uring my growing up years, our family vacationed in northern Indiana at the state’s largest natural lake, Lake Wawasee. My parents had been going for decades. Around the end of July, we would load up our old ski boat with bikes, clothes, and junk food for two weeks of vacation bliss. And every four years, the fun would be heightened because of the summer games.

Every evening, we’d sit around a black and white television and hope the aluminum-covered antenna on top would pick up a decent signal. Boy, that was fun. Every Summer Olympics since, those memories come rushing into my noggin like a line of sprinters after the starter’s gun is fired.

Like every American, I have my unforgettable Olympic moments tucked away in my brain with names of athletes like Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, Usain Bolt, and America’s sweetheart, Mary Lou Retton. But the Olympic moment I’ll never forget involved a gymnast named Kerri Strug and her coach Bela Karolyi.

The year was 1996, and my wife Debbie and I were watching the Olympics on a hot summer night at home. The much-anticipated event that night was the Women’s All-Around Gymnastics event.

Eventually, it came down to just two teams and one event, the vault. If Team USA won the vault, we won the gold, if not… I think we got the bronze (don’t ask me how that worked).

One of the last American competitors was Kerri Strug. Wearing the team uniform and her Dorothy Hamill hairdo, she ran down the runway, hit the vault, went high into the air, and came down in a crumple of pain. She had injured her leg, and we had lost, or so we thought.

Deaf to the crowd, Kerri stood at the start of the runway and stared at the vault. Who knew what was going through her mind… but then what happened next is the memory that has stuck with me thirty years later.

The camera pans to her coach Bela Karolyi with his thick mustache and thicker Romanian accent. His arms were folded and he was laser-focused on Kerri. He clapped his hands once and said, “You CAN do it, Kerri. You can do it!”

That little girl started down the runway, hit the vault, did her twists, stuck the landing (obviously in pain), and the rest is history. We won the gold. I think she was able to do that, not because she was an amazing athlete—even though she was—but because she had someone on the sideline telling her, “You can do it!”

You don’t have to tell her HOW to homeschool. “Feeling overwhelmed? What you need is a chore chart and some stickers.” That won’t go so well.

Bela didn’t shout instructions like, “This is going to hurt Kerri. But stay focused because as the pain builds as you’re running down the runway, it’s REALLY going to hurt when you land!”

He didn’t say any of that. He didn’t need to. He just told her, “You can do it!!”

You can do that too in many ways. It might be praying at dinner time, “God, thank you for this food and for giving my kids a great teacher. Amen.” It might be writing a quick note on a post-it that says, “Thanks for sacrificing every day to teach our kids. I love you, Me” and then hiding it in her lesson plan for her to find later.

The truth is, Husband, you’re a homeschooling coach. You can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and be unengaged. Your wife needs you to ask questions, be interested, and clap loudly and proclaim for all to hear, ‘You can do it, Honey, You CAN DO IT!!”

odd Wilson, author of Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe and Help! I’m Married to a Homeschooling Mom, is a dad, writer, conference speaker, and former pastor. Todd’s humor and gut-honest realness have made him a favorite speaker at homeschool conventions across the country and a guest on Focus on the Family. Todd and his wife Debbie homeschool their eight children in northern Indiana and travel around America in the Familyman Mobile. You can visit Familyman Ministries at: www.familymanweb.com.