My 5 Biggest Regrets after 15 Years of Homeschooling

hello Torian perky here and from my home school to your home school today I want to talk about my five biggest regrets that I have since I've been to homeschooling I've been homeschooling for 15 years it is hard to believe it's been that long I started when my oldest was just three years old and now she is launched off to college and oh I've been reviewing a lot about my home school experience it gives it gives you time to pause and I've been thinking one of the things I regret what would be the things that if I could look back at younger me and say do this differently I would do and I thought of a lot of different things because I think that's pretty natural it's natural to have things that you're really happy you did and regrets and I narrowed it down to the top five because I didn't want to overwhelm you so today we're gonna go through those we're gonna go through the things that I wish I could go back and say to younger me and invite her to just you know just do things a little bit differently overall I'm really really satisfied with how our homeschool has turned out for my oldest and how it's turning out for everyone else which is a good thing because I plan on doing it for quite a while in the future but here's a few things that I regret that I may be changing up just a little bit as we go forward okay number one you ready so here we go the first is I for a long time thought more is better I am a collector I'm not a hoarder but maybe with curriculum I am every time I saw a new book or a new curriculum or a new idea I would pick it up and I would read it and I would devour it I think oh I want to put this in my home school and some years I would fill our schedule with so many different ideas and over the years what I and some years were simpler but over the years what I found is that the years where I was willing to go really really simple were actually the best years they were the best years because I wasn't as stressed my kids weren't as stressed and it was easier to keep track of everything because I'd kept it simple the years where I was trying to do different kinds of curriculum and I thought I had to cover all the bases in every type of curriculum those are the years where I stressed myself out and I stressed my kids out so my first regret is I didn't learn soon that simple really is better it really is going simple taking but breaking down what needs to happen into the tiniest like most fundamental pieces and then slowly building until you hit just that right balance it's a much better process for us okay number two the second regret I have is over trusting the experts I know that's funny to say because I know some of you watch these videos and you see me as an expert and it still blows my mind that I sit in that dead space for some of you because I really do feel like I'm figuring it out as I go along just like the rest of you and I just have some things to share but I know that I was really good at trusting the experts I would read certain homeschool philosophies and I think that's the way to do it and I would be tried to follow all of the things they said and in some cases it worked out really well but in other cases it didn't and I held on to certain ideas far longer than I should have because the expert told me to instead I wish I wish I wish I had trusted my gut I wish that I'd looked at my kid in his eyes or her eyes and said nope you need something different and I backed away from the experts and I'd created a home school that really was designed specifically for my children and I tried to do that but I was still listening far too much to the experts so my suggestion is please trust yourself if you don't see something working it's okay to change even if the expert says what you're doing is absolutely wrong because in the end you are the expert on your child number three the biggest number three biggest regret I have is that I got too involved and I helped too much with the learning it was really easy they were home they needed help I was there we were doing activities we were engaged and when they were little that was awesome but as they got older I was still engaged I was still doing the activities I was still doing everything with them and because I knew more than they did I was often helping too much and what I found looking back is that some of my children on more than others ended up being less independent as a learner I needed to transition them to owning their own learning and putting them it responsible for making that learning happen whether it was in a curriculum or whether it was searching things on their own I needed to do that sooner they were capable of it far sooner than I expected it would have been messy it would have been yucky it would have looked like not learning probably longer than I would have been comfortable within the moment but it would have paid dividends later on and now we're playing catch-up with some of my kids who needed those lessons a lot earlier and it's always easier to teach a kid a lesson sooner rather than later so that's my third regret that I just held on to the responsibility of the learning far too long okay number four I didn't keep a consistent journal I had different ways of record-keeping sometimes I would write in the lesson plan sometimes I actually had like a journal I was tracking things sometimes we would write a report at the end of the week I have all kinds of things but I didn't keep something consistently and I wish I had I wish that I had one place I could go back and just look at all 15 years is a long time I wish I could go back and look at what we were doing at any given time and maybe that's a dream maybe that's not realistic and maybe maybe I just need to let go of the expectation that that would be possible but I wish I'd found an easy way to do it and to do it consistently because if I had I think I would love to go back I know I would love to go back and look at my kids when they're younger and see the things we were doing and learning and I would be able to look at the whole picture and say wow we really did accomplish a lot so that's my fourth regret is that we didn't keep a consistent journal my fifth regret is I worried too much will they turn out okay I worried and I worried and I worried and I have told myself not to worry I have told you not to worry we have talked about worry a lot I still worry too much every year I look back and I watched my kids progressing and I think it was gonna be okay why was I so worried but I keep it is so hard to let that go and I I worry about some kids for some reasons I worry about some of my kids for other reasons and I'm learning more and more that worry enlarge quote doses just doesn't serve you any great purpose a little bit is good and I've talked about that in the past but any great worry not really so I really think if if there's a way to worry less to trust to trust that it will turn out okay whether you take it from me and from other homeschool moms have been doing this for a while whether you turn to the Lord and get answers through prayer whether you turn to other resources however you get answers seeking the peace that comes from it will be okay helps your home school move along better and I have wasted over the course of my home school experience a lot of hours of worry both in conversation and privately that could have been better served in other ways oh well so those are my five biggest regrets maybe you can take something out of this hopefully just a little bit and it will help move the needle for you and that way you will have fewer regrets as you go on your homeschool journey now if you are watching this anywhere else besides my blog be sure to click on the link and head on over to the blog I have lots of other videos that talk more about these different topics as well as lots of resources to help any home schooler at any point in their journey feel more successful and more confident because that is why I make these videos every week I'm Tory I'm perky so that I can help you be a successful and confident homeschool mom I'll see you next week

Channel: ToriAnn Perkey

Views: 42,180

Rating: 4.9685659 out of 5

Keywords: homeschooling, Homeschool, homeschool is bad, homeschool regrets, homeschool is hard, homeschool is better than regular school, homeschooling for beginners, struggling with homeschool, struggling homeschool mom, homeschool failure, homeschool fails, homeschool struggles

Id: 7leY3n71sUk

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 21 2019