I got a text from a dear friend recently. Here’s what she said:

I cannot tell you the shame I feel when people tell me in front of my kids, ‘I could never stay home and homeschool. I need a chance to miss them by sending them away for a little while.’ Shot through the heart. It’s fine if they say it to me but my daughter was very confused and it left me no room to respond. It just felt hurtful. I have had a rough of at it lately and it just seemed to be hard to hear more than usual. 

I told her I was so sorry, that some moms feel the need to affirm their own decisions with total disregard for the other person’s feelings when they encounter a family who is doing school differently.

I could tell you my own stories and I bet you could tell yours too. We all encounter insensitivity. And we’ve all been insensitive. I write to remind myself just as I write to remind you.

Some of us are more self-aware than others. Too much self-awareness has its own pitfalls. {Ask me how I know.} But not enough can do all sorts of damage. While much of this has to do with basic personality and the way we’re wired, there’s a mindfulness we can all procure as we talk with others — whether it’s small-talk with the homeschool mom who has all of her children in the pediatrician’s office {good times} or the friend at church who just switched to public school.

Here are three simple ways to link arms across educational lines and foster richer community.

1. Ask a question for the sole purpose of listening, not as an inroad to share what you have to say.

If you ask a mom what made her decide to homeschool, take yourself out of the equation. This is a question about her, not you. This is a question that helps you get to know her and her family. Listen as you would want to be listened to. And if she asks you a similar question, by all means respond, but not with reactionary language, competition, or soapbox-speak. Conversation is so much more freeing when you leave behind personal agenda.

2. Purposely make conversation about school with those who do it differently than you do.

My church has a mix of families who homeschool, public school, and private school. I personally think this diversity is awesome and holds the potential to make us better together. We tend to think that community-building is so much harder than it really is, like there’s a formula we need to create or a reconciliation conference to host.

I think it begins with the simplest of questions: How’s your school year going? 

Again, we ask this with sincerity and a mindfulness of community. Back when I homeschooled, I often had other homeschool moms ask me this question but I rarely had a public school mom ask me the same question. Don’t be too hard on them. I rarely asked a public or private-school mom how her year was going either. We tend to feel easy and affirmed around those who are like us but awkward and defensive around those who aren’t. Now that seems silly but at the time, homeschooling was so much more of my identity than I realized.

You guys, every mom out there has stuff to share about school — good, bad, and ugly. You don’t know how loved she feels when you simply ask. Let her share and as she does, listen with the compassion and interest you’d want extended.

3. Learn from your differences. 

There is so much I learned when we homeschooled that overlaps with public school. From study skills to learning styles, much is transferrable. And there are essentials I’ve learned through public schooling that would have helped me when I homeschooled. From the importance of natural consequences to personal ownership of one’s work, holding my kids more accountable could have helped some of our everyday struggles. When we homeschooled, I so appreciated the web-sites and tips from my aunt who is a veteran public-school teacher, especially as I worked with my struggling reader.

We are so much better together. I believe this with all my heart.

We are rich with our uniqueness, our fields of knowledge, our myriad life hacks, and the creative ways we approach parenting. When we leave insecurity and competition at the door, we realize how life-giving it is to learn from one another. Parenting is hard. Educating our children can get complicated. We need each other on this journey. Let’s see our diversity as treasure to bask in, not tribes to belong to.

Friends, this isn’t competition. It’s community.

Shift the way you think about others. Leave your agenda behind. Communicate in a way that’s compassionate. Be open to learning from those you’d least expect.

And try out a simple question that can turn the tide altogether: So how’s your school year going?

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What’s your favorite community-building question?

For all the posts in this 31-day series, go here.

For other posts I’ve written on this topic, go here.

I’m linking up with The Nester and her tribe of 31 Dayers.

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