Is It Confusing? Is It Difficult? Are You Worried?
Good. Means you’re doing it right. Means you want to do it right. Means you’re evaluating and considering, caring, and revising.
- How can you possibly find the right program and not ever reconsider?
- How can you teach high school math when you found it impossible yourself?
- Why wouldn’t you worry about your socially awkward tween or your dyslexic 2nd grader or your moody 16 year old?
Of course you’re tired—anxious, weary, feeling alone.
You have assigned yourself an enormous task—the complete education of your precious children, without any certainty that you can do it. You live in a petri dish of your own making—hoping that if you bring together the right ingredients with your children then educated persons will emerge and contribute to the world.
Even more—there are no guarantees your children will thank you for the herculean effort you are making on their behalf. They may grow up, go to college, marry, and say, “Heck no! I’m putting my own kids in school.” What then? Will that feel like you somehow failed them?
So, yes. You worry. Some days you feel overwhelmed and sad—wondering if this is how homeschool is supposed to feel. You want joy, natural learning, enthusiasm to explore the wide open world. You hope to see ties form between bickering children, and you want to feel close to your teens as they move away from you into their inevitable independence.
Will you do a good enough job? Will your kids agree?
Yes, this is how it is supposed to feel. Lean into it. As long as you homeschool, some doubt will ride sidecar to all the good you do every day. Not every decision will pan out, not every day will show fruit, not every effort will be worthwhile.
Yet if you stick with it, if you make adjustments that are considerate of your children as they are (as they show themselves to you), over time (cumulatively), your children will receive an education that suits them to adult life.
Doubt, worry, confusion, anxiety—as long as these are not swamping you (preventing you from doing the work of home education), they are simply conditions that go with the territory.
Keep going.
Keep trying.
Keep expanding your options.
Once in a while pause—admire how far you’ve come, how many things you’ve learned, how much you know now about education that you didn’t know when you started. Remind yourself that you are still learning and will know even more in another year! How grand is that!?
You’re okay now. Just as you are. Breathe.
But what if the anxiety and doubt IS swamping you?
Hi Mandi!
If you feel swamped by anxiety, I would recommend therapy and/or something relaxing like yoga or running. Anxiety is often a bio-chemical reaction to stress, but it can also be triggered by emotional roots too. The combination of these kinds of selfcare treatments have worked wonders for me. I hope they might help you too! You deserve it!
Julie
Great reminders!