Our kids, our home and our own thoughts are three of the biggest stressors homeschool moms have in their lives that cause their productivity to plummet. If these three things are preventing us from being the most productive, then we might as well give up because we can’t run away from either of those things when life gets hard. Feeling stressed as a mom is super common but the amazing thing is, it’s so avoidable! In this episode we’re kicking stress away and bringing productivity back. You’ll learn 10 no fluff action steps that you can take to simplify homeschooling and get your mom life more productive.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Raising Children Who Love Learning Free Starter Kit
My Favorite Apps For Learning
Starfall
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This Episode Discusses:
How we often respond when stress hits us at home.
How we can experience more productive days and greater happiness in the midst of a full schedule.
Why your task lists might not be working.
How to get out of a homeschool mom funk.
How to use technology to serve you in your homeschool.
Why you may need to be having more FUN in your mom life.
Why simplifying your home and schedule is more important than you may think.
Why goals shouldn’t be glossed over.
Why your children should be more independent.
Why self care and times of rest shouldn’t be optional.
DON’T HAVE TIME TO LISTEN? HERE’S THE EPISODE ALL TYPED OUT…
Simply Freeing? Motherhood doesn’t feel simply freeing when you’re on autopilot in a home filled with chaos, stress and a ton of pressure. In order to survive the chaos we NEED the right strategies and mindset to embrace the simple and enjoy the few short years we have with our kids. I believe that we are called to see that we CAN rise up, get out of our head, shut out the expectations of the world and what mom life is supposed to be like and change what’s not working so that motherhood is fulfilling. Join me as we discuss all things motherhood, homeschooling, minimalism, faith and health. My mission is to help you embrace simplicity and find freedom in your motherhood. I’m Jackie from Whole9Family and this is the “Simply Freeing” Podcast.
Welcome back to the podcast. My first day of homeschooling in the fall of 2020 did not go the way I expected it to go. Surprise surprise. Kids are unpredictable! Life is unpredictable. But when the unpredictable things happen what happens to us internally as moms? When our days are feeling off and we’ve experience a crap load of curveballs what does that do to us?
We feel like a failure.
We’re not cut out for this.
We should have done it this way.
This isn’t going to work.
We begin to analyze and over analyze and the stress creeps in. If you’re a yeller, maybe you start to yell. Maybe you start to pull back. Maybe you can’t think straight. As I was planning this episode I started laughing because I was thinking about the biggest stressors that prevent us from being productive as mom. Our kids, our home and our own thoughts. Our kids our home and our own thoughts! If these things are preventing us from being the most productive, then we might as well give up because we can’t run away from either of those things when life gets hard. Feeling stressed as a homeschool mom, and actually as a mom in general, is super common but the amazing thing is, it’s so avoidable! In preparing this episode I sat down and thought about why homeschooling often feels so overwhelming. What actually Is happening around me when I have what I consider to be our worst homeschool days? How have I been able to experience days that are productive and feel greater happiness in the midst of a full schedule? So In this episode I’m going to give you 10 no fluff action steps that you can take to simplify homeschooling and get your days more productive. That’s what we’re going to dive into today.
1. Lower Your Expectations
You’re trying to do too much and in turn you’re expecting too much. A lot of kids in one room makes for chaos. One kid in a room can be chaotic! You might have some false beliefs that you need to work through. Maybe you think that spending a certain amount of time homeschooling is going to directly relate to your success in some way. As a former public school teacher, this was my problem. Listen to episode 3 for more details on this if you haven’t already. Our expectations have to be lowered. Some of us are making lists that are way too long and we’re not prioritizing the things on those lists. We’re doing the things on the list that we enjoy first that really aren’t helping us get things done and make progress. So we have to reassess what we’re expecting and prioritize the right things. Something has to give and if you’re homeschooling and you have goals and you want to get a certain math lesson done, for example, you might have to put aside some of the housework for the time being. And I know for some of us that’s harder than others. Maybe you’re expecting to get 3 or 4 subjects done in one day. That doesn’t seem like a lot but sometimes, depending on your situation, that isn’t possible.
If you haven’t downloaded the raising children who love learning starter kit that will help you stop segmenting your homeschool day into subjects and help you think more about learning through life and take a little bit of the pressure off of you. You can get that free starter kit at simplyfreeing.com/learn
2. Change Your Attitude
If we have the attitude that we really don’t want to do this and we generally just feel unhappy about homeschooling, we’re not going to reap any rewards. That’s going to suck the productivity right out of us. We have to push through with the big picture in mind. I know that when I feel “off” and I just have a attitude that shows that I seriously do not want to do this today. I just don’t feel right. Things are just going wrong and I kind of just want to give up. In the past, I did give up when I felt that way. What’s helped me was to think about the big picture. What is your purpose? And I’m not even really talking about the academics. I’m talking about what is your purpose as a mom? Why are you a mom? Why do you love your kids? What do you want to train them up to be? What do you want to teach them? Sometimes that gives me that little slap in the face that I need to snap me out of my funk and remind myself that I’ve been put on this earth for a purpose and I’ve been created by God to serve my family and serve my kids and raise them well. One day they will leave my home. I only have about 18 years to really pour into them and I want to make this day count. So changing your attitude can help you become more productive.
3. Have Fun
You may not be having fun and you may not be learning alongside them! Sometimes we think of ourselves as the teacher. We think that we are supposed to teach them the academics and we kind of use the book as a guide. We’re following the directions. Maybe there are some fun activities here and there but really really deep down if we’re looking at ourselves, we’re not having fun with them. Have fun! Make the day fun! Kids love being silly. They love dancing. They love tea times. They love playing games. I think sometimes it’s our own fault when our homeschooling feels so blah and it feels so stressful and unproductive. It’s because we’re just not enjoying it and I know some of you may not feel like a fun mom. You don’t have to be considered the “fun mom” and don’t have to have this super outgoing crazy, funny personality to be able to enjoy the day with your kids. You can find ways to bring some lightheartedness to your homeschool day. If your kids sense boredom from you, they aren’t going to enjoy the afternoon. Sometimes we waste a lot of time battling over finishing that math page when maybe your kids just need a brain break. Maybe they just need some fun sprinkled into their homeschool day. Happier kids make for a more productive homeschool.
4. Stop Overcomplicating Things
Too many subjects and not enough time. Simplicity is key. I think so often our own schooling experiences, for many of us that have gone to school and are homeschooling for the first time, we feel in our minds that we have to get all of these things done in one day. It’s just not possible. We are not in a dedicated school room. There are so many household tasks that need to be done. A lot of us have little ones also. Some of us have multiple ages to homeschool. Even if we choose to do less subjects in one day, sometimes we are still overcomplicating that. Simplicity! Keep It simple! So much more quality learning happens when we aren’t trying to overload them with information. They will turn off. They will shut you out! Our brains can only handle so much information at one time.
5. Declutter Your Home
Look at your home. Do you have a homeschool room? Is it being used? If it’s not being used, get rid of it and just create a little book corner with all of your homeschooling supplies. You probably have too much stuff if you have an entire homeschool room. Really really take a look at that room and assess what you are actually using and what you’re not and start decluttering. Stop saving books for the future unless you know for sure that you’re going to be using them next year depending on how old your younger kiddos are. You want to set up the house in a way that makes homeschool easy to do. You want to know where things are. You don’t want to have to shuffle through a bunch of books to find things and in order to do that you have to have a simple home. You have to have systems and routines that are working for you, not against you. I believe that this all starts with what is in your home. That’s how my entire life really was transformed.
6. You Need Goals
You need to create goals in order to simplify your homeschool day and be more productive and I’m not just talking about homeschooling goals. You need to create lifestyle goals for your family and for your homeschool. If you don’t, you won’t know what to prioritize and you won’t know what to let go. Everything is going to feel important and you’ll feel guilty dropping something. The easiest way that I found to do this is to draw a big circle on a piece of paper. Put an X in the middle of that circle and now you should have four sections: Personal, Homeschooling, Relationships and Home. Now, you could change the categories however you want and you can add more if you need to but basically you want to create categories and then within those categories think about the steps that you need to take in order to reach those big goals. I know in the past I never cared about Kohl’s. I thought they were a waste of time. I felt like creating goals was not going to change anything and I just basically shut off my brain anytime anyone would talk about goals because all I wanted to do was DO, DO, DO! I just wanted to take all the action steps and work work work work work but in reality I was working myself into the ground because I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing. I was just running. Goals are so important. I Will be making an episode on goals because I think this is something that so many of us are glossing over and it really is the key to productivity.
7. Use Technology To Serve You In Your Home
There are so many apps for learning and things that we can do to intentionally make our homeschool day a little easier and give us little mini breaks but still help our kids to learn and be more productive. My two favorite apps for learning are reading eggs which also includes math seeds and now there’s even a fast phonics section. I’ve use this app for every one of my girls starting when they were three years old and honestly it had such a huge impact on them and I think it helped them learn how to read really fast. Starfall.com is really good for younger kids...lots of nursery rhymes, math and reading. Those two apps I think are gold! They can give you little mini breaks and they are learning so much through them. We are intentional about the technology and we use it in ways that will help enhance our learning instead of just giving our kids an iPad and sending them off when we have no idea what they’re doing. Hopefully that’s helpful to you. I will put links to everything I talked about in the show notes just in case you want to refer back to them.
8. Actively Teach Your Children How To Help
So many of us are acting like a martyr. We are doing everything in the home. You are not expected to do everything! You have to have your children help you. It’s important to teach them HOW to help you. You are not super mom. Making your family a team is hard. It’s definitely not something that is easy especially if you’ve gone years and years without having a team mindset in your home. You might have some pushback and some defiant children but you will be so so happy if you can teach your children how to get your house in order with you. It is so helpful for them to have their own jobs, their own rules and to know exactly what to expect. If you give them allowance or not is totally up to you. If you don’t already have some sort of system set up in your home so your kids know what to do and know how they can help each day, you need to be doing that. That’s going to help simplify your homeschool day so much.
9. Teach Your Children How To Be Independent
We can easily fall into the trap of babying them. As they get older, they can start doing a lot more things independently. Now you might need to handhold, for some children, and be there and show them exactly what to do when they get distracted and give them a little tips to help keep them focused but there comes a time where they need to be going off on their own and they need to be trusted to go up to their room and start doing some tasks independently. You cannot always be there especially when you have younger children that take up a lot of your time. You cannot always be there doing things for them and sometimes when we’re homeschooling we can fall into the trap of babying them. We really need to think about the child and how it’s helping them. Teaching them to be independent is actually helping them.
10. Self Care
Take time away to reset. What can you give your kids, if you are feeling empty? If you aren’t feeling fulfilled, it you aren’t feeling joyful, if you don’t have times away to rest, how are you going to really pour into your kids? Have a mom‘s night out. Make it a priority even if it’s once a month. It will make a big difference to be able to talk to another adult. I know during the time that we are in right now, life is very hard. Community is so important. You will be a much better mom when you intentionally carve out times to rest.
I hope this episode was helpful for you. Let’s connect to discuss this some more on Instagram. If you are on Instagram, I’d love to hear from you! You can find me @whole9family I’d love for you to take a screenshot of this episode and share one of your takeaways. I’d love to hear from you! Thank you so much for listening today! To learn more about me and the resources I’ve created to help you in your motherhood, head to whole9family.com. See you next time!