The Cycle of Stress in Homeschooling: ENOUGH.

hey there i am zara fagin i am the author of minimalist homeschooling and i wanted to come to you today to talk a little bit about stress that i see really often in homeschooling so actually there are a couple things that i categorize a lot of homeschool stress under that would be checklist the checklist the things we should do um how do i clarify that how do i do it all how do i get to it all how do i accomplish it all and then the other category that i see a lot of is the joy how do i get my kids to like it how come i'm not enjoying it right um sort of the happiness that we all want for our homeschools and so there are these two very broad categories i want to focus today a little bit on the checklist side of things i'm only going to be here for 5 or 10 minutes my goal is not to unpack all of this but in a recent podcast episode i mentioned there's this cycle of stress and i want to go into that a little bit here in this video please make sure you check out the simple as the new smart podcast listen to all the episodes my goal today is to give you a few specific things to think about when you're thinking about that checklist in homeschooling so basically what happens in homeschooling oftentimes is that we want to give our children the world right we want to give them all the things and so first of all we look around and there are an infinite number of things that we can do with our children to benefit their education there are books there are field trips there are philosophies there are styles there are so many things that we could do so we start out with this sort of insecurity of what is enough how do i know if i'm doing enough i want to make sure i'm doing enough i don't think i'm doing enough i'm afraid i won't do enough right it's this insecurity around enough so the remedy in our life that most of us have grown up with when you're worried about not doing enough not doing well enough not being enough is that we want we have been taught and we believe that therefore we just need to do more and that will remedy this fear of enough if we just do more the problem is especially in homeschooling but really in all of life there will always be more there will be always be more that you could do can do should do would do always so you never achieve enough right because there's always more that you could be doing there's always something that some other homeschool mom is doing that looks awesome and amazing that you're not yet doing however we can't do it all and we certainly can't do all the things really well right so the more things we try to do the less well we can do each of them and so we're on this crazy cycle of feeling like we're not doing enough so we try to do more and then we feel like we're not doing those things we chose well enough right and so then we end up still feeling stressed out still feeling overwhelmed still feeling inadequate right so this is where we have to be really intentional about what comes into our home school so when i talk about minimalist homeschooling it's really being intentional about what comes in so if our insecurity is about enough whether we're doing enough that's when we get really intentional about what is coming in you have to know what your specific definition of enough is you have to know you have to make your own checklist right you have to meet your own standards so this is where a lot of self-reflection takes place because we are not everybody else's by nature if you are homeschooling it's because what everybody else does is not a good enough reason for you to do something putting your kids on the bus and sending them to school all day just because everybody else does was not a good enough reason for you you needed more meaning in your decision there was more meaning in how you wanted to educate your children beyond what everybody else was doing and the same is true for what comes into your home school bringing something in because it seems like everybody else likes it everybody else does it or even a select few people like it or they do it unless we're really intentional about what is coming into our home schools it won't be a remedy for that fear of whether we're doing enough so my hope for you today is that you can get very intentional about what your definition of enough is in your home school that you can set your own standards you can set your own parameters and you can decide in advance what is enough because then you can move forward and accomplish it and feel successful you have to have a reason for what's coming into your homeschool beyond everybody else right does that make sense so i hope that makes sense to you guys of course if you want more specific information about how to identify exactly what you want coming into your home school how to plan your days all of those sorts of things that is laid out in the book minimalist homeschooling it's also laid out in the minimalist home schooling master class inside our simple as a new smart membership those resources exist for you if you would like them but i think it is a great idea for all of us every once in a while to go back even if you've done it before re-establish on a regular basis what is your definition of enough in your homeschool and how do you decide what's coming into your homeschool and what meaning what value is really makes it worthwhile to spend your time on those things and spend your days on those things so i'm wishing you all the simple things go ahead and leave me a comment make sure you like tell a friend and until i see you again have a great one bye guys

Channel: Zara PhD

Views: 360

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: InkL9xx5JlU

Length: 6min 6sec (366 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020