In this episode of the Homeschool Better Together podcast, I’m giving you a bit of a pep talk. I’ve been there—staring at the clock, realizing the day is slipping away and thinking, “If I can’t follow my perfect plan, I might as well do nothing.” Sound familiar? Well, I discovered that my problem wasn’t laziness—it was perfectionism. And that perfectionism was sabotaging my ability to be consistent with homeschooling.

I talk about how embracing imperfection helped me break through the inconsistency in our homeschool. I realized that half-hearted school days and not following the plan exactly were still valuable. The key is to show up and do something, even if it’s not perfect. I also share how creating a “minimum viable day” helped me focus on the most important subjects and stay consistent, even on the craziest days.

If you’re feeling stuck because things aren’t going perfectly, I encourage you to give yourself some grace. Consistency over perfection is what will make a huge difference in your homeschool.

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. Okay. I have to say that this episode might come across a little more like pep talk than practical tips, but that’s okay. Sometimes we just need to have a little pep talk. This happened to me a lot back in the day when I had first started homeschooling along about 2012, 2013, 2014. And I would get to the end of my morning.

Pam Barnhill [00:00:57]:
So maybe it was 11 o’clock or something that. And all of a sudden I looked around and I had not started my homeschool day. And my thought was, oh my goodness. There’s no way I’m going to get in a full homeschool day now. There’s no way that I’m gonna be able to do this plan that I set up for myself. And if I can’t do the plan that I set up for myself, if it can’t be perfect, then I’m just not going to do anything. I’ll start again tomorrow. So what I realized after this started happening over and over again was that I had a problem.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:34]:
Well, let me be honest. I realized I had a problem before I realized that this was the problem, because I knew that I was being inconsistent in my homeschool. I knew that I did not have a good record of consistency, that we were doing school in fits and starts, that we would do school for a couple of days, and then we would not do school for a couple days. And then maybe we would do one more, and we wouldn’t do school for a day. And then maybe we do 3 days of school. And then I was just doing school in fits and starts, and we really weren’t getting any momentum. And what I was doing at that point was I was beating myself up for being lazy. I was calling myself lazy.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:14]:
Oh, you don’t care enough about your kids and their education. And it didn’t feel that way. I mean, it didn’t feel like I didn’t care about my kids and their education. In fact, I knew I cared a whole lot. So why was I so lazy about getting school done? Except I wasn’t lazy. And it took me a while to realize this. I was not lazy. I was a perfectionist.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:40]:
And that perfectionism was absolutely 100% the thing that was sabotaging my school day. It was the thing that was keeping me from being consistent and getting school done. So once I came to this realization, then I kind of had some mind work to do. Because I can hear what you’re saying right now, and you might be saying, well, if you’re not gonna do a good school day, if you’re not gonna, like, follow the plan that you laid out for yourself, if it’s not going to be close to perfect, then surely it can’t be effective. And that’s not true. That’s a lie that we would actually tell ourselves or tell somebody else if you’re saying it to me. Not true. 100% know that it’s not true.

Pam Barnhill [00:03:32]:
Because half hearted school days and just doing part of the plan instead of the whole plan, just getting to some of the things instead of all of the things, that can be a really effective way to do school. 100%. If I don’t get to every single subject on the list, that’s okay. I can do some of those subjects tomorrow. And especially when you have elementary school students, we set ourselves up with these big grand plans for the school year, and they’re really big plans. They’re not necessarily everything that we 100% need to get done. There’s really no reason why a second grader needs to get through all of ancient history in a school year because they’re gonna come back around to it later. What’s way more important is that you are consistently doing a little bit of ancient history regularly and enjoying learning together, teaching your kids some skills that they can use for learning in the future, being consistent with some skills over everything.

Pam Barnhill [00:04:34]:
And that is when, like, the best learning happens. So let me kind of explain what I mean about that. Some of our subjects in our homeschool are, I’m just gonna be frank, a little more important than other subjects in our homeschool. And so what I ended up doing was putting into practice something that I call a minimum viable day. And, honestly, I didn’t call it that then. It it became kind of like my bad day plan. It wasn’t until later that it picked up this name, this minimum viable day. But I set up in my head, like, these are the things that we need to do every day.

Pam Barnhill [00:05:06]:
Like, these are the most important things in my homeschool. And if I do those things, then I can feel really good about getting school done. And so if crazy stuff came up like doctor’s appointments or having to run some errands, I mean, you just never know when something is going to come up in life. We would get our minimum viable day done. Or those mornings where I had the I got sucked into a project and I started doing the project. Or maybe I just spent a little bit too much time scrolling on my phone because I was a mom at home with 3 young children, and I just needed a little bit of peace and quiet. And it happens to the best of us. Right? I wasted a little bit of time.

Pam Barnhill [00:05:49]:
Having that MPD meant that even if those things happen and I wasn’t going to get in my full plan, I wasn’t going to get in my completely perfect day, that I still got some school done for the day. And that was exactly what I needed. That was absolutely fabulous. And so what I came to realize is that, like, school doesn’t have to be this perfectly laid out plan every day. School can be part of that plan. Some things, the most important things. Right? And if I did that every 3rd day, you know, once every 4 days, 2 times, and then 2 times had really great school days. You know? Then I stopped being inconsistent.

Pam Barnhill [00:06:38]:
I was 100% consistent with my schooling. I just wasn’t 100% consistent with perfect school days. And you know what? I was never gonna be 100% consistent with perfect school days. So that’s okay. It was far more important to just be consistent with my schooling. Now I would say perfectionism was definitely the biggest thing for me, and it just took such a weight off when I came to the realization that it wasn’t that I was lazy. It wasn’t that I didn’t care enough. It was that I was really sabotaging myself with the perfectionism.

Pam Barnhill [00:07:15]:
I just felt so much better about everything. And I was much more willing to look at maybe some other root causes of my inconsistency. And so then it became things like, let’s dig a little deeper. Am I staying up too late at night? What are some strategies that I could put in place to make sure that I do that less? You know, am I not making things easy enough on myself by getting prepared the day before? Once I saw that maybe I could use some strategies to do that, that that would really help me get my school day off to a good start. Did I need to just wake up 5 minutes before my kids did or 10 minutes before my kids did instead of sleeping past the time that they got up. And trust me, I am no morning time superwoman at all, or I wasn’t at that point. If you’re not a morning person, just know that your life could change one day and you may wake up and be middle aged and you’re like, oh wow. It’s not difficult for me to get up in the morning at all anymore.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:18]:
And it’s just like something biologically has changed in your body where, you know, you don’t sleep in for half the morning even if you want to, sadly. I’m just saying. But at that point, I was not a morning person. I did not like getting up early. I had never been a morning person. And so I was perfectly happy to sleep in and just making that change of getting up just a few minutes before my kids really, really helped me to do that. Implementing things like morning time. So I was excited to start the day, and we had this kind of rhythm that we followed, that we knew we were gonna do.

Pam Barnhill [00:08:54]:
All of kind of these little things were things that also started helping with my consistency issue, but I never could really make those work. I never could really see those as solutions until I got to that root problem. And that being, you know, it was perfectionism and not laziness that was causing me to miss all these school days. And that’s why I think it’s so important to embrace imperfection in order to help you solve any consistency issue that you have. And I really do think that’s the first question you should ask yourself. And so if you are noticing that you are struggling to get started with your school day, you’re missing days regularly, And there are so many problems that this inconsistency can cause. It causes problems with pushback for your kids. It causes problems with you being able to evaluate whether or not things are working in your homeschool because you just don’t do them consistently enough to know.

Pam Barnhill [00:09:56]:
And then it 100% causes you to beat up on yourself or feel like you’re a poor homeschool mom. It can also cause problems with your kids’ education. Let’s get real. I mean, if we are inconsistent enough over a long period of time, our kids may suffer because of it. So those are all problems that can come out of inconsistency. But you know what? Those are not problems that come out of imperfection. Imperfection does not cause those same kinds of problem. Embracing imperfection and embracing the fact that no, things are not always going to go quite like you expect them to go.

Pam Barnhill [00:10:34]:
They’re not always going to be perfect. It’s not always going to be the wonderful homeschool plan that you’ve written out in your planner. It’s going to allow you to do school daily and really overcome some of those other things that might be coming up. Okay. So I warned you this one was going to be just a little pep talk, but I do want to challenge you to pay attention. How often are you doing school? How often are you struggling to do school? And are you allowing yourself to do things imperfectly in order to get school done? And if you’re not, give it a try. Give it a little try for a few weeks and see if that doesn’t actually improve your ratio of doing school to not doing school and helping you with your consistency. And then really notice, is being more consistent something that is actually making things better in your homeschool? I think you will find that it is.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:38]:
I mean, consistency was the number one thing that helped our homeschool from the early years where I was, like, a little unsure of myself and not quite sure if I was going to be able to do this thing. And it was getting consistent that made me way more confident that this was something that I was going to be able to do for the long haul. And so I just challenge you to look at your patterns. You know, is there a consistency issue there? And then if there is, is part of that problem some kind of perfectionism? And I’m gonna tell you, it does not always jump up and say, oh, yeah. Yeah. Perfectionism. Because we don’t always think of ourselves as perfectionists. Actually, it’s kind of a negative term, and so we don’t want to think of ourselves as perfectionists.

Pam Barnhill [00:12:21]:
But I think if you start to really evaluate and look at things, you will notice that there are some little telltale signs that you just don’t want to do something if you can’t do it exactly as you planned it. And so that’s just not going to be helpful at all. Now if you think you need some extra help in this situation, we actually do have the homeschool consistency boot camp, and the wait list is open for this right now. So if you come on over to pambarnhill.com/consistency, the boot camp wait list is open. We’re going to be opening the doors on that one in mid October. I think it’s October 15, 2024, and you’ll be able to get inside where we help you with accountability. We help you with making that minimum viable day plan, and we help you with how to carry it out so you can fix your consistency problems for good. And we would absolutely love to have you join us.

Pam Barnhill [00:13:18]:
Thanks so much for joining me. If you would like to discuss more about homeschool consistency issues, we have 100 of boot camp graduates over in our homeschool community. And you can find that by following the link in the description down below. 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.

Links and Resources From Today’s Show

Key Ideas About Why Perfectionism is Sabotaging Your Homeschool

  • Perfectionism can sabotage your homeschool consistency.
  • Even imperfect school days can be effective.
  • The “minimum viable day” approach helps focus on essential subjects.
  • Consistency, not perfection, builds long-term homeschool success.

Embracing Imperfection in Your Homeschool: The Key to Consistency

Today’s post might feel more like a pep talk than a list of tips, but sometimes we just need that boost to keep going. If you’re struggling with consistency in your homeschool and beating yourself up for not being “perfect,” you’re not alone, and it’s okay.

Let me share something that happened to me when I was starting out. Back in the early days of homeschooling, I’d often look up at 11 a.m. and realize we hadn’t even started our school day. My first thought? There’s no way I can get in a full day now, so I might as well not even try. Sound familiar?

The Perfectionism Trap

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I wasn’t being lazy. The real issue? Perfectionism. I had this idea that if our homeschool day couldn’t go exactly as planned, then it wasn’t worth doing at all. I thought, If I can’t do it perfectly, then I’m just going to start again tomorrow. This mindset was completely sabotaging our consistency.

Eventually, I came to understand that half-hearted or “imperfect” school days are still valuable. Just because we didn’t get to every subject didn’t mean we weren’t learning. I call it the minimum viable day, and it was a game-changer for us.

The Power of a Minimum Viable Day

What is a minimum viable day? It’s the bare minimum you need to feel like you’ve accomplished something in your homeschool. For us, it meant focusing on the most important subjects and letting go of the idea that we had to do everything. If we had a doctor’s appointment or I wasted too much time scrolling on my phone (hey, it happens!), I could still fit in a few key lessons and feel good about our day.

This shift allowed us to be consistent, even if every day wasn’t “perfect.” And you know what? Being consistent, even with imperfect days, made all the difference.

How to Overcome Inconsistency

Once I let go of perfectionism, I was able to address other issues that were causing inconsistency in our homeschool. Maybe I was staying up too late at night, or I wasn’t preparing for the next day. Simple changes like getting up just 10 minutes before the kids made a huge difference in getting our day started smoothly.

I also found that implementing a daily rhythm, like morning time, helped set the tone for the day. Knowing that we were going to gather together each morning gave us structure and consistency, which made it easier to roll into the rest of our day.

Embrace Imperfection and Keep Going

The most important thing I’ve learned is that school doesn’t have to go exactly as planned for it to be effective. There are always going to be days that aren’t perfect. The key is to keep showing up, even on those less-than-ideal days. It’s better to do a little something each day than to aim for perfection and end up doing nothing.

If you’re struggling with consistency, I challenge you to embrace imperfection. Give it a try for a few weeks and see if allowing yourself to have imperfect days doesn’t actually improve your homeschool overall.

Final Thoughts

Consistency is the backbone of a successful homeschool, but perfectionism can stand in the way. By letting go of the need to do everything perfectly, you can create a rhythm that works for your family and helps you stay consistent, even when life gets messy.

If you’d like more support with this, I invite you to join our free homeschool community where you can connect with other moms who are working on the same thing. And if you need extra help with consistency, check out our Homeschool Consistency Boot Camp! We’d love to have you join us.

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