It's important that homeschooling, working moms have a period of rest/work time that is built into their homeschool routine. In this episode you'll learn how to start implementing a quiet time during your homeschool day even if you've never done so before...
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
Connect With Kelly @Simplehomemom & Blog
@Whole9family Instagram Page
This Episode Discusses:
What quiet time is.
Why you should implement a quiet time during your homeschool day, especially if you are work at home mom.
Kelly’s story of quiet time implementation.
Tips to help you begin implementing a quiet time even if you’ve never done so before.
DON’T HAVE TIME TO LISTEN? HERE’S THE EPISODE ALL TYPED OUT:
Lets face it…Being a homeschooling mom who also works from home can be pure chaos! As you’ve probably already noticed, despite the occasional laugh track, life isn’t a sitcom and everyday struggles are rarely resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks to keep your sanity in check so the right strategies and mindset are vital for becoming more productive and less overwhelmed with all the things life throws at us. Enter the Simply Freeing Podcast…Episodes for the highly passionate, busy work at home, homeschooling mama ready to break away from cultural norms and raise life long learners. So let kick stress to the curb, throw chaos out the door and order in some peace and simplicity…with a cup of coffee, or 3.
Jackie: Hi Kelly! I wanted to give a little bit of background and share why I decided to have you on the show and talk about this specific issue. Quiet time is something that has been a joke in my house! We don't really have a lot of quiet time! I have four kids and I homeschool so everyone is home all the time! My husband works from home. I work from home and I know a lot of people are experiencing this same situation right now. My kids have never been good sleepers. I nurse them for a long time!
Kelly: Yes! We breastfeed to sleep too.
Jackie: When I found your account, I was very intrigued because you were talking about this topic. I really crave structure even though I fight against it because I know I need it. Moms that are very busy, trying to work from home and homeschool need quiet time during the day. We need some type of order…a time for everyone to rest so I wanted you to talk about what quiet time is and what it looks like in your home and see if we can pick up some tips from you!
Kelly: Let's jump right in! Quiet time is a period of quiet or down time through the day. For those who already do quiet time, it's usually in the afternoon around when nap time would happen if you had kids who nap. And it doesn't mean it's always quiet. We call it quiet time but just like your family, we have four kids and there's no real true quiet when there are kids around right? It's just a period of downtime or quieter type activities that we encourage our children to do. Some days, it seems that it’s not quiet. My two little kids will sneak and try to steal cereal upstairs but it's the consistency of having it every day. They know what to expect.
Here is what our quiet time looks like in detail. First here is a rundown of our family makeup. My three oldest boys are 10, 8 and 5 and my daughter is 2 ½. It’s of course very very very busy! They are very loud often through the day. I have to remind them to use quiet voices. I used to teach Kindergarten so it’s what I’m used to doing.
We have lunch and then right after lunch time is usually quiet time at about one o'clock, sometimes two o'clock if we are finishing homeschooling or if we’re outside. But they know we go to quiet time and the kids have certain routines for their days.
They usually have to tidy up their rooms at some point (put their clothes away if there's any garbage. There is no specific order. It's just do these things before you can watch a couple shows at the end of quiet time. They'll tidy up their rooms a bit. It's usually not the whole room but you know something just to get in the habit of doing that every day. They will read for 20 minutes or listen to an audiobook. One of my kids prefers audiobooks. So audiobooks and quiet play like my younger two. The two year old and five year old usually play together. They like cars and dinosaurs and then sometimes, like I said, try to steal cereal or scream at each other. They are all in their rooms. I try to separate the older two boys and they know what to do.
During that time, I'm usually resting. I might be praying. I might be reading. I work too but I make sure I get that rest time in first even if it's only 5 to 10 minutes. It actually makes a big difference. Even if the littles are in the room with me, it's still good. If they're like running downstairs I just make sure to reset and rest for myself 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the day. When I was pregnant or sick or something I would rest for way longer than five to 10 minutes but it was good. That little rest period of time to breathe and then jump into work which could be anything from blogging, to writing, doing something for a client or whatever. Once the kids have their rooms tidied, they let me know. “Mommy! I read. I tidied. I played. Can we watch our shows now?” They watched usually a couple shows so two or three like you know 20 minutes shows. I played around with no TV sometimes but we always go back to it because they never asked for a TV time outside of quiet time. Our family is pretty comfortable with that amount of TV. I make sure it's low key TV too 'cause I find any high energy show like Paw Patrol, we wait until the weekend. Monday to Friday we watch educational or lower key shows like Shaun the Sheep. They love Sean the sheep. It is so like laid back so I don't mind it during the week.
Jackie: Paw Patrol is my youngest daughters favorite show. I didn't even think to associate that with being energetic. That's something to think. What specific types of TV are you letting them watch during the week.
Kelly: Yeah…Paw Patrol is super cute and fun but it's just way too intense for their brains during the week, at least for my kids. A show like Wild Kratts is better. That’s what we do and like I said, I’m always perfect. It's not always quiet. It's just like the consistency of having it every day no matter what it looks like so that it's predictable. We all pretty much enjoy it.
Jackie: Have you always done this? Is this something that you started when they were younger? I tried to add a quiet time to our day when I first saw your account. I was intrigued. I had heard the term but when I saw you were actually doing it and showing up every day and sharing about it, I was like this sounds amazing! I tried it but like you said, how many things do we try but when we're not really, truly committed and all in, it doesn't work. You have to stick with it!
Kelly: I always had a period of quiet in my classroom. Every time after lunch they would get out their books and they would have like an hour of reading or quiet math time or something because that was just something that a lot of schools did anyways. I always found it so good for that 5 and 6 year old age so honestly I think I just carried it forward through my teaching years. When I had one baby I would just rest with him when he napped in the afternoon. My oldest is very busy and very energetic. As he got older he was really into water play and tinkering…taking things apart. He still is into that at 10. So quiet time with him would look like him playing, standing at the sink with the dishes or whatever and he's pretty good with that…I put a towel down on the floor. And then he would watch a couple shows. I remember doing that for him. I was working still at the time and when he was a toddler my mother-in-law and my mom would do the same thing for him. Having him play during quiet time because he was so busy. That was the only time he would stop and do something quiet or just hang in the bath.
Then as we added on more kids that was just like OK I'm putting the baby for a nap so I'll make sure my oldest is watching shows at that time for like 20 minutes or however long that took and then set up an activity for him after that, which could have been like the water play or tinkering with whatever he was doing. And then adding a third kid again, it was like OK the older two are gonna watch this and I'm gonna put the baby for a nap and then I'm going to do the same kind of thing. And then a fourth came!
Of course there is always this transitional period whenever another kid would come but we've always tried it and it's just like you said…having something stick and being consistent with it is so important if you want to do it. We’re in the middle of trying to fix our after supper routine like that time between bedtime and after supper and have it be this team thing everyday because Mike likes routine too and he comes off work and he's like we need a different routine. There is always something right?! And Jackie you can totally get back on that quiet time routine bandwagon and just keep going and eventually it's gonna stick.
Jackie: Yes! I think that's really what it is about…just being intentional about what you want to do and not overloading yourself with too many things. I think with a lot of us, it is learning from experience and learning how your family naturally gravitates naturally to do throughout the day and then creating your schedule based off of that instead of trying to go against them like you said, when the baby napped that's when you take the older kids to their quiet time activity.
If anyone's listening that has a baby, sometimes that means they're sleeping on you during quiet time and that's fine. Maybe you're just working with a baby on your shoulder and it feels like it's such a long season when you're in it but then before you know it, they're not sleeping on you anymore and their nap time is gone. It really does go fast. I know it sounds so cliche but soak in those baby moments!
Kelly: My youngest is 2 ½. And yes it's like where did the time go?!
Jackie: Do you notice that your kids look forward to quiet time since you've been doing it for so long? Do you think that it's something that they miss when you don't do a quiet time?
Kelly: I would say three out of four of them look forward to it. Of course they like their shows. They’ll notice when they don't get their show but three of them definitely like that quiet time and they start getting grumpy or just like falling over on the couch and one of them of course wouldn't notice anything different at all. He's like a self starter and is like go go go go go!
But it's also good for him too, to learn that you need to take care of yourself too. You need to know how to have down time. It's OK to slow down and stop your project even though you know he doesn't necessarily love love it, I see the benefit of it for him. He goes to quiet time he doesn't hate it but he's just like busy busy busy. He would always rather be busy. It's definitely good for all personalities. We have very different personalities in our home.
Jackie: I have one more question and then I want you to share a little bit about what you do and share that with us. What advice would you give to a mom who wants to start implementing quiet time but they feel overwhelmed by it?
Kelly: With routines or anything in your home I really a big advocate of small steps and baby steps because oftentimes most of us, we’re like all gung ho with something whether it be like a new exercise routine or you know anything at all, if we go full force, oftentimes we drop it because it's just too much all at once. If you're starting a quiet time routine or you want to build on it just start with 5 minutes, add 10 minutes, add in a new activity, try this, keep on testing and trying but just be consistent with whatever that looks like so whether it's 5 minutes for five weeks or whatever it looks like for you just keep going! And it is hard work because I'm just thinking of like teaching my children chores for 11 years! It's really hard work to teach them habits but if it is something that you value to have in your home long term and to teach your kids that, then it's gonna be worth that effort long term.
Jackie: I do see how much everyone thrives when we have better routines so it's something that I really like keep striving to do. Thank you! I know that this is an amazing helpful topic and I know that sometimes when we have little ones too, we don't always get up early to do any work 'cause we're up at night so we we need that at least like an hour of some type of you time with less stress so that we can just focus on knocking out an hour of work and like you said, having a period of rest…we need that during the day so I hope that this was helpful for everyone and thank you for being here! Can you please share what you do.
Kelly: I've been homeschooling since I had my second kid and I was a teacher but what I do on the Internet is that I focus on helping busy moms simplify their lives and my focus is especially on planning…learning really good planning skills and simple planning skills so that you can have better routines in your home. Last year I developed a six week flexible online course called simplify your home life course for busy moms. I also have the capsule wardrobe guide and I just launched a simple meal planning guide. They're all resources that you can read and the course is little tidbits with all kinds of advice great advice from what I've heard from the people who have taken it. I enjoy helping busy moms learn more skills and more knowledge to help them in their home life because we're all in this together. I loved learning from my older mom friends when I was a younger mom and I'm just so happy to pass on the things that I learn everyday.
Jackie: Great! Thank you! Connect with Kelly at The Simple Home Mom Blog
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