Is homeschooling hard?
I’m not going to lie … it is hard. And anyone who tells you differently isn’t telling the truth.
It’s also wonderful, glorious, delightful and exciting.
But I think we do a disservice to anyone who is learning about homeschooling to not tell the entire truth about homeschooling.
Because if you’re trying to decide about homeschooling …
If you’re trying to decide if homeschooling will be worth it -- what the benefits are ...
And you’re trying to figure out what the advantages and disadvantages of homeschooling are -- you need someone to tell you both the good and the bad.
After 16 years homeschooling, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what I think makes homeschooling easier than public school AND what makes it harder.
I’ve also spent a lot of time trying to decide why I kept going -- even when there were tears (theirs and mine!), even when I was exhausted, and even when I thought I was absolutely failing.
And the reality is that sometimes it was because I’m stubborn.
But most of the time, it was because I could see the long view -- my children were actually growing up to be wonderful people. They were learning and “becoming.”
And I wanted to be part of the journey. Even if that meant I had to keep doing the “hard.”
In today’s video, I’m covering four hard truths I’ve learned about homeschooling during the past 16 years.
Because no matter where you are in the journey -- starting out or quite a ways down the dusty path -- just being aware of what makes homeschooling “hard” can also make it easier!
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Transcript
Hello. My name's ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about four tricky truths that make it tough to be a homeschool mom. Most of the time I make videos that talk about how to be a successful homeschool mom, how to be a confident homeschool mom. But today I want to talk about why being a homeschool mom can be hard. And because I don't want to lie, homeschooling, it's hard.
It is not for the faint of heart. It is not easy. And so I want to talk about what makes it hard for the homeschool mom. Why is it that maybe you want to be aware of just some of the things that are coming that might be difficult that, don't get me wrong, I love homeschooling. I've been doing this for a really long time. I am a veteran homeschool mom of 16 years. I've got four kids. This isn't, I've been doing this awhile and these are the things that I find are still, even after 16 years, still hard for me.
So the first one, the first thing that's hard is you just never have it all figured out. You think you will. You think that it's 16 years or 18 years or 20 years, at some point, you're going to have it all figured out. But the reality is I am still researching. I am still asking questions. I'm still looking for answers. My kids get older and new questions develop, we enter a new phase of life and suddenly everything that I thought I knew has to change. It's just the reality of changing and growing.
You never have it all figured out, and that can be hard. Because you invest all this time, you think at some point, kind of just want to take a break and, and enjoy what I figured out. But the reality is there's always more to learn. There's always ways to improve. There's always things that, big questions that you're trying to figure out. So that's the first thing that I think is hard as being a homeschool mom, and it is a truth. You are never going to have it figured out.
So the second truth, the second tricky truth is that you never stop worrying. You just don't. You're gonna worry the entire time you're homeschooling. I've actually made another post that I recommend you watch all about why a little bit of worry is actually good. And you don't ever want to completely let go of the worry. But the truth is you are never going to stop worrying. And that can be frustrating.
Guilt and fear they sit on the homeschool mom's shoulders and it takes a lot of work to make them not screaming in your ears. And the guilt is all about what you've done in the past and regret and feeling like you should have done something different.
And the fear is all about the future. And it's all about what's going to happen and what am I doing to my kids and are they going to be okay? It's all the future. And these two are sitting on your shoulders and you're just like "Ahhhhhh".
So you gotta learn how to turn that off. But you don't want to completely turn off the worry because you do need it. So there's this battle in-between all of that. And me? Yeah, I'm still worrying. I'm still worrying after 16 years about math. I'm still worrying about am I using my time correctly with my different kids.
You know, am I figuring out, like should we be going on these field trips? Should we be staying home? Should we be, you know, am I doing enough? Am I not doing enough? I'm always trying to figure that out and there is some worry that I'm going to make the wrong choice. It just is.
Okay. So the third tricky truth, the third tricky truth is that it's harder to say goodbye. I didn't even know this. I read everything about how it brought families together and homeschooling creates this environment where everybody is genuinely good friends and that stuff is all true. It's awesome and amazing.
But I didn't realize that what that means is that when it's time to let someone go, either just short term because they're going into an activity you're not involved with like a play or something or long term. Like I sent my daughter off to college, it was hard. It was way harder than I thought it was going to be and it was compounded by the fact that we'd always been together. We'd always been a family, so that was hard.
The last thing, that's the tricky truth, the last tricky truth is that homeschooling is a huge sacrifice. Huge. It is a sacrifice of time. It is a sacrifice of money. It is a sacrifice of energy. All of it is a sacrifice. And you're going to have to come to grips with that. If you're going to be okay with homeschooling. It is a tricky truth that you are going to be sacrificing. Now, don't get me wrong, it is worth it. All of these tricky truths, all of these things, it is worth it. I love homeschooling.
If you need more help with your homeschooling, I do have a homeschool help center full of free resources that you can check out the links up above, down, below, wherever you're watching this video. I hope that that will help you if you are in the process of trying to decide if these tricky truths, if you're willing to embrace them so you can homeschool, or if you're in a place where you just need some help. I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
When I was a new homeschool mom, creating a homeschool schedule and a homeschool routine felt a little overwhelming.
What subjects should I include?
How much could I actually accomplish?
What if I missed something, and my kids had huge holes in their education?
So I created massive color-coded homeschool schedules. I broke the day into time slots. And I plugged in math, science, spelling, history, PE, foreign language, spiritual study, reading, character development … and so much more.
I was ready. My homeschool schedule and routine was perfect. What could go wrong?
It lasted 2 weeks.
During those two weeks there were so many tears -- both from me and my kids. It was not pretty.
I had made the classic homeschool mistake of trying to overschedule and do too much.
I had made the newbie mistake of trying to make my homeschool look like a public school.
I had made the understandable mistake of wanting to make sure I covered “everything.”
And the result was a homeschool that was completely unrealistic and fell apart almost immediately.
So I went back to the drawing board. I took time to research homeschool routines and schedules. What did successful ones REALLY look like?
And what I discovered is that a homeschool schedule is built to serve a successful homeschool routine.
Let’s dig in and talk about all three of those.
ALSO -- In this video I share one of the best ways to set up your homeschool so you can be confident and successful with my Confident Homeschool Foundations Program.
Use the coupon code “Routine” to get over 50% off the regular price!
In this video, I also mention several other posts and videos that I’ve made that can be helpful when putting together a successful homeschool routine that you may find helpful.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Check out the
For a limited time, get 50% off with the coupon code "ROUTINE"
Transcript
Hello. My name's ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about three easy mistakes to avoid when you're putting together your homeschool routine.
So routine rhythm, it's really, really important in a homeschool that you have some kind of routine patterns that you follow in your day, in your week, your month, and your year. This is how you show up as a consistent homeschool mom. This is how you are successfully accomplishing all the things that you want to accomplish is by creating routines.
But there are some easy, easy, easy mistakes that you can make that I can help you avoid if we go through this video together. So let's just dive right in because if you want your homeschool days to be successful, you're going to need routines that work and we want to help you avoid the mistakes that would make them not work. Okay?
Number one, what is the first of these three routines? You know, mistakes. What's the first one? Well, number one is expecting to fit in too much. It is so easy to put in so much in our homeschool. Language arts, math, science, history, foreign language, character development, PE, music, art, and that's just the categories, some of the categories. Technology, you know, coding, all of those things.
And then within that language arts, you want to do literature, you want to do grammar, you want to do writing, you want to make sure that they are doing punctuation. That can grow and then the math can grow and then the science can grow. And before you know it you have so much going on. Less is more, I promise.
It looks like you have to do so much in order to successfully confidently homeschool your kids. But the reality is you don't, you can do a lot less and have more success. A few things done very, very well work much better than a lot of things crammed in. So first mistake when setting up your routine is trying to have so much in it that it isn't possible to accomplish at all.
The second mistake that can happen so easily is expecting that every day will go perfectly. That every day you're going to plan the routine, you're going to know what you're going to do. It's all going to happen. It's all going to play out. No, no. Homeschool days are rarely predictable. There are always things. You're talking about a bunch of human beings all in one space, bumping into each other and doing all this stuff.
There are no perfect homeschool days. There are great homeschool days, and I've made videos about how to have good homeschool days and how to avoid bad homeschools days and how to turn bad days into good days, but there are no perfect days.
And so when you're setting up your routine, you want to set up your routine in a way that embraces the fact that you're going to have different kinds of days. And if you can do that, then you're going to be able to successfully move into a routine that actually works.
Now, the third mistake that's so easy to make is expecting that a routine once working is going to stay the same. Oh, how I wish it was true, how I wish that the perfect routine. You know, I think you could have really good routines. And I would build routines that would be working really, really, really well, and then everything would fall apart.
And what I started to notice that no matter what my routine was every four to six months, depending on how we were homeschooling, I would have to revisit the routine and sometimes completely start over. Sometimes I just would have to tweak it, but no routine lasts forever because the people who are using the routine don't stay the same. They change.
Your kids get older, your kids get bigger, they need different things, they have different ideas, they're doing different curriculum or they're doing different activities. Things change. The routine has to change. So an easy mistake is to think that once you've found it or that if you can find the right routine, it will suddenly work forever. It just doesn't work. The healthy way to look at routines is to consider what does work in your family. To embrace the change, to be open to the fact that things are going to look different, different days.
To learn about what do typical days look like and you know, how do I change good days to a bad day or bad days to good days? How do I have good days? And I've made videos on all of those. I'm gonna include links on my blog. So if you're watching this video somewhere else, head over to the blog so you can see the links of all these other videos. I've talked about how we do this so that routines are successful.
The other thing I want to recommend is I actually have a course that's all about this. It's all about setting up a successful homeschool, taking into account you and your children and all these other things so that you can create routines that will work. That will work for your family, that are individualized based on the knowledge and the principles culled from so many different areas. So I would strongly recommend that if you are struggling to build good routines or you want to build good routines from the very beginning, check it out.
It's called The Confident Homeschool Foundations Program. There will be a link up above or down below, and if you check it out and you're interested, you can actually get 50% off the retail price. If you put the word "ROUTINE" in the coupon box. “ROUTINE” if you put in “ROUTINE.”.
It'll give you 50% off the retail price so that you can create the whole foundation that you need to have a successful and confident homeschool because that's why I make these videos. That's why I talk about this stuff. I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
When I started homeschooling, I spent hours researching and learning about curriculum and teaching methods.
What I didn’t realize is that the most important thing I was going to have to learn about was how my homeschool parent-child relationship was going to work.
I thought homeschooling was about books, and lessons, and knowledge. And it is.
But it’s even more about how two human beings -- a parent and a child -- are going to work together to accomplish a common goal.
And homeschooling can be tricky because you’re not just the teacher -- you’re also the mom. And that means you aren’t just teaching subjects, you’re also parenting and disciplining.
But how do you do that while you’re homeschooling? How do you decide when to parent and when to “teacher”?
How do you motivate your kid to learn (a HUGE part of homeschooling) without destroying your relationship (with yelling or bribing or begging)?
It’s all about following 3 principles:
1. Identifying Priorities
2. Setting Clear Expectations
3. Establishing Appropriate Discipline
Let’s dig in and talk about all three.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video
Transcript
Hello, my name's ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool, today we'll talk a little bit about how you can navigate the parent-child relationship in your homeschool. Particularly if things are not going well. You know sometimes when you think about homeschool, we think a lot about the school part. We think about the fact that we're educating and we're teaching and that our kids need to learn all of this stuff and we're trying to figure all that out.
But the reality is homeschool, a huge piece of homeschool is actually this parent-child relationship. How you and the child are getting along and unfortunately sometimes things don't go the way you want them to. And it starts to tank or sour or fall apart and you're thinking, “I am not getting along with this child. We are fighting, we are struggling.” So today I want to talk about how you can navigate this a little bit so that it can be a more positive, pleasant parent child relationship, so that you can get back to doing the school part.
Now this is complicated. This is complicated because you are not just the mom, you're also the teacher. You are the disciplinarian and you're the detention teacher. You're, you're all the things that the school has as well as everything that the mom has. And one of the benefits of not homeschooling, and I say it like that because it really is true, is that you can, when your kids go away and they have trouble in this world over here and then they come home.
You are then able to commiserate with them. You're able to take their side, you're able to be their ally. But when you are the problem that they see, when you, not that you're the problem, but they see you as the problem, they see you as the frustration. You can't also commiserate. That is, you can't be both. So it is a hard place to sit and it's doable, but it is not easy. So we're going to talk a little bit how we navigate this.
The fact that we have these two roles that we're trying to inhabit at the same time because it does often sour. And one of the reasons it sours is because we are often trying to get our kids to do stuff. We're trying to force them to do things. We're trying to make them want to learn what we want them to want to learn, but we're trying to make them learn.
We're trying to say, okay, do your homework, get your schoolwork done, do this assignment, do the math, do the language, write this sentence, do your handwriting, read this book, whatever it is. That can be really tricky. We're trying to motivate our kids so that they want to learn and it often is where the battle starts to happen.
So if that resonates with you, make sure you stick around to the very end because I have a little something that I want to tell you about I think is going to help that particular piece. But first we're going to talk about some basic principles, how we navigate these two relationships. Okay.
So the first one that I want to just, the first principle that I want to share with you is to remember that the relationship always comes first. Always, always, always relationship comes first. And the reason is that if the relationship is not working, school isn't going to happen. It just isn't and so you have to have this piece working first. If this piece is working, you can start to figure out how to figure out this piece. If this isn't working, nothing's happening over there. So always putting the relationship first, even if it means shelving. Some of this, and I've talked about that in other videos, I've talked about that in the past.
Second principle is you want to set really clear expectations so that you and the child don't end up having arguments or frustrations over the fact that you simply didn't understand what the other person thought was going to happen. The reality is, any time anyone is upset, and this is across the board, whether you're talking about homeschool or marriage or family or extended family or neighbors or anything, anytime someone is upset, it's because their expectation didn't align with reality.
There was a disconnect. What they thought was going to happen doesn't align with what actually happens, and that disconnect is where the unhappiness happens. So if you can have clearer expectations, you will have less conflict and less unhappiness. And I just want to give you a really quick example of this.
This last week I had a daughter who we were trying to establish some routines in her life because she's in a place where she just needs to have a few more of those. And we had a conversation at the beginning of the week where she agreed that she was going to do certain things and I was going to do certain things. I was super, super excited. And as I watched the week progress, those things didn't happen. And I found myself getting increasingly frustrated. I was nagging, I was doing all sorts of things that were just not good parent child relationship.
And I'd got to the end of the week and I realized it was because I had not set good expectations. I had not clearly defined what I envisioned was going to happen in that week. And so she was operating under a different set of expectations and the result was the disconnect. So at the end of the week after several, I would say heated and or complicated conversations, she and I sat down. We re-discussed and got really clear on our expectations so that moving forward we can have a different type of experience and I know that it will be better because she and I are now on the same page. Okay.
Third principle I want to discuss today is that you do, in order to have your parent child relationships working, you do need to have a loving discipline system in place. Because once you've set the expectations, because children are human, there will come a time when they don't meet them. And you need to already have a plan in place for how you're going to handle that. It shouldn't be yelling, it shouldn't be threatening, it shouldn't be doing those things that are reactionary.
You want to be able to be proactive and in order to be able to do that, you have to be able to say, "So if you do not do X, Y will happen." And then be able to unemotionally apply the consequence to the choice. Because when you set clear expectations, you then have choices and if they choose something that doesn't align, then you can unemotionally apply the discipline and then they can learn.
Discipline is about teaching and learning. It is not about punishment.
All right, so those are three principles. If you can learn how to do those three things, you will successfully be much closer to navigating this challenging dynamic between parent and child as you're homeschooling. Now, this sounds like a great idea, but you're like, I do not know where to start. I know that what you're saying sounds like it makes sense, but boy, I would love a lot more help.
I want you to check out a course I've created called The Motivation Formula. It's all about how to get your kids to want to learn without begging, yelling or bribing them, and I want you to go check it out because we go into what I've just talked about in so much depth.
We go in, we dive deep talking about this parent child relationship as it relates to homeschool. And people who go through this course, quickly are able to start to apply principles that radically change the dynamic in their home. And the bonus is their kids genuinely start to want to learn because they no longer feel forced. So if that sounds like it's something that would appeal to you.
Please check up, the link will be up above or down below, you know, however it is that you're watching this video. I want to just provide that resource to you. If this is something you want to spend more time with because you know it will radically change your homeschool for the better. My name is ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
Did you know that almost every homeschool mom (at one point or another) buys into certain myths about homeschooling? And specifically about homeschooling consistently?
Even those of us who have been doing it for a really long time (and I’ve been around for over 15 years) still find myself believing certain lies about homeschooling … myths that seem like they should be true. But they aren’t!
Consistent homeschooling is tricky. To be consistent requires you show up as a homeschool mom day in and day out -- over and over again -- year after year. And it’s tiring and hard sometimes.
And whether you’re just getting started as a homeschool mom or you’ve been on the homeschool journey for a while, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking that everyone else is doing something better than you.
You look around on Pinterest or Facebook or at park day, and it seems like every other homeschool kid is thriving and doing amazing, exciting activities and doing all their chores every day (without being asked).
Meanwhile, you’re struggling to hold it all together -- the kids are having a “movie” day (again) -- the dishes are piling up in the sink (again) -- and you forgot to buy the one ingredient for the activity (again) so you’re scrapping the one fun thing you had planned for the entire week.
So what is the truth about homeschooling? What does it REALLY look like if you pull back the curtain and take a peek into a successful consistent homeschool?
Today I’m sharing 4 myths that homeschool moms often believe about homeschooling … and 4 truths about what’s actually happening inside a homeschool that works consistently.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Don’t forget to check out my Confident Homeschool Foundations Program.
Use the coupon code “Myths” to get over 50% off the regular price!
Transcript
Hello, my name is ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool, today I want to talk about four common myths about being a consistent homeschool mom.
Consistency, is that something you struggle with? Do you feel like you just never can stick with things? Things are always changing in there and you're always kind of feeling in the throws of this and then this and then this.And you just think, if I could be a consistent homeschool mom, everything would be better. My kids would be learning, things would be humming along, we would just, it would all be going well. Okay.
So today I'm going to talk about four myths that you might believe about being a consistent mom that of course are not true. That's why they're myths. And then I'm going to tell you four truths about consistent moms that you can hopefully apply in your homeschool.
If this is an area you're struggling, and I just want to recommend that you stick around until the very end because I also have a really special something that I want to tell you about that I think will help your consistency even more. Okay, so let's get started.
What are four common myths that people who are not consistent, homeschool moms, that are not consistent think that consistent homeschool moms are doing? Well, the first myth is that there's this idea that a consistent homeschool mom always has it all together. They've got the meal planning, they've got the house cleaning, they've got the chores, they've got the homeschool. It's all just sort of happening.
No. Total myth. It doesn’t happen. The most consistent homeschool moms I know feel like they also have plates that are falling. I wish I could show you parts of my house. I consider myself a consistent homeschool mom. I have areas of my house that desperately need organizing and cleaning. We're talking boxes piled ready for me to go through. We're talking about junk in the corner. We're talking about rooms that really do look like storage closets.
There are nights when we don't eat dinner and my kids make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There are times when I look around and I think that cobweb has been in the corner for six months. Homeschool moms don't have it all together. We're figuring it out all the time. It really is a sheen that it looks like we have it together, but we don't. Okay.
Second myth, that you might believe about a consistent homeschool mom that isn't true is that we do the same thing every single day and we do it in the same order. No, no, not even. Not even close. Every day looks different. Yes, I do sort of have rhythms and we're going to talk about that in a minute and other patterns that I follow, but those get thrown out of the window depending on what time kids get up. Our kid's sick. Is there a field trip? Do we have another activity? Is dad home? All kinds of things change what we do, and then on top of that, is the kid having a bad day? Did we struggle with this piece of the plan? Did I think I had something and then I had to change the plan because I didn't buy that thing at the store happens all the time?
So consistent homeschool moms are not moms who consistently do the same thing every single day. Consistent homeschool moms, they're ones who embrace the variety and are willing to be flexible and come up with something else or be okay with it changing. That's what a consistent homeschool mom does is she shows up every day and embraces the variety. Okay.
Third myth, third myth that you might believe about a consistent homeschool mom is that she always finishes what she starts? No, no. You might believe that she picks a curriculum and then she works all the way through it. You might believe that she picks a curriculum and she uses it for several years. No, I can't tell you how many curriculums that sit on my shelf that I started and we didn't finish. The number of math programs we have been through and discarded. The number of books that we started didn't like and didn't finish.
Consistent homeschool moms, it's not about picking and forcing your way to the end. It's all about consistently evaluating and deciding if it's working. Now you want to give it long enough to see if it's working and overtime and experience you start to see what is actually a long enough time to know. But I'm constantly evaluating. I'm constantly shifting. I'm constantly tweaking and turning and trying to decide what is the best mix for our family. And that is why we're never, it means sometimes we finish things, but not always. Okay.
Fourth myth is that the consistent homeschool mom always knows what she's doing. This one just makes me laugh. I don't know what I'm doing. I only know what I'm doing to the extent that I seem like I know what I'm doing because I've been doing this for 16 plus years. There are so many things I am still figuring out. I'm still figuring out how to teach higher-level math. Do I kind of know how to do elementary math? Well maybe, although I have to wonder, would my higher-level math be better if I had done a better job with the lower level math?
I don't know. I'm still figuring out how to help my kids write in different kinds of ways. I'm still figuring out how to help my son clean the bathroom consistently every week. I am still figuring it out. So the only thing that a consistent homeschool mom does is show up. Recognizing that every day she will be learning a little bit more on how to be a little bit better, a little bit more, a little bit better, a little bit more, a little bit better. It's not about always knowing what you're doing, it's recognizing that you're always learning. Okay. So those are the four myths.
Let's talk about four truths to be a consistent homeschool mom.
So one of the truths that make all consistent homeschool moms work and this is a pattern I see across a lot of different styles and families, is that consistent homeschool moms trust the process. They learn to trust that if they show up every day, something magical will somehow happen by the end. If they are learning and growing and trying to improve and asking questions and constantly striving, they actually will make some kind of progress. Even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment.
Second truth is that a consistent mom knows how to push through the initial hard. The part where a kid doesn't like something because it's just new and different and you're all getting used to something. They know how to push through that stage so that they can then get to the stage where they can genuinely evaluate whether something's working or not and some kids require a lot of energy to push through and others don't. It just depends on the kid.
The third one, and I've already kind of alluded to this, is that a consistent homeschool mom is constantly learning. She is constantly learning. She's constantly researching, she's constantly asking questions, constantly evaluating.
And then the fourth thing is that a consistent homeschool mom finds her own rhythm. She does not depend on someone else telling her exactly how to structure her day or her year. She sits down and she says, what is going to work for us based on our family situation, our family schedule a myriad of experiences and situations that only apply to your family.
You know, you have that unique mix and then you find a rhythm that works for you and you're not looking for a schedule. You're looking for a rhythm and a rhythm might be seasonal. A rhythm might be monthly based on how you handle different parts of your month. It might be based on when dad's home and when dad's not home, your rhythm is going to look different, but the rhythm is what keeps you consistent. It's what keeps you consistent over and over and over again through the days, the weeks, the months, and yes, the years. Okay.
So is this easy? No, it's not easy to be a consistent homeschool mom, but it is doable. It is doable, particularly when you can put the common myths aside and start to embrace the truth. Now there are some things you can do to make it easier and one of those is to help you develop rhythms by being aware of what's going on in your family. Being aware of how to structure your day and onto the week, the month, the year in a way that really does help you find the rhythms and I have a course that might be perfect for you if you still would like some more help on that. This course goes through different ways to structure your day as well as a myriad of other things that would be really helpful for you if you're trying to figure this piece out.
So I'm putting a link, it's down below or it's up above. It's wherever you're watching this video. It's called the Confident Homeschool Foundations Program and I actually have a special offer for you. If you put in the word myths, “MYTHS”, into the checkout form, you will be able to get 50% off the retail price. And so you can go check that out. Want to help you out there, because if you're struggling to be consistent, there are some key things you can put in place beyond what we've talked about in this video. And I would love for you to learn those so that you can be successful.
Because I make these videos every week and I help homeschoolers all the time because that's what I want. I want you to feel successful. I want you to feel confident. And that's my goal and that's ultimately my goal for you. My name is ToriAnn Perkey, and I do. I make these videos every week to help you be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
At some point, if you homeschool, you will fight the fundamental homeschool battle.
You’ll be trying to motivate your kids. Trying to get them to do their math … or spelling … or reading.
And instead of gleefully going along with your plan, your kid will push back. They’ll be defiant. They’ll say “no.”
OR they’ll be passive aggressive and just sit there -- staring at you with a look that says, “I DARE you to make me learn anything.”
How do I know this??
I’ve seen so many different kinds of homeschool bad attitudes in my house. Maybe I’m just “lucky,” but my sense from talking to other homeschool moms is this is something that we all have to figure out in order to keep homeschooling successfully.
So what do you do?
How do you work with an uncooperative child and actually motivate them so they WANT to learn?
How do you work with your kid when they’re being defiant?
How do you fight the homeschool battle and win?
That’s what I’m talking about today. It’s not easy … but it is possible.
And if you get a few key things in place, you’ll find that you have fewer battles and more peace in your homeschool.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video
Transcript
Hello. My name is ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool, today we're gonna talk about how to battle a bad attitude in your homeschool. Do you have a homeschool kid who you just feel like has a bad attitude, they're grumpy, they're frustrated, and you're like, dude, just fix your attitude. This is going to get better. Well, this video then is for you. We're going to talk about how you battle those bad attitudes and help shift the energy in your home so it can be more positive.
And the first thing I want to say is you need to know, this is something every homeschool family struggles with because at some point, every kid's going to show up at some point with a bad attitude. And it happens all the time. It really, really does. And it can happen for all sorts of reasons and it can happen because you're having a bad day. It can happen because your kid's having a bad day, they're grumpy for some reason. It happens for all sorts of reasons. And so yeah, how do we battle this? How do we do this?
Well first, I just want to let you know I've seen it all, my kids, everything I'm about to tell you I have seen in my home. I've got four kids, I've been homeschooling for over 16 years. They are all teenagers. I have seen the bad attitude and what I'm about to tell you does actually make a difference. Okay? So first of all, let's talk about what bad attitudes look like. Because sometimes we just use these phrases and we don't get really clear on all the different ways a bad attitude might be showing up. Okay?
So you, a bad attitude can be a kid who's being sassy or rude. They're being disrespectful, they're talking back. That's a bad attitude. It can be a kid who is stonewalling you and just like giving you that stone cold face where they're refusing to do something and you say, I'd like you to do this. And they're just like, and they just stare at you. Like if I stare at you long enough, maybe you'll go away. That's “bad attitude”.
They might fall apart. So you ask them to do something and instead of working through it, their emotional regulation is so poor that they just, they throw a tantrum or they just start to cry and I'm not talking like tears of frustration and they're working through it. I'm talking about fall apart, can't handle it on the floor. It looks like a tantrum or maybe it just looks like a full on meltdown of other kinds.
It might also look like what I like to call “slothing,” where they just get super passive aggressive and they're doing it, but they're doing it really slow or they're doing it really sloppy. And it's this sort of like, "Well, you can make me do this, but you can't make me do it well", right. So these are all bad attitudes show up in life, lots of different ways and some are a little more subtle than others.So what do we do?
Well, first we recognize that some of this is to be expected because our children are human and they are learning how to be mature adults. And bad attitude is something that takes time to work out of your system. I know adults who still have bad attitudes who still do all of the things I just listed, right?
So it's not like we just come onto this planet knowing how to handle hard situations, knowing how to interact with people. So sometimes battling the bad attitude has as much to do with me just recognizing that it is actually going to show up and not being frustrated that it's there.
Recognizing that it is part of my children's human experience and it is also going to show up because part of this human experience is about agency and choice. It's about letting our kids make choices because one of the reasons they're on this planet is to learn how to make choices. And if we don't give them the space to do that, they don't learn. And so human beings by nature want freedom.
They want choice. That is like, embedded in the DNA of a human being. And so your child is figuring out agency and choice. And one of the ways they do that is by pushing back against the things you ask them to do. Well, if they're pushing back, there are respectful ways to do that, but those often have to be taught well. They do.
They have to be taught. They have to be learned and practiced. Meanwhile, bad attitude shows up, and bad attitude can show up in a four year old. It can show up in a 16 year old and it will look different most of the time, but it's going to show up because it's them practicing their agency in inappropriate ways. We want them practicing their agency. We just want them learning how to do it in an appropriate way. So it's recognizing that this is actually something that's supposed to happen.
Now, on top of that, it's also helpful to recognize that some kids just need more freedom and agency than others. They just, their little souls crave choice. And so if you have one of those kids, they're going to push back on everything. And often they'll do it in stronger and stronger and stronger ways. And you end up just doing this back and forth and back and forth as you're battling because this child's like, "I need to choose!" And you're saying, "I need you to do this." And so it becomes this battle, right? So recognizing that some kids need more agency and freedom can help you adjust your expectations of the bad attitude.
Okay. So with that, let's talk about a couple specific things that you can do to help make these battles less of a battle and more of a journey that you're taking together. The first one is to pick your battles, get really clear on what's important. Not everything is important. And if you pick all your battles, you won't win any of them. So decide what hill you're going to plant on. Decide which things are the most important and let other things go.
And depending on the kid you have, you may let a lot of things go that you normally would not let go. But you recognize that these things are the ones you're going to plant your flag on. That is the first thing. You gotta pick your battles and I have been amazed over the years at how many things I thought I had to hold on to that I really didn't. That didn't matter nearly as much as I thought they mattered and as I chose to let those things go, everything actually got better and not just because I was a pushover, but I was actually not fighting about everything. Okay.
The second thing is to set clear expectations. A lot of battles can actually happen because we think a kid should just know what we want them to do. And then they're frustrated because they thought they were going to get to do something different or they thought a different level of doing it was going to be okay. And so that battle happens because the expectations aren't the same.
I've talked about this in other videos and I'm going to talk about it more because it is so key to just all human interaction, but anytime you have conflict, anytime you have this going on, it's because your expectation does not match your child's expectation and any time expectation doesn't meet reality, there's going to be conflict. There's going to be unhappiness. There's going to be something negative.
So with the clearer you can get on expectations, the better off you are and then you need to have ways to follow through when they don't meet those expectations which you have shared in advance is kind of bigger than I want to go into in this whole video, but this expectations thing is sharing. Super important.
The third thing, and I just want to share today, is don't feed the monster. When your child starts to give you bad attitude and they start to push and they start to give you a hard time, it is going to trigger you. I don't care how calm you are, it's going to bug you because your agency, your human soul is not going to like it for all sorts of reasons.
And we're not going to go into all of those in this video, but you're not gonna like it and you're going to want to push back. And as you push back and they start to push back, it is going to bring up parts of you that maybe you don't like a whole lot that you don't like when they show up. Don't feed that monster. It is inside every single one of us.
Take a timeout, walk away, take a deep breath. There is almost nothing that your child is doing that requires immediate response. Almost everything can wait a little while till you've gotten to a place where you can respond and without the monster doing the talking. If you can do that, you will deescalate situations. It will not turn into this huge battle, but instead it will be something where you can actually be having rational conversations.
That's some of the ways to navigate this bad attitude that shows up, particularly when you're trying to get your kids to do stuff in your homeschool and they don't want to do it. The reality is when we're trying to get our kids to do stuff, it's because we're trying to motivate them. We're trying to tell them, you need to do this and this and this because we want them to get things done.
We want them to be motivated and in an ideal world, they'd be motivated to do those things without all of these battles, right? So if that is something that resonates with you, if you're wrestling with how do I set clear expectations? If you're wrestling with how do I motivate my kids, I want you to check out a course I've put together, it's called The Motivation Formula. There's a link up above, down below, you know, wherever you're watching this video.
And the reason is, I've gone through and I've talked in detail and really help you figure out how to manage the agency of your child while still setting expectations and asking them to do things I've talked about. How do you know what to do with a kid who really holds onto their agency? I've talked about how do you set those clear expectations so that after you get all these pieces in place, your kids will want to learn.
They'll be motivated to learn on their own without begging, without bribing, without yelling. All those things that you're doing that possibly are creating these battles that you're trying to avoid and creating the bad attitude even though you're not trying to. Sometimes the bad attitude comes from how we show up and not just how our kids are. So if that's something that sounds interesting, be sure to check it out.
It's like I said, the links up above, down below. It's called The Motivation Formula and it's a course I've put together to help you with some of these things because the reality is bad attitude shows up in every homeschool. But successful and confident homeschools, the ones where the moms are able to consistently keep going, are the ones who figure this out without it turning into world war three. And hopefully some of the things I've given you today have been helpful. If so, please know that I make these videos every week, every week, so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
One of the questions I hear all the time from new homeschool moms is “what does a typical homeschool day” look like?
And it’s an interesting question to try and answer.
I get where the question is coming from. A new homeschool mom is trying to figure out what do homeschool kids do all day?
How long should a typical homeschool day be?
It’s almost like she wants to pull back the curtain and see what the day in the life of a homeschool mom REALLY looks like.
But trying to answer what a typical day looks like is actually kind of a tricky question.
Because the truth is there really ISN’T a “typical” day.
Yes, there are homeschool routines that we follow. And there are homeschool rhythms and patterns.
But these adjust depending on the day, the season, and the needs of our family.
So what’s a homeschool mama to do?? Just roll out of bed and hope for the best??
Absolutely not!
Even though it’s constantly changing, there are ways to put together a homeschool schedule that works. And you can do it without losing the flexibility that homeschool offers AND requires.
So today I’m sharing what a “typical” homeschool day looks like in many homeschool families.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
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Transcript
Hello. My name is ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about what a typical homeschool day looks like. A typical day. This is a question that I see all the time. I see it in Facebook groups, I hear it at co-ops. You know, "What does a typical homeschool day look like?"
So that's what I want to cover today, and I'm going to start out by just, I don't know, sharing a little secret. There is no typical homeschool day. I know. I think that there's this myth out there, this, mystique that somehow there's just, you know, what does a day look like? And the reality is they're all really different. And so it's really challenging as a homeschool mom who's been doing this for over 16 years. It can be really challenging for me to just say, well, your typical day looks like this because there are so many things that affect a homeschool day. And things that you can control and things that you can't control.
So for example, you might have a kid that wakes up sick. You might have a holiday where your husband's home from work or a holiday where you guys decide to travel. You might have a car emergency, you might have a family emergency, you might have a, so those are all things you can't plan for. But then you might also have a field trip or a special activity or you know a moon, a new movie comes out and you really want to go see it as a family or, or the it snows and you want to take a snow day. Like those are all things where you actually kind of plan that those things are going to happen.
So you're constantly juggling what a typical day looks like because there really are no typical days, although there are rhythms and patterns to homeschool days. So today I'm not going to talk about a typical day, but I am going to talk about some rhythms and patterns that you can use to kind of get a picture of what homeschooling looks like.
All right, so I want to clarify. I've been homeschooling for over 16 years, which means that we started when my youngest was three and a half. They're now all teenagers. What my day looks like now when my youngest is 13, is really, really, really different than what it looked like when all my kids were, you know, eight and under or 10 and under. So I'm going to break this video into a couple parts.
We're going to talk about a typical day, typical a rhythm day, a pattern day when I'm home. And we're also going to talk about one when we're out and about, because it kind of divides into those two categories. And under each of those categories, I'm going to tell you what it used to look like when my kids were younger and what it now looks like now that my kids are teenagers. So we're going to cover each of those.
Let's start with what it looks like when you stay home with young kids. So staying home means that you don't have a field trip planned. You don't have an outing planned, you're not going to the co-op, you're just staying home and having a homeschool day. Well, the rhythm that we often did when it was sort of like a normal day is that my kids would get up, we would get dressed. We weren't a pajama family. There are homeschool families that are, we weren't. We would eat breakfast. We would then do kind of our chores, the work around the house. I would work with the kids, we would all kind of work together at the same time and then we would gather on the couch.
We would do devotional, we would, you know, morning time we would read books, we would do art study or we'd watch a video. It was kind of our gathering time. We would do games together. We'd have kind of our time together and then the kids would kind of separate and we'd have time alone and that's where I would kind of help the kids who might be working on something that they would need help with and then we would be done and they would go off and do their own playing their own passions, their own interests.
And that's when I would get my time. Now you might be thinking, well how long is that? While we would get up, and again this is just me, I know homeschool families who are super successful with all kinds of schedules, but we would get up roughly around seven in the morning and I would get up a little bit earlier cause I'm a morning person, but we would get up, we get up around there, we would start homeschool about nine or nine 30 and we'd usually be done about noon. Remember this is again when all my kids were little, maybe one o'clock if they had specific assignments cause they were 10, 11, 12. That's what it looked like when they were younger.
Now that they're older, it actually looks a lot different. So first of all, I now work and so I work early, early in the mornings again cause I'm a morning person and my kids don't actually get up and we don't get going until about 10 in the morning. They get up before that if they want to do things. But 10 is when we gather together. That's when we say prayer. We do our gathering time, we do our devotional. That's also when we kind of coordinate the day because now my teenagers are going all over the place and most of the time I'm actually a facilitator of them going directions.
Who needs the car? Who needs to be here, who am I driving? So-and-so is, you know, child A driving child D somewhere because some can drive and some can't. So now our day is much more about coordinating after we gather at around 10 and then they go off and do their independent work. And most of what they do now is independent. It doesn't require me anymore. I am available however to answer questions, to help with projects, to help with math problems. If I can still help with math problems to help with writing, things like that.
So my day looks really, really different now and my free time is actually different. It's, it's segmented throughout the day when they don't need my help. And sometimes I will schedule with a child and say, okay, we're going to sit down and do this particular assignment right now. Because they'll say, okay, well we'll schedule to meet together at 1:15 and we kind of treat it like that more like tutoring rather than a set time.
So that's, and then we wrap up and they, and there's often activities in the afternoon that we're going to, so I'm driving kids to lessons or other kids are driving kids to lessons or going to lessons, you know, and then we finish out the day.So it's very, very different now than when I was, when my kids were younger. So that's what typical normal days look like when we're home.
So let's talk about now what they look like when we're out and about. When my kids were little, and again this is all, you know 12 and under 11 and under, when we had an outing, whether it was a co -op day or just a field trip. And we're talking like a field trip that takes an hour. I did not do anything else homeschooling other than probably to gather and some kind of devotional. And what I mean by devotional, we said prayer, we would get up, we would try to get the work done.
If that happened, I would feed my children. So we'd get up, we'd have breakfast, probably get the work done and then we would go on the outing. And that was the day. Because by the time I got everybody ready, got in the car, went to the outing and got home, I was tired and I didn't have the energy. And it was so hard to like try to get back into our routine. And so I was very careful and intentional about how I would plan my school day and my school year, recognizing we were going to take lots of those days and I would have different kinds of expectations about how much we would accomplish with our book work or our reading book or our games or whatever. Because if we went somewhere that was it.
Now my kids are older, right, so getting ready to go somewhere is easier, but because they're independent, I actually let them decide when and how they want to get their independent work done. And I cancel the classes I'm still in charge of, so I'm still doing math with a couple of my kids on days when there's outings. On days when there's other things, we just don't do math because again, I recognize that by the time we get there we do the thing and we come home.
It, just for me, does not work my rhythm to put those classes and try to do them at, you know, four in the afternoon or six at night. Maybe some moms do, I don't. I'm just going to own it and say that's how it works for me. So that's what typical days look like when kids are younger, typical days look older.
And lest you think, I'm just talking from my own experience, having been around for 16 years, I've read a lot of people who have written out their schedules. I've read probably, Oh I probably have read a conversation or had a conversation or read at least a hundred different examples of days. And these are really the patterns that I see across the board. I see very few people who are super rigid and structured every day no matter what. Now this is one piece of being a successful homeschool mom is, how do you structure your day?
It is like you got to figure out how you kind of want the day to go. Cause the day is, the block, the building block of the week, the year, the month, the year and beyond. So if you're still in the research phase and you're trying to figure this out or you're thinking, "I have tried to be homeschooling, I'm trying to structure my day, I have no idea how to do it."
I definitely want you to check out a course I've put together, it's called The Confident Homeschool Foundations Program and this Confident Homeschool course is all about ,how do you be a successful homeschool mom. And it includes a huge portion on how you structure your day, including several examples of different types of days that you can structure that will all fit these general principles that I've shared with you.
If that sounds like that's something would be helpful, please check out the link up above, down below. You know wherever you're watching this video, and I'm going to give you a coupon code. If you use it, you will get 50% off the retail price and the coupon code is “typical” - TYPICAL. Doesn't matter if it's lower case or upper case, just put in the word typical. You'll get 50% off the price and it's going to give you everything that you need to set up a successful structured homeschool day in a way that works well for you.
It gives you a way to tailor and individualize it. So if that's something that would be helpful, be sure to check out the link. It will definitely be something that I think you can find that will be useful. I'm ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
Some days homeschooling is just hard!
The kids are struggling and whining and crying.
You’re struggling ... whining … and crying.
Nobody wants to do their work. Everyone is fighting.
The phone is ringing.
The entire neighborhood is at your house.
You’re trying to teach while also serve another family in need -- or just maintain your sanity.
Hard homeschool days come to every homeschool family. Days where you just want to throw in the towel and quit homeschooling!
Not every day, of course. Some days are wonderful and blissful and magical. Days where your kids and you are having a blast -- learning and growing together.
I’ve had many people tell me -- and I’ve found it true myself -- that you get one of those lovely days about 1 in 10. And believe me, these are the days that keep me going!
On top of that, many days can be “pretty good.” My kids are fairly compliant, stuff gets done, and nobody had a meltdown. We’ve gotten to the point (after 15 years) where we get a lot of “pretty good” days. (Want to know how we’ve done it? Check out my webinar “Confident Homeschool Secrets”)
But for the days that are trending toward disaster, what can you do?
How can you make homeschooling easier when you can sense where everything is headed?
Today I’m discussing 5 things you can do and say in the middle of a hard homeschool day. No - things won’t magically become “magical,” but you can reverse the trajectory and get your family headed back in the right direction.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
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Transcript
Hello ToriAnn Perkey here, from my homeschool to your homeschool, today I want to talk about what you can say to yourself in the middle of a really hard homeschool day. I don't know about you, but there are days where everything just feels like it's crashing in. The kids aren't listening. I'm having a bad day. The phone's ringing off the hook. Kids are coming to, the additional kids are coming to the door you know. I'm hearing about stuff that's not working and everybody's grumpy and fighting and some days are just hard.
And if you're going to successfully homeschool, learning how to get through the hard days to the good days is definitely worth the effort, but you got to figure out how to get through the good days. Now, I've made another video on how to actually have a good day, and so if you haven't seen that video, be sure to check down below. I'm going to put a link to that video as well, but today I want to talk about what to say to yourself in the middle of a hard homeschool day.
Actually have five different things, five different types of things you can say to yourself to just get you through the day. Put yourself in bed so you can get up the next day.
Okay. So the first one, the first thing that you can say to yourself is, this is simple. This is easy. This is fun. Now this is all about training your brain to look at whatever is currently happening in a different light. Don't get me wrong, there are days where it doesn't feel simple, easy, or fun. But if I say it to myself enough, sometimes my brain shifts and I wait. Okay, okay, I can figure this out. So this is almost like a, like a Jedi mind trick that you're going to play with your brain to help you figure out how to do this. And so this is simple. This is easy. This is fun. Something to just perk yourself up in the middle of the day.
Okay. Number two, what's the second thing you can say to yourself? I need a timeout. Sometimes it is okay for you as the mom to pull yourself out of the situation. Go to your closet and just take a deep breath. I have spent many a homeschool day with part of the day in my closet. Now of course, you don't abandon your children. You either put them in front of something that they can watch or you put the older one in front of the younger ones. Whatever you can do.
Maybe you even just put everybody in a crib or a bed and you say, we're taking a time out and you go put yourself in a timeout. You take the time to figure out how you can reset and recharge. Sometimes when the days are really hard, that's what you need to do. You need to take just a minute to pull yourself out of the situation, get some perspective, let the emotions fall, you know, let the emotions kind of drain out of you just a little bit so you can come back into it with a fresh pair of eyes and possibly a slightly happier heart.
Okay, so the third thing, what's the third thing you can say? What do we really need right now? What does my child need right now and not what do they in the moment like they need, they maybe need to get their math done. No, I'm talking about what do they really need? Do they need a hug? Do they need some food? Do they need a nap? I don't know what your kid needs.
But often when things are really falling apart, it's because the needs aren't being met. So stepping back and saying, what do they really need? And maybe adjusting your plan for the day because you recognize that what your kid really needs is to sit on the couch and snuggle with you and feel better about themselves. Or maybe they need a conversation or maybe they just need a walk around the block. Whatever it is, will help you have, just help you reset. So that's the third thing.
Fourth, remember that you're on a journey. Take the long view. Sometimes we're having a really hard day because we're so worried and afraid that we're not getting everything done and we forget that it's really easy to underestimate how much you can accomplish in 10 years. And over estimate how much you can accomplish in a day. Less is more with homeschooling, so you might not get a whole lot done on a single day, but if you're showing up every day over the course of your child's education, you're going to accomplish a lot. So the next thing you can say to yourself is, I'm taking the long view. I'm looking down the road, I'm just gonna do one little piece today. We don't have to do it all today.
Finally, and this is what I say to myself when things really just hit the fan and everything else, there just doesn't seem to be any other answer. This too shall pass. Sometimes we don't change things. Sometimes we gracefully make it through things and sometimes we don't make it through gracefully. We just make it through, right? This too shall pass. When I remember that nothing is permanent, nothing lasts forever and I always have tomorrow. It helps me get through the end of a really hard homeschool day.
Now if you are new to homeschooling or you are struggling, be sure to check out my free homeschool help center. It's down below full of different activities. Resources, helps to help you have a good homeschool, things like this, as well as other things in there. Specifically, there are additional declarations, phrases that you can say to yourself to help you pump yourself up so you can have a good homeschool day. Be sure to check it out. That's down below. My name is ToriAnn Perkey, and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
Choosing the best homeschool curriculum can be daunting!
So many choices. So much variety. So many options.
And each claim that they will help your child love learning. That they will be the “right fit.” That they will help you as a mom homeschool successfully.
And the reality is each CAN be the right homeschool curriculum for you … but not all of them can.
So how do you choose?
How do you wade through the massive number of curriculum choices to find the best homeschool curriculum for your kids?
After 16 years of homeschooling, I’ve developed 3 simple steps you can take to decide which curriculum is right for your family.
They aren’t foolproof -- but these steps have saved me tons of money and tons of false starts.
And while not every homeschool curriculum is a slam dunk (we’ve spent years looking for the best homeschool math curriculum for our family), I’ve been pretty successful overall with my choices.
And since these steps can be applied by any homeschool mom, they should also work well for you!
In this video I share one of the best ways to set up your homeschool so you can be confident and successful. Check out my Confident Homeschool Foundations Program.
Use the coupon code “PickPerfect” to get over 50% off the regular price!
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Don’t forget to check out my Confident Homeschool Foundations Program.
Use the coupon code “PickPerfect” to get over 50% off the regular price!
Transcript
Hello ToriAnn Perkey here and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about three simple steps that you can take to pick out the perfect curriculum.
Ah, isn't that the desire of every homeschool mom to find the perfect curriculum so that your kids will magically want to do everything that you want them to do. This'll be the curriculum that your children will wake up excited to do, that they will never complain. They will never whine. They will be thrilled and their learning will exponentially increase.
Yeah. Actually the perfect curriculum, "perfect" doesn't exist, but in this video, I am going to give you three simple steps to help you find the best curriculum for your child at this point in time. And you can do a much better job of finding good curriculum without spending a lot of money and a lot of time researching and getting lost in the details. Because the reality is when you're researching curriculum, particularly if you're just starting out, the options are overwhelming.
I know it's hard to believe this, but it's actually a good thing. When I started homeschooling over 16 years ago, man, there just weren't a ton of options out there and the number of people who have created amazing possibilities in the last 16 years while I've been doing this is mind boggling and that's great. That means you can find an option that's going to be a good fit for you and your family and your child. The downside is that means you have so much more to figure out and research. So let's talk about three simple steps to kind of narrow it down to make it just a little bit easier for you.
Now the first step, the very first step I recommend is actually getting clear on your vision for your homeschool. Why are you homeschooling? What are you hoping to accomplish and what is your sort of philosophy? What are you, why are you homeschooling? And this is a really important question to answer because different types of curriculum are actually going to feed into different attitudes about education in general. And so if you know what your reason for homeschooling is, you can start to weed out the ones that just don't line up.
You know, if you're really, really big on child led learning and discovery, you're not gonna want a rigid curriculum that's just do step A, step B, step C. If you are a family, you're very focused on getting your children into an elite school and having them have the best academic opportunities possible. You may want something that has a more structured classical approach. So it's not about right or wrong, it's about getting clear on what you want.
Now, if you need help creating that vision, I do actually have a free training all about how to create a vision for your homeschool. You can check out the link down below. It walks you through the process so that you, by the end of about 30 minutes, have a really solid vision for your homeschool. So step number one, get clear on your vision.
Step number two, think about your kids. The curriculum is for them, but they're not all going to be the same. No two kids are the same. And certainly there's different kinds of categories of kids. So you want to learn and think a little bit about their personality, about their learning styles. Do they need to be up and moving around and wiggling a lot or do they do okay if they're sitting and doing bookwork for awhile? Different curriculums cater to different styles and of course you would hope that curriculum that's designed for younger children, all younger children are more wiggly than older kids. But there are some teenagers who that sitting is just not going to work for them in the same way.
So get clear on your kid. How do they learn how, what's their personality? What are their needs? As you spend time doing that, what will happen is you will be able to have a better sense of which curriculums are going to line up with the needs of your kid. And don't forget to keep in mind that you're the one teaching the curriculum. So you do want to get clear on are you going to be really involved? You need to have a little bit less involvement. Maybe you're doing this with a kid and so they need to have an outside recorded instructor. Maybe you need to nurture that child so you wanna spend more time together and just what do you need? Do you need something that's a little more structured? Do you want it to be more open ended? You are one of the kids that you need to be looking at. Okay, so that's the second thing. Get to know your kid.
Third one, get kind of, so you kind of know about the different philosophies of homeschooling. Homeschooling has been around long enough now that it's kind of branched off into different ways. There's classical, there's Charlotte Mason, there's Thomas Jefferson education, there's Waldorf, there's Montessori, there's eclectic, there's world schooling or road schooling. There's unschooling and many, many more. Those are kind of the big ones and getting to know a little bit about each one of those will help you determine what kind of curriculum you want.
Because some curriculum is designed specifically for classical education or Charlotte Mason education and you're going to see those words pop up a lot. Also, if you're asking and doing research and reading things and you know that that's not a style that's going to fit for your family, then you can just automatically let go of that particular curriculum choice even if it comes highly recommended cause you know it doesn't fit with what you are looking for. So the third one is you want to review the philosophies and get clear.
Now once you have those three steps in place, you can go do research and research is, there's a couple different ways. One, there's a book by Kathy Duffy that I absolutely love. I've done another video on that, a link down below to that video and she has put together a book on the 102 top homeschool picks. Love the book. So worth the purchase. It will actually help you walk through these steps.
The second one is your good old friend, Google. If you can put in, I need a reading curriculum for a really wiggly or a kinesthetic kid, that's Charlotte Mason, you're going to get a much more solid set of options to research. Rainbow resources, another really great place to go. A lot of curriculum there and they talk about these things and the different personalities and things like that. Social media is actually a great place to go, particularly Facebook groups that are aligned with your philosophy. You can ask questions about it in just geographic Facebook groups or in specific Facebook groups that aligned with those educational philosophies.
And then another thing that I just want to let you know is I actually have a course that goes through all of these topics and a whole bunch more to help you set up your homeschool, but particularly things to help you set up your homeschool with the right curriculum so that you can be successful. It goes along with the free training that I offered you earlier so you can join the free training, totally free to go set up your vision.
But if you also want to learn about how your kids can, you know, learn more about your kid's personality, learn about learning style. If you're really, really interested in learning about the different educational philosophies along with other helps, like how to do planning, recordkeeping, how to structure your day once you figured out the curriculum so you can actually fit everything in. I think this course is really going to help you.
It's called the Confident Homeschool Foundations Program and I'm going to just give you a special coupon. Normally it's $97 and I just want you to go check it out. You can click the link below, but with this coupon that I'm about to give you, you can get the whole thing for $47 you just want to put in the word “PickPerfect”. No spaces “PickPerfect”. If you put that in, then you can get this entire course that lays out everything that you need to know to be a super successful and confident homeschool mom for only $47! That's pretty crazy.
So, but regardless of whether you want to do that, there is definitely the free training in there on how to set your vision, which is always the first step that I recommend. No matter what you're working on because it lays the foundation for everything else. All right. Good luck on your curriculum. If you have any questions, you can put those down below. I often don't answer specific curriculum questions, but I can point you in direct resources into resources that will be helpful.
I'm ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
(Note: I got a copy of this curriculum for free, and I was compensated for the time I took to write up this review. BUT I get to be completely honest about my thoughts, which is SUPER EASY because of how much I fell in love.)
I have been hunting for a great math curriculum for a long time.
When my kids were younger, we played math games and did lots of math activities. I taught them to count, and to add, and to multiply … and we did it with basic steps and some online review.
Then my kids hit fractions and decimals and pre-algebra. And we started to stumble.
Suddenly games and activities weren’t enough. My kids needed something more structured and more defined.
We lurched from one curriculum to another -- each would work for awhile (or not). But in the end, something always didn’t work.
* It was too dry and boring.
* It was too repetitive OR it wasn’t repetitive enough.
* It required too much hands-on time from me.
* It was all online and sooooo hard and tedious to listen to, we all wanted to poke our eyes out.
* It moved too fast OR it moved too slowly.
So I kept searching.
And then I had the chance to take a look at a new homeschool math curriculum. And it is changing everything about math in our home!
Suddenly I’m feeling excited about math again because this curriculum checks ALL the boxes:
* It walks my kids step-by-step through what they need to know at a pace that actually works for them.
* It’s taught by a real human (not a “robot” human voice) and is actually easy to listen to.
* It does ALL the teaching.
* It provides tons of accountability because my kids correct their own work AND I can see how they are doing and determine if I need to step in to keep things moving along.
* It provides extra help if the kids get stuck (which is really important now that my kids are past what I easily can help with).
* It has both a self-paced version AND a live class version -- both of which have different benefits depending on what my kids need.
* It’s easy to contact someone if we have any kind of question -- and we always get a quick and “real” response.
So what is this amazing math curriculum called?
Mr. D Math -- and oh, how I am in love! (Seriously - you have to check it out!)
I feel like my search has finally come to an end. What a sweet feeling that is!
My son is currently taking the Algebra II course. And I’ll be signing up both him and my teenage daughter next year.
Check out my full video review for my complete thoughts on all of the benefits and features.
In my review, I’ve also done a complete walk through of the backend of the program, so you can see how it works and why I think it’s set up to support both the mom and the kids be successful from the very beginning.
(Is your kid a little young for pre-algebra and you’re still in the “play math games” phase? Then be sure to check out my favorite math games that we discovered over the years!)
Register below to watch my FREE CLASS
Confident Homeschool Secrets
7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)
How much screen time is too much?
How much screen time should my kid have?
What is a healthy amount of screen time per day?
Are screens bad for you no matter what?
I don’t know a single mom (homeschool or not) who hasn’t thought about these questions!
We ask them at park day.
We ask them at co-op.
We ask them to our husbands.
And we ask them at night when we are staring at the ceiling trying to figure out what to do about the glowing squares in our homes.
I do NOT profess to have all the answers. My oldest is currently 19, my youngest is 13 … and the screen landscape has changed so much since I began parenting.
We are the first generation of moms who are trying to figure this out. And it seems like every few years there is something posted that contradicts the “findings” of the previous study.
>> Screens and social media are TERRIBLE and will ruin your kids.
But over the years, I’ve developed a set of questions to determine how much screen time is too much.
These questions help you, as a parent, identify the symptoms of too much screen time. Because “experts” don’t know your family and your kids -- which is unique.
I believe that screens can be good -- when used in moderation. But I also believe each kid (and each family) is different, so you must come up with your own guidelines rather than depend solely on outside sources.
As a result, I’ve developed 3 questions you can ask yourself to determine if your kids (and you!) are getting too much screen time.
These questions will help you set screen time rules for your kids that feel like they make sense and actually can work.
You may find yourself limiting screen time for your kids. OR you may find yourself giving a little bit more.
That’s the beauty of these questions … they let you craft the screen time guidelines that work best for YOUR family.
Want to keep reading instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of the video.
Register below to watch my FREE CLASS
Confident Homeschool Secrets
7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)
Transcript
Hello ToriAnn Perkey here and from my homeschool to your homeschool today, I want to talk about screen time.
Ooh, this is a tricky topic. How much screen time is too much screen time. Oh, I wish there was an easy answer and it feels like every time I'm turning around there's a different answer. And I have been wrestling personally with this question since my kids were little and now they are teenagers. It seems like there is never a good answer to how much screen time is too much screen time.
So if you have struggled with this like I have. Today, I have just three simple answers, three questions you can ask yourself to determine whether or not your kids are getting too much screen time. Now before we get into that, I just want to remind you that this is a debate that's been raging for a long time, long before computers, long before phones.
But the question is getting harder and harder to answer because the amount of screen time that's available and readily accessible continues to grow and grow and grow until it feels like a parent that you just have no way of knowing how do I figure this out? The articles in the media, I'm reading study after study, one study will say, this is why screen time is so bad or this is why we need to be worried about this. And then the next one will come back and will say, no, no, no, actually that study was done incorrectly. This is the one we should pay attention to.
So my goal today is to give you principles, principles that you can apply regardless of the noise. As people, as scientists and people out there are debating how much screen time is too much screen time. Because the answer to that seems to be constantly changing everywhere else.
So here is the first question to ask yourself and this is the first sign if you can't give a good answer to this question. When they get off, what is their behavior like? So if your kid has been doing screens, whether it's a little bit or a lot, what is their behavior like? Do they get off with a cheerful attitude? Are they pleasant? Are they willing to then engage in other things? Or do they whine, complain, get angry, maybe they're rude to you, disrespectful.
If you're seeing consistent negative behavior when your child gets off, even if it's not immediate, like in the next little while, that's a sign that for them the screens are too much. Whatever amount there is, and this is not about what scientists say, this is how your child reacts and it's important to remember every kid's brain is going to react differently to screens.
Just like every adult brain reacts differently to screens. It just impacts our brains differently. And so your child is going to be telling you by their behavior whether or not they've had too much and that might be cumulative, that might be a one time episode. But if you're seeing lots of negative behavior, that means that the screen time, however much it was, was too much for them.
Okay. Second question. Question to ask yourself, what am I noticing? And again, it's going to lead to a sign. Is my child being creative or do they lack creativity? Particularly creativity that I used to see. So children, little children will naturally be very, very creative and as they get older that creativity tends to start moving to different directions. But everyone is naturally creative and your children are no exception. So if they get off screens or it's a day and they say, Oh, I could do this or this, or I could watch screens, then you know it's probably okay.
But if all they think about is their screen time, if all they think about is getting on the screen to do the next thing, then maybe there is a problem. If it's consuming their thoughts, if they seem obsessed, if they don't seem to be able to come up with anything else to do, they wander around bored and there's nothing in their world. They're getting too much screen time.
If you dial it back, what you'll start to see, particularly if you do a detox period, what you'll start to see is they will start to be creative again. They'll start to discover other things to do because the brain doesn't want to just be empty. The brain wants to do something, so it will start to find other things to do because it's not doing screens.
Okay, so with this, I want to put in a little tiny caveat. Sometimes particularly as your children get older, their creativity is on screens. So they are using digital art. They might be doing something with video, they might be designing a game. This gets a little bit trickier because they are being creative but they're being creative on the screen so it still applies. But you want to be careful if they're obsessed about watching recreational screens and recreational or are consuming screens is where they're just passively taking it in. That's one thing.
If they are being productive and they want to actually accomplish something and they're looking towards a goal and they're making things happen. And well that's a little bit more on the creativity side and then you're going to be looking for these other two signs that I'm giving you. The one I've already given you, the one I'm about to talk to. Does this productivity actually lead to positive results or negative results? So I just wanted to put that out there.
Okay, so third sign. What is the third thing that you can be looking for? The third question you can be asking yourself to determine, is my kid getting too much screen time? And the third one is are they prioritizing screens over relationships? This is, this is when you look at how do they treat their siblings, particularly if they have to share or if a sibling gets in the way of something they're doing on the screen time.
How do they handle when someone tries to talk to them and they have to disengage from the screen in long enough to have that conversation. Do they have a positive attitude? Are they willing to stop what they're doing in order to have that, have that face to face conversation. Or are they consistently, again, grumpy, frustrated or they just go in the zone and they completely ignore everyone around them and then almost feel angry when you pull them out? If that's the case, probably too much screen time.
But if they have a good attitude, if they're willing to share, if, if the screen is actually becoming a cooperative, collaborative experience where everyone's gathered around watching the latest, you know, YouTube clip that's making everyone laugh, then maybe the screen time is doing good things too and only you can figure that out.
So three questions, quick recap.
Behavior when they get off, how are they behaving?
Question, are they being creative? And the side note there, are they being productive, are they producing good things and putting good things in the world?
And the third one is how are they prioritizing prioritizing their relationships? How do they treat the people around them?
If you can answer that, those three things are going well, then you probably are doing okay with how much screen time you're, how much screen time you're providing.
Now this is the part that gets a little tricky and I have to do this self-assessment. How are you doing on these three questions? If you're kind of grumpy when someone interrupts you or you have to get off. If maybe you can't think of anything else to do except scroll social media and check out the latest feed and maybe sometimes you find yourself completely ignoring the people in your world because you're in your own little world. Then maybe, just maybe, you have too much screen time and that is a subject for a whole nother video. Just wanted to put out there now, don't forget I have a, actually I didn't tell you about this yet.
One of the ways that you can also figure out how much screen time you want to have in your family is to create a vision for you, your family and your homeschool vision is super, super important. It's how you dig in and successfully figure out what it is you want your homeschool to look like. And I have a free class that you've, a free training that you can listen to. It'll walk you through how to do that. You just click the link below and check that out. It's totally free. It'll help you set your vision, which is one of the steps that helps you figure out how much screen time you want to have.
I'm ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos, videos about all kinds of homeschool topics to help you be a successful and confident homeschool mom.
