The most important thing that you can teach your preschooler is obedience. This is often true for kindergartener too, and maybe for some students that are even older. Before starting on a phonics program or a writing program, teach obedience. Consider the mastery of obedience a prerequisite to all other school subjects. If you do this, your homeschool journey will be so much easier.  If you don’t and you spend your days in a power struggle, not much learning will take place. Your child will end up hating homeschool and so will you. So teach your child obedience before anything else.

Teach your child to be obedient as a result of his/her love for you. If you do not have a good relationship with your child, that will be where you will need to start. Some children obey out of fear and some obey from love. Love is a much better incentive. Children will not learn to love you if you do not love them first. So teach obedience with love. The Lord will bless your efforts.

“In His wisdom the Lord has decreed that the family shall be the greatest of all educational agencies. It is in the home that the education of the child is to begin. Here is his first school. Here, with his parents as instructors, he is to learn the lessons that are to guide him throughout life—lessons of respect, obedience, reverence, self-control. The educational influences of the home are a decided power for good or for evil. They are in many respects silent and gradual, but if exerted on the right side, they become a far-reaching power for truth and righteousness. If the child is not instructed aright here, Satan will educate him through agencies of his choosing. How important, then, is the school in the home!”Adventist Home, 182

Not only will your homeschool venture be so much happier if you teach obedience first, you will prepare your child both for this life and the life to come.