My best tips for working full time while homeschooling

working from home full-time while homeschooling and raising small children is it hard yes it's very hard it's very hard also before you begin don't forget to subscribe and hit the like button okay so with school starting back a lot of parents are having to make some really tough decisions about how to school this year and so many people are working from home now and they're trying to do their schooling online or maybe you've just decided to forgo that completely and do your own thing in homeschool which to be quite frank gives you way more flexibility but you need some tips on how to do this how do i work full time and homeschool these kids and not go insane well i'm gonna tell you what i do so a little background if you're new around here my name is lydia senn and i make videos on frugal and simple living we're a debt-free family of six and for the past eight years i've been a work at home mama i started just doing freelance part-time and now i work full-time i have business with employees i do content marketing so like what you're seeing here but i do it for other companies and i have been able to expand and hire some people to help me out in that but it is a lot of work and so for the past four years i have been homeschooling so we have four kids ages eight seven three and one and my husband travels for work so there's there's a lot of juggling that goes on but we make it work and i'm going to share with you some of my best tips on how i just want to recognize a few things one these tips may not all work for you in fact you may be in a situation that's so unique to you none of these tips do and that is the nature of all of us living different independent lives that nothing i say is going to work for everybody but hopefully it will inspire you to look at your own situation and come up with some creative ideas also i have more flexibility because i work for myself and yes if i don't get work done i don't get paid my clients won't pay me obviously and i do have to drum up business to keep things going but i also have the ultimate say in what i do and what i don't do so i'm not dependent on an employer and i'm not at their whim and i'm not their schedule and i'm not dependent on a school and i'm not their when and i'm not on their schedule so i have built in a great deal of flexibility into my own life so however you can still use some of these tips if you are not self-employed but you are working from home contact your employer and see what sort of flexibility they are willing to offer you i right now with the world being a dumpster fire businesses have to be flexible bosses have to be flexible and in fact my husband whose job is very much like no you can't work from home actually let him work from home on friday and he was able to be so much more productive get so much more done a friend of mine who has been working from home after having a baby she talked about that how her productivity was just above up and so remind them of what a great employee you are and see what flex benefits what flexible schedule they're gonna offer you okay if your boss is like nope this is the schedule you have to stick to it that sucks take a big deep breath and let's go let's just jump into some of these other things my first my next tip is to communicate communicate communicate get those expectations what does your employee expect from you what are those hours that they expect to see if you're doing virtual schooling what kind of hours does that school expect to see what is that schedule going to look like if they won't give you a schedule the squeaky wheel gets the grease right and we never want to be that annoying parent but at the same time like you have to be that annoying parent sometimes to get stuff done um but know what that schedule is if you have a spouse or a partner or someone who you're co-parenting with communicate about what their schedule is and then sit down together and come up with what your expectations are how things are going to look what you need the person to do who's going to have the responsibilities of what are you going to be able to split the schooling how is this going to look and then communicate that with your kids if you're suddenly working from home and your kids are suddenly doing school from home this has been a huge shift for them and frankly it might be a little traumatic like what has happened over the last few months has been traumatic for children they are suddenly pulled out of the space that they know they're thrown into this vortex and we we hear this term all the time the kids are resilient and every time i hear it it makes me want to cry kids do bounce back and that's wonderful but we do hold on to these things and we carry them with us into adulthood and we just need to be mindful of how these changes have impacted our kids and possibly their behavior and so you need you know we might need to sit down together and talk about what our expectations are what the year is going to look like and get your kids involved in that schedule but communicate what those expectations are because at the end of the day you're still mom you're still dad you're still in charge if you're homeschooling your school hours do not have to be traditional you do not have to copy what the public school system does you can do your own thing if you're doing a virtual or online school that's going to look different but if you're if you are truly homeschooling you do not have to sit at that table from 8 to 2 30 and do things in a certain order you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll get things done but you do need to see what your state requires as far as days and hours go and if you need to report them and so that's going to be state specific for you and you need to look that information up but know what is considered school and what's not there are days when we don't start school until 10 30 or we may take the morning off and just do school in the afternoon or maybe we're traveling and so we do school in the car but don't think of it as this rigid thing routines are key but routines are not the same thing as schedules schedules are rigid and have very little flexibility routines just give us a safety net they let us know what steps come next and routines will save your butt when things go crazy because you have a net to fall back on and so we have a certain order in which we do things every day but if my kids are tired and they need to sleep in the morning i'm not going to wake them up because oh we got to get this chore done at 8 15 and then we have to practice piano at 8 25 and you know there are days when we obviously do have to leave the house at a certain time but on those days that we don't we ease into things but we know the order in which it comes so i have a few videos actually on how to develop some good routines and i will link them up in the card and in the video description below plan plan plan plan plan plan get as much done in advance as you possibly can and oh you will thank yourself because this morning my husband's out of town and i didn't fall asleep till about 1 30. the baby was not feeling too great i was just having trouble sleeping and then my oldest was up at 5 45 and i was tired and so i was so grateful that last night lydia filled up cups of milk had water bottle had the reusable water containers in the refrigerator had pulled some breakfast out of the freezer those things were already done so in the morning when i'm like dragging and so tired and frankly feeling a little bit snappy that stuff was already done and so i we have a breakfast rotation we know on monday we have one thing tuesday wednesday we have a breakfast schedule they're able to help me fix it but i'm also able to have those things prepped and ready so that in the morning they can grab what they need and it just makes that a little bit smoother another thing i do is on the weekends i'll pre-cook some things so sometimes it may be that my husband grills or it may be that i go to sam's costco does the same thing you can get these two pound packs of lean ground turkey i'll go ahead and cook them up freeze them and then throughout the week i can pull them out of the freezer and dump them in the slow cooker or the instant pot and that's and that's taken care of and ready to go if you've been working outside the home but now you're working from home you may feel that you have a little bit more flexibility and you do but once you add schooling to that mix you're gonna realize that you needed those routines that you had before so do not abandon them so a black system will be your life so i block schedule now i know i said routine not scheduled but listen to what i'm gonna tell you i have morning time that i work morning time that i school afternoon time that i work afternoon time that i school and then evening time that i work and we've got it all planned out so the kids know that at a certain time mama has to sit at the computer and get stuff done later in the morning it's family and school time and then we go to work again and so we just break the day up they know what to expect and i know when i'm gonna work now every day isn't perfect in fact i read a study recently that said moms in quarantine who have been working from home get an average of 9 minutes and 24 seconds of uninterrupted work time and i can tell you for certain that that is true there are days when i do constantly feel interrupted and then there are days when i get long stretches of time if you have little kids that still nap protect that nap time at all costs do not schedule anything any day for any reason around that nap time i know that's not always realistic or feasible but try to avoid disrupting that nap as much as you can because you're going to need that time to work catch up on school things and then also take a minute to sit in your car and stare at the steering wheel for 15 minutes we don't schedule doctor's appointments visits trips to the park anything around nap time ever if we can avoid it and listen do you hear that it's quiet my three-year-old is sleeping my one-year-old is sleeping my seven and eight-year-old aren't here today my mom took them for the day to visit with my niece but even on the days that they're here we have scheduled rest time and my kids rest they read a book they may play in their room with legos they just go into their own space everyone goes into their own room my oldest son actually goes into my room because he shares a room with his brother but they just rest and we this is so built into our life that my kids will ask is it rest time yet because they want to go lay down or they want to read or they just need a minute of quiet this is something that i kind of trained my children into so as they started letting go of their naps like lay down with them and read and then walk away and then come back and just kind of get them used to being in their room alone awake and now it's awesome and amazing something that i haven't done right now because you'll hear dinging in the background that is my ipad alerting me is i usually put all of my stuff on do not disturb during my work time so then i'm not interrupted and i can focus and the only person who can get through to me today is my mom because she has my kids and my husband but usually it's just my husband so he can get to me if he needs me but no one else can call no one else can text put on the do not disturb obviously if your employer needs to get to you you know you use judgment and common sense have some things that you can hand your kids so i've got this mama needs a minute box and it's just full of like little paint things and little games and craft supplies but have something that you can hand even your younger kids so like a basket of toys a basket of toys over here in the school room we've got one in the living room there's some in my bedroom so that like wherever we are i can just hand a toddler a toy and they can occupy themselves for a minute so i can finish up whatever task that i'm doing and i did a whole video on like how to school from home while working and i will link up and in the video description and then finally screen time is not the devil i am not anti screen time but i am not mindless screen time so screens are a tool they exist around us all the time we use them for work they're part of our kids education now screens exist we have to learn to function with them in a healthy way right but just as adults can get addicted to social media and looking at their phone too much and ignoring the people in front of them we can condition kids to do that as well or we can teach them that screens are a tool and that there's a time when they're useful and that there's a time when we need to have face-to-face conversations and read actual books and go outside and so i have zero problems putting the wiggles on for 20 minutes in the morning for my three-year-old so that i can get my big kids set up to do school and get breakfast going for the little one i have no problems in the afternoon putting on a show or even sometimes a movie if it is a rainy day we have had a long day sometimes i just reset find something on disney plus to put on no one's gonna die it's not like they're watching it for seven hours straight it's for twenty then maybe an hour ninety minutes if it's a particularly rough day but use screens as a tool or as a reward you get your schoolwork done we meet all of our goals you don't give mama an attitude i'll give you the ipad and let you do some art hub or play a game so for many of you you need to remember that this is just a season maybe you're not planning on homeschooling your kids forever if you were just trying to get through a year or even a semester or even the first nine weeks i know that one of our school systems around here has delayed the start for nine weeks they're doing virtual school and then they're looking at the data before continuing because we're getting a thousand new cases a day and so we've got to protect our teachers and protect them at all costs we ask way too much of them but that's a different video for a different day remember this for you might be a temporary situation or you may be like me and realize okay i love this this is how i want to live i enjoy the flexibility i enjoy being together but there is no wrong answer here and also know that not every day is going to be perfect some days are going to be hard just like you have hard days at work and you have hard days with your kids and they have hard days at school that's gonna happen but just take a deep breath and know that you're doing a good job that your kids love you and that they know you love them and you don't have to be perfect it doesn't have to be this picture perfect highlight reel worthy scenario it can just be like this is what we're doing for a little while to get by and take a deep breath and know oh your kids are so blessed to have you you know what an awesome mom you are no for real like you've taken time to educate yourself to see how you can run your school year a little bit more smoothly while trying to navigate this hard time to just be a human you're such a good mom you're doing such a great job cut yourself some slack okay okay so i'd love to know where are you what situation are you finding yourself in if you are a work from home mom if you're a homeschool mom love on these mamas in the comments leave them some positive advice and your best tips thank you for being here i appreciate you and i'll see you later

Channel: Lydia Senn

Views: 7,855

Rating: 4.9541984 out of 5

Keywords: Lydia Senn, five4fivemeals, Frugal debt free life, frugal, save money, debt free, dave ramsey, frugal living, how to be frugal, how to save money, spend less money, how to spend less money

Id: OaPYb7hWd6o

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020