When You Want to Rush the Journey
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There’s a moment that comes for every homeschooling or unschooling parent.
You see your child stuck, slowing down, meandering—or simply moving at a pace you didn’t expect—and a wave rises up inside you:
Urgency.
It whispers: "They should be farther along by now."
It hisses: "They’re behind."
It panics: "You’re not doing enough."
I know that feeling well.
It doesn’t come from impatience.
It comes from fear.
From love.
From the deep, aching desire to protect your child from a world that measures worth by productivity and pace.
But if we listen closely, urgency doesn’t just tell us about our children's journey.
It tells us about our own wounds.
The wound of being rushed through our own childhoods.
The wound of being told that wandering, pausing, or daydreaming was "lazy."
The wound of believing that our value was tied to how fast we could produce, achieve, and perform.
Urgency isn’t just an obstacle in homeschooling.
It’s a portal.
A mirror.
An invitation.
When urgency shows up in my parenting now, I don't see it as a sign that my child is off course.
I see it as a reminder to check in with myself:
Where am I still believing that worth = speed?
Where am I still carrying someone else’s timelines in my body?
I used to think healing these patterns would be a one-time thing.
A switch flipped, a belief released, and done.
But it's not.
It’s a process.
It’s every time I watch my child move slowly through a skill and choose not to intervene.
It’s every time I resist the urge to assign a deadline to something that is still unfolding.
It’s every time I see their brilliance developing beneath the surface—and trust it enough to leave it alone.
I remember one season clearly when urgency almost stole the joy from our Unschooling journey.
My oldest son had developed an intense passion for Ancient Egypt.
He spent hours drawing hieroglyphics, watching documentaries, looking through every book on Egyptian gods he could find at the library.
It was deep, self-led, and alive.
And yet…
I found myself worrying: But what about math? But what about writing? But what about science?
I almost interrupted the magic.
I almost layered my own fear onto his joy.
Thankfully, something in me paused.
I realized that what he was learning—the history, the art, the culture—was far richer than any worksheet could ever offer.
His curiosity was building muscles that standardized schooling would never recognize.
And all I had to do was protect the soil he was growing in, not dig it up to check the roots.
If you’re feeling that pull to rush right now, here’s what I want you to remember:
🌿 Real learning isn’t fast or slow.
It’s alive.
It pulses and stretches and contracts like breath.
🌿 Healing urgency is not about ignoring structure.
It’s about offering structure that honors life’s natural rhythms instead of forcing them.
🌿 Trust doesn’t mean never feeling fear.
It means feeling the fear and choosing trust anyway.
Your child is not “behind.”
You are not “failing.”
You are simply walking a path that doesn’t measure success by how fast you can sprint.
It measures it by how deeply you can root.
At Bridge Academy, we hold this truth at the heart of everything we do.
We offer a container—a living structure—that holds space for growth without strangling it.
We trust the slow work, the unseen work, the sacred timing of each learner’s unfolding.
If you’re ready to create a learning journey built not on urgency, but on sovereignty, we are ready to walk with you.
Enrollment for the 2025–2026 school year is open now.
Your child is right on time.
And so are you.
🫶🏽 Leah
