23. What Surprised Us the Most About Homeschool

We share what shocked us about homeschooling as two full-time working parents: the time it takes, how fast kids learn one-on-one, and why our home feels calmer and happier. From tackling gaps in handwriting and grammar to an ADHD breakthrough, we lay out what actually worked.

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Transcript

Why We Chose Homeschooling

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I wish there was a different schooling option. I just didn't love what we were doing, but I didn't think we could homeschool in and I said in a different life, I would homeschool the kids. Like if I didn't have a job, and you just kind of laugh. You're like, you can't homeschool the kids, you have a job.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

So you went from being like, absolutely not, we can't. You're like number one go homeschool dad now. We're two full-time working parents who just made a crazy decision.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

After four years in public school, we're homeschooling our three kids and documenting the whole thing.

Meet The Family And Format

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Never in a million years did I think we would be homeschool people.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Welcome to, well, this wasn't the plan podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I'm slate, and school's in the kitchen now. I'm Scotty. Lisa Scott and I say so. I'm Sailor, and this whole podcast was my idea.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

This podcast is our real-time journey, unexpectedly juggling homeschool, jobs, parenting, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Follow along each week as we document how it's going and share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because we know some days are going to be ugly, and we're not holding back.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

We're learning to expect the unexpected. So let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Well, we just survived our very first snowbreak with the kids and homeschooling and tax season.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

It went pretty well, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yeah, actually, I guess we've done that before in the past, whenever they had school and they canceled school. So this week was the same. We had we've been home since like Friday and haven't really left the house. So that's got me a little stir crazy, but we did it. We are really, really ramping up at work. And today we Carson said it was the first time he worked. What, how many hours? 10 hours?

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Ten and a half hours today.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Ten and a half hours. So we probably shouldn't tell people this. But I had the bright idea of paying the kids ten dollars if they would homeschool themselves today. That really just means that Sailor homeschools the kids. So they did that today, and then we checked their work. It's the first time we've ever done it.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

I was about to say, I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

We've never done that before.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Because that's what people always accuse homeschool people of, like, oh, they just throw them in front of a computer and ignore them. No one's actually teaching them.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Well, it wasn't a computer, it was just workbooks.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

So we teach them, and you know, every day. This is the first time we did this, but we we were really busy.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Well, I got the bright idea this morning when all of these emails kept coming in, and we have a deadline on the 31st, and I was just like, all this has to be done. And Sailor kept thinking that homeschool was gonna be like all of us together sitting around like a chalkboard and us teaching them, like like school, you know. That's the only thing she had to think about. And so I was like, ooh, brilliant idea. Like they're all driven by money. I will pay them$10 and they'll get their stuff done. And none of them are working on anything that they need a lot of help with. It's they usually just do like the independent work and we check it. So we did that today, and that's how Carson got so much work done.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

It was nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

And they've been out in the snow playing the last two days, and it's just been crazy. So I think that they all needed a day to just they've been listening to their audiobooks and just playing, just doing whatever they want once school is done.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

And it worked out nicely because the snow came on the weekend. It's kind of sucks when it comes in the middle of the week, but we didn't really, I didn't feel like we had to miss a lot of work or a lot of homeschool or anything until we got to Monday, and then all the public schools were closed. And normally we were like, if they have a public school holiday, we're gonna take off too, because I mean we're supposed to be doing less school, not more. But we are gonna miss a lot of days of school to go skiing, and so we were like, well, we're still gonna do school on Monday and Tuesday, even though the schools are closed because of the weather.

School Closures, Routine, And Ski Plans

Listener Question: Convincing A Spouse

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah. The which the kids were like, that's fine. So we we've been just sticking to our normal routine, but we are about to go skiing, so then we're gonna have to uh take off like a couple days for that. But let's get in today's episode. There were a few questions that came in for fan mail, and everyone was asking basically the same thing. What should you do, or what can you do? Or do you have any advice if you want to homeschool but your significant other doesn't? And for us, I was the first one more on board with it, kind of brought it up. Really, before the kids were like super wanting to do it, I was like, I wish there was a different schooling option. I just didn't love what we were doing, but I didn't think we could homeschool in Course, and I said in a different life, I would homeschool the kids like if I didn't have a job, and you just kind of laugh. You're like, you can't homeschool the kids, you have a job, right? So you went from being like absolutely not, we can't, to like you're like number one go homeschool dad now. So do you have any advice on that?

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Well, it's I'm I'm a half and half right on this because I always wanted to do this, right? I always thought that this would be a great option and always thought that anybody that could do it should do it. I just didn't think we were one of those people that could do it. And I thought it required a stay-at-home parent. And you know, we know that's not the case now. So we even know I've said it might be harder for people that don't work from home like we do or have own their own business, but I've heard plenty of homeschool people say, no, not really. You just have to pick and choose the times that you do the schooling. And so, yeah, I mean, it's a lot easier than I guess I thought to get it done even though we work full-time.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

So, do you have advice for anyone that needs their mind changed?

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Yeah, so if, okay, if you're listening to this and you're the working spouse and you want the other person to do the homeschool and they don't want to, my advice is too bad. You can't you can't have it. You don't get to pick. You're not the one doing it. But if you're the if you're the one that's staying home and you want to do it, and if they do go to school, you're the one that dealing with all the teachers, with all the Parent Square or whatever notifications on your phone nonstop for Johnny Appleseed Day and everything like that, then I mean, yeah, marriages should be about compromise and coming together and agreeing. But if you simply can't agree on something, the tie goes to the person that's dealing with the problem. I mean, this is a stupid example, but if your husband lead duty is to take out the trash and your wife really likes this one kind of trash bag and you really like this other kind of trash bag, you win. You get to pick which kind if y'all can't agree. But if you're the parent that stays home and then I think you get to pick, and I don't know how to convince them, you just do it and hope that hope that they just accept it.

Research, Feasibility, And Time Math

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Well, I think it's hard if your heart's not in it, because though it is easier than we thought, it is it is hard. You have your hard days, but even though our kids are the ones that wanted to homeschool initially, I think our hearts were already in it. Like I wanted them home, I wanted them out of that environment, I wanted our mornings to look different. I wanted to say when they said, like, oh, I don't want to go to school in the morning and they're crying, I wanted to say, fine, you don't have to go to school. So it was pretty easy once we started researching it for us to change our minds.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Yeah. And just as a third option, I said if you're the parent that stays at home or if you're the parent that doesn't, I mean, we've just talked about how we neither one of us stay home. So if you're in that position, I would say it's similar though. If you're the parent that's going to be doing the homeschooling primarily, I mean, I would say that your vote maybe counts a little bit more. I mean, there's only two people in a marriage, and if you both vote and you disagree, well, somebody has to be the tiebreaker. And if you're the person that's going to be doing it, then yeah. But if you're the person that's going to be working all the time and you want them to do it, well, that's probably just too bad for you.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah, that's true. Well, I think for us it was mainly just researching it. We both started kind of researching certain things about it, and I would show you things, you would show me things, and we realized that most people weren't doing like hours a day. I'm like, well, okay, like maybe we could do that. And then we realized there were actually a lot of working parents homeschooling, and I think that gave us hope. Like, well, we could probably do it. Like, we have control of our schedule, so we probably could do this.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, and that might be the way to convince him. If it's not because, like, if it's because they think it's a bad idea or whatever, I'm not sure it you could show them the statistics, you could show them a lot of things. But if it's just because they don't think it's possible and you want to get them on board in that way, well then yeah, that the solution is to have them, well, listen to this podcast for one thing, but also just look at the research. And you could even ask Chat GPT, how long do most people spend doing homeschool? And when they realize that if you're going to be helping and you want them to help a little bit, then they start running the numbers and they're like, if this is a better option for my kids, do I not have four or five hours to spare per week? Because that's really, you know, if the spouse that wants to do it is taking the reins and spending eight hours a week and the other one's spending four hours a week, they're not really asking you for very much. And so I don't know, it seems like it's really not going to be that hard.

What Surprised Us Most

Two Hours A Day And Routines

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Well, I hope that helped with anyone that's listening. And as we said, we were anti-homeschooling at first just because we didn't think we could do it, and it surprised us once we did research it that we could. So this whole episode today is all of the things that surprised us with homeschooling because there's actually quite a bit, and we are gonna be finishing our first year very soon, and I just thought this would be a good episode for anyone that's thinking about homeschooling. So the first thing on our list, and we'd mentioned this already, was just that it just takes about two hours, and we have it down pretty efficiently now. We both don't even homeschool all the time. Like if I have a lot of work to do, Carzon does the homeschooling by himself, and vice versa. So we just have a good system down, and I think the longer that you do it, the easier it is. You know what you're supposed to be doing, and then your kids also know what they're supposed to be doing. So, like, Sailor does a lot of her work herself. Slate is taking a lot of his initiative and starting it and going through his lesson, whereas before he was kind of like, but I need your help. And he's just wanting to get it done. So it definitely gets quicker as you get into it. So if you start out and it's kind of going slow, just give it some time.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Yeah, and I mean, I don't know that with Sailor, I probably spend only 30 minutes or less with her. And I'm usually the one with her, but uh I mean, because she does so much of it on her own, and at fourth grade, so much of it is independent practice. But with the lessons, you know, they have videos, and but but she usually prefers for me to go over new concepts with her. So she'll she'll watch the videos, but she likes for me to go over them. But sometimes the concepts aren't even that new or they're really easy concepts, and so it's it's pretty fast.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

And Scotty's is very quick. I would say 30 minutes if you're sitting down with her, and that might surprise you, but she's in first grade. Like first graders need to be more like playing, hands-on learning. They don't need a lot of sitting there. They've actually, if you look at the research, you know, 30 minutes is a really good amount of time for a first grader to sit there and learn those subjects. So sometimes it takes a little bit longer, it just depends on the lesson for her. And then Slate, I think, takes the longest just because he's slow.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

But I mean, it it's also yeah, he he works at a slower pace, and it's not because he's not smart, he's actually gifted, but he just he doesn't like to get in a hurry. He stops and thinks about other things, and then he gets back to work.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

He draws pictures with that go along with his journal for the day. He draws a picture every single day, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

And another big part is that he's supposed to be a second grader by age, but for his language arts, he's doing fourth grade, and there's a lot of heavy writing in there, and he he can spell and he knows all the words, but it still takes him a long time to write, you know, paragraphs, short essay paragraphs and everything, and that's what that curriculum is requiring, which if you look at the second grade language arts, he would be writing at most single sentences, and so that would probably be a lot faster for him. So just when his his right handwriting ability catches up to his brain, he'll be faster.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Another thing that surprised me was that they were behind, and not all of as far as just like grade level, but in certain things we were kind of surprised, like their handwriting, they were definitely all behind. And even just their like Scotty was behind. She wasn't quite where she needed to be to start the good and the beautiful program, but we just kind of caught her back up. But we were surprised because once again, you're getting all A's at school, they're doing great, they're doing great, but really, you know, they weren't up to par on the things that they should, and they didn't know things they they should have because they hadn't been introduced yet.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

And I think that a lot of that had to do with the computer, and there was probably a lot of pros to it, but there's some cons too. I mean, when we were young, they didn't have to specify like we're gonna do spelling and grammar as much they did some, but a lot of it was just part of our reading and writing when we did language arts, and as part of grading an essay we wrote to show our reading comprehension, they also made sure that our grammar and that our spelling was correct. And whenever they're doing all of that and teaching to the test, they're teaching for the computer. And while the computer might have them type stuff, it's there's a word processor. I mean, there's just like the grammar and stuff is not as big of a part in the spelling, so and the handwriting overall.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

No, and the good and the beautiful is very heavy on spelling and grammar and all of those things that I feel like are so important, and so I think we're just catching up now.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

And they're important to me, which I I hate that I feel this way, but I do get a lot of emails, and I try not to judge, but but I mean, my immediate thought when people can't spell and their grammar is terrible is that they're not very smart.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

And I don't want anybody maybe it was just like spell check.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

It could have been, and that's probably what it is. But and and I hate that. I know that's a bad way to feel, but that's just my immediate thought, and I don't want that to be anybody's immediate thought of my children, so it's important.

Faster Learning With One-On-One

SPEAKER_00 15:18

No, I feel the same way when I see like there or there or the two or the two wrong. I'm like, I told Taylor, you cannot get this wrong, you will look like an idiot. Right. So I do feel the same way for sure. Another thing that I think we've talked about a little bit about this, but they have learned a lot so fast. And all the research says that, oh, you'd only need two hours, it's more efficient, you're one-on-one with them, it's gonna go quicker. But now we have actually seen it, and I'm just like blown away by the progress. Like, I can't even tell you. I think it comes from just being in the public school system, knowing how that works, and you know, meeting with the teacher to see their middle of the year and end of the year checklists and all of that, and just being like, how have we not accomplished this yet? And why did we not know this was a problem and just fix it already? And then we have the reins now, and I'm like, Scotty's reading exploded. Like, we did that, and they've got their timetables down, and all of these huge things have happened in just a matter of a few months, and it's actually so nice. But it was one of the things that surprised me the most because the one-on-one learning and being able to do it their way and have them ask questions and know how they're doing it without getting left behind in the classroom is crazy.

Finding Joy In Teaching

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Yeah, that's true. Well, one thing that surprised me so much was how much I would enjoy teaching my children. I know that sounds like I'm not usually the oh, we'll just love everything, it's so great all the time. I'm not that person. But I think part of the reason I was so surprised is that I was going into this, like, not gonna enjoy this, but it needs to be done. That was kind of my attitude, which is a crappy attitude, but it's the way I felt. And it's mostly because I had done some tutoring and I just I didn't feel like I was very good at it and I didn't enjoy it. But it's just it's a lot different when you're teaching your own children. You care a lot more, first of all, if they actually learn the material. Maybe that's why I was a bad tutor, but um and and I mean our kids are smart, that helps, that makes it easier. There's not very much frustration because you explain a concept and they get it. I don't know how I would deal with it if I explain a concept and they didn't get it, because that hasn't really happened yet.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Well, we keep missing periods, and that's very frustrating to me. So that's laziness.

Less Anxiety, More Sleep, More Downtime

SPEAKER_02 17:50

That frustrates me. Now that's different, but I feel like that's solvable by extra work. You missed a period writing one sentence, now you gotta write three sentences with periods. You missed that, now you gotta write nine, and then we'll just keep doing that until we write periods.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, we did make them start writing more if they didn't just like do those little things, and so that's actually nipped it in the bud pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

You need to use capital letters where you're supposed to, and you need to put periods in proper punctuation, and you need to write legibly. And if you do those things, you're good. If not, you're gonna get more work.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

I'm like, where's your conjunction? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

That that laziness or the laziness of when they misspell a word that's in the passage, the question or the passage. And I'm like, okay, if you know how to spell something, that's one thing. We'll work on that. But it's in the passage, you just were too lazy to go and look at the word and jot it down. Like, no, that's not cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

We could go all day on this, but I am surprised that you said that. It was not on my list, but I felt the same way because I was kind of surprised by like what they knew in some things. And when I know when Scotty like got her reading down, because we had been working on it for months, I just felt like we hadn't made much progress because we couldn't stick to it every night. Then when she did, I was like tearing up when she was reading the book.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

I was like, oh my god, it's so fun to watch them, you know, get these new concepts. I mean, I think we told y'all in another episode we went out to dinner, we had like, you know, we call it kids' champagne, it's you know, sparkling cider, but we celebrated, you know, because she finished her her reading program and I mean she could read. The program was correct. You could read when you're done with it. But it's anything, it's any new concept, especially that's what I enjoy the most, especially when it's a concept I think is important, and then they master it. Sometimes we get into some things, and like, which one's a parallelogram and which one's a rhombus, and which I'm like, eh, I don't know. I mean, that's fine. We'll learn it because it's in the book. But but whenever they're like, here's long division, and then your kid gets it, and then it feels really nice.

ADHD Thriving With Responsibility

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, I totally agree. So the next one on my list, and this was a big one for me, is that our kids are happier and less anxious. They just all of those little problems that we were dealing with when we were sending them to school, I don't know where the anxiety was coming from, whether it was from testing or from getting up early in the morning and not really having downtime, or if it was from, you know, drills at school. I know some of their friends would get really upset when they would do like drills for tornadoes or shooter drills or things like that. They didn't like that. I don't know where it's coming from for our kids, but their just overall demeanor, their confidence is back, their happiness is back. They they're not anxious kids. They're not anxious about anything, they're not stressed about anything. They are just happy go lucky all the time. And I love that.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

I think a big part of it has to be getting enough sleep. I mean, kids need 10 to 12 hours hours of sleep at the ages our kids are, preferably 12 for if they're going through growth spurt. I mean, that's what all the doctors say. I'm not making this up. And whenever they're consistently getting seven and eight, then their anxiety levels go up, their depression levels go up. This is for anybody. Now, we don't need 12 hours, we need seven or eight. But when we get five or six as adults, our depression goes up, our anxiety goes up. So, yeah, I mean, that's a big part of it.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Yeah.

Fewer Sibling Fights, Closer Bonds

SPEAKER_02 21:16

And but but yeah, there's a lot of other things too. I mean, we were also we're overscheduled and overburdened and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

So it's almost hard not to when you're sending your kids to school because school seems like that's the thing they do, but then you want to do things with them too, right? And you, if they want to do basketball and that's something that you love, of course you want to do that. But you can quickly fill up too much time in their day just doing something like that, or maybe you want to get them in piano lessons or whatever. And I think that is basically what our oldest was telling us was that I need more downtime. I need time to like be. I need time without people telling me where to be and telling me it's seven o'clock, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta get to volleyball. I gotta do this. I just need time to be a kid. And kids just can't put it into words. But that's what she needed. And that's what she has now.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yeah. And that a lot of that she earns the even more downtime by, and this is, I think, one of the things on your list by being more responsible.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yes, it is. This is a bit this was a huge surprise for us that our kid that has ADHD is literally thriving with this. She's taking on responsibility. She takes initiative. She wants to get up. She wants to do her work. She does it mostly by herself. She does a great job. She stays organized. She stays on schedule. She stays on routine. And this is a completely different child than the child that was in public school.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Sailor has been so much more responsible. I mean, she comes in here to the homeschool room and grabs her books for the next day, but she takes them up to her room so that she can work on them in the nice, quiet, distraction-free morning. And I think she gets the work done so much faster that way, and she knows it. And that's one of the reasons she wants to do it. And it just frees her up to have more free time during the day.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, I think her biggest thing is that she needed just some more control of her day, and she has that now. And we were just both very pleasantly surprised that it wasn't difficult with our ADHD kit. It's actually been so much better for her. So I've got a lot of questions on that, so I wanted to make sure we talked about it. But the next big thing on our list was that we thought going into this, our kids would fight much, much more than they did before. And we were actually wrong. Our kids actually are getting a well so much better now, even though we're together 24-7.

Dodging Phone And Preteen Drama

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Yeah, you would think if we were together more, they would fight more, but they just they just don't. I mean, it used to be a bloodbath in the car every day. The second they get in the car from school, it was terrible. They would be at each other's throats. And I think that was just because they were so cooped up all day and they had to stay acting a certain way all day that they didn't have any more ability to just restrain themselves.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

But that's a total thing. Like they have a name for it, but it happens to like everyone. I thought, what's what the heck is going on? Like they would be fighting before they got into the car. Like they would be like pushing each other and trying to get in, and that would start a fight in the parking lot, and then it was just horrible. All the way home, the 10 minutes felt like 10 hours because they were just in the worst moods and fighting all the time, and we don't have that anymore. They don't act like different people middle of the day.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

Yeah, it's great.

Parents Are Happier Too

SPEAKER_00 24:48

So that was a big one for us. People ask me all the time if they fight all the time. And our kids are at prime ages for kids to fight, but the fighting has gotten so much better. They they rarely do fight, they're usually just you know coming against us, us against them. Yeah, we're outnumbered. Now, the next thing on my list was just that it kind of goes with the fighting, they're just so much closer, and I love that. And I think that that makes sense thinking about it now because they do spend more time together, they have their little inside jokes, they know what they're doing together, they just hang out more and they are they're slowly building that relationship instead of being at school all day. And I don't, I just love it. I had a post about that this week, and a lot of people agreed with me that their kids were like went from like hating each other or would say that they hated each other to like claiming that they were best friends once they started homeschooling.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

And that's what you hope for because you know, some people are lucky that they make it through school and they have these best friends and they stay best friends for life, but for most people that's not what happens. But your family is your family for life, and it's really nice if you can be close.

Kids Don’t Want To Go Back

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Well, next on my list was just the phone drama and the teen drama and the preteen drama. It's just I mean, I knew that would come with homeschooling because we're sheltering them a bit from those things, but it's just really nice because Sailor was picking up things at school and I didn't necessarily like the attitude toward me and you, and well, why should I have to do that and things like that? And it's not really her personality, she's pretty like happy go-lucky, and we've we're pretty it's pretty easy with her. So homeschooling definitely has like brought her back to just her being herself and not having that attitude, which I mean I'm sure that we will get some more of that as she becomes a teenager, but I do think homeschooling you get to avoid some of that.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

What is on your list?

SPEAKER_02 26:57

We already did everything on my list. Oh, okay. My list was a lot shorter than yours.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Well, I have a few more on my list. Another thing that surprised me was that I'm happier homeschooling. I think that because it seemed like it would be much harder, and everyone tells you it's gonna be much harder, and everyone says, Oh, I could never do that. I had it in my head that I would be doing it because it's good for my kids. I wouldn't do it because it made me happier, but I'm much happier and less anxious and less stressed, just like we talked about earlier with the kids because we're homeschooling. So that was a huge shock for me how much I liked it.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Yeah, me too. I already said that one though. See, you didn't have more on your list, you just copied me.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

You said that you liked teaching.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Oh, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

I just mean overall I'm happier. I'm happier because I don't have to wake up and have three kids, like, one of them crying because they don't want to go to school, one of them saying they hate school and like start our mornings off bad every day.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

And the third one just remembered that they have to have something that they don't sell at Walmart and that we can't get before school.

Try It, You Can Always Return

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Yes, and then you driving them to school and dropping them off, and then you forgot the bear that they were supposed to have for their classroom that day, and then we have to drink drive it back up there, and it was just like so much. I just so much happier now not having to do all that. And I thought I might be somewhat miserable some days being at home with my kids all day, every day.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

Yeah, but no, not really.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Another big shock for me is that they don't want to go back to school.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

No, none of them.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Because, you know, once you tell everyone like I'm gonna homeschool, and you come from a family that doesn't homeschool and you don't really know that many homeschooling people, and you, you know, kind of cross that bridge and you tell them and you're scared, it's kind of hard to go back and backtrack. So that was kind of like on my thing was like, oh, I hope we don't have to be like, well, it didn't work out just like you said it wouldn't. So here we are, we're going back to school. And it hasn't been that way. And actually the kids love it so much. We're always like, Do you want to go back to school? And they say, Absolutely not. And then now we threaten them, like if you don't do your work, I guess you're just gonna have to go back to public school. And they're like, No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

And that's not us punishing you. That's just, I mean, if you don't learn anything, then you do have to go to school. That's how that's how it goes.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Yeah, absolutely. So I thought that that was a very nice surprise that I was kind of scared that we would hate it and that they would be like, Oh, I don't want to be around y'all. Like, never mind, take me back to school. And I'm really glad that they didn't, they're not.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Yeah, I think it will be really hard for them to imagine not homeschooling their kids after because that's mostly what they're gonna know.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah, I think usually that's the people that homeschool are the people that were homeschooled because they like it, you know. And like I, we sent our kids to public school because we liked public school, and things have just changed a lot, so we changed our mind. And a lot of times I feel like people don't change their mind easily, especially whenever it's hard and it's hard to change, and it changes your entire life. We had we basically changed everything about our life, and so it is surprising whenever it goes this way, and we're the people that were like team public school, and then we're like, oh no, now we're homeschool people. So I think that they will definitely have it on their radar for sure.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Well, that wraps it up. I don't have any more on my list if you don't have any last sneaky ones.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

Nope, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I thought this would be really helpful for all of the people I know that are listening now that are just like thinking about homeschooling, but they just haven't quite jumped in yet. And this is like a nice look at all the things that maybe we thought would go wrong, but they didn't necessarily, and they turned out differently.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Yeah, yeah. And if you are thinking about it, just remember that they can go back. I I don't think you're gonna want to, and I don't think they're gonna want to, but they can. It's really easy to send them right back if you need to.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Yeah, I always say you can always try something. There's no reason that you can't do something different. So if you're thinking about homeschooling, just try it for the year or even say we're gonna do it for one semester and see how it goes. You do not have to commit for life.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

That's right after we just said we changed our whole life, but you don't have to change your whole life to do it. We did, but you don't have to.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

I just meant meaning we had friends that went to school and we did all the school things, and everything was our whole life revolved around the school. And then now we had to make new friends that are homeschool people, and we had to get in homeschool activities and we had to rearrange our work schedule. So, yes, it is a lot of change. I just mean don't be scared to do it because you always have the option of going back and being like, nope, this actually worked better.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Yeah, for sure. Well, that's all we have for today. So until next time, thank you so much for listening to Well, this was the Plan Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

We will do really hard on this podcast. Make Doku Skype so you don't miss a single podcast episode. Thank you, have a good day.