HOMESCHOOLING THROUGH MAJOR LIFE CHANGE
Sometimes life throws us a curveball that knocks us off our feet. How are we supposed to homeschool through these trials without losing our minds?
A new baby. A new house. A new diagnosis. A new hole in your life from the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job, or the loss of a marriage. Whether they’re positive or devastating, these situations up-end our lives and rob us of the attention and energy we typically put toward our children’s education. Homeschooling can seem impossible in the face of them, and then we deal with guilt and frustration about that on top of the emotional rollercoaster we’re already dealing with.
Hopefully you’re reading this before a major life upheaval occurs, so you have this guidance and encouragement in your back pocket for when that curveball comes. But even if you’re smack in the middle of it, I pray this gives you the help you need to make it through and not give up on homeschooling in the process.
So – how do we do it? How do we homeschool in the middle of major life change?
The First Secret to Sanity:
Refine Our Definition of Education
What’s the first thing you think of when you hear “education?” Most likely it’s something academic – textbooks, or essays, or a subject like math or science or reading.
Particularly as homeschoolers, we must broaden our definition of education to encompass far more than just the academic trappings – not just because it makes life so much easier when things go south, but because a true education is far more than just academics!
One of the concepts we need to include in our definition is life skills, and I don’t just mean things like changing a flat tire or creating a household budget.
It’s a life skill to be able to take care of a newborn.
It’s a life skill to be able to to take care of someone who is ill.
It’s a life skill to be able to mourn well.
It’s a life skill to be able to downsize and minimize.
It’s a life skill to be able to make friends in a new place.
It’s a life skill to be able to put one foot in front of the other in the face of devastating news.
If we want our children to be able to weather life’s storms as adults, then we need to show them how to do that when they hit our families. And that is a tremendously valuable education to have.
Not only that, but it’s okay if that’s the only education your children are receiving during that storm.
Honestly, homeschooling is a blessing in seasons like these! Not having to get your child up and dressed, lunch and backpack packed, and on the bus in time for school every day; not having to to deal with homework your child doesn’t want to do; not having to stay on someone else’s schedule…if we have to go through storms in life, then I know I’d much rather go through them with the flexibility to put school aside for a day or week or month in order to get through it than to have to try to juggle that and the storm.
When a person is under stress, learning new information – especially if it is irrelevant to the current situation – becomes significantly more difficult. Even if you had the time and energy to do your usual homeschool day, chances are your children wouldn’t be able to absorb what you’re teaching. Even if it’s good stress, it’s still stress, and it still puts the body into a different mode. That mode is not conducive to learning.
There’s a common saying in the homeschool community: “The baby is the lesson!” This is true about any life storm.
The loss is the lesson.
The move is the lesson.
The diagnosis is the lesson.
Don’t misread what I’m saying here. This is not about creating a unit study all about your major life change and turning it into a formal teaching opportunity. We’re not scouring YouTube for videos and the library for books. (Actually, in the case of the baby or a move to a new home, you might want do that, since those are two life changes you can see coming a mile away and prepare for!)
This is about putting the tools of academic learning away and focusing on what is really important in this time: personal connection, emotional resiliency, problem solving, mourning.
The Second Secret to Sanity:
Take the Long View
It’s easy to get caught up in a very myopic, “right here right now” view of life when we’re in the middle of upheaval. We’re deep in our emotions, we’re trying to figure out how to fix the problem or manage the new family dynamic or get through this storm – and our concerns about our children’s education naturally get wrapped up in it all.
We stress out over all the time they’re not spending on their studies, all the co-op classes they’re missing, and we naturally start to worry about that dreaded concept of Falling Behind.
But here’s the truth: your child’s education extends far beyond this event. What’s happening right now is all-consuming, but even though its effects may be felt for years later, there will come a time when you’re able to do other things besides focus on this particular situation – like turn your focus back to homeschooling. And while it may feel like you’re losing so much time right now, the truth is that this time is filled with learning, and it is equally as important as academic learning. But what’s more important is that there is no academic learning that must be done as a child. There’s no math concept, no reading concept, no science concept, no history concept that can’t be learned later in life.
So when life returns to normal – whatever “normal” looks like then – you’ll be able to regroup and refocus and continue teaching your kids those academic lessons that you couldn’t teach during the storm. And since there’s no expiration date on learning, you can be confident they’ll be able to learn anything they need to at any time in life.
Will they have gaps in their education? Yes, they will – but not for the reason you think. Every single person has gaps in their education. Every homeschooled person. Every public schooled person. I did a whole video on this on my YouTube channel, so if this is something that worries you, be sure to check that out.
The fact that these seasons of life are inevitable is another reason why I created Simplified Homeschooling. It's so flexible and nimble that it's easy to throttle back into "survival mode" during major life change, and it gives families an easy way to take a big-picture view of education that doesn't just hyper-focus on academics but acknowledges the importance of things like recreation and rest, especially during difficult periods of life. Already having that framework in place makes homeschooling more manageable when those curveballs come slinging through the front door.
The Third Secret to Sanity:
Community
Having a supportive, encouraging community that steps up to help you is important for any family facing a major life change, but I think it’s even more important for homeschooling families.
Kids who are in public or traditional private school have a place they can go every day to distract them from the stress at home during a major life change. Even if they’re not in the right mental state to learn, they’re at least able to get a change of scenery, see friends, and have other adults to talk to about the things they’re experiencing.
Homeschooling kids usually have these things, too – but the major difference is that they don’t usually have a place like this to go to every day, and it can be difficult for parents to get them there depending on what’s going on at home.
Enter the community. Besides helping the way community usually helps when you’re in trouble – starting a meal train, volunteering to help with jobs around the house you’re unable to do, even donating money to help with unexpected costs – they can help you with more homeschool-specific tasks like getting your kids to and from co-op or extracurriculars or even just bringing them to their house for the day to play or even do a little schoolwork.
And since your homeschool community has to track the same things you do to comply with your state’s homeschool regulation, they can help you juggle the details of whatever yearly requirements you might have to deal with.
There are two downsides to community of any kind, however. The first is that you have to actually tell them you need them and specifically ask for the help that would be the most useful in your situation. That can take a lot of vulnerability. We are often used to shouldering everything on our own and can struggle to admit that we are actually humans who cannot do every single thing that needs to be done.
I can guarantee you, though, that every parent has gone through a time when they needed the help of others, and they understand not only what that feels like but how difficult it can be to ask for help.
The other downside is that community takes time to build, so you can’t wait until you’re in crisis to try to rally people around you who don’t know you well. If you’re an introvert like me and aren’t a big “joiner” who loves co-ops and mom groups and playdates, then it can require getting out of your comfort zone and deliberately working at creating connections with other people in your community.
For many years of our homeschooling, I’d hide in my car while my kids were in a class or bring my laptop and give off “I’m working, leave me alone” vibes when I had to stay at the class with them. I finally realized that I was doing myself and my kids a major disservice by not being more proactive about connecting, especially as they got older and more extroverted and wanted to hang out with other kids outside of events and formal activities.
I started forcing myself to go in and actually talk to other moms, even about banal stuff like the weather. It allowed me to start figuring out which other moms there I felt comfortable chatting with. It also gave me the chance to meet the moms of the girls my daughters had connected with so we could start arranging get-togethers outside of those classes.
If you tend to be like me, then consider setting an expectation for yourself that you’ll connect with at least one other homeschool parent a week. That can be just having a conversation with someone at pickup/drop-off for an extracurricular, inviting another parent and their kiddo(s) to join you and yours for a snack after a get-together, or organizing a park day through one of your local homeschool groups on Facebook – whatever feels doable and natural for you.
Most importantly, if you don’t have a church home yet, find one! The whole purpose of the church is to bring us fellowship and community. God wired us to be social and to not just want but need connection with others to grow in our faith. If you aren’t sure where to start in terms of finding a church, then ask in your local homeschool groups on Facebook where other folks attend and what their church is like so you know there will be other homeschoolers there you can connect with.
Major life changes are unavoidable, but they don’t have to derail your homeschool. Prepare ahead of time for when they hit, ask for help to get through them, and hold on to the promise that this too shall pass – and that, once it does, you’ll be able to regain your homeschool footing.