How To Find Your {Homeschooling} Joy Again

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I’m about to tell you my dirty secret. I’ve kept swallowing this one back down for the past year. Sometimes (more often than not?) I don’t enjoy homeschooling.

There. It’s out.

Like so many good and righteous things in life (camping outdoors / exercise / green juice for breakfast, etc), I enjoy the idea of the thing more than The Thing itself. I like planning, and musing, and joining the ranks of the Noble Camps Who Do The Thing vastly more than, you know, actually running five miles. Or eating kale for lunch. Or, well…homeschooling.

For years I’ve been conflicted. Should I enjoy homeschooling? (pssst. *what if I don’t?*)

My default approach has been Acceptance. It follows reasoning like this:

• Lots of things in life aren’t fun.
• It doesn’t matter if I like it; it’s my calling.
• It’s really hard. Only weird people would actually enjoy their bladder getting stepped on by a two-year-old while the first grader sounds out words next to you at the speed of sap dripping, and another child moans about math.

These things are true.

But here was the problem. It’s a sister to, “When Mama ain’t happy, nobody ain’t happy.” Same song, different verse. This one goes: “If you hate school, your kids probably will, too.”

The past six months have been a slow unravelling for me. Losing my energy, finding it again. Losing my confidence, finding it again. Losing my ideals, finding them again.

Honestly, I blame Instagram. I found this girl, this video, this simple 15-second loop of their homeschool morning. (I’ll link it later so you don’t all immediately leave Yours Truly and flock to this other homeschool rockstar forever.) I probably watched the stinkin video 75 times. I sent it to everyone I knew cared. or didn’t care. I wept. (And I am prone to exaggeration, but this is not: I wept like a baby.)

This was probably late May when I found this scene. Everything about it was captivating, and so different from us. They were drinking tea, and eating something (muffins? biscuits? something delicious). They lit a candle, they had little teacups and beautiful linens, there was music, and a big, inviting stack of books (I have since learned it was poetry, short stories, devotions, and the Bible). They sat down and held hands and said their prayers, and the homeschool Life had begun.

I could not stop thinking about the video.  I got down on my knees, and I prayed something like this. God. I know this woman is different from me. We aren’t the same. But I feel like something’s missing. If there’s something different you want ME to do, please show me, and help me do it.

And I started to ask myself this question.

What would it look like for me to enjoy homeschool?

It was a scary, scary question. I had – for the briefest of seconds – to imagine away glamorous test scores, completed workbooks, and convoluted syllabi. In other words: all the concrete standards which give me confidence.

Like I said, it was a slow process. There was a lot of undoing that needed to be done. While the biggest change of all has come in my mind (choosing Delight over Done), there are many changes.

• I bought a tea pot. I purposely chose the most beautiful and happy teapot I could find. (God bless the Pioneer Woman – it was only $10). Linger is my word for our morning time. Savoring the snack and the reading together.
• I joined a co-op. It was the farthest thing from my mind three months ago, but I am hoping it gives us accountability and friends.
• I became more strategic about planning. I have always been a planner, but I stumbled on this planner via Amazon and what a gift to me. It has room for the page numbers and chapters and all that, BUT ALSO. What goals do you have for your family? What character traits do your kids need? And that. Just love it.
• I bought the preschool curriculum A Year Of Playing Skillfully, and we are all going to enjoy it together. It’s play-based, and nature-based, and talking-to-each-other-based. I’m repeating it for my own sake: We are ALL going to enjoy it together. My six year-old got gypped some play time because his mom thought he needed to finish ALL THE PAGES IN ALL THE BOOKS. So we are redeeming the time.
• I made space in my life for homeschooling. I had to get a lot of things OUT so I could be IN. Out of my mind, mainly. It was so packed. My priorities were out of whack. I got back to God, then kids, and then me and my wants. It’s amazing how His burden truly is light.
• And in short, I gave all of us – me, and them – a big fat permission slip to enjoy the day. Not to disregard the hard things, but to stop and breathe, think, paint, color, talk, giggle, run, rest, eat, cuddle, snack, savor, sit, discuss.

Small changes, mainly, that made a big change.

And it’s happening. I am finding my {homeschooling} joy again.

~

ps. This is the Instagram video that breathed life into our homeschool.

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