Show notes
Welcome to the first ever Teach Them Diligently Podcast. This week, David and Leslie Nunnery, founders of Teach Them Diligently, give you some insight into their decision to homeschool. They explain why they started and what they have seen God do all along the way.
We hope that through it, you'll get a fresh view of how God can use you as parents, as you invest in your children. We're so glad you're here. So let's jump in.
Additional Resources:
Download a FREE copy of Leslie Ebook, Rethink Education, where she seeks to turn the scary questions about homeschooling into exciting opportunities.
Attend a Teach Them Diligently Event to find a refined vision of your own mission as a homeschooling family. You will also get equipped and encouraged to pursue that mission with more passion and confidence. It could make all the difference in the world in your resolve to stay the course.
Teach Them Diligently 365 is the world's largest, perpetually-running online homeschool convention, and it brings all the amazing workshops and a touch of the fellowship and camaraderie of Teach Them Diligently events straight to your home all year long. The more well-equipped you are (and feel!) each and every day, the easier it will be to stay on mission and have more good days than frustrating and discouraging ones.
Transcription of "Are you still homeschooling. What an unusual question."
Leslie: [theme music playing] Hey there, and welcome to the Teach Them Diligently podcast where we discuss marriage, parenting, discipleship, homeschooling, and everything else that comes into play when you're following God's plan for your family. We are David and Leslie Nunnery, and today we're going to be talking about an unusual question I was asked recently.
We hope that through it, you'll get a fresh view of how God can use you as parents, as you invest in your children. We're so glad you're here. So let's jump in.
Leslie: [theme music ends] So David, I was asked before an interview not too long ago, a most unusual question, and it got me thinking. So let me throw out the question for you and then see how you are impacted by it. I was asked before I did an interview the other day, "are you still homeschooling?" And I thought, what a very unusual question to ask us. when we have kids still in the home, we are doing all of this stuff. So, um, I thought we'd talk about that today because are we, are we still homeschooling David?
David: Yeah, absolutely we are.
Leslie: How many?
David: Well, we have one in college. He still lives at home.
Leslie: Uh, he still sleeps at home [laughter]. Let's clarify.
David: He still sleeps at home, that's true. Three.
Leslie: We have three.
David: We have three, and we are homeschooling.
Leslie: Why? Why are we still homeschooling when, um, there's so much stuff to do. There's so many opportunities. There's so much going on. Why are we still doing this?
David: Our belief around homeschooling is anchored in the fact that we believe is the best way to disciple our kids. And it's much deeper than the education part of this. It's much deeper than the place. Meaning, do they go to co-op? Do they go to dual credit or you know, at a college? Are they at home all day long?
We're not trying to insulate them. We're not trying to protect them from the evil school system. It is about discipleship and because it is about discipleship and because we believe that it's the best way to disciple our kids is to be around them all the time. We have stuck with it and we've had opportunity to move on.
Matter of fact, you know, uh, uh, I don't know how many people know this story, but we actually took our kids out of a really good private school. We actually moved down here from Lexington, Kentucky, and when we moved down here to Greenville, South Carolina, we were excited because we were finally going to be able to put our kids in the private school that we wanted.
And I want to say that when we moved here, Camden was in first grade and we pulled him out of that school in third grade, not because we were angry at the school. He wasn't making bad grades. He had a lot of friends at the school. But we just felt compelled and called to homeschool our kids. And what led to that is I, we actually heard a pastor say right before that happened that you reproduce who you are, but you teach what you know.
In me that set off a series of thought processes that led to: if I reproduce who I am, then I should want to have my kids around me as much as possible, and I need to work on myself. That kind of led into it, and at the same time the Lord was working on you regarding homeschooling, and we went from absolutely no way, never going to homeschool.
I remember helping out in a youth group and thinking, man, we are never going to homeschool. And because the youth group was a third, a third, a third public school, private school, homeschool. And it's not that the homeschool kids were bad kids or anything. I just remember thinking, "we're never going to homeschool".
So that's where we started. And then it was slowly but surely over several years. We came around to this idea that, man, we need to be homeschooling because this is the best way to disciple our kids and to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
Leslie: Well don't you think that it's interesting cause I do: you alluded to the fact that we started homeschooling really because of discipleship.
There was no, there were no academic considerations because our kids were in good shape academically. They were in a great school, [00:05:00] and actually I was involved in this school. I was a room mom. It was, you know, it was everything I always thought that it would be, but we started exclusively for a discipleship purpose and amazingly, absolutely, stunningly, at the end of our first year of homeschooling, when we knew nothing about anything, had stubbed our toe on so many things. And you know, I've, I've spoken on that and we'll probably discuss that later. But at the end of our first year of homeschooling, God called us to start Teach Them Diligently, and it makes no sense.
We didn't know anything. We didn't know any of the players, but what did we know? What was the overriding purpose for why we stepped out and did this thing?
David: Well, our feeling when we started Teach Them Diligently was that if parents could understand what their calling is, that they are called to disciple their kids, that it's actually the great [00:06:00] commission that is going on when you're parenting and your home is your Jerusalem.
When you think about it in those terms, our feeling was that, man, this is the message that we really wanted to propagate. That we wanted to talk to people about that we wanted them to have because our sense was that people were hung up on homeschooling as a academic exercise, and it was almost, in some cases, many cases, it was like homeschooling was becoming an idol. People were using phrasing like, "I converted so-and-so to be a homeschooler." And I'm not saying that just because you use this phrase that it's some somehow evil.
Leslie: You just offended half the people listening [laughter].
David: I know. And I don't mean to, but my point is, is that it was almost like it was the gospel.
Leslie: Right.
David: And you know, homeschooling is a great way to teach your kids. It's a great academic exercise. Many people come to it because of a bully or a bad teacher or whatever reason.
Leslie: Yes, statistics show that homeschooling is an incredible means of education.
David: And all of that is true. And, and I don't mean to diminish that. But what happens when the bully moves away, a bad teacher moves away? What, what happens? And so many families out there, they decide to homeschool and they get into it and they realize this not the academic side that is the biggest challenge. It's the discipline and the balance of relationships, because now you're not just mom, you're mom and teacher and wife, and that's difficult to balance all that.
Leslie: Yeah. We need to really unpack that a little bit later.
David: Absolutely. We can. We can, but, um. People don't realize all the difficulties that go into it and just being in the home all day long with your kids and you have, you know, you have all these things that are happening, and if you're not rooted in the right place, it's real easy to give up.
And there are a lot of homeschoolers, homeschool kids that turn into prodigals. There's a lot of private school kids that turn into prodigals. There's a lot of public school kids that turn into prodigals. So just because you're, you had the right education choice doesn't mean that your kids are going to turn out perfect.
There's a lot more that goes into it. And what I believe and what you believe is that kids need their parents and they need their parents to engage in the day to day lives. That that they are living, and they need their parents to speak into them, and God delights in using His people and He is going to use you to reach them.
Leslie: Let that simmer just a second. How amazing is it? How amazing is it that God has given us the opportunity to reach the people that we love the most, that we have the biggest influence in the world over them if we will take hold of it. Now, we can choose to not, we can choose to allow someone else to have that influence, but it's ours for the taking and I will never get over that.
I will never get over that we as parents have the opportunity to reshape or to shape what our children's futures look like, what their belief system is, what their foundation is. What a privilege that is!
David: Absolutely. And I think that even if you do make that choice to send your kids off to school. God is still going to use you to reach them.
He is still communicating through you and you're actually communicating through to your kids as well. So if you don't handle that choice right,...
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
