When the children in our church turn eight years old they can choose to be baptized. The age of eight is what we consider the age of accountability. This is congruent with what I learned in Psych 101 and my human development classes -- that it's at the age of eight when humans from every culture studied understand the difference between "right" and "wrong." Being baptized is making the commitment to lead a life wherein you try to make right choices, and understand that there will be blessings if you do. Right after baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost is conferred and that gift will help you make right choices.
While it is certainly not a requirement to do so, before The Boy was baptized two years ago he read the entire Book of Mormon out loud (out loud so that The Dad or I could follow along). The Girl had decided that she would also like to finish The Book of Mormon before she was baptized.
You would think that during a homeschool year reaching a goal like this would actually be easier... All that "extra" time during the day, no "homework," etc... But something that we've discovered this year is this truism: It's hard to get things done that require a long term commitment, if there isn't a consistent schedule.
When The Boy was working on it the days were like this: get home, do homework, take a shower, practice piano, have dinner, read... Our days have not looked like that at all this year... And certainly didn't look like that at all this past month while we were traveling.
The Girl's baptism is this Saturday. Last week when we got home from our trip I looked at the chart that we had made months ago with the little boxes with every date and coordinating page numbers to be read on that date. I realized just how woefully behind she was.
"Your choice, kid. You can try to bust through, but that's going to mean hours of reading every day."
"I want to do it."
So, while homeschooling contributed to the dire situation (or... at least the way we homeschooled), now it's been helping... For the past few days my eight-year old has sat and read scriptures out loud for hours every day. It has not always been easy, but she has not wavered from her decision.
She has two days, and about 90 pages left.
I will truly celebrate when she finishes, because if there's one thing that we want our kids to learn in this life it's something a bishop of ours once said: Life is hard, but you can do hard things. (Of course, I hope that they also learn that by proper planning we can make our lives less-hard... but different experiences yield different learning opportunities, and we're just going to work with what we have now.)
What she is doing is a very hard thing. Especially since she has still been expected to keep up with chores and math, etc. AND now family members have started to arrive for the big day -- grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. That's made it hard to stay focused, and she doesn't want to miss a single activity/outing.
I don't think it would have been a "wrong" choice to realize that it just wasn't going to work out. For example, it wouldn't have been "wrong" to reevaluate and commit to finish by the end of the summer. That said, I think it's impressive that she decided that she had set a goal, and even though her goal became significantly harder because of a lack of proper planning and diligence, she is still willing to work very hard to reach the goal. Being willing to work hard for something -- even when it's a drag, and even when it's something intangible (when she finishes the only reward will be a good feeling of accomplishment) -- is certainly a "right" choice.
