When you don’t WANT to homeschool anymore (But think you still should!)

And then things start to fall apart.

The kids don’t want to do that amazing activity. They fight you to do math or they groan when you pull out the science book.

And you start to think “WHY am I doing this?!?” And you’re ready to quit!

How do I know? … Because I’ve been there over and over and over again.

After 15+ years, I’ve wanted to quit homeschooling more times than I can count.

I’ve had sleepless nights wondering if I was failing my kids.

I’ve worried that we weren’t doing enough … or that I was pushing too hard (or not hard enough!)

But I found ways to push through … which is why after 15+ years, I’m STILL homeschooling.

How did I do it? That’s what I’m talking about today. 

So if you’re struggling with your homeschool. If you want to quit but KNOW you have to keep going … this video is for you. ❤️

In the video I talk about creating a homeschool vision. If that’s something you need help with, check out my FREE lesson on how to create a homeschool vision!

Transcript

Hello,

My name is ToriAnn Perkey and from my homeschool to your homeschool today I want to talk about what do you do if you don't want to homeschool anymore, but you know you have to keep going. Or you know, you should be homeschooling but you really, really, really don't want to homeschool anymore. What do you do? Okay, so this happens to all of us.

Ready to Quit

I've been homeschooling for over 15 years. I've got four kids. You know, we started when they were really little. Now they're all teenagers and beyond. And there have been lots of times where I think, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to keep going. But I knew deep down in my heart that I was supposed to keep going. So you know, what do you do?

There were lots of reasons why I got there. You know, maybe it's sometimes it was because my kids were driving me crazy. They didn't want to work or they were fighting all the time. Things like that. And that was really hard. Sometimes it was because I was in a bad place. I was really struggling over the course of our homeschool life. I've had lots of experiences where I personally was falling apart and I'm trying to hold together this whole homeschool thing and my house thing while this part of me over here is not working. And that was really hard.

Another reason that I found some times that I would be really struggling is I would have this dream, this picture in my head of what homeschool should look like and our reality. It was not matching the dream, and that disconnect between the two would be so difficult. I just want to throw in the towel.

So how did I do it? How did I keep going all of these years? Because 15 plus years is a long time. Well, let's talk about that. You know, what do you do? I'm going to go through six different things and I'm sure there's more. But I think all of these done, one or more of these, can help you kind of, you know, get a little bit of the fire back, a little bit of the desire back. Because I, you know, if you're supposed to still be homeschooling, we want to make it so it's not quite as hard as drudgery, as something you're dreading. Okay.

#1 Vision

So the first thing, I talk about this all the time, is you go back to the vision, you go back to why you started in the first place and it's really important that you have this written down so you can go back and look at it just in these times. Because if you go back and you look at your vision, you'll remember why you did it in the first place. And I can't tell you how many times I referenced my vision. My vision for tailoring an education, my vision for helping my kids who had special needs, all of these different reasons. I think, okay, I can do this because it's that important to me. And if you don't have a vision, you need to write one.

I have a free lesson that you can access immediately that will help you work through the steps to write your homeschool vision. I'll leave a link down below or up above, you know, wherever you're watching this video so you can go do that. That's the first thing I recommend. Go back to the vision.

#2 Assess Problems

The second thing I recommend you do is assess what is not working. Are there underlying problems that need to be addressed? Is it a long term thing? Is it a short term thing? Have you just been through a major life change, a new baby, a move, something like that that's affecting how you feel about the homeschool or just how you're feeling about life in general. And homeschool seems like the thing to quick, is it, is it a long-term issue that maybe needs to be addressed?

Is it a discipline thing and you're having trouble parenting, which just is exacerbated when you're homeschooling? Is it because you have a child who is really struggling in areas that have nothing to do with academics? Maybe they have depression, maybe that they have reading or other learning issues. You know, something that you recognize as kind of a long-term journey and you need to give time to that. But because they're struggling in that way or your struggling, the overall homeschool is suffering. So is there something that needs to be addressed and if so, how can you address it?

You know, once you become really intentional about recognizing what the problem is, then you begin to say, okay, what is it I need to do to be able to fix or address or manage this issue? So that's the second thing I recommend you do. Assess what is it that's actually working and not working.

#3 Review Your Schedule

The third thing I recommend you do is, you know, review your schedule and figure out are you trying to do too much? Because when you have a really packed schedule, you feel overwhelmed and you can start dreading anything related to homeschooling because everything feels too hard. And I've made another video that's all about the benefits of simplifying your homeschool schedule and some ways to go about doing that. I will leave a link down below this video so you can check that out. If that is something that you need to maybe do is just go through your schedule and figure out is there a way to simplify it.

#4 Changing It Up

The next thing is asking yourself is there a way to change things up? You know, sometimes the reason we are so dreading our homeschool and we want to quit is because we've done the same thing over and over and over and we're just bored and boredom is a killer. Like it makes it so you don't want to do anything. So maybe it's time to change it up.

Even if what you were doing is something you were super committed to and it was working and it might just be time to put that aside for a while. And just go on field trips for a little bit or just watch documentaries for a while or just snuggle and do, I don't know, an entire review of all the Disney Canon. You know, whatever it is that would kind of just recharge you and your kids and kind of get you in a place where you think, yeah, we can go back and try some of those other things. Sometimes taking a break and changing it is really awesome.

Another way you can consider changing it is, maybe instead of just completely taking a break, you decide that instead of doing this kind of math, you're going to take a break and you're gonna switch it up and you're going to play math games or you are going to do math activities. And just the switch of this focus on how you're doing the subject can also make a huge, huge difference.

#5 Take A Break

The last thing I recommend is, no, two more things. One is take an actual break and I kind of alluded to that just a minute ago. You know the reason we homeschool is because we can take breaks, adjust schedules, revise and change up things. So it may be that you need your fall break, significantly like, end of November all the way through to the end of the year. It may be that you need your spring break in February where you're and you might then take a second spring break in April. You might need that.

You might need to say, you know what, we're just going to not homeschool on Fridays for the near future. We're just going to have a day to play. You know, taking a real break where you have a mental downtime, you get to work on some of those other projects can make a big difference and then you can come back and be excited to start up again.

#6 Self Care

Now the final thing I recommend is take a look at your own self care. And I know self care is super like popular buzzy word. Everybody's talking about how you need to do self care. And almost to the point where I'm, I personally am kind of annoyed about hearing about it. But I am going to bring it up because the reason it has become so trendy is because it's based in fact.

If you aren't taking time for you, if you aren't making time for a little bit of recharge time, you will burnout. And burnout is a huge problem in the homeschool world. Because on top of all the normal mom and home and home running things you have to do, you also have homeschool. And many of you are also working part time or you're juggling a new baby or all of those. You have to carve out just a little bit of time for you.

Now what you do during that time, totally up to you. For some people it's doing some kind of crafting. For some people it's going to a store by yourself. For some people it's sitting down and reading. For some people it's just going into a quiet, dark closet and closing the door and just turning off your mind for a couple minutes while you listen to some quiet music.

You get to decide what your special time is, but if you aren't making that special time, then ultimately your brain and your body will start to shut down. And that's one of the reasons you're feeling the way you do is because you just are feeling like you just never get a break. So if you don't have time for that, if you legitimately look around and you say, I don't know how I would make time for that. Then it is time to assess what can I cut out? What can I simplify? What can I let go of, change my expectations, to just give myself a little bit of time for that self care.

All of these things, you know, one or more of these things will help you get a little bit of the desire back, a little bit of the fire so that you go from thinking, "I do not want to homeschool." To "You know what? I like this. This is why I'm doing this. This is a good thing. I'm happy to be here. Let's go."

I'm ToriAnn Perkey and I make these videos every week so that you can be a successful and confident homeschool mom.

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