In the post Our Hot House, I spoke about the wonderful, nurturing, safe and supportive church where our family started and mentioned that I hoped this blog would spread some of that support to others.
A blog is certainly a poor substitute for face to face, person to person. So here is something that helped our family find like minded families after our move and has provided continued support for us and like-minded friends for our children. We began a mom’s group.
My husband is really the one behind the idea. I had been involved in just such a group before our move and Mark suggested that we attempt to begin one here. After the first several months of low attendance, I was ready to give up, but Mark encouraged me to persevere and today we have a large group of wonderful families. These families are some of our closest friends and have been a huge source of help and encouragement to us.
This is the format that has worked for us. We meet in a home one evening a month without children. Our meeting begins at 7:30 pm in order to give the mommies time to feed their families and get their house and children settled down for an evening with dad. We have a general topic each month to begin the conversation, but the discussion is very laid back with the ladies just sharing and asking questions as they feel led. Some of our topics have been; how to be a help and encouragement to your husband, best family traditions/activities, child training, cooking and menu planning, scheduling, homeschooling curriculum, hospitality, etc.
How did we find these families? Anytime we met someone whom we thought might be interested, we invited them. Those who needed the encouragement or enjoyed the fellowship came and have continued to come. Our group is quite diverse, we have Baptists, Presbyterians, Charismatics, Anglicans, and Church of Christ, some home school, some use co-ops or Christian schools and some have children in public schools, but we all love the Lord and want to obey Him in our calling as wives and mothers and I am amazed at the closeness of our fellowship. This is one of God’s good and bounteous blessings to us as we walk this sometimes lonely road.
Ultimately, God will bring the families that He wants. Our group has been a tremendous source of encouragement to me and I hope to others.
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This sounds like a really good idea. Do yall have refreshments? How do you organize that? How long do the meetings usually last? Where are the family members of the hostess’s home? Thanks!
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For refreshments I usually just have one of my daughters fix some cake, brownies or cookies. They enjoy the opportunity to make something sweet. I have water available and then hot tea and coffee. Sometimes another mom will offer to bring something and that works well also.
We usually have a number of moms leave around 9:30 or 10:00 and others stay later to visit more. We have been known to stay up until after midnight.
My family is at home while we have the meeting. Have I mentioned that God has blessed us with a wonderful house that is well suited to hospitality? We are able to meet in the living room and be out of the way of my husband and children. Also, most of our children go to bed at 7pm, so they are all sleeping and the 2 oldest are reading quietly.
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WOW!!! What a great idea!!!!! I am going to pray about starting one of these in my home!!!
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I started a moms group in my town too.
It’s a playdate now, but we started meeting when our kids were born (all in 2007) and we read The Power of a Praying Parent together, prayed together, etc. etc. Now we’ve been meeting for almost 2 years and there are only 4 of us left (the rest have moved on, either in this season of life or geographically) and our children, and now since the kids are older, it is a playdate for them and fellowship for us. We have a short prayer time (too many almost-2-year-olds in one house gets a little crazy!) and we eat lunch together and we are the best of friends! We lift each other up and encourage each other, and I could not ask for a better group of women to meet with every month!
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I tried that in my town for 2 years and kind of bombed out. 6 moms joined and then there were cliques and snobbery. 2 of those were teachers and they looked like I was trying to invalidate or offend them every time I mentioned homeschool, even though I never said anything negative about public school or teachers and in fact all I said was just to answer, when asked which preschool we’d be enrolling my daughter in, that I would be homeschooling her.
There was one other homeschooling mom and she was the rudest, snobbiest, meanest person to me in the group. I did come out of it with one true friend but now that the group has split up and her kids are in public school I barely ever see her. So I tried to join the local homeschool group and the woman in charge takes weeks to get back to me as I’m trying to ask her questions about the group. Also that mean mom probably attends this homeschool group so to be honest I’m not really looking forward to it. I looked at a Christian group in the next town over after that. They have co-op classes and field trips and their statement of faith is wonderful! I was so excited so I sent a message requesting more info and introducing myself and the woman who replied was cold and bordering on rude. She basically insinuated that I am doing my almost-3-year-old HARM by starting to teach her “school” things now and that I should wait until she’s 6, 7, or 8 to start schooling like she does. She told me to let my daughter be a child. (This offended me because I would never force schooling on a toddler! My daughter literally begs me to learn. She interrupts my loading the dishwasher or cooking supper to ask what letter is that or help her write letters at the table. She asks me what sound N makes and I tell her N says nnnn and she’ll be happily chanting, “N say nnnnn!” all week.) Also I had asked clarification on one of their rules which had made it sound like parents were required to attend EVERY meeting which I would not be able to do living in a different city on the nights my husband works late. She took that to mean I didn’t want to actually attend ANY meetings and made a snarky comment back to me about it as her reply. I wrote back to her in a very kind and tactful way, apologizing for miscommunicating my questions and explaining the situation with my husband. She had also given me a long list of books at her city library that I was supposed to read to convince me of the error of my ways in allowing my 3 year old to learn reading and writing skills, so in my tactful reply I said that I live in a different city an hour away but I have been listening to a homeschool seminar by Gregg Harris which has been tremendously helpful. I thought surely she’s heard of Gregg Harris and will back off now that she knows I am researching it and not just skipping my way along uneducated about anything relating to homeschool. She replied again with another snarky comment about how she is ’sure (my town) has it’s own library and there’s this little thing called inter-library-loan.’ I was very offended and tried not to cry and have not written back to her. I seemed to be out of options and I am hurt and discouraged and just don’t know what to do!
Then I was inspired to make a message board for Christian homeschoolers. I figured if my area homeschoolers are so mean-spirited and snobbish then fellowship with them will either make me like them or make me feel bad. Neither of which I want. So I began a message board for conservative homeschooling Christians here: http://godshomeschool.aceboard.com/
So far only one person has joined and I’ve had it up almost a month. Having alot of discouragement right now but trying to hold out hope and keep praying. God bless you for this blog and the encouragement I’m getting reading it! It’s about all I’ve got right now.
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