Dear Homeschool Mom, You’ve Made a Mistake

Have you jumped into your homeschool journey and thought “Wow, I’ve made a mistake.” Parenting and teaching your child at home can bring stress into your daily lives.

You’re so excited as you’ve planned and purchased your homeschool curriculum and created your perfect homeschool schedule. But then things start to fall a part when you begin to actually teach your children. Your children hate the curriculum, they don’t want to do their work or somebody is fighting with someone else. It’s not how your imagined homeschooling. You know how you had those wonderful dreams of your kids being each other’s best friends, they willingly do all their schoolwork with no complaints, and your house is always clean. Throw them out the window. It’s not how it works, at least not in my home or the homes of other homeschool mothers that I’ve talked to.

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Are you feeling overwhelmed?

Don’t stress, focus on one thing at a time. Is it a curriculum change that you need  to tweak, is it the schedule that needs to be tweaked, or is you or the child that needs some attention. Make sure that you have a system in place for your children so you are not running around looking or searching for stuff that could have been planned out before. Take the time to teach about character. If you are having issues with character in your homeschool, and it’s full of whining and complaining then you need to address it. School is work and it’s something that your children will have to learn to get into the habit of doing daily. Or maybe it was you.

You will have bad days.

We are all human beings and prone to faults. There isn’t a  day that goes by where I don’t have to think about what I was doing, was what I said helpful or hurtful? However, the most important thing is what you do afterwards. Take the time to discuss your actions, how they can be remedied and how you will try to keep it from happening again.

We make mistakes.

And you will keep making them but it’s a part of who we are and it’s something that you will always need to keep working on. I don’t like to admit it but my frustrations can boil over into our school and its not pleasant for everyone involved. Make sure you apologize and make things right before it becomes a habit. We want to set an example but it also lets our kids know that everyone is human and there is an appropriate way to respond as well. You can go on being miserable or you can take a step back, take a breather and really focus on what is at issue. The important thing is to make things right as soon as you can. Take a look at the other posts in my Dear Homeschool Mom series.