Tag Archives for " mindset "

How you may be secretly sabotaging your homeschool

How you may be secretly sabotaging your homeschool (and what to do about it)

The other day I was scrolling through my feed on Facebook, and it happened … the dreaded yucky feelings …

Someone had posted some cool thing their kid was doing, and I found myself starting to think “Aaaaaahhhhh … I’m failing!”

SCROLL TO WATCH

But then I caught myself.

And I instantly knew how to turn myself around before I spiraled into the abyss of despair.

And that’s what I want to teach you in my video today.

Ready to feel Confident and Successful as you homeschool?

Register below to watch my FREE CLASS

Confident Homeschool Secrets

7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)

Transcript

Hello, my name's ToriAnn Perkey, and from my homeschool to your homeschool -- Are you secretly sabotaging your homeschool? I know, I know, you're doing your best. You're trying your hardest -- feels like you are doing everything you can. And yet it doesn't seem like everything's going like you wanted to.

You look around, and you think, “This is a train wreck.” Well, let me tell you, there might be something you're doing that is secretly sabotaging your desire to have a successful homeschool, and you don't even realize it.

So, let me ask you a question. Do you ever get on social media -- Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram -- and scrolling through your feed, you find yourself thinking, “Oh, I'm failing?” Or, “Oh, I could never do a homeschool activity like that.”  Or, “Why do her kids want to read and mine just want to play with their Pokémon cards or their Barbies?”

Do you ever find yourself comparing ... comparing that these homeschool moms look amazing? That everything's happy. That everything's going well, and you aren't? Do you ever watch my videos and think, “Oh my gosh, she totally has it all together? What's wrong with me?”

Newsflash! I do not have it all together. I promise, I promise, I promise no homeschool mom does! But we all fall into this trap of comparing. Now, I want to ask ... is there ever a time where you're also scrolling through your feed, and you see something and you're like, “Ah, that's a great idea, I want to try that?” Or, “Oh my goodness, I'm so glad that her 10 year old just started reading. I feel like we're going to make it.”  Or, “Oh my goodness, they are traveling, and their kids are with them, and they're doing all these cool exciting things. We could do that too!”

Why is it that sometimes we look at Facebook and social media across the board, and we get jealous, and other times, we get inspired? Well, I want to tell you what the distinction is because understanding this will help you stop sabotaging your homeschool by comparing yourself with all of the other things going on around you.

The distinction is this -- It's all going on inside your head. You're looking at the same feed. You're looking at the same stories as everybody else, and there's not a whole lot of difference in the stories or the person who's sharing it. It's how you interpret the stories.

If you look at a story or a picture or you hear someone talking in the park or at a co-op or anything like, and they start telling you something or you see something and you think, “Oh, I could never do that,” then you start to get jealous. Jealousy comes from when you think it's impossible for you to reach that thing that you're seeing.

But if you see something and you are inspired, it's because inside your head you think, “I could totally do that. I could do that if we did this and this or if I learned how to do this.” Or, “Oh, we're already so close to that. I just have to tweak this.”

That's why some people can look at a really cool craft for a homeschooler and be jealous because they're like, “Oh, I could never do crafts or my kids will never do crafts.” And other moms can look at the exact same craft and go, “Ah, that's so cute. We should totally do that tomorrow.”

It has to do with whether or not the mom feels like it's hopeless or something totally doable.  That's the difference. And you're sabotaging your homeschool if you are looking at things in a mindset of “That's impossible. It would never work for me” because it turns all your insides into this yucky, negative place where you feel bad about yourself because you're not doing certain things.

And I'm here to tell you nobody does everything on the internet in their homeschool. I don't do 99 percent of the things that you see on the internet in my homeschool, and I have a successful homeschool.

Successful homeschools do not come from the kinds of activities that you do -- whether it's a specific curriculum or a specific book or a specific philosophy. That's not what makes a confident, successful homeschool. What makes you have a successful homeschool is when you feel good about what you're doing, when you feel confident.

And if there's something that isn't working, you go solve it. When you're inspired to move forward. When you see ideas and they inspire you to come up with your own ideas. That's the difference. That's the difference between a sabotaged homeschool and a successful homeschool … it’s how you're thinking about it in your mind, not what you're actually doing.

So, if you catch yourself feeling jealous, stop and think, “Do I want to do that? Do I really want that?” Because if you don't want that, then stop being jealous because you don't want to do it in the first place. If you do want to do it, then shift into, “Well, how could I make that happen? How?”

The minute we open the door that it's possible is the minute that our life can start to change, and we can start to move into a learning, growing, changing place. And that is the essence of being confident -- is knowing that you can figure things out.

So, I want to encourage you. Encourage you to be paying attention when you're flipping through your feed or you're listening at the park -- how you're interpreting the things around you.

Are you jealous and maybe sabotaging and don't even know it, or are you inspired? And the really cool thing is the next time this happens, you can decide whether you're going to be jealous or be inspired. It's really that easy.

I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and from my homeschool to your homeschool, I bring you these videos every week to help you be a successful, confident homeschool mom.

Save for later by pinning to your favorite Pinterest board!

How you may be secretly sabotaging your homeschool
How you may be secretly sabotaging your homeschool
How you may be secretly sabotaging your homeschool
How sabotaging homeschool if homeschool isn’t working
Homeschool-socialization-ideas-social-skills

How to Answer the “What About Socialization” Question

If you haven't had someone ask you "What about socialization?" ... then wait a few minutes ... it's coming.

This question seems to show up over and over again in homeschool conversations with people outside of the homeschool world.

Homeschool-socialization-ideas-social-skills

SCROLL TO WATCH

And knowing how to ANSWER that question can feel a little tricky!

Today I'm sharing the answer I've developed over the last 14 years that seems to work every single time.

Learn this, and you'll never feel awkward answering the socialization question again!

Want to read instead of watch? Scroll to read a transcript of this video.

Ready to feel Confident and Successful as you homeschool?

Register below to watch my FREE CLASS

Confident Homeschool Secrets

7 Ways to Create a Homeschool That Works (and you LOVE!)

Transcript

Hey guys! ToriAnn here! And from my homeschool to your homeschool, I’ve got a question for you. Have you ever heard someone ask you, “So what about socialization?”

You’re in the grocery store or maybe you’re at a family event and someone’s going to ask you how you’re going to socialize your kids.

Do you know how you’re gonna answer that question?

Or do you start to get all squidgy and squealy inside and feel all rumbly cause you don’t know what to say.

And behind that question, you can hear the real question which is, “Are you gonna destroy your kids?”

Yeah. So I used to get this question all the time. My in-laws would ask it. My parents would ask it. My siblings asked it. I would hear it in a church. I would hear it at the store. What are you gonna do about socialization?

And I got the question so much that I decided I was gonna come up with an answer that was going to work every single time. Because I was tired of fumbling around it and trying to come up with something that didn’t really feel like it satisfied them and usually took us down the rabbit hole of a whole bunch of other questions that didn’t really make a lot of sense and made the whole conversation harder. And it made it sound like I didn’t really know what I was doing with my homeschooling -- which is never a good idea.

So I came up with the answer to the “socialization” question, and ever since then, every time I use this, the answer just puts everything to rest. I can feel everyone I’m talking to take a deep breath. And I don’t get lots of follow up questions that aren’t just interested. They’re not critical questions, they’re, “Oh tell me more about that.”

So are you dying to know what this is?

Okay, so here’s the answer to the question. When someone comes up to me or we’re in a conversation and they say, “So what about socialization?” this is what I say --

“Well, you know, I treat socialization just like any other subject. I’m the facilitator of my kids’ education and development. Which means that I make sure that they get lots of socialization opportunities, and they’re getting educated in how to interact with human beings whether they’re adults or kids in a really great way.”

That’s the answer.

That you are creating opportunities and that you’re treating it like a subject, like any other subject.

And then if I feel like it, I follow up with something like this. “And besides, there are so many opportunities for homeschoolers to socialize with kids their age that if we wanted to, we could be gone every single day of the week and never be home and actually educate. But we don’t do that. So we just pick and choose. But my kids get so many opportunities to interact with other people. Yeah, they get tons of socialization.”

Between those two answers, it pretty much puts all the fears to rest.

And that’s how I want to end this little video. Remember that when people are asking you questions, they’re coming from one of two places.

They’re either curious. Which means you don’t need to feel defensive because they really are just curious and they wanna know what’s going on. And they’re learning more about homeschooling and they’re trying to figure out how it works and they figure you’re a good source of information because you are homeschooling or you’re thinking about it or you’re just getting started.

Or they’re worried. They’re worried that these kids that they care about, either because they’re in your neighborhood or they’re a neighbor or they’re a friend or maybe they’re a family member. You know grandmas and grandpas, they worry. They wanna make sure the kids are gonna be okay. That’s what they’re really asking.

So when you have an answer that’s confident and when you have an answer that’s clear that you’re in charge and you have a plan, it calms everybody down. And when everybody’s calm, the conversation gets a lot easier.

Alright, I'm ToriAnn Perkey, and I bring you these videos every week so that you can feel like a confident, successful homeschooler.

Save for later by pinning to your favorite Pinterest board!

Homeschool-socialization-ideas-social-skills
Homeschool-socialization-ideas-social-skills
Homeschool-socialization-ideas-social-skills

What to Say in the Middle of a Hard Day

What do you say to yourself in the middle of a particularly hard day?

Are you telling yourself this is a “but a moment” and “this too shall pass”?

Or are you sure the day is “a disaster” and “I’m failing”?

How you speak to yourself in your head makes a huge difference as to how your homeschool experience will turn out. If you are mean and cruel and beat yourself up when things don’t go well, you shatter your confidence and destroy the opportunity for things to change.

But if you can step outside and shift your perspective … if you can take a deep breath and realize that this is only one moment of many … things can start to turn around.

Each moment you have a choice. Each moment you can decide that this is “but a moment.”

How To Conquer Homeschool Mom Fear

Sometimes the biggest thing that gets in the way of having a homeschool that really works is the fear that it’s NOT working.

You look around and see all the amazing things that other people are doing — on Facebook, on Pinterest. Or you hear about it at the local park day — the kid who just graduated at 14 or the 4 yr old who is already reading Shakespeare.

And you can feel like a total failure because you have cheerios in your hair, and the best your kid could muster was stick drawing of the family for school that day.

Comparison is the #1 thing that will destroy you as a homeschool mom. You CAN’T compare how you’re doing. You are you … and they are them. What you do is based on what YOUR kids need and what YOUR family’s goals are.

The kid who graduated at 14 may struggle with depression. The kid reading Shakespeare may struggle with simple addition.

You never know … and it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you figure out what your kids need and work to give it to them. Provide them space to learn and grow. Pay attention to opportunities that will light them up. Allow them to be different … and unique … and special.

Yes — it’s important to pay attention to growth and to ask if you’re on the right track. That’s okay. But make sure it’s YOUR track and aligned with the destination YOU want.

Let the fear that your kid and your homeschool isn’t measuring up go. And embrace the homeschool that you are meant to create.

Long Road Perspective of Successful Homeschools

One day at a time … one day at a time …

Homeschool success is NOT built in an instant. It is full of messy disasters, unintended detours, and collossal failures.

It is ALSO full of delightful moments and exciting discoveries.

And you never know which is coming today.

But if you show up today … and you show up tomorrow … and you don’t give up … and you don’t give in (okay — this is starting to sound like a cheesy song!)

But seriously … successful homeschools are the ones who decide that they are going to show up each day and do their best. They are going to embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly as all part of the journey.

They hunker down in the hard moments and celebrate like crazy during the good times.

And then, regardless of how the previous day went, they show up again the next day — ready for whatever comes.

Why You Need to Celebrate Today

Hey you!

Do you take time to celebrate?

No — not “it’s birthday time and we need to have a party” celebrate.

I mean really CELEBRATE!

Celebrate the first time your kid writes the letter “s” the correct direction … or the fact that your two boys made it 15 minutes without trying to kill each other … or that there was an actual vegetable on the plate with dinner.

Do you take time to celebrate the little successes?

Because little successes, added up over time, lead to massive success. A truly successful life is built one small success at a time. Choosing to celebrate the little successes helps you prepare to fully embrace and recognize that your life has BECOME a success.

So today I invite you to find 5 small things to celebrate. The smaller, the better.

Today is the day you can begin to see that you are building a successful homeschool life!