We started when my eldest was 12. My dh was in Iraq, not home, so I simply read the book, _A Thomas Jefferson Education_, myself, and then read it aloud to my children and discussed it with them. It was a paradigm shift for all of us. It made them much more excited about educating themselves. When my dh returned, I had already made a lot of changes in how we were doing homeschool, but he still had to become convinced of it himself.

The best thing we did was institute weekly scheduling and planning meetings for dh, myself, and God. The next best thing was begin interviewing one child each week, listening, letting the child know we love him, and letting him know what our mental pictures of his future are. Our son could discuss with us his interests and what he feels he needs to work on. We discovered that when he chooses what to work on, it gets done without nearly as much pushing from us. We still check on his progress regularly, but he knows we're trying to help him, not trying to force him into our molds (my dh and I still have somewhat different mental pictures of how school should work; it's a prayerful compromise).

Working together to determine what's most important to do now, makes the future much less frightening. My dh panics sometimes about our children's financial future, because he sees his own work challenges, and because he sees our children apparently wasting time on things that won't immediately pay off... It's a major leap of faith to let children govern their own educations, but it leads to much better adults.