010 || What Nobody Tells You About Homeschooling

 If you could go back to your first day of homeschooling . . . the one with the beautiful planner, the brand new curriculum, and approximately no idea what you were doing . . . what would you tell yourself? 

Sarah shares the things nobody told her before she started homeschooling. Not the curriculum tips or the room setup advice, but the bigger picture things. The mindset things. The ones that, if you get them wrong, will make everything else harder no matter how good your systems are. 

This one is for the mom who is just starting out, the mom in her first few years, and honestly the mom who has been doing this for years and still needs to hear some of these again. Send it to a homeschool mom who needs it today. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

If I could go back and sit down with myself on that first day I started homeschooling, the day with the beautiful new planner, everything laid out, the homeschool room all set up, and the brand new curriculum, but actually no idea what I was going to do. These are the things I would tell myself. Things nobody told me, things I had to learn the hard way over the last five years and four kids. Today I'm going to tell you those things because if you're earlier in this journey than I am, you deserve to hear them now. Glue. It's messy, it's sticky, it gets everywhere. But without it, nothing holds. Homeschool life can feel messy too. We have the loud days, the mental overload, so many moving parts. But we don't need is more curriculum or more pressure to do it all. We need something that holds. Simple systems, steady rhythms, the kind of structure that makes homeschooling easier instead of heavier. Hi, I'm Sarah, a homeschool mom of four, and this is the Homeschool Glue Podcast. Each week we have an honest conversation about real homeschool life and the simple systems that help overwhelmed homeschool moms clear the mental clutter, build rhythms that actually stick, and create the peaceful lives we are all craving. If you're tired of carrying everything and getting nowhere, you are in the right place. Grab that load of laundry and let's get started. Welcome back to the Homeschool Glue podcast. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. We've been very practical talking about systems and curriculum planning and chores and things like that. And I love that content. It's not going anywhere. But today I really wanted to pull back and just kind of talk about the bigger picture with the end of the school year, everybody wrapping up. And if you're newer to homeschooling or going to start homeschooling in the fall, or it's your first couple years, you're looking ahead to when you start the next school year, whether it's right away or in the fall. And I want to just kind of help with the mindset and things like that that really do make a huge difference. So much more than the curriculum we choose or the homeschool room we set up or the co-op we join. And these are the things that if you get them wrong, they will make everything else harder, no matter how good your systems are or how good any of those other things are. I have been homeschooling now for a few years, and even before I homeschooled, I ran a daycare in my home and I taught preschool in the in the daycare. And so I don't even know how to quantify how many years I've actually been like educating in my home, but my oldest is 11, and then I was a teacher before that. So currently I have a uh coming up on a sixth grader, a third grader, a kindergartner, and a toddler. And I have made so many mistakes. I have cried in the bathroom. I have bought curriculum I've never used. I have compared my homeschool to people online and people in real life and felt like I was failing. I have burned myself out trying to do too much or trying to do all the wrong things and not doing the right things that I didn't even realize were wrong or right. Um, and I have fought against my own educational philosophy and then had to come back to it. So I have been there. I know what it feels like. I think all of us homeschool moms at the beginning can relate to all of these things. And through all of that, I have learned so much. That is definitely the sanctifying part of this process that it can be really hard sometimes, but we are learning and growing, probably even more so than our children through this process. And it's a beautiful thing. May not feel beautiful in the process, but when we can look back at how much we have grown as moms, as uh children of God, as adults maturing and our emotional intelligence and just the knowledge that we gain through this. There's so many ways that we learn and grow. And it's it's it's fascinating when you really look back at it. There are things I genuinely, genuinely wish someone had told me before I started. So that is what this episode is going to be. Consider this my little uh end of the school year and beginning of the next school year gift to you, especially if you're in your first few years and everything feels harder and more uncertain than you thought it would. But don't let that opening dissuade you if you're experienced in homeschooling. I mean, I need to come back and listen to this. I don't have it all figured out. This isn't advice coming from somebody who's like the guru who checks all the boxes and never gets upset and never gets burnt out and never gets overwhelmed. No, I still deal with all that, but I just have a lot more perspective on it. And sometimes we need to preach to the choir, which is ourself. So let's get into it. My first thing I want to talk about is to know your why before anything else. I talk about this a lot in many different areas online and in real life to people I've talked to about homeschooling. I think it's so important that before you set out to choose any curriculum, before you set out to have any kind of conversation, before you set out to buy a planner or set up your homeschool room, you really know why you're doing this. And that's going to ebb and flow and change and grow stronger in some ways and weaker in other ways as you get experience in this lifestyle that is homeschooling. Um, but it's really important before you start making all these decisions and before you actually start the physical act of homeschooling, you know why you're doing it. Okay. And this isn't the surface answer. This is not something you have to share with anybody. This is not just because I want to spend more time with my kids or because the school system isn't great. There's a lot more to this decision. There's a lot at stake with this decision. There's a lot of uh people you're gonna come up against, probably either right in your face or just seeing assumptions online or things like that. And it's very important that you know why and you're pretty confident about it. You can be apprehensive, you can worry, you can doubt, but it's really important that you have some level of confidence in your decision. And that will come when you really sit down and ask yourself, why? What do you believe about how children learn? What kind of adults do you want to raise? What does a good education actually mean to you? And why do you believe this is the best way to bring that about for your specific kids? And now maybe you're homeschooling because your kids' needs aren't being met in the school system and you're worried that you're not gonna be able to give them what they need either. That's okay, but it's still your why of they weren't thriving and we're going to try something new. You don't have to have it all figured out, but you really need to know why you're doing this. Because without that, every shiny curriculum is going to equally look appealing if you don't know why or where, you know, what's driving you, what your compass is when it comes to education and things like that. Every piece of advice will sound equally valid. You'll chase things that look beautiful but don't really fit your family, and you'll feel lost when they don't work and you'll be very confused. So your why is your filter, and this includes why you're homeschooling, but also your why behind what educational philosophy you stand behind. Now, this probably will take you years to really figure out. I knew I leaned very Charlotte Mason from the beginning, just based on I'm a very research-oriented person, and so I researched for months different types of curricula. And as a former English teacher, it kind of makes sense that I would have gone down the path of Charlotte Mason. But uh that has just gotten so much stronger now, reading the volumes, reading um Kieran Glass's books about the volumes, having a homeschool co-op and book club that are Charlotte Mason and following people online that are Charlotte Mason and just learning so much about it. It's just grown that why. But I started with some sense of how I wanted to educate my children and why, why I thought that was the best way, at least in the initial stages. These all can change, but you need to have some kind of compass because if you just go out and say, I want to homeschool, you're gonna have 50 different viewpoints, 50 different companies telling you their way is the best. And that is very overwhelming. So spend some time really getting to figure out your why, why you're homeschooling, why you want to educate in the particular way that you do. And maybe you don't really know. And so you're right now, you're just going to figure that out this first year, this next year, you're gonna spend some time trying different curricula, and that's okay too. But know why you're doing that because you don't know. You don't know what you want to do, you don't know what sounds the most appealing, you don't know what's gonna work the best for your kids. And so that can be your why temporarily that you're trying to figure it out. Um, and that is okay. And have some confidence in that. You don't need to compare that to anybody else. We all start out at different places. Some, you know, I had to unlearn a lot of things that I learned in college because so much of what I learned was more about classroom management and not really about education. Uh, I realized I had learned so little about education with my education degree, which is kind of ironic, but the very honest truth. Um, so really get clear on your why, and that will first of all just make everything a lot easier for you. My next tip um is the hard one, and that is that everyone is going to have an opinion, and a lot of it's going to conflict with that why. Um, so that's why it's important to have your why, first of all. I was somewhat prepared for this, but not really. I did not realize how openly people, some people would be about our decision to homeschool. Some people I don't even know personally, they'll just give you their opinion. Some people who we live in really close proximity to who very uh bluntly and rudely told us their opinions. Some were very supportive, some were not. And I was just not prepared for the pushback in ways online. Even today, even though most people would say it's gotten a lot more supportive, we also live in the world of online comments. And so uh it's very easy for people to just spout all kinds of nonsense at you with very strong conviction. Um, so it may be friends and family members, it may not be. It may be strangers on the internet, maybe strangers in the target line, checkout line. It could be anywhere, you know, sitting uh at a baseball game for your kids, and you share that you homeschool and you're you might be flooded with questions or opinions or things that make you just sometimes the questions are asked in a way that make you feel like maybe I don't really know what I'm doing and make you doubt your ability and doubt your choices. So please go into it knowing that's going to happen. If it doesn't happen, great, you know, at least you were prepared. And if it does happen, uh you'll be happy that you kind of thought about this ahead of time. And so it's it's helpful to kind of have a um a plan to get out of these situations, maybe a phrase that you will say, or just choosing to change the subject because it really doesn't matter what anybody else believes. Obviously, if it's like your spouse or you know, your parent who you really value their opinion or something, um you can decide if if that's going to influence you or not. But ultimately, we are given the tremendous and beautiful responsibility when we become parents, whether through birth, adoption, what have you, foster to adopt, whatever, you know, however uh you became a parent, it is your God-given responsibility to raise these children to the best of your ability. Not the best of anybody else's ability, but to the best of your ability. And if you feel called to pursue homeschooling, then that is what you need to stick with. And that is, you know, as long as your spouse is on board and whatnot, um, and legally you can, obviously. Um that is something that weighs so much more than anybody else's opinion, even the opinions of people you greatly respect. And especially people who are older, who have, you know, they have certain opinions about things based on their life experience, and that is great for them, but it is your responsibility to do the best you can for your kids. They're not going to be the ones answering for how they turn out. You will, you know, not to put pressure on you, but I'm just trying to give you some confidence that your voice matters. Your spouse's voice matters. Nobody else's voice actually gets a say. You can choose to let it sway you or not. Um, but it's it's up to you to decide that. So you will save yourself enormous amounts of second-guessing and anxiety when you decide in advance whose voice you're going to listen to. Is it hard when people you love and respect have differing opinions about homeschool? Yes. But if you decide in advance that their voice doesn't get a say, it is a lot easier to let it roll off than giving every voice credit in your mind when you've already made a decision and it's it's your choice, it's your calling. Um, and there's nothing set in stone. You can always change your mind, but you don't need to change your mind because of somebody else. You need to parent your kids. And this is this goes for everything with parenting. Everybody, there's completely opposite viewpoints on basically every issue of parenting. Potty training, how you feed your kids, what you feed your kids, what clothes they wear, screen time, uh, whether they should play outside on their own or not, like how many hours they should be outside. I mean, I could just keep going. There are opinions on the complete opposite spectrum by actual people who have researched these things. And the research says conflicting things. So at the end of the day, you just have to do the best you can. You're not gonna be perfect. None of us are. We are not God, and we are going to do the best we can and learn and grow along the way, but have the same confidence you would of I'm gonna try this method of potty training. Do I know what I'm doing? No. But I'm gonna try it and see how it goes. And that can be your opinion and your mindset for homeschooling as well. Just because it's their education doesn't mean you suddenly have to have it all figured out. Because guess what? I taught in the school system fresh out of college. You think I knew what I was doing? No. And so even when you have degrees and you're getting paid for that job to teach, you're still learning on the job. And so it is okay, like all parts of parenting, to not fully know what you're doing, to figure it out, but to be confident in that this is your job. And while you may look to others for advice and their opinions, at the end of the day, those opinions only get as much weight as you decide they get. So keep that in mind. Um, my third tip is that your family's needs come before your kids' education, and that's probably gonna be somewhat controv controversial for me to say. Um, but this one really took me a long time to admit as somebody who was a teacher and obviously really values education. And when I came into the role of homeschool mom, sometimes the homeschool came before the mom and I had it backwards. The truth is we don't get to separate the homeschool from the mom. Homeschool describes mom, not the other way around. Um, and so it ultimately we're still mom through and through, and it our role as a mom is to look out for our kids and our family. Education is a piece of that, but it is just one piece of our kids' well-being, our kids uh what they need to do to grow and mature. That is one piece, it is not the whole picture, and so the needs of your family and your children come before their education. And over time, I have learned that this is one of the most beautiful parts of homeschooling because if we send our kids to school, that we are getting checked in, we are, you know, could be liable for truancy and things like that if they don't show up. And obviously, I'm not saying don't homeschool your kids and let their education go to waste. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying with us outside outsourcing this the education of your children, you only have so much wiggle room. Let's say you're diagnosed with cancer or somebody you love is diagnosed with cancer and you're spending a lot of time with them. Well, that's really hard to do when your kids are in school because they have to be in school a certain number of days. And it can be really hard to keep up with their school because now they're in school, but they're worried about their parents' health or the health of somebody that they love. And so you can't easily adapt. They just have to keep going and keep trudging through with their education, even though the needs of the family at that time are actually, we need to take a pause. And that's the beautiful thing about homeschooling is that you can take those pauses and get back to it. You can, you can move things around in your homeschool and maybe still continue, but you're switching it up in a way that works for your family, doing it different times, doing it different days, maybe lessening the load for a little bit and then picking up and doing more later. You can ebb and flow with the needs of your specific kids and the needs of your family in such a more flexible and beautiful way that really honors the people that are being educated and the needs of your family. Um, I for a while was very focused on getting through the curriculum, and I'll be honest, I still have a hard time when we need to kind of pull back doing that, but I've gotten a lot better over the years because I see that it benefits their education to not force them to be educated and do our formal homeschool when we're just not emotionally or physically, if we're sick, able to continue. So I missed at times what was actually happening with my kids or what they were really needing. A child who is really struggling emotionally or with special needs, or or you're trying to figure out what they are, they cannot learn productively. A child who doesn't feel safe or seen or loved is not going to absorb a history lesson. Maybe they're really struggling in some way. The relationship is the foundation, um, and everything else is built on top of that. Homeschool mom. Mom is in relation to your children, and the the momming comes before the homeschooling. If something hard is happening in your family, a health crisis, relational strain, grief, hard transition, whatever it may be, it is okay to let the curriculum take a backseat. It is more than okay. It's probably the best thing you can do for their education at that time because what are they actually going to get out of it other than stress, which isn't helpful or productive. Your kid does not need a perfect education and hint, a perfect education doesn't even exist. And education is a lifelong thing that we're trying to set them up for. It's not all on your on your plate that you're one part of helping them with that, but it's a lifelong endeavor. More than a perfect education, they need a present mom. That is something you can give them most of the time. Not a perfect mom, a present mom. Um, every time I, you know, I'm struggling with this, I come back to that. They need a present mom. Um, when I'm tempted to push through through a hard day, or I'm really struggling, and I'm just trying to like check off all the boxes. I have to remember that a present mom is more important than the perfect education, which is not even a true thing I can give them anyway. My fourth tip is that there is no right way to homeschool. And I really hope you take this with you after this episode. There is no one right way. There's not. It's just not true. There is no perfect single approach to homeschooling that is the quote quote unquote right way. There's no single curriculum, no single schedule, no single philosophy that's going to work perfectly for every child and every family 100% of the time, um, or that you can even implement perfectly, quite honestly. Um, because like I said, we're we're homeschooling real kids, we're real people, we struggle, we fail, we have, we have things that happen. So anyone that tells you otherwise that their way is the perfect way or the right way is probably trying to sell you something and is probably lying, or they're, you know, aren't thinking clearly. I don't know. So there's no perfect curriculum, there's no perfect schedule, there's definitely no perfect homeschool mom. So don't try to compare yourself to her because she doesn't exist. Okay. There's no perfect day, there are only the homeschool days that you actually have, there's only the kids that you actually have and the season you're actually in. And your version of homeschooling, the one that is hopefully, after listening to this episode, built around your family's real needs and your kids'. Kids' real learning styles and your real available hours, which is gonna look different for every mom and every season and every year. Um, all of those are valid, as valid as anyone else's. Um, and we don't need to compare them. And even if it looks completely different, that doesn't mean it's wrong. One or the other is wrong. It's okay to do things differently, and there's no right way to homeschool. Do I love Charlotte Mason? Yes, I will sing her praises from the rooftops. I think she's brilliant, and it is the right way for my family, at least in this season. Um, and I can see the benefits and I love it, but I am not gonna be somebody who says it is the perfect way for everybody, or it's the right way to homeschool. I think a lot of people could benefit. I think the schools could benefit a lot from her knowledge, but I will never say that it's the right way to homeschool. It is okay to outsource your homeschooling, it's okay to use audiobooks, it's okay to skip the subject that everyone else says is essential or to do it in a different way. It's okay to use subscription boxes or online courses or video lessons or co-ops or anything else that makes this more sustainable for your actual actual family so you can actually continue. You are not cheating, you're not doing it wrong, you are homeschooling. And the beauty of homeschooling is it's what works for your particular home, and there's no one way to do it, and that's a beautiful thing. My next tip is that comparison will steal your joy faster than anything else, and it also is the easiest thing to do. I have spent hours, I was gonna say years, but probably I don't know if you add it all up, I don't know, hours of my homeschooling life feeling inadequate because of things I saw on the internet. And I, you know, being somebody online, this is something I truly struggle with. I'm just peeling back the curtain a little bit, that I struggle so much as being somebody online, showing beautiful pictures of homeschool because I don't always have beautiful days with my kids. I get frustrated. Sometimes our house looks like a disaster, and I try to show that too from time to time. And I struggle with this balance of showing the beauty and showing the hard times without uh, you know, using my kids for relatability's sake, if that makes sense. And I don't want to um exploit my kids, I don't want to exploit the hard things in our lives. I also don't want to exploit the good things, and so I it's something I really struggle with. And I think a lot of people who post about their life in some way online struggle with this too, because you want to be honest and you wanna be true and authentic and real, but you also want privacy and you honor your kids in that. And so comparing, uh, often we're not even comparing to anything real. So keep that in mind. Um, you don't need to compare to a beautiful homeschool room or a child you see narrating fluently at age seven, or kids with incredible skills in some area that your kids just don't have. Um, the mom who seems to do it all with peace and joy and an unlimited craft supply budget. You know, even me, like please don't compare yourself to me because I really try to be authentic, but I don't know what you're actually seeing, you know, how much of my content you're seeing. Maybe you're only seeing the highlights, and you're not seeing any of the stories I do that show my dirty house or talk about a hard time or things like that. And so don't compare yourself. Here's what I know now that I didn't know then. The mom on Instagram with the perfect homeschool room isn't homeschooling any better than you. She's photographing differently than you. You're seeing one carefully curated corner of her real life, which includes all the same mess and doubt and hard days that yours does, or at least some version of those things. Or maybe she's in a really great season, but she just came out of a really hard season. We don't know all of those things. And so we're comparing to something that's not even the full picture. The kid who's reading at four isn't smarter than the kid who's reading at seven. They're just on different timelines. Both are beautiful and how God made them. Developmental variation is real and wide and normal. And social media has made us forget that because we only see the early walkers and the early readers and the impressive narrations, not the whole spectrum. So if there are accounts, even mine, that make you feel behind or feel less than, or you every time you see anything they post, there's just this feeling and you are trying so hard to overcome it. It is okay to unfollow them. Maybe not forever, or maybe forever. That's okay too. Just um at least just until you're rudding enough in your own homeschool and your own philosophy and your own why and have confidence and that seeing someone else's life and homeschool doesn't destabilize you anymore. Your homeschool is not a competition. Um, it is your life, and we should not be comparing our lives, especially as you know, children following God. God placed each of us uniquely and beautifully in the path that we are on, and He doesn't want us comparing our path to somebody else's path. Um, that leads to really ugly, ugly bitterness and resentment and comparison and things that we just don't want to tap into. We all have our own struggles, we all have our own gifts, and let's just do the best with all of those things that we're given and just follow in the calling that we are called to specifically individually. My next tip is that you cannot do it all well, unfortunately. Um, this one's hard to do, and something I still struggle with, if I'm being honest, but it's important to say you cannot do every subject every day with every child at full capacity while also running a beautifully maintained household and being present for your family and also maintaining your own well-being. It's just not possible to do every single thing beautifully, wonderfully all the time. And when you attempt to do all of that, you're probably gonna burn out by October. Um that's hard. It's hard to say out loud when I talk about systems and things like that, that you cannot do everything that you want to do amazingly well at the same time. So less done well beats more done poorly every single time. Let me say that again. Doing less well beats doing more poorly every single time. A homeschool that covers, you know, let's say 10 subjects deeply, but not every day, you know, but 10 subjects overall pretty deeply and joyfully will produce a better educated child than a homeschool that covers 20 subjects with a very stressed, depleted mom who's just trying to cram everything in there. And I know Charlotte Mason talks about a wide feast, spreading a wide feast, but that's not going deeply, super deeply into every single one of those things. Um, and it's not doing all of them every single day. So keep that in mind. You can spread a feast without doing every single thing to full capacity, and I am pretty much guarantee most moms are at least skipping something that they feel in some way that they should be doing, either in their homeschool or in other areas of their life. It's okay to not finish a curriculum. Most teachers in the schools don't finish the textbook either. I know I was one of them. Um, the goal is not completion, the goal is learning. And learning requires a mom who has something left to give. So whether that's, you know, some subjects, even temporarily, or some books that you feel pressured. I mean, we feel pressure from all areas as homeschool moms. We have the pressure to have the cleanest home and have our kids involved in things and socializing and reading all the books and like our to-be-read book list is so long, and then we feel pressure just looking at our bookshelves. And so you don't have to do it all well. Nobody is telling you you have to do it all well. That is something we feel culturally, um, but it's also pressure that we're putting on ourselves. And the truth is, it's just not possible to do all of it really well all the time. Some things gotta give in certain seasons and certain phases of life. Like there's gonna be dust. There's gonna be uh some things we have to say no to for a while so that we can do the things that we deem most important a little bit better at that time. So give yourself permission to do less and do the less that you give yourself permission to do. Do it well and let the rest go, at least for the time being. Also, I'm giving you permission to change your mind about everything, about curriculum, about philosophy, about how many subjects you do, how long your day runs, what order you do your day, whether you do year-round, take summers off, do a Sabbath schedule where you do six weeks off, six weeks on, and one week off. Um all of it, whether you use a planner, a spiral brown notebook, nothing at all, you have the permission from me, whether it matters or not, to change your mind. Homeschooling is a living thing. It is not just this box that you check off. It is a lifestyle. It changes as your kids change, as your families change, as you change. What worked beautifully in year two may not work at all in year four. What worked in the fall may not work in the spring. What felt impossible in year one may be your favorite thing by year three. Um, you may have fewer kids when you started than when how many you have a few years down the road. Homeschooling with a toddler looks a lot differently than homeschooling with all teenagers. Okay? Things change, and that hopefully you will learn to believe is one of the beauties of homeschooling is that you can adapt it as your family adapt as your family grows and changes and as life changes. Changing your mind is not failure. I don't know when we started to believe that it is. Um, it's not inconsistency, it's called responsiveness. You're paying attention to what's working and what isn't, and you're adjusting. That's not weakness, that's wisdom. And as moms, that's what we're called to do. If we parented our 10-year-olds the same way we do our newborn babies, that would be really weird. If we use the same tactics with our 15-year-old when they're having a hard time emotionally, that we do with our two-year-olds, that would be kind of weird. I parent my toddler differently than I do my almost sixth grader. Um, and I've to be funny, sometimes I will like talk to my one-year-old, like, oh, hey, buddy, can you do this? And show me your belly. And then I'll say to my 11-year-old, show me your belly. Like, and we laugh because it's ridiculous. Like, I don't talk to my 11-year-old like I do my one-year-old. And I try really hard to talk to my one-year-old with big language and things like that, but you still interact differently with a toddler than you do an 11-year-old. And that's good. Um, I'm gonna I talk to my friends differently than I talk to my eight-year-old. That's just normal. It's okay to, and it's good to uh interact with people differently based on their development. Um, that is pretty normal and good because it'd be really weird if we talked to our toddlers like we would talk to people in a business meeting. Like that's just not normal. Um, so changing and adapting is what we naturally do as moms. And the thought that we're not supposed to do that with homeschool is kind of bizarre because, like I said, momming comes before homeschooling. And as moms, we are very, it is in our nature as females and as moms to be very in tune with the people around us and their needs to a very fine degree. And so implementing that same mindset into our homeschooling is not only okay, but it's encouraged. Like we should be adapting how we're teaching, what we're doing to our kids' specific needs. Um, the school can't always do that, often can't do that. And that is one of the huge benefits of homeschooling is that we can do that. And I'm encouraging you to do that. Um, and I don't know why we seem to think it's bad if we change our minds with our homeschool. It's good, it's good to really analyze and reflect on what's working, what's not, and make changes to make it better for our family. Another tip is that I believe at least systems are not optional. I saved this one for later in the episode because I knew some of you would roll your eyes at the systems lady talking about systems again. Um, but I'm gonna say it anyway because I truly believe this. I would not talk about this so much if I didn't believe it to be true. Winging it works for a while, maybe even a few seasons of your life, but it's going to catch up with you. The Sunday night dread, which we definitely don't want to be feeling as homeschool moms, the mid-October burnout, the feeling of constantly running just to stay in place or even fall behind. Um that is often a systems problem, not a character problem, not something wrong with your kids, something wrong with you. It's often a systems problem. When you have nothing helping you carry this tremendous load that you're carrying, it is very easy and quick to burn out and to have symptoms related to that in so many different ways, even physically. You do not need an elaborate system, but you need a simple one that actually runs, a repeating weekly rhythm so you're not rebuilding every Sunday, a way to capture everything that's living in your head so your brain can stop trying to hold it all and can actually be present at what's happening right in front of you with your kids that you so badly want to be present for. A daily closeout routine. So tomorrow isn't starting from chaos. Those are just a few examples. The moms who homeschool sustainably for 10 and 15 and 20 years are not doing it on sheer willpower. Uh, hopefully not by the end. Um, they have structures that carry them. If you build yours early on, even really simple ones, it can change so much and it can make you not have to go through some of the hard times that a lot of us have to go through as homeschool moms as our kids grow and more is placed on us, and we feel this pressure and this burden of carrying so much, which a lot of what we're carrying are beautiful blessings that we prayed for, but they can feel like this heavy burden that we are become resentful of if we don't have systems helping us to carry it all. If you want more on that, got a lot of podcast episodes you can go back and listen to. My last tip is that the hard days are not a sign that you're doing it wrong. I want you to go into homeschooling, whether you're just beginning or into your even tomorrow. You know, if you're listening to this and you're homeschooling tomorrow, go into tomorrow, remembering this, that there are going to be hard days. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing something wrong. Every mom has hard days. It's just, it just comes with the territory of trying to help raise real humans that you care tremendously for. Um, but they are they are a lot, and it is a lot, and it's not something we were given a guidebook for. We didn't go into it knowing really what we were we were up for. And so we're learning as we go. Homeschooling can genuinely be difficult, and I don't think a lot of people talk about that. You are educating your children, no pressure, right? You're managing your home, also no pressure. You're managing your home in a home where you're always at with these people that you're educating, and so the second you're like cleaning something, it's immediately becoming dirty. That also is not talked about a lot. So you're educating your children, you're managing your home, you're maintaining your relationships and trying to make them stronger, and you're doing all of this in the same four walls all day, every day. There's gonna be hard days. There will be days when everyone is crying, including you. There will be days when you wonder if you made the right choice and whether your kids would be better off somewhere else. Not a lot of people talk about that. That's gonna be a thought in your head, most likely, and that's not bad. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. Those days are not data points about whether you should be homeschooling, they're just hard days. Every teacher has them, every parent has them. You are allowed to have them too. You can use them for data to try to reflect on how could I improve this, especially if it becomes a pattern. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't be homeschooling or that you're bad or you're doing something wrong. What I've learned is that the hard days almost never mean what I think they mean in the moment. By the next morning, sometimes the next hour, they look different and we're moving forward. That is life with children, that is life with emotional humans, um, especially with people who have not developed to the point that you've developed, it happens. And especially when there's more than one of them and they're not the same people, you know, there's conflict, there's there's I don't know, it can be chaotic sometimes. Um, and on the really hard days, it is okay to just close the books, go outside, watch a movie, go to the park, meet up with a friend, go, you know, your house husband gets home, you go and you have a good cry with a friend. That is okay. We are meant to let out our emotions sometimes, and crying is a great way to do that if you need to do that. It is okay to read something beautiful, make something together, the lesson plan can wait, but your relationships with your kids cannot. And so, like I said earlier, let's really focus on those first and foremost and use those as a guide with how we're educating our kids. Because if it's if it's pressing up against our relationship, then something should change. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, but it means, okay, this is a sign, like I said before, of where maybe we need to make a little change. So if you're new to homeschooling and everything is feeling harder than it should, or harder than you thought it would, you're not doing it wrong. You're doing something hard, but the truth is you're still doing it and that matters. Or if you've been homeschooling for years and some of these things sting a little, me too. I am not a genius homeschooling expert. I am a fellow mom just trying to share some of the things that works for me and some of the things I notice. These aren't things you learn once and then you're done. They're things you keep learning, you keep coming back to, you keep needing to hear again. I truly hope and pray. I pray before these episodes that's on my checklist to do is to pray before these episodes because I truly do hope that what I share resonates and makes some kind of difference in your life. And if this did, um, I would be so honored and blessed if you would share this with one other homeschool mom who may need to hear it. That is genuinely the best thing you can do for this podcast. And if you're not subscribed yet, please go ahead and hit the subscribe button wherever you follow, wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss what's coming next. And lastly, if you're in a season where homeschooling feels really heavy or I talked about systems and you're like, where do I even begin with that? Because I think that could be something that really needs to change in my home and my homeschool. I have put together my free starter glue print at homeschoolglue.com slash start. It is a free PDF that's going to walk you through five foundational systems that you can start implementing today or tomorrow. Um, and they include a lot of different things, one being the weekly rhythm template that truly will help so much that you can print out and actually write on and start rebuilding your week and get it down on paper so that you don't have to keep doing it every single week. It's just a gentle starter starting point. Um, it's completely free, and I would love to bless you with that. So, like I said, it's at homeschoolglue.com slash start. I hope this episode was helpful. I hope it blessed you in some way, and I will see you next Tuesday. Happy homeschooling. I pray this episode blessed you and gave you something useful that will make homeschooling easier or more fulfilling. If this episode made you feel seen or gave you one thing to change this week, would you please share it and leave a review? That's how more homeschool moms who are struggling with overwhelm can find something that actually helps. You can always find me on Instagram at homeschoolglue where we talk simple systems, rich learning, and the real version of homeschool life. You don't need to do it all, you just need systems that stick. I'll see you next week. Happy homeschooling.