Let’s chat about the homeschool lifestyle and making homeschool life easier. We even talk about the elephant in the room – things we’re not supposed to talk about as homeschool moms! But in this episode, we’re talking about them.
Have you ever wondered: “Am I a normal homeschool mom if I actually hate homeschooling sometimes?” We have a brutally honest conversation.
We do face unique challenges that other moms do not face. So what are some practical strategies to help your family enjoy living with homeschooling? Listen in on my conversation with Lea Ann Garfias, a veteran homeschool mom and author.
Welcome to the show notes for Episode #102 of the Homeschool with Moxie podcast!
As a former classroom teacher, now homeschooling mom of five, I love to equip and encourage other homeschooling families.
Stick around to learn how to homeschool with moxie. It’s about embracing your journey and finding your groove.
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Everything You Need to Know About Homeschooling
Lea Ann Garfias is a homeschool graduate, veteran homeschool mom of six, and author of three books on homeschooling.
Lea Ann’s newest book is Everything You Need to Know about Homeschooling: A Comprehensive, Easy-to-Use Guide for the Journey from Early Learning through Graduation.
This book is comprehensive! It’s like an encyclopedia of homeschooling. She literally thought of every problem, question, or topic – and covered it completely.
I just wish this book had been around when I was a new homeschooler. It definitely would have helped to be able to flip around and get quick answers to my questions.
You can connect with Lea Ann here: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Enter to Win a Copy of Lea Ann’s Book!
This book is HUGE! It’s a comprehensive guide to homeschooling and will answer literally every question you’ve ever had. It’s almost 600 pages long! You can enter the giveaway below, or find it HERE.
One winner will receive a physical copy of Lea Ann’s new book shipped to you! U.S. mailing addresses only, please, due to shipping costs.
Giveaway ends March 4th at 11:45PM EST. Winner will be notified via email on March 5th.
Be sure to share this giveaway with your friends!
Homeschool Lifestyle Dangers
Lea Ann takes a whole chapter to talk about the Dangers of Homeschooling. These are areas where homeschool moms struggle more than our public school friends. And we also have unique areas in which we can stumble.
Here are a few of the dangers she discusses in her book – What if I…
- face burnout?
- hate homeschooling?
- don’t homeschool right?
- limit my student’s possibilities?
- become lonely?
- worry about other people’s judgment?
We cover quite a few of them on this episode!
Is it really okay if we hate homeschooling sometimes? This is the elephant in the room for homeschool moms, is it not? We go there! Let’s chat.
Making This Homeschool Lifestyle Easier
There are definite strategies and solutions for helping your family thrive in this homeschool lifestyle. Lea Ann covers this topic in her book as well.
Here are some of the topics & strategies she discusses in her book that will help make homeschooling life easier for you:
- selfcare
- routine
- constant interaction with my child
- how to homeschool a child who hates homeschooling
- strategies to stay available to each child
- how to homeschool with babies & toddlers in the house
Finally, we end by discussing why it’s important to identify your homeschool WHY and to constantly come back to it.
Read the Interview with Lea Ann about Making Homeschool Life Easier
Intro & Sponsor
Welcome to the home school with moxie podcast where our goal is to inspire and encourage you with actionable strategies to take you from overwhelmed, too confident in your home school adventure. I’m your host, Abby Banks and this is episode 102.
This episode is brought to you by pretty nerdy press. If you want your educational posters to blend seamlessly into your home decor without sticking out like a sore thumb, then check out all the beautiful goodies that pretty nerdy press has to offer. And don’t forget to use the code for one more at checkout for 10% off your order. You can find beautiful educational art and gifts for people that appreciate good design at pretty nerdy press and you can find them at 41 more dot com forward slash pretty nerdy
Welcome to episode 102. I’m so glad you’re here today. I’m chatting today with Leeanne Garfias who is a second generation home schooler, a veteran homeschool mom and the author of the book. Everything you need to know about homeschooling. This thing is humongous. I was so surprised when I got it in the mail and I was going to check it out before I talked to leann and this thing covers absolutely every little topic you would ever need to know the answer to. Its incredible.
Remember the old days when we would all have encyclopedias on the shelf. For the school library would have encyclopedias and you could find information about anything. Well this book is almost like a standalone encyclopedia for everything you need to know about homeschooling.
I wish this had been around years ago when I started homeschooling because it’s not necessarily something you will maybe read cover to cover, but you will go and find the topics that you need help on at that specific moment. So it’s a really great book and I will put the link in the show notes so you can check it out yourself.
But Leeanne has a lot of experience and to specific chapters in her book caught my attention and so I wanted to chat with her today about the dangers of home schooling and then also how to make home school life easier because it really is our lifestyle. We’re in this 24 7. And so what are the best ways to really take care of ourselves? Um you know, make this life more enjoyable and realize that we’re not failing. We’re doing a good job. So we talk about a whole lot of things along the way.
Leann has some really great insight and I know you’re going to enjoy this conversation. So listen in on our conversation, don’t forget to go to the show notes at 41 more dot com forward slash 102 where you can see links to all of lee ANn’s uh sites in her book and she has a podcast as well. I will link that all and super exciting is that if you enter at the show notes for our giveaway. One of you, one of you lucky people is going to get Leeann’s new book sent to you for free. So there will be one winner. This is of course a limited time thing. And all the details will be in the show notes. Once again, you can enter there as well for this exciting giveaway at 41 more dot com forward slash 102.
Second Generation Homeschooler
Okay enough chatting here is my conversation with Leeanne Garfias. Hey Liane, thanks for joining us today.
spk_0: It’s great to be here. Abby. Thank you.
spk_1: Yeah. So let’s start out by just getting to know you. Maybe you can introduce yourself and your family.
spk_0: Well, I am a homeschool graduate. I was homeschooled back in the late 80s and early 90s, the dark stone age of homeschooling. And my husband is a public school grad. He’s an immigrant from peru. We have six Children, the oldest for our biological from 13 to 22. And then we adopted nine year old twins, a boy and a girl. And we live east of Dallas. That’s awesome. And
spk_1: actually we have that in common as well. We had four biological boys actually. And then we adopted our daughter. So we’re kind of that same homeschooling family who, you know, has a mix of kids and it’s all one big happy, chaotic bunch. Right.
spk_0: Exactly. And what is really unusual as no one can tell which of our Children are adopted. They look are adopted Children look exactly like one, Each of them looks like exactly like one of my bio kids. So when people are like which ones are adopted and we say who do you think? They always pick one of the bios? Oh that’s fun, that’s fun. So
spk_1: I’m kind of curious as a second generation home schooler, I’m sure you can tell like things have really changed since you grew up and were homeschool, what what are the big things you noticed that have changed since, since those dark days?
spk_0: We’re not such weirdos anymore. It was very unusual to know a home schooler, People had never heard of it back when I was a student and and we were in hiding back then. I was home schooled in michigan, which is one of the two worst states you didn’t want to be in michigan or California back in those days because Children were being taken away from their parents for homeschooling. Um so our home school was very secretive. We actually did home school in the basement and not go out during the day and not tell anyone that we were homeschooled. So we didn’t draw any attention to ourselves.
But I think one of the biggest um differences now is how much support there is we all know other homeschool moms or if we’re just starting off and we can’t find any that live near us, we can find them all over facebook, all over instagram and it’s easy to get the resources, there’s so much curriculum now that is written specifically for homeschoolers and back in my day you had um, to use schoolbooks and it was actually really hard to get them sold individually from the publishers. They wanted to sell the schools not to individuals. So having all that, those resources and all the support and friendships is it’s a whole different, it feels like a whole different lifestyle than it did back in my day,
spk_1: which is good news. Like it’s such an easier place to be where you can start home schooling and there is tons of help and support and that’s, that’s huge. Like that’s amazing. So we are thankful for all those parents who blazed the trail back in those days. It wasn’t easy. So that’s really cool. No,
spk_0: it wasn’t and it was because of the hard work of all those families that had to go to court for freedom and from um marching on the capitals. I remember doing that and holding the signs for educational freedom. There is so much that the Trail Blazers did um, way back in the day. I live in texas now and they’re texas back with the leaper case, way back when they, they earned the right to be called private schools and that’s, that’s why texas is one of the best places to homeschool in because the government can’t get involved in your business any more than they can any other school. So yeah, it’s because of those trailblazers that had to sacrifice and go to court and and endure all the harassment that they did that makes it so easy for us right now.
Homeschool Styles
spk_1: sure. So I’m curious what your family’s particular home school style is. Do you gravitate toward one? Are you really eclectic? What do you, what do you do?
spk_0: I would be really eclectic. Now when I first started off, I was such a textbook home schooler. I mean like with the charts on the walls and all the textbooks and reading out loud exactly with the teachers guide said to say and yeah, I was really strict on that and it took me a while to really relax. Thanks to a lot of the support, Like we were going back to that, the support of other homeschool moms who really encouraged me relax. Leanne, your five year old doesn’t need to be copying spelling words over and over and over again. So yes, that really helped. And then I really jumped into classical homeschooling for a while.
spk_1: Now
spk_0: I’m really all different. I’m classical for some subjects. I’m, I’m textbook for a few subjects were unschooling science for little kids. I mean and and a lot of the principles of charlotte mason. I don’t think there’s a home school style that I don’t borrow something from. Yes, we
spk_1: are totally that way. And it’s funny when people ask my kids. So what homeschool curriculum do you use? They don’t know what to say because it’s the same thing. It’s like which one? Like we used to have a little of this and that and it’s like they don’t even know how to answer that. So it’s good. I think you’re right. Like once parents like home school for
spk_0: a while. I think a lot of us
spk_1: do end up really eclectic because we like to pick and choose and our kids are so different. It’s hard to say we’re only going to stay this one style forever. I don’t think hardly anyone does that. I think what do you, have you noticed
spk_0: anything? No, I agree. Well I think a lot of new home schoolers feel the pressure to try to copy off someone else a book that they’ve read or the homeschoolers that are around them and they try to push themselves into that mold. But what I really encourage homeschool moms no matter how long they’ve been home schooling is. I say all the time you have to homeschool the way you teach fast for the way your child learns best and I think so much comes down to your family culture. I don’t parents the same way you do abby and I wouldn’t hopefully we, as moms have started to learn, we can’t tell each other how to parent, we’re all going to be different and it’s the same way homeschooling is just parenting on steroids, you’re going to do it your own way for whatever works with your child and try so hard not to pay attention to the way other people are doing it.
Everything You Need to Know About Homeschooling
spk_1: Yeah, I think you’re right now. Your book, your book. I was like so surprised when it came in the mail, I was expecting this little bug. It’s like it’s like and it’s like live pd a it is humongous but I don’t think there is another book like it out there as far as like covering pretty much every little topic. Usually books are really focused on one type of home schooling or one topic which is great too because you need those those books too. But I really was like whoa this thing. I wish I would have had this years ago. I think it’s great for like just being able to pick it up and go, this is where I’m having trouble today. Let me look at this topic. But one of the interesting chapters I was I was thumbing through, I saw you talked about the dangers of homeschooling and I kind of wanted to ask you some of the about that chapter. What do you mean? What do you mean when you say the dangers of home schooling and then we’ll jump into some of the topics you talked about in there.
spk_0: Well I we hear so much criticism of homeschooling that we as homeschool moms are used to defending where we defend it to our friends and our neighbors and our in laws all the time. Our choices. But we’re I am afraid that we as a community are often so focused on defending ourselves? That we become blind to the weaknesses that we may have as a community and that each of us could have as a family. So I think it’s important that we’re well rounded that were really going at it with our eyes wide open.
I could be really messing up and we want the encouragement. I mean 90% of that book is encouragement. You’re doing the right thing for your child. Here’s a little more information if you need to but you’re doing a great job and that’s where the book is coming from. I don’t want to be prescriptive that you have to homeschool a certain way but rather give you the information that you need. But for this small portion of the book, I wanted to look at what our mistakes I make, what are mistakes other people might be making. How can we guard against some of these problems that can creep into our home schooling and derail the good we’re trying to do.
What if We Hate Homeschooling Some Days?
spk_1: I think one of the topics you talked about was this whole aspect of you might actually as the mom kind of hate homeschooling sometimes and maybe we’re afraid to admit that because we do feel like we have to keep this like happy face. Like everything’s always perfect and it truly it isn’t always perfect and it’s good to be able to admit that sometimes we are going to hate homeschooling like what kind of things were you thinking about as you wrote that section? And the whole burnout aspect of you know what we kind of feel as moms sometimes
spk_0: I don’t know about you Abby but I think especially when you’re a podcaster, you’re an author, you’re or you’re a friend trying to help other people homeschooling. You don’t want to admit. I really hate homeschooling, I really hate it. But if I’m going to be honest, I really hate it a lot of the time I don’t do it because it’s fun every day that’s if that were the case I would have quit
spk_1: like it’s
spk_0: day number two of my first child. But um so I wrote that section because it was true of me and I thought if I put this out there I hate homeschooling then maybe other people will feel comfortable saying, do you know what? I really hate it too but we don’t have to quit just because we’re at a point where we hate it or where it really stinks to be the homeschool mom right then we don’t have to quit. We can keep going. And the same thing with burnout. I wrote a lot on burnout because when I was asking my facebook friends and my facebook friends helped me, right, so much of this book. But when I asked them, what are the problems with homeschooling. I mean everyone, burnout burnout burnout burnout, that’s what they were saying they were having problems with and I was having problems with it at the same time.
So it was easy to recognize that that is such a big issue that we all need to face and that we need to expect, we need to go into this expecting I’m going to really hate it sometimes and I’m going to get tired of it, we’re the same. I keep going back to parenting, homeschooling really is just parenting and we hate being the mom sometimes and I think now as a culture we’ve gotten to the point where we’re allowed to say that out loud were allowed to pass each other the memes that say I really hate being a mom and I want to run away right now but I want to take home schooling to that place to, we can say I hate homeschooling and still be the homeschool mom. I didn’t quit being a mom because I really couldn’t stand my kids yesterday. I’m not going to quit homeschooling just because I really hate homeschooling today which actually I did have a bad home school day just now when I started talking to you one of my Children, I wanted to throw out the window but that doesn’t mean I need to quit, it means I need to say okay this is one of those days I expected and I’m going to survive through it.
Homeschool Expectations
spk_1: Yeah a lot of it is expectations and like are you realistic when you get into home schooling and sometimes sometimes people just are not because we think it’s this big rosy situation all the time. Well what do, what should moms do if they are in that day or week or season where they are burned out? What are some great ideas and solutions for them?
spk_0: I think um the number one we just said is just to expect it and say, okay, this is, this is what I expected. This is what’s going to come and number two, we don’t need to be afraid to quit in that moment. We, as moms would run away and hide in our bathroom and eat chocolate or if our kids are old enough just get in the car and drive away for a little while. We can do the same homeschooling, we can quit, we can put the books away and say, do you know what? I’m taking a day off or I’m taking a week off. You guys can watch a few documentaries and you can make something in the dirt outside. I just don’t want to see you for a couple of hours and we can feel good about that because taking care of ourselves is taking care of our Children and being a sane healthy mom is being a good homeschool mom. So that’s the first thing I tell a friend who says that’s it. I’m at the end of my rope. I’m like then just stop, there’s only a limit. We’re not. Omnipotent homeschool moms and God didn’t intend for us to go go go every single day with a huge smile on our faces because that’s not the amount of strength we were created with.
So taking that break, stop for a little while and maybe while we’re stopped to take care of ourselves, make sure we’re eating, we’re sleeping. That’s a huge thing that we’re getting a little bit of fresh air and then um stop and look at our home schooling. Is it what we’re doing? That’s burning us out. Are we trying to teach away? We don’t teach well? Or are we trying to teach a way that our child doesn’t learn well. Um Is there maybe, you know, maybe it’s throwing out the books were using and getting new ones. I don’t like to spend that much money. So for me it’s usually throwing out the teachers manual and using it using the material a different way. Doing some different activities, are putting all the books aside and just working you know on math in the kitchen. Today we were I am so sick of working on multiplication facts. My twins are not getting
spk_1: them. It’s
spk_0: been a year almost of multiplication facts. And I feel like we can’t go any further in math because can’t do multi digit math problems. If it takes you five minutes to remember what nine times seven is 63 For the love of God we know. So today it was using my another one of my sons collects dice and he had 10 sided dice. We were rolling dice and multiplying the numbers together. Sometimes it’s just, you know, putting it all aside and doing something different and that will help your child if you’re burned out, your child’s probably burned out too. So everybody is going to need a change of pace, a new perspective.
How Your Personality Affects Your Homeschooling
spk_1: Yeah. And I guess it depends on the mom’s personality. Some moms, it’s easier for them to say we’re changing things up and to feel that flexibility. Some moms are so scared that if I don’t do everything, the teacher’s guide tells me I’m going to mess up. So I think it is part of that. Like relax, you’re in charge of your child’s education. You need to do what’s best in your situation. And I think I think that does come the longer someone home schools at the beginning, I think people are much more afraid to make those changes.
spk_0: You’re right. It’s personality, mine, my personality is to just dig in and keep going. So I tend to push myself and my Children past the breaking point, just like forcing us into the curriculums mold even after all these years, I should have learned better. So, but you’re right. We need to just, we need to recognize when it’s not working and be more flexible
spk_1: for sure now. So that kind of segue is really well into the second chapter I wanted to ask you about which is making homeschool life easier because we all want to know, okay, so how do we make it easier? And I love what you said, it was basically like, look, this is your life, like it’s all encompassing, it’s your lifestyle. Like there are things you can do though that will make it easier and you had a lot of practical solutions in there. So I’m just going to ask you about a few of them, Maybe you can talk us through um you know, I’ve heard this, you’ve probably heard this. A lot of people are like, I could never home school because I don’t want to be with my kids all day. But what are some solutions? I mean we are with our kids all the time. So you do talk about dealing with that constant interaction. What do we do about that?
spk_0: I get away from my kids uh a lot, Because I am an introvert, I can’t stand having people around me 24/7 and that is a real problem with me. But we, I from the beginning of my motherhood, from my parenting recognized even with my newborn, I couldn’t stand holding him all day every day. So having a routine in my life helps me, some people find that stifling, but for me just knowing okay, we’re all together in the morning, we’re going to do our schoolwork then, but in the afternoon they are going to leave me alone, I’m going to go in my bedroom, I’m going to close the door.
Everybody has quiet time for two hours so everybody has to be in their own rooms, do what you want, just don’t leave the room and don’t make a lot of noise. So having these these routines these times or even days once your kids get a little bit older, it really helps to be able to just say I’m going to the library by myself today or I’m running the errands by myself today. Getting that time away, helping your husband know that you know you’re overloaded with kids having a good communication with him too and say I really need serious breaks from these kids. Really helps.
What if Your Kids Hate Homeschooling?
spk_1: Yeah, I think you’re right now. Okay, what if someone has a kid who hates homeschooling? We talked about moms can sometimes realize we hate it sometimes. But what if you do have a kid that’s just really giving you a hard time and they’re having a hard time with this whole homeschooling thing. This might even really be applicable to people who Their kids were in public school last year, but with all the changes they homeschooled and their kids have this change and they might be 12 years old all of a sudden you know thrown into homeschooling. What what advice do you have for mom’s dealing with that situation. I
spk_0: dealt with that with my younger daughter who was adopted, She had been in public school then for um preschool and kindergarten in the first semester of first grade. And she is such a people person like Exactly the opposite of me, she thrives off of people’s attention. So it was hard for her at first being at home all day, she missed just being able to talk to people 24/7 next to her. Um so for her what I did is I helped her first of all to understand to recognize what the benefits were for her. Instead of sitting in a chair in school all day, she was getting her work done in two hours and then running outside and playing or doing whatever she wanted.
And then when we run errands we’re going to the store, we’re going on a field trip pointing out, look we get to do this because we’re home schooled, you don’t have to sit behind a desk today, you get to go with mommy and we can run to the park or we can spend more time at the library or whatever it is that they love to do. And then getting getting her really involved. We got her on a sports team, she wanted to take swimming. So so she’s swimming more um doing more activities at church because again we have the flexibility so we can I can um plan my week around, making sure that they have enough time for fun.
And then I mean my kids literally are looking at the clock and can’t wait till their friends are done with school. Um and a lot of them are taking online school, but here you still have hours, certain hours you have to sit in front of the computer and they’ll go tell her friends we’ve been outside playing since noon and you guys are stuck in your house is all that time. So it takes a while, it takes a lot of education, showing them where the benefits are and listening. I have to listen to her a lot and what she needed and what she wanted to do with her extra time.
Focusing on the Positive
spk_1: Yes, so it is a lot of mindset even for our kids and focusing them on the positives because they can, we can all tend to focus on the negatives, but there is always a positive and especially with homeschooling, there are so many positives which I think you covered really well. So what about the mom, like you’ve got lots of kids, how do you take care of the house and home school and if you’re working like this is a common thing that people looking from the outside that are want to homeschool their like I could never do it because how do you get everything done, what are the, you know, how do you make home school life easier? How do you get everything done with lots of kids still in the house.
How Can Homeschool Moms “Get It All Done”
spk_0: Um Well you, first of all you change your definition of what get it all done. Really means it doesn’t mean that I do Pinterest crafts because I don’t, I hate crafts. So you’ll never see me do a craft. That saves me some time right there. I’m not big on home decorating. So that also saves me time. I don’t bake from scratch again. There’s, there’s lots of things that I don’t do, but people who love doing them, they can do that instead of write books. I highly recommend baking cookies instead of writing a book. But I think changing your expectation of what you are going to do and of what your house has to look like and then harnessing the power of the people who live in your house, making them do a lot of the work.
I personally, I don’t, I haven’t seen any statistics on this, but I personally think that homeschoolers do more chores than kids who go to school because it’s necessity, we need help around the house if we’re going to get all of this done and it’s really good training for them. My kids knew how to do laundry by the time they’re seven or eight years old, they know how to do the dishes in the dish. They know how to cook a meal by the time they’re 10 or 11. So um it’s actually really good, a really good part of their education that our Children are learning how to take on responsibilities and their family and they’re learning that mom isn’t just there to serve you hand and foot.
We all live in the family, we’re all going to help out as a family because this is, we all work, everybody is working together so that helps. But also you have to know what it is you’re going to do. I mean if you’re going to be a baker, if you’re going to play the play an instrument, if you’re going to work out of your home or or in your home, whatever you’re gonna do, you have to know what is most important and then make sure that you arrange your life so that it will actually fit that. But it will, I mean there’s homeschool moms who work full time outside the home and they still make it work. So it’s again going back to making your home school fit your own family’s culture.
Family Delegation
spk_1: Yes, now, so okay, I agree with you totally the whole delegate to the kids because we’re all here, we’re all part of the family. I think that is a huge part of being able to handle life and home schooling. How do you suggest when people are like, well how do I teach, you know, multiple kids, how do I make sure I have enough time to spend with each of them? What do you say for that situation? Like how do moms make it easier? You know, some moms are looking in going, I’ve got four kids, how in the world will I home school for different kids? Like what are the best strategies and solutions there?
spk_0: I’ve never taught my kids like completely one on one. They’ve always, it’s always been a herd mentality at our house, especially the more kids you get. Um because by the time I was teaching my first one, I already had another one and you just keep getting more after that teaching your kids all together is really the way to go. Now. There’s some things you have to teach them one on one, like you have to teach them to read one on one. They’re all doing math at their own level or doing um grammar at their own level, but so much you’re doing together, you’re doing history together, you’re doing science together, you’re doing bible and other electives together. Um And so I think your child that doesn’t read yet or Children that don’t read yet, They are more time intensive and you’re going to have to set aside, I don’t know, maybe 30 or 40 minutes each one of those Children tops because when they’re little they shouldn’t be doing much um serious schoolwork anyway.
So you’re going to set aside time for them and then the older kids if they can read and follow directions, then they can take off by the time they get into middle school or high school, they’re all completely doing all their schoolwork by themselves, So there’s a lot more independent learning that goes into homeschooling and and in my opinion, that’s what it’s all about. We’re training kids, we can’t possibly as moms teach our kids every little thing they need to know and if that’s our our view of homeschooling then we’re gonna, we’re not going to homeschool because none of us can do that, just like people say, I don’t know math or I don’t know algebra, I don’t know physics, you don’t have to, the whole point of home schooling is to teach our Children how to learn, we teach them how to read, we teach them the fundamentals of math and then we let them go because for the rest of their lives they need to be able to teach themselves things.
Knowing Your Homeschool WHY
spk_1: Yes, Amen, I love that, I agree with you as we wrap up, tell us the importance, I know you talk about this a lot and I do too about the whole um importance in knowing your home schooling, why, why is it so necessary to get that straight and always come back to it.
spk_0: There is a big shift now in our generation to abby about why people home school, back when I was a homeschool student, it was almost all religious reasons. People were home schooling, their kids to get them away from um public schools, humanism and they wanted to be able to teach their Children from a christian viewpoint, But now um 60% of parents who homeschool say that their most important reason is their child safety. And 80% of homeschoolers believe that safety is one of the most important reasons to homeschool, they’re taking their kids out of public school because of school shootings, because of bullying and now because of health concerns, so that’s always going to be huge and it isn’t a bad thing.
It used to be that homeschoolers said, well the only good reason to homeschool is to give your Children a biblical education and it is important. I don’t want to, I don’t want to say it’s not, but there may be many reasons that you home school and they’re it’s important to know all of them, all of what is important to you. For us, it is giving our Children passing on our values to our Children through their education and giving them an excellent education, those are our two values. But it might be meeting your child’s special needs, it might be keeping them safe and healthy, It might be any of a number of reasons.
Oh, so many of my friends, it’s because, so they can pass on their cultural heritage in their home schooling. So whatever it is, you know what it is or what the several reasons are because going back to, we’re gonna hate homeschooling, it is gonna happen, we’re gonna hate it, our kids are gonna hate it, it’s gonna get bad, but if we know why then we can say, okay, this is a bad day and I really hate homeschooling. But I know God wants me to pass on his word through my Children’s studies and I know I’m giving them a really great education, so I’m going to do it again next week.
spk_1: Yeah, it does, it helps you keep going because there’s a great, there’s a big y there’s a great big priorities and then those little little annoying days, you know, you can just forget about them, right? I mean, they’ll start new tomorrow, I agree with you there and that is so important. And even though why could change over the years, some of them, right? Like you might start for one reason and then as you homeschool your like, oh, I didn’t realize that I also am homeschooling because of this, this and this, right? Like, you could add to your y as you go and you learn more
spk_0: special needs is a huge y that gets added later. Homeschoolers um generally get their child diagnosed with a special need faster because they’re just, they’re really focused on how their child is doing and they notice it faster than they would in the classroom. So then that becomes a huge reason, meeting that child’s unique needs, rather whether it’s a behavioral problem, it’s a mental illness or even if it’s a giftedness that they find that they can actually meet that need one on one so much faster, so you’re right, it changes all the time.
Final Encouragement for Making Homeschooling Life Easier
spk_1: Yeah, for sure. So as we wrap up, I just want to end with letting you give moms who are listening just some final encouragement. The mom who’s probably has her earbuds in and she’s trying to fold laundry while she’s listening like and she might be hating homeschool right now or whatever what comes to your mind, what is like the best little final encouragement you can give our moms today.
spk_0: I really liked talking with you Abby about about how we hate homeschooling sometimes. I think that is the big encouragement is Me too. I hate it too. And anyone who home schools that tells you that they don’t hate it sometimes is lying and you don’t want them for your friend. You want a friend that will actually say yeah, it really stinks homeschooling sometimes.
But go back to go back to why you’re homeschooling and go back to how do you teach best and I spend a lot of time on that, it’s not just your home school style, whether you’re charlotte mason or unschooling or whatever it is that you’re doing, it’s more than that, it’s what makes you personally a great teacher because you are you are a good teacher and you have to find and I hope to help you find in my book how what your personal superpowers are for teaching, what are the many different ways your child learns and how you can connect those two really go back and finding the fun and joy in your home schooling again. So remember that your home school is going to be unique and when you find that great niche, that really nice intersection where your strengths and your child’s strengths meat, then you’re going to go back to enjoying it again.
spk_1: This has been a super fun conversation, Lianne. Thanks for making time to join us today.
spk_0: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.
spk_1: I really hope you were encouraged today listening in on this conversation I had with Leeanne. Her book is a gem, definitely check it out and enter the giveaway because one of you will be able to win a free copy so you can find links to everything plus the giveaway by going to the show notes at +41 more dot com forward slash one oh two. Thanks for joining me today. And in the meantime, happy Home schooling
