“What is summer vacation? We homeschool. We don’t do that here.”

Personally, I remember three or four years growing up where my homeschooled sister and I didn’t take summer vacation at all. I finished seventh grade on Friday and started eighth grade on Monday. We weren’t a super competitive homeschool family or anything. It was just a period of time when we needed to take the summer to finish up … multiple years in a row. Around that time, my mother had a new baby, we moved across country and then between a few houses, my dad started a new job, and there were many days when I was simply too much of a middle schooler to function properly, let alone write an essay. Life happened, and school didn’t fit neatly between Labor Day and Memorial Day.

Flexibility and following individual family and student rhythms is one of the benefits of homeschooling! Yet, when homeschool moms and dads start looking around to see how their schooling compares to the public or private school, they may feel insecure or even inadequate.

Today I want to slap a big fat NOPE on that negative comparison! You probably know not to compare yourself to others, but I know that even the strongest among us need encouragement.

I spoke with several homeschool mom friends of mine, asking them what encouragement they have for other homeschool parents or what they wish someone had said to them. These moms collectively have a range of homeschooled kids from preschoolers to high schoolers. I took note of how what they said overlapped and would like to pass it on to you all.

1) The kid comes first, not the work.

As a homeschool parent, your job is not just to teach your kid math or grammar. Your job is to raise the child!

That includes academics, but some days, the pencils have to be put away and you need to put off doing school to take care of the child’s mental health, help them deal with their emotional immaturity, or just make sure that they know they are valued even though they’re crazy right now! That may look like a four-day school week and a thirteen-month school year. It may look like taking off the entire month of December for the holidays. (My family did that growing up, and it was the best.) It may look like putting away the math books until tomorrow again because your kid did the assignment wrong for the fourth time, but they are NOT in the headspace to try again anytime soon.

Your child is worth the time you invest into who they are as human beings, not just how they perform academically.

2) You are enough, both with what you do know and what you don’t know.

You don’t have to be an expert in every field to effectively homeschool your child. It’s unreasonable to expect that! And it’s dumb when people say, “If you’re not a teacher, you shouldn’t teach your children.”

First, if you don’t know something about a subject, you will teach your kids how to learn by learning the subject yourself! This shows them how to learn, not just how to know.

Second, OUTSOURCE! Homeschooling does not mean kids are kept in a shed in Kansas with no electricity and everything is taught on a chalkboard from 1889! There are plenty of resources out there these days to help you educate your children at home for ANY subject you or your child struggle with. Search for them and use them! Science, math, history, reading, writing—by the way, I know of a GREAT writing curriculum that also offers a scoring service for middle and high school compositions—there are plenty of resources available for you and your student. Search until you find what fits you and your family.

You. Are. Enough.

3) You don’t have to be perfect to be good.

Each and every mom I spoke to said something to this effect. One mother in particular has a nine year old girl and a three year old boy, and they just started homeschooling this year. She said she was so excited and had been waiting to be able to do this for forever and she just knew it was going to be so great and they were going to love it—and it took exactly one meltdown to understand that things were not going to be bright and rosy for the rest of her life.

(By the way, she didn’t specify who had the meltdown: the three-year-old, the nine-year-old, or herself.)

Although you are enough, you are not perfect. Although your child is important, your child is not perfect. You may think that the perfect homeschool family has a pristine, set-apart schoolroom with postered walls and intricate record keeping and sharp #2 pencils and kids who are super enthusiastic for every subject they take—yeah, those people don’t exist. And if you are thinking of someone who has a life like that—yeah, they’re lying to you. Lying.

Everyone has meltdowns. Every student has a subject they are “behind” in and makes the parent think, “Oh no, I’m a failure because my twelve-year-old can’t write a complete sentence!” or something. Every family has a day, week, month, or year where things just don’t work smoothly at all. (Or a couple of years. Heyyyyy, middle school!)

You don’t have to have the perfect homeschool with the perfect students and the perfect teacher. Remember: you’re raising a child to be a holistic human being, and school is only a part of that. It’s okay if it’s a bit rocky.

I was watching an old episode of Frasier the other day in which the dad and (grown) son were bickering and not getting along in spite of all their efforts. When the son wanted to give up, the dad said, “Look, you want us to form some great father-son relationship, to make some connection? Well, that kind of thing takes a couple of years, not a couple of days!”

Remember: what you’re doing as a homeschool parent takes a couple of years, not a couple of days. Bear it out. Your child is worth it, and you are enough.

I hope this lifted your head today and as you continue on your homeschool journey.

What are some things that have encouraged you over the years, or what encouragement can you share with other homeschool parents?

By Athena Lester

Head of Curriculum and Scoring

And the boy will not capitalize the first words in his sentences no matter how many times his mother reminds him to.

Neither will he indent paragraphs, write a fully developed paragraph, or often even answer the writing prompt completely!

Why is this smart young man struggling with writing so much?

My mother has struggled too! Sometimes she feels like a failure as an educator because her seventh-grade son is writing like a third grader. Other times, she feels crazy because she knows she taught him how to capitalize, indent, and organize his paragraphs, yet he just doesn’t! She can only pull at her hair and cry, “What else am I supposed to do?”

Many homeschool parents experience this: their smart, capable child struggles with writing well. 

What are you supposed to do about it?

I have no definitive, fix-all answer to give, but I can share some important principles to keep in mind:

1) Recognize that every student is different.

As an educator, you want to challenge your student and teach them what they need to know; as a homeschooler, you also want to meet them where they are. Some students learn at a different pace than other students. That’s okay!

2) Break it down into small pieces, even the content your student “should” know at this point.

Rather than given them another writing assignment and hoping they will do better this time, break the assignment down into small parts. Have them focus on writing a paragraph at a time or even a sentence at a time! Separate the organization, drafting, and revision into entirely different steps. Break the “big” assignment down into small, conquerable steps.

Also, provide a checklist for your student that they can work through as they write. For example, even though my thirteen-year-old brother should know to capitalize the first words of sentences, his brain isn’t reminding him to do that for whatever reason. If he sees that task on a checklist, however, he will remember that rule and make that correction in his work.

The Essentials in Writing workbooks provide checklists for each composition, but you may need to create personal ones for your student that address the specific areas in which they struggle.

3) Press on.

This advice is directly from my mother. Sometimes, the only thing to do is to keep trying, keep reminding the student what they need to do, and keep correcting them when they still don’t do it. The only alternative to pressing on is quitting, but you should never quit on your child. Don’t feel like your student is behind some universal standard of “should” that fits no one. Press on with your own student in what they need to learn. They are worth the effort and time.

By Athena Lester

Curriculum Development and Scoring Services