Ep 190: Homeschooling, Motherhood and Midwifery

Join Midwife Tiffany as she shares a heartfelt keynote speech delivered to homeschool moms in San Diego. Explore the ups and downs of her homeschooling journey, how it intertwines with her work as a home birth midwife, and discover tips, mistakes, and personal anecdotes for navigating the homeschool path.

00:00 Introduction to Kelly and Tiffany's Podcast

01:15 Tiffany's Keynote Speech for Homeschool Moms

03:27 Homeschooling Challenges and Identity

06:05 Mistakes and Lessons in Homeschooling

08:54 Homeschooling Philosophy and Family Dynamics

10:43 Transitioning from Public to Charter School

15:15 Full-Time Homeschooling and Midwifery Practice

20:56 COVID-19 and Homeschooling Adjustments

21:41 Embracing Full Control and Private School Affidavit

28:34 Teenagers and Homeschooling

32:20 Homeschooling and Personal Growth

34:15 The Challenges and Rewards of Homeschooling

35:51 Navigating Homeschool Conflicts

38:09 Balancing Career and Homeschooling

42:10 Answering Common Homeschool Questions

56:58 A Day in the Life of a Homeschooling Mom

01:00:51 Conclusion and Community Support

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to at Home with Kelly and Tiffany, where we share powerful tools, exciting education, and relatable views about holistic health, physiological birth, and thriving in the female body. We are home birth midwives in sunny San Diego. Passionate about the alternatives that give women control and confidence in health, in birth and in life. We've poured a lot of love into creating very in depth and high value offerings. A monthly membership, a physiological birth course, and holistic guides for the women who really want to dive all the way in. But this podcast. We want to bring zero cost information about health and natural birth and make these important topics accessible always. Your support of the show is also zero cost and means everything to us. When you leave a review, share an episode and join our newsletter. It really helps us keep this space open, ad free and full of honest, valuable conversations. Now let's dive into today's show. You are at home with Kelly and Tiffany. I'm Tiffany, and you are not at home with Kelly. You are just at home with Tiffany. Today I get to share with you guys a keynote speech that I recently got to deliver to a group of homeschool moms in our local San Diego area. Friends of mine have been putting on this conference for years to encourage moms and just come together and share in all of the challenges and the joys of homeschooling. And I know we've been Kelly and I have been really. Honest with our audience and followers about our own homeschool journey and how that fits into midwifery and how we have done it, and tips and tricks and lessons along the way. And so I'm excited to get to bring to you this information if you were not able to make it there in person. Probably most of you were not. I get to share it with you today, and I'm also using it. It's actually before the conference that I am recording this. It won't be live until after, but I'm using it as a practice and a benchmark for how. Long it takes me to get through the speech. I'm shooting for a certain time and I have my speech written out and exactly what I wanna say, but I'm a little bit nervous that the cadence of how I will speak or the time that it takes me to get through the information is either gonna be too fast or too slow for the speech itself. So I knew I was gonna record it, I knew I was gonna practice it, and I thought, oh my gosh, this would be such a fun thing to share with our audience. So you guys get to be in on my little mini dress rehearsal today. I hope that you enjoy. Hey friends. I am so thankful to be here among women who not only get it when it comes to being freaky little homeschool people, but among women who are eager to invest more time, energy, and heart into their homeschool, which to me is really all about just being moms and the true investment of time, energy, and heart into your family. And as a home birth midwife, I love to see women especially encouraged, emboldened and empowered in their calling to prioritize the work in their homes. I'm a homeschool mom of two teen daughters now in 10th and seventh grade, and I actually don't particularly identify as a homeschool mom, which made it a little bit awkward and surprising when I was asked to be here today. Homeschool feels like just one of the many alternative choices that we have made along the way, and it's almost more like a family identity than a personal identity, or it's something that we do and not necessarily who we are. Homeschool feels more like an explanation for why we are out in public in the middle of a weekday, or why my kids don't know the difference between a state and a country, or the difference between a nickel and a dime homeschool. I am just a mom who also happened to homeschool. Preparing to be here today really made me dig up a lot of identity baggage. Thanks for inviting me into that therapy process. In fact, if you wanna fast track some cheap therapy for yourself, write a 45 minute speech about your own motherhood journey, but make it encouraging. For others. Okay, so what I am admitting right out the gate is I feel a little like an imposter here talking to you about this because I actually think I suck at being a homeschool mom. So my therapeutic step one is if you are bad at something, just stop identifying at that role. Okay? But honestly, I think we all have that nagging little voice in there that is telling us in some way that we are not good enough. Not cut out for this, failing our kids in some way, not doing this right, or not doing it like we want to. And I wanna tell you that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what other people think that we should be doing what we thought we would have figured out by now, and that it's a mess some days. When that little voice gets loud, tell it to shut up. It's such a distraction from what really matters, which is the time and real life connections with our kids. We are really good moms who happen to homeschool. In my family. We just started our ninth year of homeschooling and we have tried it all along the way. Public charter, homeschool, charter, co-op, drop off programs, private hybrids, and being full-time at home as a young mom, I never set out to homeschool. It happened unintentionally to us. Anyone else here that was not planning on actually finding themselves in that situation? Yes, I know I'm not alone. I have embarrassingly been in the pursuit of perfection in homeschool long enough that I can share a lot of my mistakes with you and what we have learned along the way. In fact, when I was asked to be here today, I said to these lovely ladies, organizing this event, oh my gosh, what do you even want me to say? And Danielle, of course, without missing a beat, said Your mistakes. So I asked her if I could have the entire seven hours of the conference, and she said, no, I would just have to come up with a small amount of mistakes that I wanna share. I used to think that all these mistakes that I'm about to share with you today were genuine failures. I know. I know. When I say it out loud, it's so obvious I needed to work on my growth mindset. But before we rehearse the bit about not being a failure and just doing the best that I can, let's look over a basic list of ideals and goals that most homeschooling families are shooting for. And then I'll admit to you how we suck at them so far. Even though we have spent many years trying to inspire our children towards excellence and personal passion. Here we go. Number one, a lifelong love of learning. Sounds good in theory, but so far they do not like to learn things. My seventh grader actually asked me the other day what steps she could take to be a high school dropout. Number two, a superior comprehensive education. Our homeschool philosophy is to look at the bare minimum requirements and do those with a c plus effort. If no one cries or storms out of the room, mid lesson, they get full credit. Number three, creative out of the box pathways to learning. Okay, so in preparation of being here today, I asked my kids recently to think back on all the field trips, the experiments, the crafts, the hands-on projects that we did together, and share what memories were the most special to them, and my high schoolers said. When you let me get that fidget spinner in third grade, that was the most meaningful. Okay? So it's really uncomfortable to realize that we have no control over how our intentions will land. I know that my commitment to homeschool is shaping and impacting my girls and hopefully for their benefit, but I'm under no illusion that they will look back on these years and agree or be entirely grateful for everything that we did together. So yes, in some really broad sense, we are failing, but it's teaching me that I do not have the final say over the outcome of their lives. I don't know how they're gonna turn out, but I'm a hundred percent certain that I am meant to be present with their current needs and desires today, and walk along side them and love them as they grow. I know we talk a lot about the school part of homeschooling, but I think homeschooling is really just a very deep and intentional way to parent. It's way too easy to get sidetracked with the learning stuff when good mothering is actually about connecting with our children. I hope somebody else in your interactions here today shares about academic strategies, personalizing education and lifelong learning, because those things really do matter. But my hope this morning is to encourage you and your relationship with your child. Here's some things that I am learning and really choosing to lean into. Instead of asking how I can motivate my child to work harder, I'm asking how I can teach to her heart better. Instead of asking, what learning materials will make this easier to teach, I'm asking what kind of environment makes her feel relaxed and open. Instead of asking what kind of schedule will help us get all of this stuff done, I'm asking what activities make us feel the most connected to one another. I want to know how can I be the one and first person in their lives that help them feel known and understood. We all have our personal or our family. Why of homeschooling. Our why has changed a lot over the years. I used to think the why is what was supposed to stay the same through the changes, but we have changed and grown a lot as a family. Navigating homeschool. Homeschool is not one decision, but it's a series of pivots, adjustments and experiments. My why now is to be with my kids, but my why of starting out in public school was to not be with my kids. Let me take you back to 2015 when we started out in public school. We lived in Carlsbad at this time, and my oldest daughter would enter kindergarten. I knew that some public schools were terrible, but we felt that Carlsbad Public Schools were doing pretty good, and we did not question this much. We just did the mainstream thing and we signed our kid up for school. I went to public school in Carlsbad and I turned out fine, right? Our kids went to part-time preschool before kindergarten, so we were used to farming out the early social and educational development, and they were used to the routines too. Going to school was a part of growing up for them. It was a rite of passage. It was an occupation in and of itself for my little people. I was finishing midwifery school in these years, and I needed the time to work and study. I was very much looking forward to the school setup that included more days and no tuition. Plus my childhood next door neighbor was my daughter's kindergarten teacher, and it all felt so cozy and convenient and right for us. But this is when the very subtle messaging about public education started to slip in and bother me. The year was full of communicated benchmarks of various being on track and progress assessments and developmental readiness. I told myself that this is just part of their job, that I would stay vigilant and involved to make this experience more personalized. And I took the feedback with a grain of salt. Okay. She might be behind on some things, but that was typical. Kids don't develop linearly, and she was five. She would catch up when she was ready. Fast forward to the next year, 2016. This is first grade, and now they're worried that she is not keeping up enough with her reading progress. And I learned one day through my child that they had taken her out of class for reading intervention. I was so ticked that the teacher had not told me this herself, and it made me feel totally disregarded and it woke me up to how needed my advocacy for my child was in this education setting. See, my husband grew up navigating some mild learning disabilities, so we were very aware of the potential that our kids could need extra help, but we were also super wary of the stigma of being pulled outta class. Or placed in any kind of special group, and we didn't even have a chance to disagree with the assessment that the school and teacher had made. What made matters even worse was that these reading interventions were happening during classroom math instruction. So when she got behind in her reading and was taken out, she was also getting behind in math too, and it was almost comical how quickly this was clearly not working out for us. My daughter started to say things like she wasn't smart, and this is where I firmly drew the line. I can't remember exactly how we decided that a charter program was the next step, but I knew that I needed more control and autonomy and personalization. Moving her into second grade. We started at Coastal Academy on C Track, which is a full-time homeschool while we waited for her to get a spot in a second grade classroom at that school where she would go to school two days a week. My husband was pretty unsure that this was the way forward. Public school was all we ever knew. And he was concerned that we were gonna turn into the weird homeschool kids and the ones that we knew growing up. I told him what our kids, they can't get that awkward because they have such cool and normal parents like us. And the logic actually worked for him and he agreed that we should try it. I definitely did the rookie thing and assumed that being a good homeschool mom, then setting up a special school room complete with a whole wall boasting, a morning calendar routine alphabet posters, a whiteboard for instruction. I made a schedule, I labeled a lot of things and I organized all kinds of supplies that would make us successful. The charter school supplied all the curriculum and the schedule for staying on track with learning objectives after figuring out what the dozens of textbooks and workbooks were for, and logging into what felt like hundreds of online programs, one for math videos, one for fact practice, one for grammar worksheets, one for history songs. Oh my gosh. It was completely crazy trying to learn this new system for second grade. But as soon as we got that figured out, we had to get right down to the relationship stuff. The wait list for the classroom felt temporary, so I was willing to make the adjustments of suddenly full-time homeschooling, but my kiddo was having a hard time adjusting. She just wanted to go to regular school each day and be with all her friends, and every single day felt like a battle of wills between us. She didn't want me to be her teacher. She didn't wanna be the only student. She didn't wanna do these new hard things that this crazy lady who clearly had no idea what she was doing. And she would just flat out refuse to work and shut down with overwhelm. I remember trying everything to make it fun for her. I thought that we were missing a good time. Learning should be fun in second grade, right? I got all the teacher paid, teacher resources, scoured Pinterest for every homemade learning game, bought pretty gel pens and stickers for her to use. I found silly learning videos. I used a reward chart. I borrowed all the related library books, and I know this is sounding familiar to some of you because I cannot be the only one who has totally spiraled into this homeschool perfectionism. I realized that nothing was working and I can't remember exactly what we did to climb out of that hole together, but it just took time to find our footing to feel safe together in that unknown zone, and for me to really connect with what she needed from me. If I could go back and give that version of myself advice, I would say chill. Out get used to being together again all the time. Do some actually fun things, not exciting learning things like baking together, going for walks, creating art or reading something that is not related to anything academic. I wish I had taken the time to not worry about the pace or worry about keeping up or catching up or measuring up. There's so many things and put the curriculum away, and I wish that I had cared for our hearts and nervous system a little bit better. About halfway through the year, she was finally placed in the second grade classroom, and we did third grade the following year. As my youngest started kindergarten at Coastal two, I was feeling more and more confident with the system, learning how to customize it to our needs, and really owning that I was the master teacher. I found a whole lot of flaws in that education model, and it was more and more not feeling very individualized or personalized, but I still felt like my kids. Were slipping through the cracks. I wanted full control of their education. It was the same year that our medical freedoms were looking more and more limited as the state moved forward with the school vaccination law, and we knew that our time enrolled in a public classroom setting would come to an end. Eventually, we used that final push to switch to full-time homeschool with a public charter. And I really embraced the full control over the curriculum and academics. We learned how to check all the boxes that the charter wanted to see, and we were enjoying making decisions about how to use our new educational funding. But now I had two kids who did not see the benefit of being home together all the time. I had just taken them out of their routines, their social scenes, and their school community, and we had to start all over again at home together. I was in the middle of setting up my midwifery practice at this time and needed some kind of childcare arrangement so that I could still work. We utilized the drop off program where the girls took extracurricular classes like cooking, dance, archery, and I felt so good exposing them to so many different activities, and there was a little social outlet while also being able to handle all of our core subjects at home together. My husband was concerned again that we were getting a little bit more fringe and losing academic oversight that might be important. He had also noticed there were lots of days he would come home from work and enter into a home after a hard homeschooling day that was a little bit dark and stormy from the relationship, conflict and stress, I felt like there was nothing we really could do, but just move through it. It was still the right decision for us, even though it was really hard. I was constantly evaluating that some of the problems might be our schedule, our curriculum, our discipline, my attitude, my expectations, and I was making changes as I experimented with this ever elusive, peaceful homeschool formula. In one attempt to win them over to the fun side of homeschooling, I told them that they could do their math anywhere on our property that they wanted, and they chose the swimming pool. It was a disaster, but it is hilarious to think back on. They climbed in their wetsuits in the middle of winter. I put their worksheets in these little protective sleeves. I set up their workstations on the side of the pool, and then they barely got anything done because it was too distracting to do math in the pool. We tried this several times and we called it school pool. It was a fail in reality for my kids, schoolwork is just hard. They don't wanna do it. I am the one who's constantly telling them to just do it anyways, and we just can't make everything fun and creative and enjoyable sometimes, or all the time. We just need to push through and do hard things and get to the other side of it. It simply felt like a grind most of the time. And again, I was being called deeper into the attuning and knowing of my children, helping to develop their character around hard work, perseverance, integrity, persistence. This was not fun, but it was meaningful and necessary. Partway through this year we're in first and fourth grade COVID hit and amidst the wackiness and uncertainty around us in every space, we were also learning to do all of those extracurricular classes online, which you can't do archery and pottery and cooking online. It was really stupid and definitely not the point I was getting stretched thin personally and professionally so many of us. And I hated the oversight that I was getting from our charter, playing the game of making the samples look right, dodging state testing, trying to enjoy the financial benefits, but they weren't even paying for my faith-based curriculum. And now I could, couldn't even go to the extra classes in person. So we made the decision the following year to cut loose from the charter and do our first year filing a private school affidavit. Yes. This made my husband even more nervous, but now we totally wore those homeschool people, right? Q the denim dress and the matching outfits and the passenger van. But the world was crazy and my kids needed consistency, security, and simplicity. And you guys, I needed that too. We are used to choosing the paths that are best for our kids, but I have learned it is totally reasonable to make schooling choices or any family choices that have the family units best interest in mind and the primary educator's needs and desires to. I was ready to take it on and fully own what was happening in our home, and that translated into confidence in so many other areas than homeschooling alone. To me, these were the golden years. We did four full years together at home from my oldest fifth grade to eighth grade, and my youngest second grade to fifth grade. I look back now and I can see how sweet it was to know that we could make school anything we wanted it to be, and we did. We found resources that worked best for each kid and aligned with our family's values. The pressure was off to perform for anyone outside our family, and my husband noticed how this shift spilt out into more peaceful and connected home for all of us. This is when he actually started finally telling people, my wife homeschools our kids, and it's amazing. It was not so much about creating a magical environment or stimulating natural wonder or sparking creativity or trying to ma manufacture any type of experience for my kids. It was about freedom to be ourselves and to be together. It was not at all a kumbaya togetherness. It was simple and practical touch points throughout the mundane day, sharing meals, being called into the other room 100 times to see how cute the cat was laying down. Again, long stretches of read alouds and boy, how I loved reading together. I wish I would've started early in our schooling journey and spent more time each day just reading to my kids. When I asked my girls what was special to them about these years, they both immediately said co-op. We formed a small group of two other families who were close with us, and every Friday we rotated homes and did all of our history and science together. Not only did this free us up to focus on math and language arts during the other home days, but it was the perfect setup for group activities, experiments, field trips, and art projects. It was a space where the magic, the wonder, the creativity, the fun, felt natural instead of forced at the beginning of eighth grade. This is last year in 2024, my oldest asked to go back to real school. She felt like she was missing out on what she perceived her public school friends were experiencing. And I think a part of that was also growing up feeling just a little bit sheltered because you can't keep up with all the teen pop culture that your public school friends seem to know. We approached the topic with openness on the outside, but my internal reaction was, yes, my love. We are purposefully keeping you from being able to experience the stuff that circulates in a public school. And I think you're capable of so very much, but I think you would have an absolute meltdown to experience the workload of a traditional public school day with homework. And that is really cute that you wanna go to school, but they actually will not let you in with your medical history. But after I processed those mom things, I could hear the heart behind what she was actually saying. I'm ready for more independence, more life experience, and exploring my identity apart from my family. This was totally developmentally appropriate and I wanted her to feel valid in her desires. I told her that we would look into options for high school for her, but as I started asking around and researching what was in our area, there were no options I felt comfortable with that would be a good fit for her. High school seems like its own little beasts to tackle. Every homeschool family handles it wildly different, and I was actually surprised that there were not more families looking for the options similar to us. I was praying that a solution would present itself, and I even started to entertain the idea of starting something myself. But Allegiant Academy came out in the woodwork. It's a hybrid program that meets on campus two days a week in San Marcos. We love the staff, the curriculum, the other families, and the intentionality behind raising future adults, but still allowing home and family life to be the core influence. So as we were preparing to start her there as a ninth grader last year, I told my sixth grader that we were going to get all kinds of one-on-one time together. She said, no offense, always the best way for your middle schooler to start a sentence. But I don't wanna be at home alone with you. I really wanna go to school too. And I know that I could have fought her on that and made her stay home with me for a few more years. But it was actually my husband who ultimately encouraged me with how good that margin might feel to have both girls in programs a couple days a week. And so we selected Hart Christian Academy for our youngest, which meets on the same days, and has a lot of community and philosophy overlap with Allegiant. I know that this was the right step for our family, but shoot, it took me a whole year to really embrace it. High school curriculum was easy to give up because it's getting complicated and I am so grateful to have a more built in mentor in our corner, and I have completely appreciated all that heart has to offer. It is wonderful, but I'm just not naturally a follow the schedule and do the program kind of mom. So that part has been a huge adjustment for me. I almost brought my youngest home with me again this year, but that was not really what was best for her. It was what was more comfortable for me. My kids are thriving, being in stable social scenes outside of our family, friends, and our church has built them up in beautiful ways. They've made really deep and fast friendships at school and have a lot of great adults around them full of encouragement and care. I know these programs are going to be the highlight of their homeschooling childhood when they look back on it. This is not where I thought we would end up, but that is the beautiful thing about it. The freedom to adapt is really the greatest gift of homeschool. It's not easy to change course, but taking it year by year, stage by stage, child by child, is a huge benefit of what we get to do. I wanna tell you how much I love having teenagers. I was a terrible teenager and I came into motherhood with two girls feeling all kinds of things about what was to come. I have worked through so many cycles of acknowledging fear, letting go, dealing with my own stuff, and learning to meet my kids' needs as they grow. I certainly am not taking credit for having kids that I enjoy. The glory really does belong to God, but I do see the connection between teaching to their hearts and deeply understanding them, making space for lots of feeling and lots of talking that develop strong communication skills and actually sharing a life together that helps them feel safe and open with me. Most of the time teenagers are so fun. They are looking for joy everywhere. They are old enough to think of their own interesting things to do. They think that almost anything can be funny except for me, and they want music and candy and friends infused into absolutely everything. It's a party all the time. Teens are developing their own really profound ideas and they are such an honest reflection of what is going on around them. If we listen. I was camping recently and I was getting ready for the day in the bad lighting of the camp bathroom. And I was looking at my face like, whoa, is this what I look like? And I thought, this is what having a teenager is like. It is humility to the court. They have this impersonation of me where they do my voice, what they take, my voice sounds like. And they say things that I say and it's rude, but it's also very true and very funny. We have the saying at home mommy will always help you. And it started when they were tiny little babies and couldn't even speak yet and we were doing the sign for help. Because they so often needed to ask for help. And that was something we wanted to communicate right away. I said it to them when they were when they did have, more vocabulary to remind them that there were solutions to their problems, like not being able to get their shoes tied by themselves. And then I started saying it with homeschool too, mostly to remind myself that it was totally okay that they were asking for help. Lots of help. So much help all the time. In fact, I was wondering if I was helping them too much sometimes or if they were taking advantage of me or when were they finally going to be able to do whatever it is on their own. I heard some really great homeschool advice addressing this once that said, help them as much as they ask for it. Kids actually want to be independent. They want to do it on their own. You can help them whenever they ask and trust that they will get it one day. And so that was such a comfort to me. We did change this mantra over time to mommy will help you. She will not do it for you. And even recently, I heard myself say to my seventh grader, I will not help you with this until you change your attitude. And my 10th grader told me last week you actually can't help me understand this thing about chemistry. And I want my kids to come to me with their problems and I wanna help guide them to solutions. But one of them told me this year, I don't want you to try to fix this. I just want you to listen. And wow, it is just such a picture of constantly being drawn back to being present, connected, and flexible. And ultimately not about me. I know that there are so many pathways to this goal of connecting, but for us it was really homeschool. Being a home birth midwife informs a lot about how I view and experience the world. So much so that there is this joke in our family where you can say, this reminds me of birth about almost anything, and it is pretty much true. Try it out. Stuck in traffic. This reminds me of birth. Feeling exhausted at the end of the hike. This reminds me of birth. Still trying to get your sixth grader to start every sentence with a capital letter and put a period at the end of every sentence. This reminds me of birth. I know I'm speaking to a room of women who have likely experienced birth in some shape or form, and there are lots of shapes and forms, but every single way to bring your baby here required some unknown, seemingly impossible level of surrender and sacrifice. And that was just the beginning, literally day one. Now I'm on day 5,657, and I see how the imprint of that day carries over into so much of who we are together as mother and daughter. As we think back on our birth experiences. No matter how you feel about your exact story, we know that it was meant to be big, important, and impactful. The weight of the event matters so much because it was the day that we turned our focus from ourselves and onto this new, tiny, helpless human. With my line of work. It goes without saying that I love babies and I adore growing families, but I get the most satisfaction in my job from witnessing the transformation of the mother herself. Pregnancy and birth humble us. They make us more vulnerable. They allow us to open literally and make us needy for help community and so much grace as we adjust to the new person in our family. To me, I feel like homeschool has caused a similar type of transformation in my life. I was not expecting homeschool to challenge me so much. I thought that everything I was doing was for the kids. I was not at all looking for additional character development and personal growth opportunities. I can assure you, I'm the lifelong learner. It turns out learning and relearning those lessons of surrender and sacrifice. I don't know for certain, but I have a pretty good feeling. It would have been easier on me personally to send my kids to full-time school. In fact, allowing myself to fantasize about this option is one of my homeschool coping skills. Yes, I'm making a choice. Okay. Okay. I still choose homeschool. This may be the curse of someone who has experienced the lifestyle of public education. I remember the buffer of dropping them off for the day for many hours at a time, day after day, which is truly effective at keeping relational conflict at bay. But think about that. If I'm not spending enough time with my own kids for the real stuff to surface and present itself to be dealt with, and there is no getting away from it except just dealing with it, then maybe I'm not spending enough time with my kids. I think about all the confrontation, especially with two daughters that has forced us to work through things with one another and ourselves, and we got on the other side of it stronger, connected, understood, and reaffirmed in our mission together. The homeschool terrain is full of these little relational landmines, and we get to make the choice to tread lightly and hope we don't hit one or to march through confidently knowing that we cannot avoid them, and maybe they're even for our good. These, I am your teacher and your mom. Conflicts are just freaking hard. When my kid says they are absolutely not going to do the assignment the way I have asked, do I give them a consequence for disobeying me or do I try to be flexible when my daughter has to wait a really long time for me to come help her because I got distracted on my phone? Do I take responsibility for letting her down or do I blame it on her and try to brush it off? When she gets overwhelmed with a hard thing and bursts into tears and runs out of the room, do I give her space or should I come follow her to work it out When I said that we were gonna start school at 8:00 AM but I wanna finish my online shopping order first, do I let them hold me accountable to our commitment? Or do I remind them that I'm the parent, I can do what I want? When she drops her pencil on the ground for the 40th time in the day, is she hoping that I crack it in half over her head and then set our house on fire? This is real life, you guys. Or just quietly die inside. Lots of lots of choices here, right? I believe so strongly in how that this, how homeschool has benefited my relationships with my children, that I feel sad for families that are missing out on these really hard and then really triumphant moments buffering an entire childhood with time spent apart in avoiding the relational work. I don't think at all that we're the type of women who are looking for the easy way. I wish it was easier, but I also embrace that good things come out of the testing and tribulation attached to being a homeschool mom. Like evaluating the shortcuts that I'm willing to take, being confronted with my extreme desire for control, constantly reconfiguring my self care, processing seasons of feeling stuck with our direction or unliked by my kids, trying to get my husband on board with a new plan. Spiraling. When I think about my kids hating this so much that they will send their own kids to public school, it's complicated, right? It's complicated and yet it's worthy. We are worthy of growing and changing and transforming with our kids, and for our kids, truly always becoming the next best version of ourselves and the version of ourselves that they need. My career as a midwife has been a tricky thing to throw into this mix. On one hand, I think it is 100% possible to homeschool your kids and have two working parents. Obviously, it is going to come with so many logistical things to work through, but if this is a priority for your family, I totally believe you can do it. I've loved being a business owner and having a lot of flexibility with my different schedules. I can Tetris things around to make it all work. Most of the time when I get called to a birth, my kids are happy for a day off and we catch up again later when I'm home again. I'm so thankful we have the time right away to reconnect and be together. When my girls were little, I had a lot of childcare needs as someone who works on call, but I also need designated work days each week that were taken care of so that I could see clients. We utilize drop off programs like Legacy and Thrive. I hired a part-time nanny to come homeschool my kids one season. I exchanged childcare with other homeschool moms, and we took turns teaching and supervising each other's children for the day to day. I often wake up early and get some work done before everyone else is up, or I have my computer open alongside my kids while they work on something more independent. Or I schedule work blocks on evenings and weekends when my husband is home. It has taken creativity, intentionality, and a lot of planning to make it work. But on the other hand, I have seen opportunities for my career to advance that I have had to pass by. Homeschooling has kept me more balanced and humble as a mom. Because of this, my practice grew really quickly off the heels of COVID with many more women choosing home birth. But after a few years of going so hard at that, I realized that I couldn't sustain giving both my practice and my kids the attention that they needed. It was pretty wild to find myself laying down my professional ambitions to lean more into what was happening in my home. But goodness, who else is gonna be their mom? And it was a really defining shift for us as a family when I committed to making our home the first priority. So ladies, we accept the call. We stay present. We are not failing. If we pivot, we are just simply paying attention. But how do we know, truly know when it's time to make a change or when we need to just ride something out? Or, the question that comes up so often in these homeschool conversations is, how do we know if we're doing enough? How do we know? And some advice that I got a long time ago that I carry into so many different parts of motherhood is you will know when you are present and when you are focused and when you have your intention set on the best thing for everybody, you'll know, you will not miss that feeling. You can look into other homeschool with curiosity and creativity, but the beauty of homeschool is that yours is not gonna look like mine or hers. Or hers. We are trying to make it our own. That's the beautiful part of it, right? It belongs to us. It's our own thing that we're doing in our own homes and our own family. This is less about the perfect program and it's more about relationship, flexibility and resilience. Kids are gonna remember the conversations, the family culture, the time spent, not what they learned. Every mom here I know for certain has what it takes to be the one to be the number one for their kids. I know that you're brave enough, you're strong enough, and you're smart enough. As I was preparing for this speech this week, I tapped into Instagram. It is the greatest crowdsourcing. And I wanted to make sure that I was hitting on the points that the audience wants to hear it, that other moms who know that I'm a midwife and know that I've been homeschooling for a while and know that I have daughters and know that I that I work. I wanted to make sure that I was answering their questions. So I took a couple questions in from our Instagram account and I have them here. I'm going to answer them. Briefly for you guys. The first one is how to find a curriculum and where to start. I would say just start talking to your friends who already homeschool or start poking around in forums online with communities or moms or, or groups that have a lot of things in common with you so that you feel confident about the recommendations that are being made there. Curriculum is a moving target. It is so much all the time and I always think I'm finding the one that is going to make everything easy and beautiful and wonderful for us. And I'm constantly changing because even if the curriculum is great, even if it was wonderful for the, this particular child in this particular season, those kids are growing and changing all the time and so they need flexibility. So we have stopped curriculum mid-year, we have stuck it out and just finished and changed in the middle of the year. We have completely put something to the side and just decided not to use that or even do that subject at all that year. And then we've returned to curriculum that, that wasn't working for us before, but seems like the next best thing several years later. And so I don't even hardly go looking for and discovering and researching curriculum anymore because it's so overwhelming. I'm not interested in finding anything new. We have tried most of the most popular things out there. We are just utilizing the resources that we are already familiar with at this point. What about age gaps? Schooling older children and little children at the same time? Our kids are three grades apart, so we have a little bit of experience with this. I would say. There, there's a lot of great programs out there that have a one room schoolhouse view, and so you can get this base curriculum that is gonna cover some of the subjects like science and history and leadership and personal development and faith based studies and stuff like that. You can do that as a family and kind of work through the expression of that as appropriate for each age group and, and that has been really fun. We have enjoyed that kind of sh having lots of whole family moments with home, the homeschool curriculum. But when it comes down to math and writing, that's so specific to the kid and their developmental stage that you are inevitably going to have kids who outpace even some of their siblings and they're gonna need something more individual. So I would say as far as language arts and writing and reading go, that is its own separate thing. But you guys can all be reading the same book together and have different degrees of exploring some of the concepts in that book. But when it comes down to math, probably e each child is gonna have their own individual thing, and that's the tricky thing to set up. We used to have, okay, everyone does math at this time, now we're moving on to this subject. That was our rhythm throughout the day. But I couldn't help everybody at met with math at the same time. So we had to stagger that throughout the day, you start math here so I can help you. And the other kid would do something more independent that she wouldn't need my full attention for while I was helping the other child. And some kids are gonna be more independent with some of those things and some of them are gonna need a lot of handholding and help with different subjects. And in larger families, with more than two kids, we can utilize the older kids helping with the younger kids. And we can have that set up into our family as well so that everybody is, still on mission together, working together to get to the end goal of finishing the work for the day. And there's lots of creative ways to figure that out. The next question is, what if you wanna homeschool, but your child loves public school? Yes. I dealt with this in a couple different ways, right? Throughout my story. You got to hear that. I think you're the parent and there's lots of things my kids don't like, but I think that what is best for them is my decision for them. But you're going to come up against a lot of backlash probably and working through that. And we cannot make decisions for our family that is just based off of keeping our kids happy. It's really great when we get to make a decision for some for them, and the decision is what's best for them and makes them happy. That's wonderful. But if it's, but if you're just keeping your kid in public school because that's what they want and you think that homeschool is actually the better option for them, work through that challenge, be willing to get in that nitty gritty relational space and work through that. And there's so many creative ways to create. The parts of school that she loves. You can still keep up with those friends. You can join other activities outside the home. You can start a co-op and have, that school room feeling. You can do a hybrid program where she goes to school and gets to go through the rhythm and do all the schooly things. But it's two days a week or something like that. So there's lots of options to explore there. The next one is how to convince your husband to homeschool. You guys heard that in my story too. My husband was just oh, this is unfamiliar. Is this a good idea? I don't know. My wife is, just going deeper and deeper into this crazy space. And I think like a similar response to how do we convince our husbands that home birth. Is the right thing for us and for our family. And it really comes down to trust and communication. And so if you're saying, Hey, I'm looking into this is really important to me. I think this is the next step for our family. I want you to come along with me in that. And he's saying, no, absolutely not. That is not a homeschool problem. That is a marriage and relationship and communication problem that needs to be worked through. But usually it's, it, the hesitation from your husband is based off of fear and a misunderstanding. And so giving him some resources and some education and some tools is a great way to get him on board and get him up to speed, right? As women, were often so far ahead. Really ingrained in the research and talking to other parents and understanding things really quickly. We go down rabbit holes really fast and sometimes our husbands are just not there yet. And so we can talk through that and have a lot of communication about it. How to get the best education possible if you don't have a degree. Yeah, I think this is one of those myths of homeschool that you can only be a good homeschool teacher if you are a credential teacher. And it's funny, it's like saying the only good home birth midwives are the midwives who used to be nurses in hospitals once, right? And you're like, oh, okay, so you learned how to do birth in this. Institution or like school, right? You. Okay. So you've been trained to teach to a group of children with a certain set of tools inside of this institution with these things prepared for you. And public school teachers are absolutely incredible. I don't even know how they do it. You guys, it seems absolutely crazy to me that. We would put one person in charge of 30 little tiny people's education and wellbeing for five days a week. Like what? That's a whole different topic though. But I don't think, I don't think having gone to school to learn how to teach children things is a prerequisite for being a homeschool mom. I think homeschool is an extension of parenting. I do not think homeschool is an extension of any kind of like certain education model or anything like that. But clearly my family does not have a very studious academic rigorous approach to school. And so I have kids who are not overly ambitious in that area, do not wanna be pushed in that way. I'm pretty laid back about that and I would look into classical methods of education if you want a lot of rigor, and you can absolutely teach that. But there's a lot of great tools out there and online programs and all kinds of things that you can arm yourself with if you wanna pursue that. But you your children's best education is not necessarily the most studious, rigorous best educa, like best academic experience. I think we have to redefine or maybe define for ourselves and our family, what does the best education mean? What does best education mean to your family and for your kids? Are there financial assistant options and would you recommend using them? You guys got to hear in my story that we did do a public charter for a while in California. We get several thousand dollars to spend on educational resources and materials. I thought that was really cool. I still believe that money belongs to every single child, whether you are in a public school or a private school or homeschooling, whether you have a charter who is overseeing that or not. It's the taxpayers are putting that money aside for education for children. And I'm certain that there's plenty of people who abuse that, but most do not. Most will would use those funds appropriately and well. And I think we have to really wonder do what the gov the government is setting aside this money for. I don't know. That's a whole nother conversation. I'm not gonna get into it. Yes, there's financial assistance available. Look into your pub, your public charter options in your area and would I recommend using it? It worked well for a season for us, but ultimately, I don't wanna exchange. I don't wanna, I don't wanna change my standards in my home to align with what I need to, for the government to give me the money to do it. So the exchange at some point didn't quite feel quite right for us and I was willing to forego it. But there's a small percentage of families who truly can only homeschool with that extra financial help. They can't, they cannot afford the other parent to be home and not working, and then have to pay out of pocket for all the things that they wanna do. But I also don't think homeschooling has to be expensive. So I have a lot of opinions about that. I can't go into it in detail apparently. How to be intentional with the early years. This mom says she has a three and a half year old. I think intentionality with little kids is really just letting them play and reading to them and like dancing and the, in the living room to music and letting them make a mess and letting them practice sharing with other little tiny humans. And, like coloring and stuff. Like I obviously, again, we don't have the academic rigor here but early childhood development specialists or professionals will say that like most kids do not need a super early and, incredibly rich educational experience in for example, learning numbers and letters and math and stuff like that. There's a point in which that is helpful and is going to help kids, get started into kindergarten better when they know how to write their name or whatever. But kids are gonna naturally get to that point where they wanna do what you're doing, right? So if you're living life alongside your kid and they see you counting things, they see you reading things, they see you, writing things down, they're just naturally gonna get curious about that and ask about that and wanna learn and do what you're doing. So I would say just keep your kids with you. Teach them as they go and as their interest seems appropriate, but give them lots of playtime, lots of creativity time. And I do not necessarily think that kids should be starting kindergarten type things at five years old either. There is so much good research out there about kids just playing for an extended amount of time. And I would totally support a little bit of that unschooling attitude for those early years. There's such a good book that I'm thinking of right now that every parent with little kids should read. And it's a really old book written by this guy, and I cannot, oh shucks. I can't remember the title of it, if I remember the title. I'm gonna put it in the show notes for you guys. Oh, how children learn. It's something about how children learn that might even be the title of it. And it's really good. It goes into child early childhood development and how their brains work and how to foster that in a way that's like really meaningful and not performative. So check that out. It's a great one. How to handle kids who won't do their work. I don't, oh my gosh. How to handle kids who don't do their work. I'm still figuring that out. I am still figuring that out. How do you handle your kid who doesn't, who's, who doesn't do the other things that you tell them to do? I think it's a parenting issue. I think that we can definitely come we can come. Add it with compassion and understanding and really try to understand the core of what it is that they're saying they need by taking control, right? They're trying to take control and say, no, I'm not gonna do this. I think that there's a lot of benefit to a positive reward system and that's not something that is gonna work throughout your entire homeschool at some point. They just need to learn how to do hard work. But working through some of those seasons that just feel like such a daily battle. Sister, listen, I have been there. I have been there a whole lot, and I think you just gotta wake up in the morning and get your own head right, and think about how you're gonna encourage your kid that day and just cover it in prayer and your own positivity and you tell yourself. I'm gonna have a good attitude, even though my kid is gonna potentially have a really crap attitude today. I'm in charge. I'm regulating my emotions, I'm gonna respond appropriately. There's so many things, right? And you guys are gonna figure it out. And if multiple days in a row you just have to say, alright, I can't, oh gosh, I can't make you do it. I can't hold your hand and make you write down the things. But continuing to work on it together and talk about it and, yeah, and just be there in that. Don't just say, oh, it's really hard. I don't think I'm cut out for this. This is just a really sticky spot. I, my kids don't want me to be their teacher. I think they're just gonna do better with somebody else teaching them stuff. I think that's a very real dialogue that is happening out there. I hear it all the time, but you don't have to de, you don't have to do that. You don't have to decide that's the only way you can just be present in it being a total mess and be willing to be there with your kid. A day in the life is the last question. A day in the life. I will give a day in the life today. Today was a great day in the life. I'll give two days. So yesterday was a home day for us and I woke up early to get some work done. My husband and I had we have quiet time in the morning together where we're just reading and praying and connecting before he goes off to work. And then it was a homeschool day, so my kids got out their materials. I actually took a one hour work block while they were being independent and I locked my myself away in my home office and got some work done. And then I went up and checked on them and they were they needed a little bit of help with some things. We all had lunch together. One of my kids took herself on a walk at her lunch break. Another one of my kids went and watched her favorite show on TV right now and then came back and finished her work. And then I was just doing chores around the house while my kids were like a dilly daling in the afternoon. I worked out and had another little work block after that, and then I furiously made dinner for them and took them to church for youth group last night. And then I came home and I worked some more. So I probably got four hours of work in yesterday just. Picking and choosing these periods of time that I could sit down and concentrate on some things. And so that's a lot of how I get work done while I'm homeschooling and home with the kids. And then today was a go to school day and that day was it started again with me waking up early and getting some work done. My husband and I spending time together, the girls are very independent, so they set their own alarms. They get up, they take showers, they get breakfast, they pack their lunches up'cause they get to go to school. They're very motivated on these school days because. The other days they don't have to go and do anything. It's just two days a week. They have to get up and get themselves together. But they're excited to be there. They're excited to be there with their friends away from the house, away from their mom. And so I dropped them off at school and then Kelly and I had some prenatal appointments, and then we went out to lunch afterwards and had a business meeting. I she left to go pick up one of her kids from their drop off program. I ran some errands on the way home, and now I'm here. Recording this guy and then I'm gonna, after this, I'm gonna go get dinner prepped before I pick my kids up from school. And when they get home, they're probably going to have a little bit of work to do. Most school days they don't have homework, usually leftover, but they're both doing different math programs than what their school curriculum has assigned to them. And so they get some of it done in class when the other kids are doing math, but then usually there's some amount that's left over. So they'll probably do that. And then we're home. We're not going anywhere tonight, so we have a couple chores that we need to do at home. My daughter's preparing for a conference that she's going to next week, so I need to help her like pack for that and stuff. And then I probably will take another. Work block tonight in the evening, sometime before I go to bed. So that is a day in the life. And this is our story. This is our homeschool story. I hope that it feels fun to peek in on this part of our life and to hear our story and to hear all of the different pivots and changes and stuff that we have made along the way. I know it was actually really fun to share it with you guys. Thank you for letting me practice my pacing. Before I started answering the questions, I was right where I needed to be timing wise. So I think that I've got I've got the right amount of things to share and it flowed nicely in a way that I can imagine myself presenting this to an audience. So you guys are great for listening to that. I hope that it encourages you in some way too. And we will catch you next time. Hey ladies, if you're loving the show and want to help us keep it ad free so we can keep talking about all things birth and women's health, without cutting to an ad about electrolytes or grass fed beef sticks, here is how you can support us. First, leave us a quick review or a rating. It helps more women, new moms, and birth enthusiasts find our show. And it honestly means so much to us to be reminded that you love what we are doing here. Second, share this episode with a friend, with a doula buddy, or anyone who is on their own holistic health or natural birth journey. And third hop on our newsletter list. This is where we share. Bonus goodies behind the scenes stuff. Fun little extras you just won't hear on the show. You can find that link to join in our show notes below. Thanks so much for being a part of this growing empowered community. We could not do it without you.