had to take the step, right. They had to go ahead and step out in obedience. They had to cross the red sea. They had to cross the Jordan, they had to March around the wall seven times to blow the trumpet. They had to bathe in the river seven times, you know, but when we step out in obedience, God shows up and he meets our needs.

Yvette Hampton:           Yeah, that’s right. It’s funny you said the red sea, cause I literally, that was the image that just came up in my mind. And I just thought, you know, when Israel, like they’re standing at the edge of the red sea, you know, they had no idea how they were going to get across. And, and I’ve thought a lot about this because of just our family and what the Lord has us doing right now. You know, they had no idea how they were going to get across that. And had he brought them to a small stream or a river, there were enough of them that they could have figured out a way across. They could have stuck some logs or some rocks or something, you know, piggy back at each other, whatever they could have figured out a way across. But he didn’t bring them to a stream or a river small enough to cross.

Yvette Hampton:           He brought them to a C that they had no other option but to depend on him. And the Lord showed up. And the cool thing is, is that they couldn’t have at that point said, well, clearly God’s going to just part the waters and we’re gonna walk through on dry land. They never could have imagined that that had never happened before. And all they could do is just stand there and cry out to God and say, God, we don’t know how we’re going to get through this. We’ve got the enemy chasing us, but we’re going to, you know, trust you. And many of them didn’t trust God of course. But he still provided away and he split those waters and they walked through on dry land. And God is a faithful God. And so it’s not going to be easy, but, but he is faithful and he will, he will equip you and he will bring you the help that you need to be able to accomplish.

Israel Wayne:    Oh product of a guy who was homeschooled by a single parent mother, he saw God come through time and again with providing food, providing groceries, providing money, you know, miraculous things. So you know, it’s the faith life and boy, the more that you’re in need, the more miracles you get

Yvette Hampton:           To see. Yes. Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Someone asked, are your books on audio?

Israel Wayne:    My books are not an audio. They are available in Kindle and in print, but at this they’re not available in audio.

Yvette Hampton:           Okay. Not yet, but one day maybe in your spare time. Okay. So Jill is asking she says, what about the common core math specifically? You have written about it in your book, but I just don’t understand why it’s so bad. Am I missing something? Where can I go to see why it’s so bad? My husband is a high school public school math teacher and he and I have talked a lot about it and from his perspective, he’s seen that students are learning the concepts better since common core standards being the guide. He has not seen why it’s so bad.

Israel Wayne:    Okay. Why are you going to put me right on the spot? I know you can handle it. 10,000 people are going to hate me for what I’m about to say. I have been calling Christian parents for two and a half decades to get their children out of anti-Christian schools and give them an exclusively, explicitly Christian education. And we’ve had every reason in the world to do that. Harmful peer environment, bullying, school shootings evolution, relativism, you know immoral sex ed, you know, giving out condoms on the school campus. I mean drugs available on school campus. I mean, on and on and on, revisionist history, so on and so forth. There’s been so many reasons why people should have chosen exclusively Christian education rather than anti Christian education. For, for some reason, eight years ago or whenever common core math hit, Christian parents lost their minds and said, now they’ve gone too far.

Israel Wayne:    I don’t know how to help my child in math homework. We’re taking them out now, you know, as a homeschool advocate. Like, I’ll take that, you know, and I’m like, okay, cool. This is finally the straw that broke the camel’s back. I just not sure why that was the thing that was so radical and so appalling that Christian parents just said, okay, the schools are too bad now. We can’t take it anymore cause we don’t know how to help our child with homework and math. Common core math teaches math in a more conceptual way as opposed to you know, a standard way that they have in some cases, multiple steps that you have to take. There’s a lot of guessing. There’s a lot of rounding. It’s not everybody’s flavor. There are some children who I think thinks that way or relate to that.

Israel Wayne:    There are some who don’t. Certainly people who have learned what we would call more traditional standard way of learning math don’t relate to it at all. So it’s a difference. But, but as far as it goes, as far as it goes, it’s, it’s a difference. And some people have kind of made it as though if you use a common core math curriculum, you’ve taken the Mark of the beast. I don’t look at it like that. It’s a difference. And some parents will relate to it. Some students will relate to it. Common core in general. What was problem in that problematic about it was it was a federal government overreach. It was the federal government trying to dictate to all the States that they all had to standardize. They all had used the same methods and approach. That was the big problem with common core.

Israel Wayne:    There were parts of common core the details of common core that were horrible in their parts of common core that weren’t so bad. And so my view is common core math is just a difference. It’s, it’s not something that’s gonna work for everybody. Some people like it, some don’t. But in the grand scheme of things, the problem with common core was not the math, it was the federal overreach. And and so that’s, that’s kinda my take. But I’m just shocked that so many Christian families left the schools and droves over math when all the other stuff just apparently was a shrug. So, I mean, if that’s the thing that finally got him out the door, I guess, praise God for that. I found it ironic.

Yvette Hampton:           Okay. Here’s, here’s another question and here’s another tough one, but I’m going to throw it at ya. It says, what about students in say inner cities and other places where they have terrible home lives and public schoolers, their only safe Haven in the day. What can be done for families like that? That’s a great question.

Israel Wayne:    Yeah. I actually have a, I have a car after in here. I address that. You know, the, the problem is that we have a breakdown in society because fathers are not in the home in many cases, particularly in an urban environment. They are not raising their own children. They’ve abandoned their wives and their children to kind of fend for themselves. We’ve got a huge cultural problem. I have, I have a couple of thoughts along that line. The first is that people use that as an excuse not to homeschool their own children. You, you have people who are in, you know, middle America suburban homes using that as an excuse for why they don’t homeschool their own children. And it’s kind of like saying, well, what about the person in the jungles who’s never heard the gospel? Why would God send them to hell?

Israel Wayne:    And they’re using that as an excuse for why they’re not a Christian. You know, that’s not your issue. That’s not relevant to you. So for people who are using that as an excuse for why they don’t homeschool that’s, that’s not your issue. So I think it can be a bit of a red herring to kind of you know, try to use an exception to a rule to eliminate a rule. Does that make sense? And inception never invalidates a rule, right? So but, but secondly beyond that, there are a lot of homeschool associations that are reaching into the inner city and they are reaching these urban families. There are some great homeschool co-ops, homeschool networks that are helping these people to to, to find ways to be able to homeschool. I wrote an article that’s called a parable of two roads.

Israel Wayne:    And if you Google search that a parable of two roads and then Israel, Wayne I wrote, I wrote an article basically about that, that there are steps that people can take incrementally towards educational freedom if they want to. One more thing on that. I think what I hear in that statement when, you know, it’s not the first time I’ve heard it, cause I’ve, I’ve read the chapter about it, but what I hear is people saying at the end of the day, we have to have a socialist safety net in our country to catch those who fall through the cracks and that the free market will never work. The free market is impotent and it is not effective and it won’t work. Therefore we always have to have a socialism. Whether it’s in healthcare, whether it’s an education, whether it’s in, you know, any other kind of social issue.

Israel Wayne:    We have to have a socialist safety net because the free market doesn’t work. I think that’s really a, a presupposition that is inherent in that argument. People probably don’t think about it cognitively, but I think that is what they’re saying is we have to have the government there to save us at the end of the day, because otherwise people are going to fall through the cracks. The free market doesn’t work. It’s just not true. It isn’t true that the free market doesn’t work. It doesn’t, it isn’t true that the free market won’t create its own solutions. The free market always creates better solutions. And the thing that we have to ask is, well, what did we do before Karl Marx? Because we didn’t have government schools before. Carl Marx, we had 6,000 years of human history before Karl Marx were civilizations somehow got by before institutional government schools. We’ve only had 170 years of institutional government schools. So what did we do for the 6,000 years before the 170 years? That’s what we have to do. We just have to go back and say, what did we do before Karl Marx? That’s how we answer that question.

Yvette Hampton:           Yup, yup. Good stuff. And I, and I wonder if, I think she was maybe asking the question to you and I love your answer, but also in regards to like what about those kids? Not so much. What about the parents who don’t want to homeschool, but what about those children who that’s their only, you know, safe Haven and well, well, it’s just not a, it’s not their only option, right? You know, there are private education options,

Israel Wayne:    There are scholarships to private schools. If we privatized education, there would be myriads of options. But within the system that we have now there are lots of options that are useful and valid that you don’t have to have your kid in a government school. If you want something better for them, then you can find better options. And the church is one source that needs to step up in this. But there are, there are options for them to get a Christian education if you want one. Yeah. But most people don’t want it. So at the end of the day, the people that don’t want to give their kids a Christian education won’t. And so in that sense, there will always be government schools for them. I’m not that concerned about that. What I’m concerned about is getting Christians that they can live like Christians, you know, we, we will always have people who will want a humanistic socialistic solution, but as Christians we should want a biblical solution and that’s parents taking responsibility for the education of their children.

Yvette Hampton:           Right. That that is right. Okay. If we don’t have any more coming in. I have one last question for you. Cause we only have a couple of minutes left here. And, and I want to talk about state organizations. I know that, well, let me back up. I said before that we had gone to the chia homeschool convention, that’s the Christian home educators association of California. And when we went to that homeschool convention, it was about nine and a half years ago. It was the year before our oldest daughter was starting kindergarten. We didn’t know anything about homeschooling. And, and when I say we didn’t know anything, I mean we literally, I mean we had some friends who homeschooled, but it was everything opposite of what we really thought that, well, I won’t say everything but mostly opposite. And so we kind of felt like we didn’t have another option at that point because our, we always thought we’d put our kids into a good Christian school, which is where I grew up.

Yvette Hampton:           I loved the school that I grew up in. I had great teachers and so that was always our plan was to put our girls in this Christian school while then as as God would have it in his perfect plan for our family. I was pregnant with my youngest and so I couldn’t work. My thought was always I’ll work so they can go to Christian school and I’ll just work during the day so they can go to school during the day and then I’ll be home at nighttime and stuff. Well I was pregnant, getting ready to have a baby in October. That was not an option. So we said, well, I guess we’ll do this homeschool thing cause the private or the public schools in our area, we were, we’re from Los Angeles County, they were not safe. We were not willing to put our, our daughter in the public school.

Yvette Hampton:           So we heard about this homeschool convention and called chia. And I’m like, that is weird. And I remember talking to my friend Jodie and trader Joe’s, she said, you should come to this homeschool convention with us. And I was like, cause I have a convention for homeschoolers. I mean is, is it a parking lot full of minivans? Which yes, it is. And and I just could not imagine that this was actually a thing. So then we went to this convention and our eyes were just opened up to the amazing benefits of homeschooling and what that meant for our family. And we came home that I remember going there and we were kinda just, I don’t know, hesitant about even going, I think we were excited about a weekend away. You know, just the two of us. But we were very reluctant with this whole homeschool thing.

Yvette Hampton:           And three days later we were driving home and we couldn’t stop talking about it and we just said, this is, this is our family, this is what we’re going to do as long as the Lord allows. What I didn’t understand at that point, and it took me many years to really understand that chia, this Christian home educators association that put on this homeschool convention was the California state organization homeschool organization and that they are the ones who lobby for, you know, everything homeschooling. They, they are on the front lines of this homeschool battle because even though homeschooling is legal in every state now, it hasn’t always been, and it may not always be if we don’t continue to fight for our rights. And so we’ve got all these state organizations from I want, I think Israel, you might know better than me, I want to say 47 out of the 50 States. I think somewhere around there have a Christian homeschool state organization and you guys really work together because you’re a part of your state homeschool organization and you guys really work together with one another to help support each other and help to support the homeschool community. So I would love for you to take the last few minutes and talk about state organizations, why they exist, why they are important, and then how we as homeschoolers can and should be involved. Sure.

Israel Wayne:    Well, most of the state organizations do is they provide several services, one of which is to watch bills that go through the legislature that may be harmful to homeschoolers if there’s increased regulation. They’re just trying to make it more difficult on homeschooling, create more government red tape that that hinders people homeschooling freely. The state homeschool associations have lobbying aspects to what they do, where they help to defeat those bills and they’re very effective in it. Most of these state organizations have been around for over 30 years and oftentimes will kill these bills even in committee before they get out for a vote, just because of relationships that they have established within the legislature. Nobody else is doing that. No one else will do that. That’s something that the state organizations are exclusively doing. So if you want to see homeschooling stay free, illegal in your state, you need to become a member of your state organization.

Israel Wayne:    You need to support what they do. A big part of their funding comes through their state conferences. They have an annual, most States have a state annual state homeschool convention or conference where they have speakers just like what we’re doing here online. They have vendors where you can go and see the curriculum and hold it and look at it and ask questions to the publisher. You can find a lot of other resources at the conference educational games and children’s books and literature and you know, lots of great family resources. So there’s lots of vendors there that support the homeschooling lifestyle and those supine curriculum and buying products. At the convention helps to support the vendors who support the conference. And that’s how a lot of that legislative work gets funded. They also help to do a lot of support group development.

Israel Wayne:    So there are usually local homeschooling co-ops or support groups in your area and those are networked oftentimes through your state association. And like in Michigan where I live, our state association, I’m the vice president of our state association. We provide training, leadership development for a support group leaders and cop leaders around the state. So we’re helping them to learn how to do what they do well and to do it better and how to serve on a local level in a more effective way. And so a that as well as sometimes graduations Capitol days where they’ll have you meet and greet your legislators lots of different resources that happen all year round. Your state association is, they’re serving homeschoolers. Even if you didn’t know that there was one you didn’t know they were there. It’s a wonderful community and one of the best ways you could support them is of course with donations, with membership.

Israel Wayne:    And then going to the, to the conference, registering for the conference and buying your curriculum at the conference. All of that helps to fund and support your local state association. We just heard about one state that closed down about three weeks ago just because people weren’t supporting them and they actually went out of business and that state now has no voice in the legislature. They have nobody PR, you know, protecting their rights as parent, homeschooling parents. None of those resources are available there anymore cause people just took it for granted. They said, well homeschooling is legal here. We haven’t had any problems. We don’t think the state organizations that important. But I guarantee you that now the legislature, there are people in the legislature don’t like homeschooling. They’re just going to feel like, Hey, the gate is open and nobody’s watching the hen house. And so you want to support your state association.

Yvette Hampton:           Yes, for sure. What are some, some ways that people can be involved? Now, you talked about supporting of course, through membership. And, and by the way, I know as homeschool families, most of us are on a pretty tight budget and we were one as well. And so we don’t have money just floating around to sign up for all these things and but this is something that is a worthy cause and it is something that is for your protection and for the protection of your family. Get involved in your state organization. How can people get involved in prayers? The first thing that comes to my mind, you know, pray for those who are helping to keep your freedoms and fight for your freedoms and your very state, but are, are there opportunities for people to actually get involved in their state organizations?

Israel Wayne:    Yes. So our state association in Michigan, we, our board, our leadership team is entirely volunteer. I volunteer everyone on the board volunteers. So there’s opportunities for you to volunteer at the convention there. There’s a need, usually for 40, 50 people to be there. Teenagers can be a big help at the conference. Loading, unloading boxes, helping the vendors to set up. You can help to be there to help with registration, to pass out the handout bags at the doors. Oftentimes if you offered a volunteer, sometimes you can even get discounts to the tickets for the event. And there are people who volunteer for our state association doing social media doing email for us handling logistics, answering phone calls coming into the office, doing office work, things that they can do at home, things that they can do at the conference, things they can do at Capitol day.

Israel Wayne:    So if you contact your state association and say, man, we don’t have a lot of money to give, but we would love to donate time. What can we do to help? My guess is they’re gonna put you to work because what we need is we need people, we need hands. And it really is a community. We’re all doing this. You know, there’s nobody in our state association getting rich off of this. We all volunteer our time and put the money back into serving the homeschool community. It’s, it’s what it is. It is a nonprofit. Most of the States are nonprofit. So donations are always helpful. The more resources we have, the better things that we can offer. We can bring in more speakers, we can do more events throughout the year. We’re actually bringing a small state as small homeschool seminars around the state. So we’re doing one in a couple of weeks in battle Creek where we’re going to go, our Jackson, sorry, Michigan and we’re going to bring a mini conference to their area cause a lot of them say, Hey, we’d love for you to bring something here. So there’s lots of walls that you can get involved.

Yvette Hampton:           Yes. I love that. And I’m going to throw this out there for the vendors because I know you’re not going to say this is real and others won’t either. Understand that the vendor hall at these conventions, they go there because they want to provide a service for you. The homeschooler, they want you to be able to physically touch their curriculum and their books and their resources that they have. And it’s not cheap for them to do that. It costs them quite a lot of money actually. And what I’ve seen happening a lot, and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well as real, is that parents will go and I, I’m not, well, maybe I’m trying to guilt trip a little bit, but that’s okay. Sometimes we need to be guilt chipped. Homeschool parents will go and they’ll, they’ll browse through everything and they’ll take pictures and, and figure out what they want and then they’ll leave the convention empty handed and they’ll go find it, you know, as, as inexpensive as they can somewhere else instead of supporting that particular organization or, or company.

Yvette Hampton:           And what we have learned is that almost all of the companies, you know, whether it’s, you know, apology and ministries or master books or, you know what I mean, there are so many different organizations there. For the most part, small family owned businesses usually started by homeschool families who saw that there was a need, you know, science shepherd, I mean there are so many different ones and so they’re really there to support you. So support them. Pay the extra $5 for the curriculum at the convention as a ministry to those who are providing the, the resources that you need in order to homeschool effectively. So I just want to throw that out there. You support your homeschool organization. Go to SchoolhouseRocked.com and you’ll see on the front page there’s a button that says homeschool in your state. If you click on that, it will take you to the homeschool freedom website.

Yvette Hampton:           Or you could just go directly to homeschool freedom. It’s homeschoolfreedom.com. Anyway, if you go to SchoolhouseRocked.com, you can just go to that website and find the homeschool organization. Just click on your state and you can find the organization that is in your state and just pray that the Lord would give you just some clarity on how you can maybe help to support your organization, but get involved. You guys, it is so important. Someone commented on her and said, you know, you’re, you’re helping yourself. Yes. Cause it really is supporting you as the homeschool family. Anyway, that’s my soapbox on that. Israel, we are out of time. Thank you for your continued encouragement. I know you’re going to be back in about an hour and a half for that round table discussion this afternoon. So I, I’m sorry we didn’t get to all of your questions. If you have a question for Israel, please jump back on with us. In an hour and a half. Israel will be back on with Scott lob here Durenda Wilson, Ginger Hubbard, and Aby Rinella. They’ll be on to encourage you and answer a bunch of your questions. So thank you Israel. We will see you back here in a few minutes. All right, sounds great. Okay, bye.