Of Peers and Mentors

A peer group is a wonderful thing. Our peers can support us, especially when we are living a lifestyle that is, in some important way, counter-cultural. Perhaps we are Christians, perhaps we have decided  to educate our own children or perhaps we have decided that it is right for our families to raise our children ourselves and not to send them off to long hours in nurseries whilst we work outside the home.

Whatever it is that we are doing differently to the surrounding culture, we are likely to need peer support. Our peers will encourage us, challenge us and help us to feel more 'normal'.

My home educating peers, for example, were the ones with whom I was able to share my frustrations and small triumphs on a weekly basis, as we met up whilst our children were engaged in sports activities together. We met for years as our children grew up together. Occasionally, we still meet up!

Some of my home educating peer group, all now successfully completed that job! Between us, we have children at university or in paid or volunteer employment, enriching their communities. Three of us are also now grandmothers.

We knew that, in many ways, we were pioneers. We knew few mothers from the previous generation of home educators. Firstly, this is because there were actually fewer of them. (Home education has grown enormously since the mid 90s when we began.)

However, also, it is fair to say that the older, experienced generation of mothers had dropped out of the home education scene, moving on to other things, such as caring for elderly parents, or grandchildren, or the need to earn an income, after so many years of financial sacrifice.

Whatever the reason, they tended not to be available to my peer group as mentors.

So, when we were faced with difficulties, like when some of our children were diagnosed with disabilities or when we were concerned about how to help our teenagers sit examinations, in some ways, we had to make the new paths we needed ourselves, metaphorically clearing a route through the jungle, hacking away with our machetes, calling out encouragement to each other along the way.

What we wouldn't have given for older mentors, further along the path, having cleared part of the route for us!

I was very mindful of this lack of mentor mothers during our home education journey. So, when my children had completed their home education and were at college, I deliberately remained involved in the HE community, willing to listen, to help and advise younger mothers, if they wanted me to.

Few did. In fact, it was almost as if mothers like myself were not wanted at all. In certain places, my presence was considered suspicious. I was, apparently, no longer a home educator and, so, no longer welcome. The irony being that some of these very groups, which people now consider a vital lifeline of peer support, I actually set up myself, as a pioneer.

'The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
that one may turn away from the snares of death.' Proverbs 13:14 (ESV)

I am noticing that most women don't seem to want mentor mothers around. Let's put that another way: when women get to a particular stage in life, they are not as welcome as they once were.

Perhaps it's our fault. Perhaps the way that we try to share our experience and wisdom is too overbearing or clumsy. Perhaps, though, experience and the wisdom acquired by painful pioneering is not recognised as valuable. Perhaps it's simply that older women themselves are just not valued.

If God blesses you, Dear Daughter, with a long life, you will one day stand where I stand now. How do you wish to be seen, as an older woman? How do you view the older women around you?

In the home education community, I would ask younger women, even if you do not feel the need for a mentor mother, do not despise the women who walked that path you are walking down.

Some of us sacrificed a great deal to clear it for you.

Mimi is a wife to Jamie, mother to two grown up children, a mother-in-law and a grandmother to a darling little grand-daughter. She home-educated her children and now teaches exam subjects to groups of home-educated children. She's a Worship Leader in her church and has a passion for helping women raise children to adulthood with a strong faith in the Lord Jesus.