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It’s that time of year! And no, I’m not talking about the holiday season and Christmas Break. I’m talking about homeschool burnout season. It comes around every November through February and hits the homeschool mom and homeschooled kids alike.
While this is a normal season during the homeschool year, some parents give up and throw in the towel. Often this looks like putting the kids in public or private school. But, take heart. There are ways to reduce the feelings of burnout in our homeschool.
This post is going to focus on avoiding homeschool burnout in our kids. Don’t worry moms, I have a post coming for you too. I decided to start with what we can do to help our kids not get burned out, because this often will help moms too. Kids that are enjoying their homeschool experience push back less, and there’s just generally more peace in our homeschool.
Here are my five DON’Ts and Dos for helping our kids avoid homeschool burnout.
DON’T Make Your Homeschool Look Like Public School
As parents we have a tendency to try to stick with what we know, and for a lot of people that is public school. While public schools aren’t all bad, they are limited in their focus. High academic achievement is measured by high test scores. As a result, we have a culture that equates test performance with learning.
I really want to encourage parents to think outside the box when they are homeschooling. The public school model might be what’s comfortable, but when does anything good happen in life from staying in our comfot zone? When we truly embrace the different and turn into the weird homeschoolers (with varying degrees of weirdness), we start finding the joy of what it’s like to truly educate and inspire our kids.
DO Make Your Homeschool Unique
A little bit of creativity goes a long way when it comes to homeschooling. If you need permission to school outside the box, then consider this permission granted. We are created to be seekers of knowledge and truth and our brains are uniquely equipped for the task of learning. As homeschool parents we can facilitate true learning without worrying about some arbitrary number on a test result form. Prioritize the love of learning in order to create seekers of knowledge. That will take our kids much further than test performance.
DON’T Create a Teacher and Principal Role in Your Homeschool
One of my biggest pet peeves is when parents create roles for themselves in their homeschool based on what you would find in a public or private school. I hear this so often, mom is the teacher and dad is the principal. Please, please, please stop doing this. The key word in homeschool is home. You are a family in a home environment, even when school is involved. So, mom is always mom and dad is always dad. Homeschooling should integrate into your family culture. It doesn’t need to be a separate entity.
DO Focus on Relationships
Relationships should always be the main focus of your home, and this includes homeschooling. I get questions all the time about how to motivate kids to do their homeschool work. It is heart breaking when parents say their kids have some kind of character flaw or they are lazy because they push back on doing school work.
While there may be some character issues involved, more often than not there is a breakdown in the relationship. And as hard as this is to admit, as parents we are the ones responsible for the relationship we have with our kids.
This tension in our relationships will often lead to burnout in both mom and kids. I’ve seen a lot of people in homeschool groups give advice on being tougher or punishing kids more, and I simply think that advice is misguided. While there is room for discipline and putting your foot down in homeschooling, when this becomes a constant part of your homeschool, then that is probably a sign of a deeper relationship issue that we need to work to resolve.
DON’T Over Structure Your Homeschool
Too often we think that we need to account for every part of the day while homeschooling. We schedule every minute of our homeschool day and don’t allow space for rabbit trails or free time. This is a definite recipe for homeschool burnout in our kids. And it’s not much fun for us moms either.
DO Allow Plenty of Free Time
Free time doesn’t need to be productive. A lot of learning takes place with unstructured activity. If your kids want to go outside and pound rocks with a hammer, don’t turn it into a geology lesson. Kids learn from observation and experience as well as from direct instruction. I’m not saying to trade one for the other, but allow time for both. And show your kids that you value both.
Don’t Only Focus on Academics
This one is very closely tied to the last don’t, but maybe it’s important enough to say it twice. Academic learning is great, it is necessary, but it doesn’t need to be everything.
Piling on the academic work may or may not result in high achievement. There are some kids that thrive on writing essays and doing math worksheets. In that case, go for it. Pile on the school work. For a lot of kids this will not be the case.
Even if you have a child who is academically gifted, you still need to be cautious about giving too much work. I was that academically gifted homeschooled child who wasn’t a fan of academics. The workload I was given would be considered appropriate by many standards. But, by the time I was in highschool I had total homeschool burn out. I was done. College ended up being put off until my mid-twenties.
Take my story as a cautionary tale. While I don’t resent my homeschool experience, I recognize that there are things that would have served me better had they been different. The amount of work expected of me was one of those things. When I finally decided to go to college, I was surprised at how much easier it was than homeschooling. Your kids can still do well and find success in life without having a crazy amount of homeschool work.
Do Create Space for Other Pursuits
One of the best benefits of homeschooling is that we can create space for our kids to pursue their interests. Our kids aren’t tied down to the time constraints of public school schedules. Making sure we create the space for passion pursuits is a great way to avoid homeschool burnout in our kids.
What are your kids into? Since 2020 and the rise in homeschooling, there are so many daytime opportunities available for our kids. It is now easier than ever to incorporate interest based learning into our homeschools. And, yes. These interests are still part of homeschooling. They still count. Get a little bit creative and think outside the box, and you will see all of the things that don’t look like school, but still facilitate learning.
DON’T Focus on Your Dream Homeschool
We all know how this story goes. It starts with a vision of how we view the perfect homeschool. Maybe it begins with a lovely homeschool space. This vision probably includes well behaved and attentive children with perfectly matched outfits and meticulously styled hair.
And don’t forget the curriculum. Your perfect curriculum that you painstakingly spent 80 hours researching (don’t ask me how I know how many hours), and it’s, well, perfectly perfect. Your well groomed, perfectly styled, attentive children sit quietly as they hang on to every word that you read from this perfect curriculum.
Then you get literally smacked back into reality by a poorly timed Nerf dart, flying through your perfectly messy homeschool room, hitting you in the forehead as you are trying to teach. Pretty soon you realize that your kids are going out into public after they haven’t combed their hair for three days. And they are in their pajamas, complaining about your perfect curriculum.
When we focus on our dream of the perfect homeschool and try to force our kids along, it is a recipe for burnout for mom and kids. Fighting to keep our kids in some box that doesn’t fit them ends up being counterproductive in the end.
DO Focus on Your Kids’ Reality
It’s important for us to keep in mind that homeschooling is not about us, our dream, or even what we deem to be the perfect curriculum. Homeschool is about our kids, or it should be. Occasionally we might have those dream homeschool days, but often the reality doesn’t live up to the dream. And that’s completely okay.
We are imperfect parents, teaching our imperfect children, and oftentimes we switch homeschool curriculum several times only to realize the curriculum we thought was imperfect is the one that works for our kids.
Homeschooling and life often require us to pivot away from what we thought was perfect. And while it was a beautiful dream, reality ends up being so much sweeter. And harder. But good. Really good.
