We have been blessed to learn so much from our son Drew who spent one month with a Christian entrepreneur when he was just 14. That month changed his life and ours.

Leo Tolstoy said,

"In Germany, nine-tenths of the school population take away from school
a mechanical knowledge of reading and writing,
and such a strong loathing for the paths of science traversed by them
that they never again take a book into their hands."

I fear that is true in America as well and I don't want that for my children. So we do whatever we can to make this education thing as real as possible.

A Mentor

Our friend Chris Verhaegh taught my son Drew to see things from a different perspective.

Through the years, I have seen Chris' teaching impact Drew's life. He is no longer content to just pass through life as a spectator, he wants to be in charge of his life as an active participant.

Instead of following the traditional path that most of us adults have taken that has led to the security of a job, he desires to be free to pursue the business ventures of his choice, one at a time.

You could call him a "Kiyosaki Kid."

The Seeds Start to Sprout

As Drew started changing, I realized that I was the one who was going to have to get out of the educational box. Being college trained in education, plus being raised by parents who taught in and designed public schools, I had a lot of unlearning to do.

So I started listening to my teenage son instead of telling him. I was surprised at how much I learned. I soon learned to give him plenty of time and space to work on his own.

Our Early Attempt at Home Business

In our early years of homeschooling, we represented Lifetime Books and Gifts, a provider of great living resources for homeschoolers, for five years in the Southeast to teach our children responsibility and the principles of business. Their inch thick ALWAYS Incomplete Resource Guide is the most comprehensive offering of great books for homeschoolers in existance.

We constantly redesigned and rebuilt our shelves and Drew did all the carpentry with instruction from his dad who learned carpentry from a builder who had dropped out of school in the eighth grade. Drew built one set of large wooden shelves our display and one for our competitors, The Elijah Company.

As we attended home school conventions, we learned so much from mothers who were experimenting with real books. Plus, since we warehoused a one-ton inventory of the newest and best titles for homeschoolers, I began to read our borrowed library.

I soon learned that the key to success in homeschooling is developing a lifestyle of learning in which the child grows to take responsibility for his or her own education and continues with it forever. We wanted to add projects to our lives but didn't have the time or space to fit them into our already full schedule.

So after reading the book Margin, we decided to get control of our fast-paced lives which were racing out of control in a variety of directions and move to the country.

A New Start

It took two years for us to find a place that had everything on our Need List. We sold our 1800 square foot house on two acres in town and spent just a little more for a 3600 square foot log house in the middle of 44 acres in the middle of nowhere.

Life immediately changed and we had to learn to be more responsible since town is 30 minutes away. We learned that everything had to have a purpose and the animals had to pay their way. Jobs required more responsibility because if an animal didn't get fed, it died.

We had more time for our projects because much of the busyness of "going" was eliminated. I stayed home more and focused on my children instead of my interests and ministries. I discovered I had some pretty neat kids who were just waiting for attention.

Drew became the farm manager. Read more about his story here.

He is just getting started in life and doesn't have many great success stories to share...yet. But I have learned so much about what parents can do with an industrious young person from the entrepreneurs I have met and from him, that I want to encourage others to listen to their hearts.

This original web site, which was built by our son Will,14, is our humble attempt to share with you what we have seen. We have glimpsed success and are striving to train our children to think for themselves.  It has recently been re-made by his friend Joshua Mitchell

We are not "homeschool heroes" by any means and don't want to give you the impression that we've arrived. We simply want to invite you to join us in our journey as we discover daily about the realities of a Lifestyle of Learning.

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Looking for Like-minded Peers?

Also, we'd love to meet other young entrepreneurs and share your stories with our readers so if you have a story to share, feel free to join us on our discussion group, Entrepreneurs at Home.