How to Avoid “Homeschool Envy”

You see some other homeschool mom doing something amazing.

Maybe she’s just posted a picture of how her family of 8 all gathered around the table to mummify a chicken for their unit on Ancient History.

Or maybe she’s showing multiple pictures of their homemade pioneer meal to wrap up reading Little House on the Prairie.

OR ...

Maybe you took a few minutes on Pinterest and ended up saving 50 pins with fun science activities … or tea party ideas … or fieldtrip enhancements …

And suddenly you are feeling Homeschool Envy -- the green-eyed monster that appears at your side telling you that somehow your homeschool will NEVER measure up to all of these other amazing homeschools.

And along with the Envy monster comes his side-kick Homeschool Guilt -- reminding you that you are failing your homeschool kids … that they are not learning anything … that your homeschool isn’t working at all.

In that moment -- what will you do?

How will you battle and win against Homeschool Envy (and get rid of Homeschool Guilt too!)??

You must go back to the beginning. 

And this week’s video is all about how to do that.

Rather read than watch? Keep scrolling to read a transcript of the video.

Transcript

Hello, my name is ToriAnn Perkey, and from my homeschool to your homeschool, today I want to talk about how you can avoid homeschool envy. As long as you're homeschooling, envy can start to creep in.

Envy is when you start looking at all the other things that the homeschool moms are doing, and especially on Facebook or on Pinterest, and you start to just think, "Oh, I want that. I want that for my homeschool. But you start to feel yucky inside because you don't know that there's any way that you could possibly also recreate that in your home."

So today I want to turn the tables just a little bit and get you out of homeschool envy. And the way you want to do that is to talk about the fact that when you are homeschooling, you will always have a buffet of possibilities. You will have so many things in every subject area that you could cover, that you could easily start to feel well overwhelmed or guilty, or just like you're failing because you're not doing even a fraction of everything you see.

And so the cure, the antidote to overcome this buffet overload is to step back and get really, really clear on your priorities, on what's important to you. Because if you can -- if you can look at all of those things and line them up against your priorities, what you think is best for your homeschool, then you'll be able to pick and choose.

Now how do you prioritize? Well, you need to get clear on 1) how your homeschool wants to function. What do you want happening in your homeschool? And that happens through creating a vision. It also happens when you get to know your kids' personalities, their learning styles, all of those things.

And then once you've done that, you can look through and you can say, "Okay, I need to figure out what is the best thing I could do? What's the better thing and what's the good thing? " I like to call it good, better and best. Because there are lots and lots of great options out there. And what you need to figure out is which of the great options fit in this priority scale? And what do I mean by that? Well, let me give you an example.

Let's say you want to study history, and you're looking and thinking about all of the options. Well, "good" for your family, depending on your kids and how they learn, good could actually be doing a really intense, hands-on activity where they're getting their hands dirty and they're making a huge mess. Better might be doing a simple activity that you know you can pick up in 10 minutes and it's not going to make wreak havoc in your home. And best might be just sitting down and telling a story or even watching a YouTube video about that topic.

You see all three of things allow you to accomplish teaching about that subject, but they may not all be the best fit for your family. On the other hand, maybe you know that your kid isn't going to learn a whole lot if they're just watching a video, but they will learn a lot if you do that messy activity, and so you actually swap your good and your best, and your best is the messy activity, and you do less somewhere else.

It all depends on your kid's learning style, your kid's personality, your personality and learning style, your vision for your own school. It depends on all those pieces.

But once you have it, you can prioritize, and you can step out of homeschool envy, and you can feel better because you know that the things you are picking for your homeschool are actually really the best things for your homeschool.

Now, how do you set that vision? How do you figure out your kids personalities and learning styles? Well, I have a free webinar that I'd love to have you check out because I go over exactly those things and several additional things that will help you create a successful and confident homeschool. It's called Confident Homeschool Secrets, and you can sign up for free to watch it right away. Just click on the link up above or down below. You know, wherever you're watching this video, and you can-- it'll shoot into your inbox and you can start watching it as well as soon as right now.

Okay. I just want to end by saying that homeschool envy doesn't have to have you turning green. You can feel confident as you're homeschooling. You can feel good about picking the very best things for your kids. Prioritize, get clear on what your family needs, and you'll be halfway there. 

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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