Why “Struggling” Kids Are Often the Most Brilliant

In this episode of HOMESCHOOL REVOLUTION, I dive deep into one of the most important conversations homeschool parents can have: how to help children who struggle inside traditional education systems finally thrive. From dyslexia and ADHD to anxiety, sensory challenges, and emotional overwhelm, I share what I’ve learned after homeschooling five children for over 24 years, including raising dyslexic kids myself.

I open up about the emotional journey of watching my own children struggle with reading, confidence, and self-esteem before discovering that many so-called “learning disabilities” are actually signs of different kinds of brilliance. I share how the book The Dyslexic Advantage completely changed the way our family approached education and helped my children begin seeing themselves as capable, intelligent, and gifted instead of “behind.”

In this episode, we also talk about:

• Why ADHD and dyslexia can become superpowers in the right environment
• How public school environments can increase anxiety and emotional dysregulation
• The importance of safety, sleep, nutrition, and emotional connection before academics
• Why homeschool environments help many children finally relax and learn
• How to identify different learning styles and strengths
• Raising mechanically-minded vs. language-minded children
• Practical homeschooling encouragement for foster and adopted children
• Helping reluctant readers and writers gain confidence
• Why many homeschool families struggle during the 10–14 age transition
• The power of co-ops, community, and finding support as a homeschool parent
• How My Homeschool Village was created to support overwhelmed homeschool moms

I also answer questions from parents about IEPs, public school burnout, homeschooling one child, curriculum overwhelm, co-ops, online learning, and balancing homeschooling with work and family life.

This episode is a powerful reminder that children are not one-size-fits-all, and that many kids who feel “behind” in traditional systems are actually incredibly gifted when they’re given the freedom, support, and environment they truly need to flourish.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Homeschool Revolution. I'm Rebecca Stromsdorfer, homeschool mommified for over 20 years, and I've been coaching moms just like you for decades. I've done this messy, done it wrong, and figured it out as I went. This podcast is for the working mom, single mom, stay-at-home mom, and yes, dads too. Any parent who is done with the old way and ready to raise creative, confident kids who actually change the world. This isn't just homeschooling. This is a revolution. Let's get into it. Okay, so going live, helping you homeschool your children. Rebecca here, homeschool mom to five kids for over 24 years, and I am here to help you answer your questions, do what I can to guide you along. You'll have to forgive me today. I'm not feeling so great. I've got a kidney stone and I'm trying to get it passed. So I'm gonna be drinking a ton, but I wanted to come live because I had a lot of questions yesterday from my last live, and so I'm here to help you as we go along. So there's a couple of people, several parents I was talking to yesterday. So as you are homeschooling, wanting to homeschool, trying to get your homeschool better, uh, you are always welcome to private message me at any time, and I always try to get back to you as soon as possible. And I do voice messages because it's faster. Anyway, I was hoping about four or five different parents yesterday on Messenger, and it was awesome. And it made me think of a few things that I know you probably need to hear. So, number one, let's talk about dyslexia. Okay, this is a big deal. I raised two children who were dyslexic, and it was a very long process at first because we didn't understand what was happening, and our my two children just wouldn't learn to read, and they struggled, and they thought they were stupid, and it was a self-esteem issue, plus all kinds of things. And so finally, a friend, I think I was at a homeschool conference, and a woman recommended the book, The Dyslexic Advantage. Now, the book that's a dyslexic advantage, it actually, by the time you're done reading it, you actually wish you had dyslexia. Like if you don't have it, you you actually realize that there's so many amazing things with it that you actually wish you had dyslexia. Kind of funny. But the book I checked it out and then I read it out loud to my struggling readers. And as we were reading it out loud as a family, they would go, Oh my gosh, that's me. Mom, that's what I think. Oh my gosh, that's what I and they like lights started going on. And by the time they were done, we were done reading the book together, they didn't think they were stupid anymore. They didn't think that they were lacking anymore. They actually saw themselves as genius, and it built their self-esteem and it helped them see how to learn differently. And they would remind me later, Mom. Remember in the book it says, I need these things. And so reading the book, The Dyslexic Advantage, helped my children and me homeschool differently. We homeschooled differently after reading that book. And I even looked at all my children a little differently. They may not have had dyslexia, but they but it did make me realize that child different children think differently. And there are skills that come with the weakness. So, say ADHD, right? The world is always like, it's a problem, it's an excuse to not get things done. When in reality, ADHD is actually a superpower, it's not an excuse, it's it's actually something that you should be able to tap into and really learn how to use properly. I was talking to a mom yesterday, and she has a child who's dyslexic. She's in seventh grade, she's struggling, and so we started talking, and I keep hoping she pops up in here. I did let her know I'd be live, but I don't know if she's gonna make it. Maybe she'll watch the video later. Um, my boys don't have dyslexia, but they have many other challenges. Most boys do. The education system is not built for boys, it is not built for boys in the way their brains work. How old are your kids, Catherine? Um, ADHD. I have children with that. I myself have ADHD, but we've learned to not make it a weakness but a strength. As we've learned the strengths that come with it, we have been able to change our homeschooling around those strengths and what we do, how we do it. Very important thing to learn. So when you go into homeschooling, thinking like a public school system where the spectrum is bad, which once again I find an absolute strength. A child on the spectrum, I can tell you that story if anybody's interested. Um ADHD, the world says is bad. No, not if you're homeschooling and you know how to make it a superpower. Dyslexia is actually not bad. It's something you need to work with, but it actually comes with signs of all kinds of amazing strengths. And so you need to read the book, The Dyslexic Banage, Advantage, um, all of these things that schools create IEPs for, specific or 504s or whatever it is that's going on, the schools label as a problem. And all it means is the child needs some different education than what the school system generally provides. But as a homeschooler, you can create that system, you can learn the strengths, and then you base their education on those strengths, and then the weaknesses take care of themselves as you work on them. Hi, Yvonne. Come on in. What challenges, Catherine, are your boys having and how old are they? I have a 10-year-old that has severe ADHD makes anxiety, depression, go with intellectually developmentally delayed, and a nine-year-old who has severe ADHD makes an anxiety. He also has DMDD. They are both children and care due to their birth parents if I get shoes alcohol issues. Okay, so they're adopted. Okay. So learning has been very challenging at the school level. I have just been given permission to homeschool the nine-year-old starting in September, and I'm really excited about it. Okay. Oh, because they're adopted are they adopted or foster? I don't know what DMDD means. Sorry. You're gonna have to fill me in on that. Hi, Jordan. Do you have to get permission to homeschool or can you just homeschool them? So here's what I've discovered. And this is I help thousands of homeschool families, you guys, thousands. I've been doing this for 20 years. And something I've discovered is children who struggle with anxiety, severe anxieties because they're in the public school system. So pulling them out of the public school system, a child with ADHD, yes, has severe anxiety inside a public school system because it's everything against the way we think. So as an ADHD person myself, the public school system stressed me out. I struggled with it. I got all the way through it, but barely because I was told I was stupid, because I liked to move a lot. Uh oh, disruptive. Oh, you're right, you're right. Thank you. Disruptive move dysuregulation disorder, and they are foster. I'm their stepgrandma, they call me mom, and are in Canada. Okay, Canada, I get it. Okay. I Nicole, you gave up my life. Good, because you're next. I'm keeping your comments from last night next. Okay, and so what I've discovered is all children who go to public school suffer with anxiety. When you bring them home and you create an environment of safety, don't jump into a curriculum. You don't bring them home in homeschool and jump into a curriculum. The first thing you need to do is create a space of safety. So a child who's been going to public school, and even especially if they've been in the foster system, they are unsafe. They always feel unsafe. And there is, and so what you do is you bring them home and you create a safe environment. You make sure their diet is good. Because if they're going to school, their diet is not good. It's not. So you bring them home, you increase their protein, you increase their sleep. You make sure they're getting their 12 hours a day. Yes, 12 hours a day. You make sure that they're getting all the protein, their sugar levels have dropped. You make sure they're not getting the junk, you get their diets healthy, and what you do is you work on the body, and then you get the body working right, they're getting enough sleep in the right foods, then you work on their spirits and you just create a safety. You just let them know they're safe. When a child has a strong body and feels safe, you can't stop their learning. Okay, the learning will take off, they'll just find things and not be able to get enough. Now, if they are not feeling safe and their bodies aren't functioning, you can't get them to learn anything. I don't care what curriculum you use, it is impossible to teach a child who is not emotionally and physically safe. So, as you bring them home, remember it's about body and mind first. Like focus there, get their spirits good. Once they trust that they don't have to go back to school and it's not coming back, and their bodies begin to relax and they're getting the sleep they need and they're getting the proteins that they need and all the healthy vegetables that they're not getting at school, you will see a huge change in their personality, and then you won't be able to stop their learning. Okay, remember that as you're bringing them home. And you'll watch ADHD change. A lot of kids have worse ADHD because they don't get enough sleep. You'll watch the ADHD also calm because you'll be able to control the diet. I have one child that I had to keep an eye on. He wouldn't eat, he just didn't understand hunger. I don't know why hunger pains to him. He was like, Why does my stomach hurry here? I'm like, I don't know, try eating something and it would go away. And this was like at 15. I'm like, dude, he just never ate. And then and he was grumpy and he was mean and he had severe ADHD. And then finally, the first thing I started to learn is get him up, get him protein. And as soon as I got him protein, he was sweet the rest of the day. That boy. He is 19 years old now and understands that the first thing he needs to do every time he wakes up in the morning is protein. Both my boys are that way, they just don't get hungry. I don't know why. And so I've had to literally be like, go go eat protein, drink a protein drink, here's your eggs every morning. Like, get started. And it changed their personalities. Hunger will do that. So you teach them to listen to their bodies to eat. You teach them, you think it's basic, but it's not as basic as we think. Nicole, I'm so glad you made it. All right. Yvonne, Tammy, hi Catherine, Diane. May you made it! I was just talking about your daughter. You have seen this first time, Nicole, right? Hi Jordan, hi Joseph, hi Casey. Um, I know they don't recognize the signs of hunger and they don't get hangry, and then they're at school all day, and so you don't know. And then they're misbehaving in school because they're hungry, they're tired, right? And then they feed them a lunch at school, which is total crap and full of additives, which makes them act worse. And so you're just in this loop. So you bring them home, get them healthy, then worry about the curriculum. My behind child just completed almost two years of language arts once I brought her home. Uh-huh. Because she's healthy now, she's safe, right? Isn't that awesome? May, I want to talk to you about your daughter. Okay, guys, I'm gonna give you a little bit of background here. Um, and I hope this is okay, May, that I'm giving this information because I think this will help a lot of women and men. This will help. You ordered the book last night. Yes, okay. I want to tell you what happened. Okay, I'm gonna give you the full story here. My first child, a girl, is like little miss first child, gets everything right, no problem, gets everything done. Okay. Like, it wouldn't matter if she went to public or private school, she would have thrived because she's an oldest. Child number two, who was only 12 months younger, by the way. Yeah, that was an oops, but yeah, she was not that way. Um, she came out of the box like she had different parents this one. She didn't read, she wouldn't read. My oldest was reading at four. She just taught herself because she wanted to. Child number two was struggling how to read still at six and seven and eight. And I was like, what is wrong with this kid? And I'm thinking something's wrong with me, something's wrong with her. I'm having her tested for all the things. We did find out she couldn't hear as well as we thought, and so she was struggling. So we got our hearing fixed. The dyslexic advantage, Nicole. If you have a dyslexic child, get the dyslexic advantage. So I'm struggling with the second child and can't get her to read, can't figure out what's going on. And a friend of mine suggested getting the dyslexic advantage, the a book on dyslexia and how dyslexics think. And what it does is it literally teaches you, it gives you examples, but it literally shows you how brilliant a child is who has dyslexia, how to educate the way they think because they don't think the same. It's like everybody in school is supposed to be on this path, but dyslexics are doing this and they don't understand it. But really, the truth is it's a brilliance. And so what I read it out loud to her, the two of us discovered her absolute brilliance, which it really is, and then she started to flourish. She got this new confidence. Well, around 14, she finally hit the reading. We were working on a writing. It took forever, you guys. It took forever to get her writing until finally she was like, Okay, mom, I'll do it. I taught her Google so she could at least type because she struggled so much with her handwriting. Her brain worked faster than her hand could keep up. So she started doing typing. And then within a couple of years, and I and I did make her copy work and journal. That's all we did for her writing. Copy work. When you're dyslexic, you need to copy work. Copy, copy, copy, copy for years, guys. It's years. And then when she was ready to write on her own, it was journal. Every day write in a journal, and that was it. I promise not to read it. Now going back, she'll let me read pages, and they're hilarious. But she then went from hating reading, writing until from until like the age of 14 to all of a sudden wanting to write chapter books. She has chapter book after chapter book written on her Google Docs that have like she's now going back over and fixing. She's 23 now. She's a mechanic. She got, she became a mechanic and a writer. And that girl can fix anything. At eight years old, she asked me, Mom, the washer broke, and dad was out of town, and I was stressed. And she goes, Mom, can I do it? So I found her YouTube video, stuck it in front of her, walked away to take care of a crying baby, came back and she fixed the washer at eight years old. Because that's how her brain works. It was more mechanical. And that's when I realized mechanical brains and language brains don't do the same thing. My first daughter speaks two languages. Um, it is music, language, she just has this vocabulary and understanding. My second child struggled with language her whole life, but then uh mechanically and mathematically, brilliant. This child could build anything, create anything. We we call it her name's Aria, and she ariifies things. She just makes them blingier, prettier, and she has this amazing talent. And now at 23, she is sharing it with the world as a female mechanic. Problem is she's 5'2, teeny tiny, gorgeous, and that's hard to be a mechanic when you look like that. And nobody trusted that she had the knowledge. So there's some issues she's having to work with. Um, all right, let me get back on some of this. So may that source for you. And if your daughter wants to give her a little call, I will connect her with my daughter. I will. Uh Jordan, CPS involved for pulling my five-year-old from Ritalin. Really? Homeschooled kindergarten almost full year, put back in public school because one year old got a cancer diagnosis for routine. Oh my gosh. He did daycare and preschool. Want to revisit homeschool soon. Hearing yes, he had to get tubes. Oh my goodness. Goodness. My daughter had some kind of like an allergy, and they said she was hearing like she was underwater and she had to take Benadryl and it cleared up her hearing. It was like, what? Then I found out all my kids had severe allergies. It was crazy. Um, that is crazy, Jordan. But if you are so you going to be homeschooling now, you're gonna pull them out and homeschool them now? Or do you still need help? Like, where are you at on this? Because wow, that's a lot to take on. Okay, I've got like my homeschool village is replying to. That's not how's that working? Okay, Nicole, this is my big hesitation with becoming a foster parent because in Indiana we don't have a choice to homeschool them. Oh, and homeschooling my own kids means that would be a big divine, not divide, not to mention what the foster kid would bring home from school. Yeah. I agree. I always wanted to be a homeschool, I always wanted to foster and adopt. And we when we prayed about it and prayed about it and prayed about it, the Lord kept saying, No, that's not gonna be your calling. And it was something that was hard to swallow. Hi, Brittany. But boy, I admire those who do. Oh, I love hearing what you do and what you go through. And there's a lot of states that have no problem with homeschooling for foster kids. So, May, you'd love that. Let me know. My daughter loves to connect with other girls, it especially that have that same like style. Like, my daughter will create the coolest Lego things. Origami was her favorite. Before she even knew what origami was, she just spent all this time in a room one day. She came and asked me for a bunch of paper and tape. I'm like, here you go, paper and tape. No idea what she was doing. Then she brings down after hours of silence, I'm like, You good? She's like, Yeah, I'm working on something. Um, she brought it in and she had created an entire dollhouse for herself out of paper and tape, folded a chair and a table and a kitchen, and I and had taped it together. And that's when I was like, Okay, you are not the child, like your first year older sister, you have talents I did not know about. And she has been our little origami queen and our mechanic. Um Ashley, is it possible to homeschool one child? Oh heck yeah. Heck yeah. Um, FYI on that. So here's what I do recommend if you're homeschooling only one child. It is harder to homeschool one than multiple because your child wants more attention from you. Hi, Karen. And so it is, it can be a little harder. However, for a one child, I recommend you need to join some form of a co-op. So a co-op is when multiple homeschoolers get together and everybody teaches something, and it's like you create kind of a class. Now, sometimes those work, sometimes those don't. You can join my homeschool village. We have an online co-op. So we provide the curriculum in the more in the morning, you get the curriculum must-dos, as I call it, like reading, writing, math, right? In the afternoon, you can join our online live classes and he can make friends. So you just gotta make sure he's making friends somehow. He's getting out somehow to give you a break, really, if nothing else, right? You got a foster license for sleep. May congratulations! Good for you, right? She loves origami. I don't know what it is. So does my other my son, who's also got the same like mechanical, he's also an origami kid. I it's interesting. Brittany says, right now I have one that does homeschool. We have three in public. I'm feeling called to pull them out for the next year. Good for you. Good for you. What help do you need? Or what's keeping you from doing it? I find that homeschooling is a calling, you guys. You it has to be a calling. You have to feel the call from God because of the rough days. There are too many rough days when the world is against you and you wonder if you're even doing it right. And then, and so that calling gets you through those days. And it is a calling, it is the highest calling, in my opinion. Nicole asks, what state are you in, May? Are you able to homeschool foster kiddos? Yeah, May is North Carolina. We have to be in public school, but we get to pick the school. Oh, you can't. Interesting. Hi Rose. May says we also have the option to pay for them to be in private school. Can they do online private school? Because sometimes you can get around it. So my homeschool village is considered an online private homeschool. Now, private schools. Here's what's interesting. Private school, the law to create a private school is actually kind of funny. You might ask if you can do a private online school. Because if that if that's the case, you can actually use my homeschool village. Hi, Charlie Jo Wright. Welcome. We're talking about homeschooling today. I'm Rebecca Homeschool Mom25 Children for over 20 years and owner of my homeschool village. My homeschool village is a community for parents where we meet up and we support each other, but then it's also an online curriculum and an online co-op where the afternoons our kids get together and are taught by teachers, depending on their age, their interest, and what we've got going on. And then in the mornings, they're get using the curriculums and they're getting their reading, writing, math done. And so we've created an online co-op. Now, for new homeschoolers, sometimes you're like, What the heck's a co-op? Co-ops originated when, like, and when I was in Maryland and started homeschooling 20 years ago, basically, the only co-ops we did was like, I had two friends who also homeschooled, or maybe we met at gymnastics or something, and we started talking. We're like, oh, your kid's my kid's age. Do you have a co-op? Do you want to create one? Hey, I'll host it. I'll teach English. I'll teach right. And we and then we just got together at one of our homes, and everybody taught something and one day a week, and it was awesome. And we were skipping around every couple of years, we'd they changed and we'd go to a different co-op. Well, now co-ops have changed a lot since COVID, and there's a lot of micro schools. So micro schools are where people will actually pay and then just go get like electives, um, things like that. But we have created an online co-op because we had a community of moms and we decided to just work together and educate our kids together. And so that's what we're doing but online and all over the country. Jessica says, Okay, my twins are supposed to start kindergarten pre-K has been rough with the school. I'm not surprised. Uh, I don't I work during the day and don't want to put the schooling on my mom, but the school has pushed me too far. Woo, yeah. Um, so what are you gonna do? Are you gonna try to homeschool and let mom do it? So, one of the things we do actually have several parents who have signed up for my homeschool village, put their kids on our program. Um, and then grandma or grandpa are following up and making sure it's getting done, and then mom just makes sure, like checks in and stuff, and then grandma or grandpa are like, Did you get your stuff done? Did you go to your classes today? And just keeping on top of that. We do actually have several families like that inside my homeschool village. Brittany says public school just does not cater to them like they need. Agreed. My husband gets husband getting on board has been the hurdle. The boys are. Nine, nine, and ten. My oldest is high school and can do a lot of independent work. Totally agree with that. My husband was the hardest to get on board. I had to just be like, look, I just need you to trust me, give me a year. If you don't love it, we'll we'll reassess and rediscuss, but give me a year. And we had to go through that. My husband is from South America, and in South America, this is not done. My husband came to America in his 20s and he's like, I fought really hard to live in the US so my kids could be educated in the US and you want to pull them from these systems? Because the systems here are at least 10 times better than they were in Colombia. But so we had that conversation. We had it, it was years before my husband was convinced. Now he's like, best thing ever, so glad we did it, and tells the world. So if you need a conversation with my husband, let me know. He has actually jumped on a phone call multiple times with other men and gone, look, what's your problem? Trust your wife. Let it happen. So if you need that, let me know. Do you think you need to find a co-op to homeschool? No, you don't need to. I find it important only because mom needs a break. So the co-op is nice for your kids. Take it or leave it for your kids. Now, if they don't have siblings, definitely. If they have siblings, not necessarily. I needed it for my sanity. So for mom's sanity, unless you have a really good flow where your kids work together and you can get, like if your kids are a little older and you can leave the house and run some errands or you can get a break here and there, I needed it for my sanity. And I still do. I still like it. My kids are now 14 and 16, and I still like them to be gone once a day or once a week. They're in a co-op once a week here. I go drop them off. And I'll be honest, I don't love the co-op. It's not like the best education, but they're getting out, they're being exposed to other religions, other people, other colors, other everything. And they're not there for education. They're there to be out in the world and give me a break. And that's okay. Um, says no, it has to be an actual school, but we picked younger aged kids, so we are okay with it for now. Oh, smart. So that it has to be a physical school. Because there are a lot of online schools that qualify as schools. It's just that so interesting that they set that precedence, but unless they're adopted, I guess. I get it. I get it, especially because they're in a system and you know. I I'm not gonna have any opinions on that one. On your own kids, if you can homeschool them homeschool them. The fact is that you're providing a safe environment for them, and that's what matters. Uh Nicole says, yeah, but as we discussed, my co-op isn't exactly a break for me. Yeah. Nicole. Yes, they need a co-op. Does it need to be ran by mom? No. So this is why everybody's dumping on you, Nicole. Because they because you let them. Um, because they want the break. And they are dumping on you to get the break. And so everybody's getting a break but you. But you're not benefiting from it because you're not getting a break and you're not getting money for it. So it's not really helping you and your family in any way but causing stress. And it's and so do they need a co-op? If it's good and you can drop them. The one I just we just paid a thousand dollars for my two children to take a full day every Tuesday for four months. It hurt. I did not love paying that. Now, I did that because they also do my homeschool village classes, they also do the live classes inside, but it was because I was just like, Can I just not have children around me for a day a week? I love that day. Electronic-wise, are your kids getting online or morning or evening sessions individually? Do they each have a Chromebook or iPad? So my children, my husband is a NASA geek, you guys. He's a NASA engineer. It's all about the tech. So he's always looking for deals on Facebook. He's got all the kids' good computers, but he got them all really cheap on Facebook. Somebody's selling, he knows a good deal, bought everything. You can go to there, you can go to um Walmart has refurbished Chromebooks. You can get refurbished Chromebooks for 50 bucks. So you can go there. Amazon has refurbished Chromebooks for like 50 bucks. You can go those, they'll last a year or two, maybe. But yes, my kids all have computers, so I can't show you now because they're working. But I have we took our dining room area, and my desk is there, and my kids both have desks right next to me, and I can see their work at all time. Everybody can see everybody's screens. When this is how I run my homeschool village while they're homeschooling, we all get on in the morning, they're getting their homework done. I'm working on my homeschool village, they get their homeschool done, and then in the afternoons they get on their classes. I work on other things. Sometimes I take a nap and they get online and they play games with friends online, but they've earned it, they've done their jobs, they've worked, and they're not on the computer all day. This is probably three days a week. Thursdays we do like their classes, they're in karate or uh self-defense, whatever you want to call it. They do archery. Um, they've got some classes on Thursdays, some music classes, things like that, run errands. We do Thursdays is like run the house day. And they do it all with me. They shop with me, they learn how to they keep me in a budget there, and then Friday is like day off. Like we sleep in if we didn't get sleep that week. We go play, we try something new, but we don't worry about academics. We really only worry about academics three days a week. That's it. And they have been able to not just keep up with but surpass the public school system on that. So yeah, my kids all do it individually, but they are 14 and 16. Now, when they were before the age of 10, I think we had one computer we shared, and it was just like I would put one kid on a computer, one kid in my lap, one kid at the table, and we'd just shift. Something like that. Hi, Sonia. Oh my gosh, my therapist and his says this to me too probably means something. Nicole, stop letting people walk on you. My mom used to say when she would see us starting to do these behaviors, my mom would say, I did not raise a doormat. And that was like, that has stuck in my head. You are not a doormat. You deserve respect. Don't let people walk on you. Uh, but if I'm still in the early years of homeschooling where I really do want my kids home with me all the time, I just don't trust anyone. But I know that means I need to find a way for breaks for us all for sure. Hence why I'm really trying to figure out how to make the homeschool village to work for us. Do you have scholarships for families? We don't yet, but I have actually been considering putting out a scholarship application. I want to do scholarships, and I, now that you mentioned that, I think I'm put out a scholarship application. I should. I really need to do that. I think that's a great idea. Um we have helped families in the past. We had one sweet girl who was in the village for about a year, and then her mom just up and passed away out of the blue. She stayed in the village for as long as her grandparents would let her, and she was just one of us. And the teachers just took her in and mommed the heck out of that cute girl until finally her grandparents were like, We're putting her back in school, and we all just cried. But um, it happens. So I I can work on that. But like I said, if you go in, start with the $10 a month and then just start sharing the link and sharing it and sharing it, it'll pay for itself. Um May says, only if we adopt we can homeschool, but we will be a safe place and trust God for the rest. Yeah. And it's okay. Uh we don't do co-ops anymore. My girls want to do sister field trips instead. Oh, that's adorable. Hi, Charlie. Nicole, sign up for the 10. So, my homeschool village. So, okay. I, as a homeschooler, I've been homeschooling for 20 years, and we've lived in three different states. So I've had a lot of friends homeschooling, and I can't tell you how many I would sit with as they cried and said I have to put my kid back in school because I have to go work or because I got a divorce, or because my husband just left, or because, and now, now not only is mom financially like crippled, but now her children have to be thrown back into a system in the middle of a tragedy, and it just really is hard on the kids. The kids go way off the deep end, mom struggles, and I've seen this so many times that when I created my homeschool village, one of my number one goals was how do I create a system that not only takes homeschooling and takes it off mom's plate, doesn't take it off your plate. I don't want to do that. I want you to still be mom or dad. But I how can I support a mom? How can I take a little bit off her plate and help her create an income at the same time? And that's been in my head for years. And as I've created my homeschool village, we set it up so that any of our members can share a link that they get from My Homeschool Village and make 40% recurring commission on the signups that come from their link. Now, all if you know anything about affiliates and someone who has a bunch of followers, they're lucky to get 15 to 20%. 20% is high for an affiliate. My homeschool village pays 40. And the reason is because I want moms to be financially independent so that they do get divorced or if their husband dies, or maybe they just want to pay for college, or maybe they want to be able to afford the dang ballet class. They can. And so if you sign up, if you a friend of yours signs up for $199, you get 40% of that. That's $80, and that comes to your house automatically to your bank account every month they stay. If that lady stays for a year, that's $80 times 12, and you'll get it every month. Now you bring in 10 people every month, that's $800 a month recurring. So in month one, you brought in 10 people, that's $800. On month two, you brought in 10 people, but you still have the first 10 people. Now you're at $1,600 and that's only two months. You bring in 10 people on month three, now you got $2,400 coming in every month. Do you see where we literally created this on purpose because I just want to help moms stay home with their kids. That's the plan. So if you are interested in doing something like that, all you have to do is pay for a minimum membership because it's set up on school, and school is set up where the only way to get an affiliate link is by being a member. So I set up a $10 a month membership just for those of you who just want to make the money. Because the membership to get the curriculums and everything is $99 a child for one a month for one kid, $199 for two or more children. Just to give you all the info. Hi, Katie. Is the $40% for both plans the nine or one? It's for all the plans. So whether they sign up for $10, $99, or $199, you get $40 of that. So you can share. So it doesn't matter what they sign up for, you get 40%. And then inside school, I don't know if you guys knew this, school is an amazing platform. It's really just taken off this last year. And if you're whatever group you're a part of, you can be an affiliate for, well, if they set it up and share people's interests. I have, I'm a part of about four or five different groups on there. One is how to trade, how to trade for women. Cause I always wanted to learn stock market. And so I'm in there on a course and I'm teaching my kids how to um they trade. Are we making money? No. We're using fake accounts. It's pretend money and we're having a good time. We're learning a lot on it. Um, I loved it because it was taught by three homeschool moms and how to teach you and your kids how to trade online. And if I had more time, I probably would be doing better. But anyway, so like I had that on school, and I can share their link, and I can anyway. Um so yeah, I apologize for all the comments. Now I'm gonna have a bunch of people who came live be like, what the heck?

unknown 33:38

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

I love AI. There it has a lot, it's like, okay, Nicole, think of think of AI like the internet. When the and I don't know how old you are, but probably too young for this to remember this. But I remember when the internet came out and my and I was learning about Google and I was learning about the web, and it over stimulated me, scared me, what the heck? It took me 10 to 15 years to finally get on and understand its beauties. But the internet also has its evils, right? It has both evil and good. So does AI. But if our children don't know how to control AI, it they will be controlled by AI. I've been learning a lot about AI, and it's literally about those who control and those who are controlled. And I am teaching my kids AI. My homeschool village will have a fall class for our teenagers all about how to use AI, how to control AI, how to make it better your life, um, so that they can recognize it, know how to use it, all of that. If you pay $9.99, you pay the $10 a month, you can still get the 40% commission off whatever they sign up for. Is that what you mean? I know. It's actually okay. Like everybody's like, how are you doing that? I'm like, it works. Hi Dina. I'm new to this page. It's actually I'm first time live. What curriculum do you recommend for a 10-year-old going into fourth grade in August? Great question. Um, Dina, I recommend my homeschool village. So here's what I am discovering. I actually just, who was it? It was one of you guys in here. I think it might have been May, no? Anyway, it was somebody I was talking to yesterday. Made me connect some dots. Children, I don't know what it is, but there is a homeschool change that happens around the age of 10. 10 to about 14. It's like you have one homeschool system going on in the in the early years, and it's reading, writing, math, and you've got like this cool system, and then all of a sudden they hit about 10 years old. Some of them, maybe you might make it to 12. But for your kids, all of a sudden, whatever you were doing doesn't work anymore. They don't want it anymore. They're they fight you on things, and they seem to need something else. And mom struggles and goes, I don't, I don't know what we're missing. I don't know what happened. Maybe I need to put them back in school. This is when my homeschool village is perfect for you. And here's what I've discovered. I found that the families that stay the longest, love it the most, have kids between that age because the kids are looking for more and mom's tired. So my homeschool village will provide all the curriculums you need. Okay, and I say curriculums because we don't provide one. One curriculum rarely works for all your children or even all the subjects for one kid. Most homeschoolers, after a couple years, end up piecing together their favorites and creating their own. Well, my homeschool village, we already did that. We went through and picked the favorites that everybody loves, and then we made deals with them, and we give you access to all of them in one membership, and then we provide live classes in the afternoons so your kids can get on and have Minecraft education and games to play with other kids, and it's meant to be some social time, but also some education time. And then your kids get a full education, they get a little more, it's not so much answer to mom anymore. Mom's still in charge of their education, but now they're answering to other teachers, and it tends to create a better relationship with mom. So that's why we created it. I'm almost 40. I remember time with no internet. Oh, good. I'm 50. And so I was like, how long ago was it without internet? I can't remember. Uh Nicole, yes, that was my question. Wow, trying to wrap my head around that. I know, and here's the thing what I've discovered it's such a good deal, nobody believes me. I'm like, really, there's no catch. There's literally no catch. And then I partnered up with a woman, her name is or her tag here in is called Think Outside the Classroom. And she's a homeschool mom of 11 for over 24 years, and she actually teaches people how to do this. So she's creating a course for 27 bucks on exactly what to do and how to do it, sharing my homeschool village. And she shows you like you don't even have to like be doing your posts. If you're part of my Facebook group, you can literally just go into my Facebook group, take the post I just created, share it to wherever you want with your affiliate link on it, and you're done. Like, you don't even have to come up with your own posts or your own videos. If you want to, great, but you don't have to. You literally just have to go and go to my group, share, attach your affiliate link, and you're done. And you can make money doing that. The internet has made life so easy. She never been to school. I've been homeschooling her since day one. Oh, perfect. So, um how much for one child? It's $99 a month, and that includes all her curriculum, that includes all her live classes. You don't have to pay more for the classes later. Like, she can come and go as she wants. And so, yeah, it's everything included. And that's exactly what's happening to my 10-year-old. Nicole, I don't know if it was you. Was it you I was talking to? No, I'm talking to I had out five parents yesterday on Messenger. I was just popping messages out all day. Hi, Katie. Um, and so I'm trying to remember who it was, but it that it something clicked you last night because I realized most of the parents I was talking to that were burned out from homeschooling because they've been homeschooling for a while, all had 10 to 14 year olds. Like I would be like, How old are your kids? And they would tell 10 to 14. It was always in the 10 to 14 range, and it was like they didn't want to listen to mom anymore, they were kind of tired of having mom do everything. Whatever you were doing didn't work in their heads anymore, and they just need a shift. And most of our kids who are the most active inside the village are 10 to 14. We have classes for older and we have classes for younger, but our most active is that age, and I'm it finally clicked last night. I was like, oh, my own kids did this. I remember now. Do you have good and beautiful curriculum in my homeschool village? I do love the good and the beautiful. I will say I am a fan of the good and beautiful. We don't currently have it. You just made me think of something though. That doesn't mean we couldn't use some of it. We're currently spicing up our high school, and I never thought about using it for high school. We don't have it in there. They wouldn't work with us that way, as far as like letting us work with their stuff. Some companies would let us, some companies won't. And the good and the beautiful are like, no, thanks. We they they wouldn't work with this. But I think it's a great curriculum. I think it could be overwhelming. I think it can be a lot of friends I know that use it get overwhelmed, spend a lot of money on stuff they never use. That happens a lot, but I think that happens with a lot of curriculums, which is why we built my homeschool village. Like, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars and then find out you're not gonna use it. Like, you put in your 99 or your 199, and if next month you realize you're not using it, you don't like it, that's okay. You tried it for a month, but you're not out thousands of dollars, and you don't have an unfinished curriculum sitting there haunting you. So I've been teaching her with books. I never used online work. Do you have paper copies? Yeah, one of the programs that we give you access to inside my homeschool village is called Have Fun Teaching, and it's all the printables you need. So you can go in and do that. A lot, like some of the programs, you just it gives you like a PDF version and a fill-it-out version. You just print it out, have them do it that way. So it just depends on what you want to do. Totally customizable. It was me, you loved it in the voicemail message. I thought so. Mayo was you. It was talking to you about it that made me connect the dots. And I was like, wait a minute. Most families between the ages of 10 and 14 need a shift. So you're gonna start seeing some posts about that coming up. I love, see, it's an ADHD gift. Have you heard that? An ADHD gift is spotting patterns, and there's one thing, the spotting of patterns I have noticed as a homeschool parent and talking to so many homeschool parents is that 10 to 14 is they need that homeschool change. But a child at 14 to 15 needs sleep. So I was at a conference once, and parents were like popping questions at me, and they would be like, How do you deal with a child who only wants to sleep, is lazy, won't work for you? And they give me a list, and I'd be like, How old's your kid? 15. Huh. In that year, every parent that said, I have a child who only wants to sleep, is lazy, doesn't want to do anything for me, and they won't even like hint that they're teens, and I'll be like, Is he 15? Yes. How did you know? Because all 15-year-olds are doing it. They all need to sleep, they are all grumpy, and so there's patterns, and that's those are some of the things I can help you recognize as a homeschool parent. Like, give me the problem, I'll tell you what the pattern is, and then I'll tell you how long it should take them to get out of it. So they don't have a lot of high school levels released yet, but they will. We do have a high school program, it's called Schmoop. I don't know if you've heard of Schmoop. Schmoop is famous for its test prep, so it's really good at getting your kids to have a great SAT, A C T score. And I'm trying to remember what the name of it is for the military. They're really good at that, and that's why we picked them. We are also supplementing with live classes that we find are important, like entrepreneur, AI, philosophy, critical thinking type stuff. And we're doing that for the classes as well. Do we accept the AFA grant? I tried. They denied me. I'm sorry. They did not like the way we were set up. We accept ESA and we accept Braintree, but EFA now. Wait, EFA is Florida? Is that the Florida one or is that the Texas one? Because the Texas one I'm about to apply for. I love it from the standpoint of it's open and go. I'm still the teacher without having a plan. I am too. I've discovered that there are two types of homeschooling parents: those that went to homeschool and teach their kids, and those that just want their kids home, and both are totally valid. But if you are the second, you won't like good and the beautiful. Yeah. I used, I had a co-op that I loved for several years, and they used the good and the beautiful for the co-op and the education, and I loved that. But I loved that someone else did it, and it wasn't me. So I love having my kids home with me because I'm not, I wasn't good at the getting it done. And so that's why I created my homeschool village because I knew it still needed to get done. But I just wanted to play with my kids all the time. And I needed to be able to figure out something else where they could get the work done and I could still be the fun mom because I like being the fun mom. So my homeschool, I don't do the teaching in my homeschool village. We have homeschool moms and teachers that are in there. I created a group. The women run it. I am the owner. I'm the boss. I'm the one with the visionary, and I do the social medias, but they're running the school and they're running it so well that my kids are well educated because of my homeschool village. And so I can brag all day long because I'm not the one doing it. These are some awesome women and they do it out of passion. And so they're in there really just passionately teaching these kids. Um, some of these teachers are free, they trade or whatever we do stuff, but some of them are just volunteer because they love it. Isn't that amazing? That's a good teacher right there. But I agree with you, Nicole. There are, well, I would almost say that there's three kinds. And then there's a third kind who just brings them home out of the public school system and does nothing either way. I've been meeting a few of those lately, and I'm a little upset by it because they're making the rest of us look bad, and they're gonna be the ones that make the laws come down on our heads. So if you are gonna be into your children homeschool, if you are not gonna be into your kids, please don't homeschool make it look bad for the rest of us. Oh, that's why the the stupid laws are coming out, is because of the one or two bad homeschool parents. Connecticut right now is just sickening what they're doing. Europe. If you are a homeschooler, do not move to Europe. Homeschools become such part of our lives that we actually, my husband and I will do research on a state before we'll move. So my husband was looking for a job last year. We were living in Utah at the time, and he would tell me, okay, I'm applying to this state, and I'd be like, hold up, and I would go and do the research on the homeschooling, and I'd be like, mm, yeah, I don't really want to do that. So you're gonna have to look for a different job. And it would be like like New York, New York, Washington State, Oregon State, Pennsylvania, uh, California. They all have very strict answer to the man kind of homeschool laws. Whereas so I was like, when we were in Alabama now, and he was like, hey, I've been putting in Alabama, I read about Alabama. I'm like, oh, we are good. We can move to Alabama. Their homeschool laws are awesome, and so we are in Alabama. But um, we have we have often looked into homeschooling or living outside of the country. My husband's Peruvian Colombian. Like, moving to another country is not a big deal for him, and I've always wanted to. And then we were looking at a few, and it was like the homeschool laws were so bad, we were like, mm-mm, never mind. Hi Jennifer, hi D Martin. Um, I taught special ed for two for eight years before I realized my entire paycheck was going to daycare. Oh, could I get a job as a teacher here? Nicole, we can have a conversation. Let's keep messaging. We may be looking for some new teachers this fall. And some of the teachers they teach one or two, anyway, that is a possibility. That is a possibility. We have been looking for someone who's more specialized in special ed because we have a lot of families coming in with kids with IEPs, and we would love to be able to expand a little bit more into the IEP area and um create some more one-on-one for those parents so we could talk. Maybe we found our way in. When you were talking about your co-op the other day, I was like, Nicole's gonna be joining us soon. I know it. So uh, looking forward to meeting you. I recommend, but I do have a woman who actually is in charge of the teachers and runs the school. We call her the principal. I'm the admin, she's the principal. Her name's Tony, and she is one Spitfire Bon woman and is homeschooled for 20 years as well. Has four of her own kids. But anyway, excuse me, now I'm I'm drinking apple cider vinegar and ginger. So I've got ginger, apple cider vinegar in here with water, sweetened it up, and I am guzzling to get rid of my kidney stone, and it makes me very burphy, so I apologize. Uh more questions. Jennifer, you got any questions for me? Homeschool mom here. I've been homeschooling for over 20 years. I got five kids, and I am the owner of my homeschool village, which is your community, your curriculum, and your live classes for your kids, um, where we take it off the plate and get and like one of the things one of the moms told me after she joined my homeschool village is she got to find her mom, her fun mom site again. I think that when we're dealing with everything we deal with as moms anyway, and then you put homeschooling on top of it, we start to lose ourselves. We start to wonder where fun mom went and why am I always after the next assignment? And we get lost and kind of sucked into this vortex of exhaustion. And then moms come into my homeschool village and they start using our curriculums and they start putting their kids in the afternoon classes, and all of a sudden they find their fun mom back. And now, so we'd say, We'll be the bad guy, you be the fun mom. Awesome! Win win! I'd love to get back into writing IEPs again. I love homeschooling my kids, but there's things I miss for sure. What a god path. Hi, Katie. Nicole, we need to talk. You here's what I've discovered. In my homeschool village, it was a it's a mission. I never set out to create what has it has become. I set out to just get other moms to communicate with each other so that we had a some form of like support system. And it's turned into this big beautiful movement, and I love it. And but it's all been God sent because I will talk to somebody like you, Nicole, and we'll have a conversation and they'll start telling me things and we'll talk, and all of a sudden the person comes and then the problem comes, and then I know exactly who's gonna be handling it. But when somebody crosses my path and they have we've actually been discussing this the last few weeks, is we need somebody who can ride an IEP who can come in and actually help the parent do that because parents are willing to pay for that, and we've got to figure out how to do that, not for free, right, Nicole? Right, Nicole? Repeat after me. We don't work for free. We volunteer, we help others, we are service-oriented, but you don't have to work for free. That's I'm gonna tease you about that now, Nicole, because I know what you're talking about. Okay, I actually need to go. I wanted to pop in here today, give it an hour, and then I've got I actually go live now inside my homeschool village. We have our mom hangout right now coming up in an hour, but I got some work before then. And we hang out, and everybody pops their faces on today, and we chat, and sometimes we're talking to a mom. Uh, we have several women who are widows, and we've been talking to them a lot lately, and they're matching up and becoming buddies, and we've been talking about health because we deal with anxiety and depression as women and post-menopausal and menopausal and pure pre-menopausal, and so we've been talking about, we've been sharing like what we each do, and most of us prefer something natural, and so we share, what are you doing? What are you doing? So we share we talk about a little bit of everything as we're in the village because we're not just homeschool moms, we're women, and we want buddies, and so we have set that up inside my homeschool village as well. There is something about a homeschool mom when our kids hit a certain age that says, I can do more, I know enough. Let's get this done. And then you call me. My job, and I will tell you, I will tell you very clearly, when my homeschool village was becoming, it's becoming and it became what it is because a woman would come to me and say, I have this skill and I would love to use it. And then another would come to me and say, I have this skill and I would love to use it. And I'm praying about this, going, Lord, where is this headed? This is not the company I thought I was building. You know what he told me? He said, Your job is to coordinate the gifts of the women that already have the gifts. You're not supposed to just coordinate the gifts. I've already have daughters with gifts. They need a place to use them. Your job is to create a place for them to use them. I was like, that's what I'm building. Ha ha! Okay. So my homeschool village is literally, it's not just about homeschooling, it's about a place for women to find themselves, to find a place to use their gifts that God already gave them because you've got them. And so when the right woman comes along, we know it. We know it. I would love to advocate and help parents again, especially without my hands tied by public school.

unknown 52:17

What would that look like?

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Thank you for your time. I'm feeling so encouraged. I didn't even know I needed Nicole. I'll tell you, all night last night after our conversation, I was like, there's something more going on here. It was definitely in my head all night. Um, there's something more going on here. And I'm and so I've been kind of waiting. IEP though, that really excites me that you have that knowledge. Because I don't know if you know, go in and watch. I did an IEP post, viral, okay, on TikTok, on Facebook. It doesn't matter where it posted. All I said was if you have an IEP and you think you can't homeschool, not true, you should. Oh my gosh, I have 300 questions on there. You know how many moms have IEPs and want to homeschool their kids, but they want an IEP. And for me to explain to them how that works as a homeschooler is overwhelming to them. But to be able to send them to somebody who understands both sides of the coin, so let's talk about it. Okay. Guys, thanks for being here. I will be here at here. I come live on Tuesdays at about at 10. Um, or is it 11? It's 11 on Tuesdays, and I bring in Kelly Crawford who teaches you how to make money from home as a homeschooler. And then, and and we also talk all kinds of things, homeschooling, because we both homeschool for so long. It's interesting how any homeschooler who sticks it out, we all end up in the same stuff. We all end up learning the same thing. And so it's really cool to have that. Today, Wednesday, I come on a 10 um on Facebook. I don't know that I'll go live the rest of the week. I usually wear pretty hard Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then I just take off the rest of the week and play with my kids. So thanks for being here. Bye guys. That's the wrap for today. I hope you're leaving with something real, something you can actually use. This is a long game. You don't have to get it all right today. Just show up tomorrow. That's enough. If this episode helped you, share it with another mom who needs it. And if you're ready for a village to do this with, find us in the show notes. Until next time, keep going. The revolution starts at home.