I’ve been sitting on this blog post for awhile. I wanted to write an encouraging, grandmotherly-type, have some cookies and sit down and take a deep breath kind of permission slip. But instead, I feel like my words come across as shouty and/or annoyed. Tone gets lost in type!
But alas, I think it needs to be sent out into the blogosphere! Please imagine a warm cup of tea (or coffee or hot chocolate or whatever your comforting beverage of choice!), a soothing voice, and a gentle pat on the back. Because what I want you to take away from all of this is simple: you are enough.
An Open Permission Slip for Homeschool Families
What should our daily routine look like?
Is this enough math?
Is this enough for grammar?
Is it okay if we don’t do morning time?
What if my kids hate this curriculum?
How much screen time do you allow your kids?
Can I skip this part of my curriculum?
Is it okay to take longer breaks and vacations?
How much should my 7yo do?
How many hours each day do you homeschool?
What time do you finish each day?
Is this enough?
Am I doing enough?
Is this enough?
Enough! I’ve seen the word so many times on homeschooling threads and forums that it almost doesn’t even look like a real word anymore!
Listen: It’s enough. You’re enough. You’re doing enough. They’re learning enough. DO WHAT YOU WANT.
No really. Do what you want.
I understand that some of you have requirements to fulfill. Maybe it’s a portfolio. Maybe it’s a specific curriculum for a charter umbrella. Maybe it’s just attendance records to demonstrate.
But within those requirements, YOU ARE THE BOSS.
I remember in my early years of homeschooling getting so caught up with “enough.” I’d see what everyone else was doing, and I would think we should be doing that, too. Public schools, private schools, other homeschooling families locally and online.
I’d see the next shiny new curriculum and assume we needed that, too. I’d fall in love with methodology after methodology. The more I tried to implement, the more would flop and fail.
Every new routine and schedule suggestion, from morning time to block scheduling, seemed to be something we were supposed to try.
But gradually I realized that the best thing for our homeschool was…are you ready?…whatever works best for our homeschool.
Not what worked best for someone else. Not doing “school at home” (which is, in reality, very different from homeschooling). Not whatever beautiful thing was marketed at me from my facebook feed. Not even necessarily my beloved Julie Bogart’s recommendations in The Brave Learner.
When we quit the stuff we didn’t like, and began to do what we WANTED to do, we all began to thrive.
Your Permission Slip
If you don’t want to ___________________________________, don’t do it. Do what you want.
Permission unnecessary, but hereby granted anyhow by Weirdly Simple Homeschool.
Don’t like the curriculum? Ditch it. In fact, KonMari the entire cupboard where you hide all of the unused beautiful curriculum materials that you harbor guilt about. Thank them for their service (even if their service was to simply inform you that you don’t like them), and let them go.
Want to sleep until 10:00am because your kids allow it? Sleep! And if you or your kids are night owls, take advantage of that and work around it. The argument that kids need to get up early now so that they can function as an adult with a daytime work schedule is ludicrous. For one, they might not end up with a job with a daytime work schedule. For two, it doesn’t take 13 years to figure out how to use an alarm clock.
Nobody feels like “morning time” in the mornings? Skip it. Have “lunch time.” Or “dinner time.” Maybe even “bed time.” Or don’t even have a “time” at all! If you don’t want to pull out a basket of books and activities to do as a family, then don’t. I’m sure you do other things as a family. Yes, those things are enough!
Want to watch movies on Tuesday afternoons? Go for it! Or choose Monday mornings for video game time. Or Thursday evenings after dinner for history lessons. There are no rules for when you should do things.
Everyone hates family read-alouds? Don’t do them. Have silent reading times, watch quality movies, let them listen to their own individual audiobooks. Do what works for you. I keep seeing a particular homeschool ad in my Facebook feed telling me that read-aloud time is the most important part of my homeschool day. It’s driving me crazy. If read-alouds are loved, hooray! If not, find another way!
Kid forms his letters “wrong,” but you’ve decided it’s not worth the battle because they still look okay? It’s totally fine! Your child will still grow into a whole adult, even with poor penmanship!
“They won’t be standing at the wedding alter in a diaper.”
You’ve heard this one, right? Potty training a toddler is no small task. I’ve often heard more experienced moms with older children sagely offer some version of this wise advice about a toddler who just can’t seem to get out of diapers: “They won’t be standing at the wedding alter wearing a diaper.”
The basic idea is that, eventually, your kid is going to become MOTIVATED to potty train, and they WILL figure it out. Likely before they become an adult.
But what if your kid has special needs, and they really won’t get out of diapers ever? Buy stock in diapers, mourn if you need to (and for as long as you need to), then carry on. Not every kid is going to grow into an adult who can independently use the toilet.
Not every kid is going to grow into an adult who understands algebra.
Not every kid is going to grow into an adult who remembers details about the Spanish Inquisition, Shakespeare’s life, the periodic table, or what a preposition is. Guess what? It’s okay. They’re still going to grow into whole adults, good adults, people who are loved.
It’s going to be okay.
If something, anything, is sucking the joy from your homeschool, it would be wise to strongly consider why you continue doing it.
What is your end game? Are you hoping to continue the tedious grammar curriculum because you worry that at age 30 your son or daughter will call you on the phone, urgency and anger in their voice, because their life has reached a crisis due to never being forced to memorize a long list of helping verbs?
As Julie Bogart would say, “There are no educational emergencies.”
I could link you to story after story about children who refused to learn about something, then later, as an adult, decided they needed to know it after all. And then what did they do? They learned it.
Homeschool should not be at the expense of life.
You all know this intuitively. We don’t make it our goal to ignore the joys of our lives in favor of curriculum or routines that burn us out. But it’s so easy to get caught up in the avalanche of suggestions that we forget to use our own inner compass to guide us.
So if you are feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, confused, frustrated, or just curious to know if it’s “okay” to follow the path that seems relevant and inspiring and joyful to your family, eschewing the path that everyone else seems to be following, here is your permission: do what you want!
Freedom to do things differently is, after all, what this whole homeschooling thing is all about. 😉
What are some ways that you do homeschool differently? Tell me in the comments! I would love to hear what you’ve given yourself permission to do in your homeschool! ☺️
I love this so much. I need to just “let go”! Yet, I really don’t know how to do it!
I have so many “should do’s,” “could do’s,” “ought to do’s,” and “want to do’s” swirling around in my head each day that it’s hard to sort it out, especially on top of resources and requirements.
How did you learn to just let it go? And how, in the midst of letting it go, do you hold on to what topics to still teach? I feel like if I just let go, we’ll end up with the kids playing all day everyday while I hide in the kitchen from their noise and they won’t learn anything…. In reality, I know this isn’t true, because I am constantly teaching them things and pointing out new ideas, it’s part of who I am, but still… Letting go is hard… and ambiguous.
Thank you for these thoughts… I need to process them more…
It really is so hard! You have such wonderful questions, and a really great perspective already. 🙂
I would say what has helped me the most has been time. I have seen that when I let go of all those anxious ought-to’s, my kids actually have thrived. It seems like the more I back off, the more things eventually work themselves out! But I’ve had to see it to believe it. 😉
That’s not to say we don’t have our “must-do” list. I think what helped me most was sitting down during the summer and thinking about each kid, their personalities, their goals, and their potential futures, and then making a super basic list for each one. In our house, our “dailies” include hygiene, chores, math, instrument practice, and for my oldest two, typing. If those are the only things that happen on any given day, I can be satisfied we’re moving forward. I always start the year with grand plans for all the other subjects, and they often quickly fall apart. But then they eventually settle into the grooves of our daily rhythms. I just have to let them find their places.
I think the turning point for me was lugging my giant binders to Starbucks one summer, a few years back, fully intending to map out my year and make THIS be THE YEAR that I FINALLY get it together and make this curriculum work for us! I stared at the scope and sequence for a good half an hour. When it finally hit me that this curriculum just wasn’t a good fit, and that most curriculums, in fact, were not good fits for us, I closed it, ordered a cookie, and sat down to really think about my true goals for my kids and our homeschool.
And we do still have days where the kids play all day. And I’m totally okay with that. 🙂 In fact, I wrote a whole post about it!
Brave Writer just released a new planning tool that I think you would really enjoy working through. A previous iteration of this same planning tool really helped me hone in on what was necessary, and what I could let go, in our homeschool. You can find it here: https://store.bravewriter.com/products/intuitive-homeschool-planning-tool
Thanks.