4 Mistakes I Have Made as a Homeschool Mom
I could write a book on all the mistakes I have made in our homeschool journey, but I don’t see the fun in that for anyone. So I wanted to give you some idea of the major stuff. And funny enough since every family is different, my mistakes I have made may be what works in your home. I am in no way saying you shouldn’t do these things, in fact if some of them work well in your family I would LOVE to hear about it.
Listening to Outside Influences
Epidural or not, breastfeeding or formula, cloth or disposable… there are choices everywhere we turn in parenting. Let me be real… I am a little bit of a crunchy mom. Natural birth (hypnobirth techniques), breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby-wearing, & no screens should have clued everyone in. And no delayed cord clamping after birth… we had the dr snatch those stem cells up and had them frozen in some giant freezer with other parents who also pray we never need to use them. It would seem like homeschooling would be the next logical choice.
But just as it goes anytime you go against the grain not everyone was a believer. Even when we started our oldest early. (Without TV there is a lot of time for learning.) But I listened to those that asked why I was better fitted to teach my kid, I listened to those that questioned if I was qualified. I saw all the uncertainty from family members. I was puzzled by the cashier at the grocery store telling me she hoped I knew what I was doing. (To which I, of course, laughed and said “me too.”)
The barrage of questions concerning my son’s education were important to me because I wanted to be certain I wasn’t screwing up his education. His education that will either open up endless doors to him as an adult or his lack of education that can lead to less opportunities in life. His education translates to his future. I couldn’t fail him at this. So I listened, however I listened too much.
We are in our 5th year of homeschooling and I know that while every day isn’t going on my Facebook reel, we are doing the right thing. In every way possible we are getting confirmation that we are doing the right thing. And stranger’s concerns about how he will ever go to a prom (homeschoolers have proms too), how he will ever learn to deal with a bully (kids are jerks on the playground as well), or how he will develop friendships (his school life and social life are separate but he still has plenty of friends); I don’t let them influence our decisions.
Never Say Never
I came into this with so many “I will never” statements. I am sure if any veteran homeschoolers heard me they had quite a chuckle.
I said I would never do testing. Our state doesn’t require it and I didn’t see a need to do it for years. But last year I was thinking it wasn’t going to hurt anything. We were able to administer the CAT here in our own home and we let him know both the importance of the test while also letting him know that it wasn’t going to change anything in our life. It was actually a great experience and he absolutely blew our minds. He is a very humble kid, but when we talk about it we can see him stand taller and the confident smile on his face was worth it for us.
I was never going to use videos, we could learn everything we needed from a book. No reason to bring in screens… but then we were studying animals and we started watching some videos with dolphins. You just can’t learn everything in a book, so I’m thankful we live in an age with great access to so many educational videos.
I was never going to sway from the schedule with our curriculum. Now some days we might do several history lessons or we might do 4 science lessons because we find our groove and don’t want to read about anything but electricity. It works for us so we do it! Which I guess is how homeschooling is supposed to work after all.
Making a Plan And Sticking to it
That doesn’t really sound like a mistake. But I am talking about making a plan and seeing that it isn’t working and still trying with all my might to force it to work. The truth is my son evolves constantly. One day he wants to do all of his together work (that which requires my help) first and be done and another day he wants to work alone first thing in the morning. One week he may do well at taking his work into the office and working alone, the next he might prefer to be in the kitchen where I am making lunch and working through the distractions.
Some days I will lay out the work and we will get through a hard lesson with math and I will call it a day. We don’t have to finish it all everyday. If something is especially challenging and we tackle it, learning has occurred and I like to just live in that victory for the day.
Some days we just aren’t feeling it! Ya know… we just don’t want to do anything. On those days learning will not take place… This won’t always be the case in life, as he gets older he will have to push through on those hard days and keep working. But today he
is 7, and today I think its more important that I not kill his love of learning to “push through”. This isn’t always an option, but when it is I close up the books and we get to playing.
I had plenty of those days of “no matter what we will finish this NOW” before it turned into “we get to call the shots on this”.
Trying to Turn Homeschool Into Public School At Home
I was so blown away by how to homeschool when I started. I heard people say that they didn’t keep grades, that they would finish in a couple of hours. I needed a schedule and I was going to keep a grade book. You are reading, I am going to count how many words I have to help you with. You are counting, I am going to write down how high you can go.
But this just didn’t work. At a young age he would finish his lesson in no time and there is really no point in grading how he says his alphabet. Teachers in public school have to do it in or to keep track of what has been learned and communicate to the parents what needs to be worked on more. I am the parent. If my kid is struggling with counting past 18 I know and will be working on it. My son takes a math assessment once a week… basically he does a worksheet on his own and I see what he needs more work on. I don’t actually calculate a grade. He was asked not long ago what kind of grades he makes… he didn’t know the answer, because there is no answer.
I also had it set in my head that we HAD to homeschool Monday-Friday and take off every holiday. But we don’t shy away from school on a Saturday and Sunday. We have done history on Independence Day, we have done math on Easter…. But we have also taken off for a couple of weeks at a time just because we wanted a break or for a trip.
I hope you can take my mistakes and have a laugh at them. Maybe what I couldn’t get to work in my house works beautifully in yours.
