Navigating a Challenging Homeschool Start

Pam Barnhill [00:00:01]:
Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again? Do you long for support as you learn alongside your kids? Welcome to Homeschool Better Together. A podcast about building a homeschool experience that works for your family. I’m Pam Barnhill, and it’s time to step out of the overwhelm and into the wonder. Let’s do this. What if I told you that feeling overwhelmed at the start of a new homeschool year is not completely a bad thing? You probably wouldn’t believe me, right? Stick around to the end, and I will tell you why that’s exactly the case. But look, starting a new homeschool year is exciting. It brings about a lot of changes. Some of those can be pretty unexpected.

Pam Barnhill [00:00:58]:
Of course, if you’ve been doing this for a while, nothing’s really all that unexpected anymore. I will tell you though, I’m not gonna throw a kid under the bus, so I can’t give you too many details. We’ve had good starts. We’ve had bad starts. And there was 1 year we had a particularly horrible start, so bad that we didn’t start at all. I just threw up my hands on the very first day and had my husband deal with it, which is not something that I do a whole lot. I have to be honest, but I was getting nowhere. We eventually worked it out and we got off to a better start, but it was not on the day that I planned and it was not in the way that I planned.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:42]:
So just know that even those of us who have been doing it a very long time and have written books about homeschooling can have truly big struggles at the start of a school year. And that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. Some of the things that you might struggle with at the start of that school year and how you can deal with those things. The first thing that might be a struggle, and this is the struggle that I had, is dealing with resistance. Kids totally pushing back on lessons. And even if you don’t get a big, huge blow up like we had, it is still normal for this to happen because kids have their own agenda. They have their own life they’re leading. They’ve been perfectly happy with what’s going on in the summer.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:34]:
Maybe they’re not in the mindset yet of going back to school. They’re not as excited about it as mom is. I have to tell you that nobody at my house is ever as excited about going back to school as mom is, and they’re just not ready to do it. So what do you do when you have a kid who has built up some resistance? Well, I hope one of the first things that you’ve done is actually let them pick some subjects or activities that they want to do. Now this is kind of back as part of the planning process, but I always try to include my kids in making some of their own choices about what they were going to be studying. And that’s a really big thing. Another thing is to start with something they enjoy. So instead of starting off the 1st day of school with something really hard and that they find difficult, start for a few days with just some of the subjects that they love, then let them get their feet wet with those subjects first before you begin adding the more difficult subjects for them.

Pam Barnhill [00:03:32]:
And then finally, break those lessons into smaller chunks with lots of breaks to begin with. You definitely don’t want to start off by having, like, this big, long day of lessons sitting for 30 minutes at a time to do a lesson. Start them off with a smaller chunk and kind of gradually work your way, adding a little bit of time as you go, and making that lesson longer. So those are just a few ways to kind of beat that resistance. Actually, it’s kind of impossible to completely beat the resistance, but it to lessen the resistance that you’re going to get from some of those kids. And just remember, the more you are consistent with your homeschool, the more you keep doing all the little things, this is what I’ve found, the less the resistance goes. But it takes a little bit of time to get back into that muscle memory of doing homeschool every single day. There’s definitely that adjustment period.

Pam Barnhill [00:04:33]:
Okay. So another struggle that you might have at the beginning of the whole school year is that your kids have forgotten things over the break, and this can be super frustrating. And so we had this 1 year where we were working on multiple digit multiplication, and it was really, really hard. The kid was crying a lot at the beginning of the school year. And I realized that not only had this child forgotten the steps of multiple digit multiplication, but they had forgotten a lot of math facts over the summer break as well. And so we actually ended up spending 2 whole months just reviewing single digit math facts before we jumped back into the process of multiple digit multiplication and continued on. And I have to tell you, as a homeschooling mom who felt like this child was already behind in math, This was such a struggle for me. I kept just, you know, feeling these feelings of despair that, oh, no.

Pam Barnhill [00:05:37]:
We’re just getting that much further behind. It was so tough. But as I would talk to my homeschool mom friends, they would say, look. It doesn’t do any good to move forward unless the child can do the math facts and use those. And and they really were right, even though it was such a struggle for me to stop and take the time to review those math facts. So those things definitely happen over the summertime, and a lot of times, the only answer is to stop and take the time you need to refresh some of those skills. So you definitely wanna start the back to school with a review. Don’t always expect to pick up where you left off and keep charging forward.

Pam Barnhill [00:06:19]:
Sometimes, especially on things like math and spelling, there needs to be a little bit of of a review of what you were doing at the end of last year. Now the good news is sometimes you can see great leaps forward in their ability in things like reading because they had that downtime during the summer, and, you know, were probably reading some on their own. And, you know, sometimes concepts just need a little time to gel, and you’ll see a kid make a big leap forward. So one or the other might happen, and it’s just to be expected. So what do you do if you have a kid who has forgotten? I mean, the best thing for us was just to take that break and to work on those math facts. And we did that with an app on the computer. It was a pretty plain straightforward app. Math UC has a free math fact review game.

Pam Barnhill [00:07:10]:
I hesitate to call it a game because there’s nothing whiz bang about it. It’s just answering the questions, but my child was able to use that to review all the math facts that needed to be reviewed. You could also play some fun games with flashcards, just short daily practice sessions, and not adding a lot of extra stuff on top at that point. Just letting them practice those particular facts. Short daily sessions to practice are really good. Keeping up consistent short practice sessions. You don’t want to, once again, spend hours and hours with them going over these things and then celebrating their wins along the way. Because you never want to make a kid feel like, oh, you forgot this, you know, what are you doing? It’s not their fault.

Pam Barnhill [00:07:53]:
They forgot it. Right? And so just helping encourage them and celebrate their wins as they go along is definitely the thing you want to do. If you are finding these tips helpful, I would love for you to subscribe for more homeschooling advice and resources. Okay. So finally, the last, I think, biggest struggle that I have going back to the homeschool year is just feeling overwhelmed at everything that I have to do. Because I went from a summer of being able to work whenever I wanted to, whenever I needed to, and keep up with the house, though that that’s laughable. Don’t tell my husband. Do all of those things.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:34]:
And now I still think, oh, I can do all of those things, and I’m going to throw hours of homeschooling on top of that. You know, for us, it’s it’s about 4 hours a day that I’m having to spend with my kids anywhere between 2 to 4 hours a day, and then they’re spending the rest of the time either with a tutor or working on their own. I have a kid who has a math tutor and a Japanese tutor. And so, you know, it does take a few hours out of my day that I wasn’t doing before, and that’s always such a huge adjustment for me. Like, now I’ve got to step back and make time for this thing because it’s very important to me to honor my school day. And so I’m not able to continue working as much or spend as much time doing projects around the house as what I was able to do during the summer months. And it’s just an adjustment. I mean, that’s just the way it is.

Pam Barnhill [00:09:25]:
So a few of the things that I do is just try to really set a flexible schedule around everything else, except for homeschooling. Homeschooling, I want to honor my school day. And the more I honor that school day and say, these are the times that I have set aside for school, the more the rest of my schedule kind of shifts and adjusts as it needs to in order for me to prioritize the homeschooling and get that done. And then age appropriate chores. Both of my boys are going to be getting half credits in home ec this year. I have created us some nice zone cleaning lists that we’re gonna be using this year, And every day after morning time, we’re going to spend about 15 minutes cleaning, and I’m gonna be showing them exactly how mom wants it done. Now I will tell you there are a lot of times I start the year off with grand plans like this, so check back back in with me in November and see how it’s going. But this is kind of the plan for this year is getting them involved in that cleaning with me, showing them how to do it because honestly, it is a skill that they need to learn.

Pam Barnhill [00:10:35]:
And then, you know, putting a little credit, half credit, not a whole credit, onto their transcript for home ec, along with some other things we’ll do, having them plan and make some meals and different things like that. Okay. So remember I told you at the beginning that feeling overwhelmed actually isn’t a horrible thing at the beginning of the school year. And I want to just end up by telling you why, and, hopefully, this is going to encourage you. Feeling overwhelmed at this beginning of the school year tells you that you really, really care about your kid’s education, and you are committed to making it work. Because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed at all. And so this is just a sign for you that you care about what’s going on in your homeschool. You care about providing your kids with a quality education, and you want to do a good job.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:28]:
And that is absolutely commendable. So step back, take a deep breath, and know that you have got this. This is something that you can totally do, and I have confidence in you. Alright. So for more in-depth tips and support, I would like to invite you over to join our free homeschool community. You can come on over to pambarnhill.com. There’s a free community link at the top of the page, and we will get you joined in and hooked up with a bunch of other homeschool moms who have this same feeling of intention and care about their homeschool year. I’ll see you there.

Pam Barnhill [00:12:07]:
That’s our show for today. Be sure to follow, subscribe, and leave a review. So you never miss out on the wonder of homeschooling better together. To stay connected and learn even more about the homeschooling better together resources and to join our free community, visit hsbtpodcast.com. Until next week, keep stepping out of the overwhelm and into the wonder.