5 Tips for Balancing Homeschool and Real Life (Without Losing Your Mind!)

[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to the Wok way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be my top five tips for balancing homeschooling and life. Let's be honest, there is nothing that ruins the most perfect homeschool plan more than real life. Like, it happens every time. I will have the week planned out. It will be perfect, flawless, and then life happens. Something in the house breaks, an unexpected appointment or errand comes up, somebody gets sick. Like, it just happens every single time. It's kind of why I quit planning in advance because every time I do, life is like, "Haha, nice try." But the thing is, there are some things that we can do to try to at least balance when that happens or at least manage our expectations. Because if you're anything like me, when it happens, I'm ready to be like, "Well, forget it. You messed my plan up. We'll just throw it all in the garbage." And then homeschool is basically ruined. So, here are my top five tips for not letting that happen. Tip number one is to stay calm. When everything starts to unravel and you realize midday that you've forgotten an appointment or the refrigerator just broke or you have no power or your kid comes down with an illness, you don't have to throw it all away. You also don't have to get so frustrated that you're taking it out on your kids or that you're letting your frustration and anger and negativity boil over to them and then they're feeding off of it because that's not going to do anything except end in frustration and tears. Ask me how I know. guilty. So instead, let's just try to stay calm. Let's stay calm. And let's remember that even baby steps are going to move the needle forward. So maybe your homeschool plan did go off the rails. Maybe the refrigerator broke. Maybe you're out of power. Okay, just read aloud all day. Reading aloud by candle light can be super fun and it could be one of those core memories that your kids remember forever. And wouldn't that be so much better than the memory of their mom losing her temper because she didn't stay calm when her homeschool plans went off the rail? Tip number two is to get back to the basics. Sometimes when everything goes crazy and we can't follow our plans exactly as it is because real life has happened, we need to remember that we can just go back to the basics. For us, that means reading a book and playing a game. Those are kind of the two core fundamental things that need to happen for me to at least feel like our homeschool day was successful and to feel like we really really connected. And so we actually do that each and every January. For a couple of years when we first started homeschooling, I was so excited. January was like this a brand new empty calendar with all of this space for me to fill in all the homeschool things that I wanted to do. And it ended in tears and frustration because real life happened. Coming back from a holiday is hard. January is the winner. Illness is frequent. Uh none of us have the energy. We all have the winter, February, January blues. And it just it never worked. It never ever worked. So instead, now I just plan for the basics. And then if we get anything else done, it's icing on the cake. And if we don't, I'm not frustrated or upset or feel like I'm failing because we did what I planned, which was read a book and play a game. So maybe the basics for you are, I need you to do a math lesson. Okay, so when life happens and everything is just going absolutely crazy, you're going to say, "Hey, if you just get a math lesson done today, everything will be fine. We were successful." And that's like the one thing. Maybe it's, you know, them reading 20 minutes. Okay, life is crazy. We have 3,000 errands. We're going to be all over town today. We don't even have time to be home to do any lessons. So, grab your book and read for 20 minutes in the car or in a waiting room because maybe you're going to be in and out of doctor's waiting rooms. Figure out what your like bare minimum or basics are because I'm sure it's different for everybody and just go back to that when everything feels crazy. Tip number three is to allow for a different approach. Sometimes you just need to change things up. Sometimes when homeschooling and real life mix and things are going crazy, you just need to change things up. So allow yourself to take the workbooks outside and do your work in the sunshine. Allow yourself to switch things around and say, "Hey, you know what? We're going to start our day with the fun things today instead of the things that we all drag our feet through and we'll get that done first and we'll get our energy up and then we'll switch to the others." Or maybe you just need to switch things up completely and realize that you can still learn all of the same things in a different approach. Maybe it's listening to podcasts. Maybe it's watching a documentary. Maybe it's playing a game instead of doing whatever curriculum or lesson you were going to do that day. Remember that different isn't always bad. It doesn't mean that it's worse. It doesn't mean that you're failing. It's just a different approach. Um, and in some cases, again, it might even be a better one. Tip number four is to remember that balance might not even be the answer. Here's a little tip. Balance shouldn't always be our goal. I know we are always constantly like, "How to balance it all? How to juggle it all." But here's something that I had to learn a long, long time ago, especially as a mom. Um, I can't balance all the things. I can't beat all the things. I can't do all the things. It is impossible. I can't prioritize my health. I can't run a successful business. I can't homeschool Emily. Well, at least not the way I would like to. I can't keep a clean house. I can't make meals from scratch. Like, there's just not enough of me to go around. It is absolutely impossible. And somebody told me a long time ago, like when Emily was really, really small, and it's something that I've come back to over and over again. They said that the key to being a parent, specifically at the time, I was a stay-at-home mom, um, who wasn't even homeschooling yet. And I think this applies even more when you're a homeschool stay-at- home mom or work from home mom, is that you can't drop the same ball two days in a row. So, if today you were like, I was a jam up homeschool mom and my house is a mess. Well, then tomorrow you don't drop the mess, the cleaning the house ball, right? you don't let that ball drop again. Maybe that's what you start the day with. Then maybe the day after that it's something else, right? And so that is kind of like what I try to live my life by. And it's not even always just by days. Sometimes it's by seasons. And Emily has even grown to know that there are some seasons, for example, that mommy has to work more. And so that means that while we might get the bare minimum of homeschool done, we're not doing as many fun extras. But guess what? when the work season is over, we're going to do something really great to make up for the fact that you had to kind of be neglected. And I use that word really, really loosely because I don't mean neglected. I just mean she wasn't necessarily our top priority in that moment because work needed to be priority. So then afterwards, typically we go on this, you know, big road trip or uh we'll do something really really fun to kind of make up for it. I think we have this vision of balance being something that we're striving towards. And I'm gonna be honest, I don't even know if it exists. I think balance looks very different for everybody. And I think it looks very different in every season of life. If you have a newborn, obviously, you can't neglect your newborn today to homeschool. So, your look of balance in that season is going to look very different than before you had a newborn. Like, it's it's relative. There's not a finish line. It's something we're always striving for. And so I think it's not always the answer. Like sometimes you just need to accept that homeschool isn't the priority in this season. Real life has to take precedence. You had a death in the family. You had a new baby. You have no power cuz a hurricane just came through. Whatever it is, sometimes homeschool really does have to take a backseat. Tip number five is to remember that this is still homeschooling. That is the unique gift that we have as homeschoolers is that life is learning and those curveballs that life throw at us are all opportunities for something that we can teach our kids. our kids are going to become adults just like us one day. And so all of those curveballs, they're going to need to know how to handle them. So it's just this wonderful opportunity if we choose to view it that way of education. It's just homeschool throwing you a curveball. It's a rabbit trail being presented in a way that you didn't expect. So the fridge broke. Okay, the repair man's going to come to fix it. Let your kids watch him. Let him ask questions. Maybe you have a repair man in your midst and you didn't even know it because maybe that's going to be this huge rabbit trail that you end up down because your kid was so fascinated by it. Okay, you have no power because a hurricane hit. Well, that sucks, but that's a learning opportunity. Let's teach our kids about an emergency kit. Let's teach them what power does and doesn't power. Let's teach them, you know, what we can do with and without electricity. Let's remember how many years and how many generations of people lived without it. uh maybe read a book from that time setting by candle light and you know there's just so many things that you can learn or even if you're not adding extra things in it can be something that you're doing instead of like okay the weather really stunk and the field trip you hope to go on got cancelled that stinks but instead of being at home like upset about it and just okay well we can't do anything so our field trip got cancelceled use that to do something that's been on your wish list for your home school maybe it was an art project or subscription box or maybe it was play a stack full of games. All of those things are going to probably be like the silver lining in a gray cloud because hey, we got to do something fun that I wasn't expecting. And it was even better than the field trip. Maybe it's not always easy to homeschool and do life at the same time. But I want you to remember that homeschooling is life and life is learning. And even when it doesn't feel like you're doing a whole lot, your kids are probably still learning even when you're not the one facilitating it. So keep that in mind. Now, I would love it if you would tell me your tips for balancing homeschool and life down in the comments because I'm sure we could all use the help. [Music]