10 Days of Homeschool Encouragement

As we wrap up with the last day of the 10 Days of Homeschool Encouragement, I’d like to ask you to get involved.

I’d like to celebrate all the ways we experience homeschool success.

Homeschool Success, Not Failure

It’s easy to focus on the things that don’t go well. That’s why I started out with The Real Phases of the Homeschool Year and a printable you can download. But the truth is that we all do so much well and we tend to overlook it.

• We play it down.
• We think the successes aren’t as important as the obvious failures.
• We don’t allow the successes to shape how we view ourselves in a healthy way as homeschool moms, but instead focus over and over again on what we perceive as failures in the areas where we think we don’t measure up.

The successes are vitally important and they are everywhere – if you allow yourself to look.

Share Your Homeschool Success Stories

I would like to encourage you to take two minutes and share a bunch of your homeschool successes in the comments. Yes, a bunch. You think you don’t have a bunch, but you do.

You need to write them down. Other moms need to see them. People who are thinking about homeschooling and find this post need to read them. We need to celebrate all of the tremendous good happening every day in our homes.

If you have one of my homeschool planners, you’ll know that there are a couple of pages in every planner called “Moments to Remember in _________________” with 31 numbered lines – one for each day of the month. They are in there for a reason. They are in there to help us remember the funny things, the profound things, the important things, and the amazing things that happen every. single. day. in our homeschools.

Please don’t be shy. And don’t feel like it’s wrong because you are bragging.

We’re celebrating. We’re celebrating all the hard work we all do every day. We’re celebrating the long hours we’ve put in to make sure our children have the educational experience they need. I want to celebrate with you!

So please share with us your homeschool success stories!

If you haven’t downloaded the free lovely printable pack that accompanies this series yet, I hope you will! Each page in the pack coordinates with one of the posts in this series. Keep them in your planning notebook or somewhere else to remind you of the truth about the homeschooling journey.

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I don’t know who said it first, but the idea is that you become like the five people you spend the most time with. So if you want to see who you will be in ten years, look at the people you are spending the most time with every week.

I’ve looked back over my life in ten year increments and I find this to be quite accurate in many ways. If this is true, then it follows that you need to choose your five homeschool people carefully.

Who Are Your Five People Right Now?

Today I want to encourage you to think about the five people you spend time with who most influence your homeschooling.

• Who do you talk with on the phone?
• Who do you text with?
• Who do you read?
• Who do you listen to?
• Who do you interact with on social media?

The five people you are interacting with on a very regular basis are going to shape your homeschooling experience and, in turn, are going to shape your children.

In some cases, one of those “people” might actually be a group of people. It could be a co-op, a Facebook group, or a forum. These kinds of groups can have a tremendous impact on your homeschooling – for good or bad.

Choose Homeschool Groups Carefully

I’ve been thinking about this for myself over the past few months and realized I had to make some changes in where I was investing my time. Online groups that met a very important need for a season were no longer necessary. In some cases, they were actually detrimental.

I realized one Facebook group, in particular, was actually starting to depress me. The constant stream of struggles and problems in my Facebook feed was doing real harm to me. (Update: I left Facebook a number of years ago.)

I didn’t leave the group because it is a valuable group, but I turned off the notifications. That way if I ever need the group again, I can go there and look for an answer. But I’m not subjected to the steady stream of problems and painful questions that constantly popped up in this active group.

Avoid Negative Homeschool Ruts

The other thing I’ve thought about is the importance of avoiding ruts and moving on when people are no longer where you are. It’s easy to keep visiting the same websites, the same groups, and the same social media channels. I fall into it myself.

But I had to ask myself, “Why in the world am I investing time in this? I have precious little time each day so why would I give those golden moments to something that really isn’t necessary, edifying, or inspiring?”

The same thing can be said for negative people. If there is someone in your life who is dragging down your homeschooling by being unsupportive or undermining what you are trying to do, then remove yourself from her/his influence as much as possible. It might not be necessary to completely remove that person from your life, but you might benefit a great deal by slowly easing your way out of regular contact with a negative person who doesn’t help your homeschooling endeavors.

Think Ahead Ten Years in Your Homeschool

In ten years, Caroline will be of college age. Right now she is heading into fifth grade (age-wise) and so I am starting to think more of where I can find support and wisdom as I head into the middle school and high school years.

Who is through that time who can help me navigate it? Who has the type of attitude and life perspective that will inspire me and encourage me? Those are important questions I’m asking for myself. I want to be influenced by good people.

If you think about the homeschooling experience you want for yourself and your children, it’s important to choose people who will help get you there. What might that look like and who will help you get there?

I hope you will download this free lovely printable pack that accompanies this series. Each page in the pack coordinates with one of the posts in this series. Keep them in your planning notebook or somewhere else to remind you of the truth about the homeschooling journey. Just click the cover below to see the details. 

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If there is one concept that has driven my parenting and homeschooling, it is trusting my instincts even when no one understands. Fully embracing this idea early on changed the course of my parenting and made me a much more effective parent to my daughter.

As a Christian, I believe that sometimes it is hard to tell where our gut instinct ends and the leading of the Holy Spirit begins. (How the Holy Spirit works is a discussion beyond the scope of this post!) But in either case, learning to listen and trust your intuition is vitally important.

Trusting Your Instincts With A Differently Wired Child

The more your child falls outside of the “norm,” the more important it is to make your own decisions. If you are trying to parent a child who is an outlier in any way, trying to act on traditional parenting and homeschooling advice will erode your confidence and threaten to slowly drive you mad.

Believe me. I know this firsthand.

This post is part of my 10 Days of Homeschool Encouragement series and today I’m going to mostly point you to other things I’ve already written about this topic. I’ve been fairly open about my own parenting and homeschool journey. Depending on where you are in your journey and what kind of child you have, there is probably something here to encourage and help you.

Look at the drop down menus in the header for many topics. There are literally dozens and dozens of encouraging posts to help you sort out whatever issue you are facing whether it is:

• a gifted child
• a twice-exceptional (2e) child
• highly sensitive children
• right brain children
• high need babies
• having an only child

If you want to know if I’ve written about some specific topic and can’t find it, feel free to ask in a comment and I’d be glad to point you to something that might be relevant.

Trusting Your Instincts

So what is my advice?

• Take in the relevant information you can find in books or online.
• Listen to what people say.
• Listen carefully to people you trust.
• Ask the Lord for guidance.

But I can guarantee you will find yourself in situations where no one understands and you need to trust your mother gut. Acknowledge the truth of what you are hearing, but at the same time if you simply know that it isn’t the right choice for you, your child and/or your family then have the courage to trust your instincts – even if no one else understands.

I hope you will download the free lovely printable pack that accompanies this series. Each page in the pack coordinates with one of the posts in the series. Keep them in your planning notebook or somewhere else to remind you of the truth about the homeschooling journey. Just click the cover below to see the details. 

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Homeschool moms spend hours and hours researching curriculum, reading reviews online, and ordering just the right supplies for their children. But how much time do they invest in their own needs for the school year? Do most moms even realize or admit they have needs?

Can we make one thing crystal clear right now? Homeschool mom DOES NOT equal martyr. Homeschool mom care matters just as much as curriculum and supplies.

Homeschool Mom Survival Mode

We’ve all lived in survival mode at one time or another. It might have been because of a needy baby, a death in the family, a job loss, or some other significant life situation. You come to a point where you realize you have to let everything go and just survive.

It’s okay to live that way for a brief period of time a few times in your life.

It’s not okay to live that way all the time, year after year. Your body, your mind, and your spirit are not designed to handle survival mode forever.

For moms who homeschool, it can be easy to default into survival mode far too often. Even mini-survival mode due to the different phases of the homeschool year can take a real toll on a homeschooling mom.

Develop a Homeschool Mom Care Plan

I’ve written before about making your homeschool mom-friendly which I believe is vitally important. If you’ve never read it, please do. Today I want to encourage you to take it a step further and proactively plan for how you are going to care for yourself in the coming school year.

Please download the free printable featured below and plan one or two ways you are going to prioritize homeschool mom care each month this year. It can be as simple as going out for a cup of coffee and reading a book at a coffee shop for the evening or as complicated as flying across the country to visit your best friend for a long weekend.

Just plan something for every month.

It might be establishing a routine that makes it possible for you to get a minimum of seven hours of sleep a night. It could be joining a Bible study or a book club. Maybe you should take a long bike ride once a month – alone! Or sign up for a once a month painting class.

(If you have a favorite mom care idea, please share it in the comments for other people who read this and need to be inspired!)

This Homeschool Mom Care Plan will give you a place to put your plan in writing.

You will find it in the free lovely printable pack that accompanies this series. Each page in the pack coordinates with one of the posts in this series. Keep them in your planning notebook or somewhere else to remind you of the truth about the homeschooling journey. Just click on the product cover to see the details.

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