Divine Calling

I was reading an article from ldshomeschooling.org titled 'Are We Having Fun Yet?' The author talks about happiness. She quotes Joseph Smith as saying "happiness is the object and design of our existence." As I continued reading the article she stated this quote by President Benson. "Mothers, teach your children the gospel in the home . . . this is the most effective teaching that your chldren will ever receive. This is the Lord's way of teaching. The Church cannot teach like you can. The school cannot. The day-care center cannot. But you can, and the Lord will sustain. Your children will remember your teachings forever. . . Mothers, this kind of heavenly, motherly teaching takes time--lots of time. It cannot be done effectively part-time. It must be done all the time in order to save and exalt your children. This is your divine calling." (President Ezra Taft Benson, Fireside for Parents, Feb 22, 1987). I have been trying to decide this last couple of weeks if I want to include gospel studies in with homeschooling. I still need to pray about it, but I really like this quote. It's true that the church, schools, daycare, or anyone else cannot teach our children as well as we can. While they all care about our children one way or another (esp the church) no one does as much as us. No one on earth loves our children as much as we do. I think that is what makes the difference. We teach our children with absolute pure love. I know our Bishop's and other church leaders have a special love for us and our children, but we spend the most time with our children. We have a bond with our children that no one else has. I do feel that by having my children in school I am lucky if I get to even teach them part time. I truly believe that teaching them is not based on the time we have with them but the time they have in their entire day. Mornings were always rushed as was evenings with dinner, homework, and bed time. There just wasn't any extra time to sit down calmly and teach my children. The only time we had for that was Sunday. Sure, I definitely enjoyed having less responsibility, but I started feeling like I was missing out on something. Now I know what that was. My daughter. Just in a few weeks from being at school I was already losing out on knowing who she was. The teacher probably knew her better than I did at that point. This is not why I brought her home (I don't want to put her on ADHD medicine just so she can survive at school), but I realized this after the fact. I had also lost a lot of authority over her as her teacher 'knew best'. She would say to me "that's not what my teacher said" as we were doing homework. I know she doesn't get the full instructions due to her attention and comprehension issues, but I was getting tired of having to correct her. She just didn't believe me and I had to make her do it anyways. I bet this is why teenagers use the famous line "you don't even know me". Of course the parents don't. How can they when they only see them 5 hours a day and that's if they're not hanging out with their friends after school. This is also why we have the generational gap. Because the parents have no clue what's going on in their children's lives. I don't want to be that type of parent.