CHM 121:How to Build a Homeschool With Love

Do you sometimes wonder how you can homeschool patiently with understanding, all while offering your kids that security that they need?

Well, that's what this whole podcast is about today in the month of February, which is the month that I like to focus on love.

So today's podcast is about homeschooling with love.

If you're interested in this topic, stay tuned.

Hi everyone and welcome to the Christian Homeschool Moms Podcast.

I'm Demetria and I'm so glad to be back with yet another episode of the podcast.

And if you are new to this podcast, I just want to thank you for listening in and encourage you to listen to the prior 100 plus episodes that are available for you.

And also I just want to encourage you to see what I have to offer over at my blog, ChristianHomeschoolMoms.com if you're interested in just getting a little, a lot more information about homeschool homeschooling and receiving some encouragement through my blog posts, through my videos.

And also I have an ecourse available, so I'll talk about that a little bit later.

But if you're just wanting more support in your homeschool journey, that's what I'm here for, to help you to get through this phase of your life with joy and with commitment.

So I have been homeschooling now for 13 years and it has been quite a journey learning to operate in the fruit of the spirit in my homeschool, one of which is love.

And so that is what I'll be focusing on on today's podcast.

How do we lead our homeschools in love?

I feel that this is such a prominent topic for not just for February, but for any month of the year.

Because when we're working with our kids, we need a lot of love, we need a lot of patience, we need a lot of understanding, and we also need some discipline and correction and security and all the boundaries and things that make, you know, a home life viable.

So we'll be talking, or I will be talking with you and sharing with you about the things that I have discovered over the years that have helped me in our homeschool.

So I am raising two daughters, ages 17 and 12 years old, and over the years I have learned how to compromise when I need to, how to not give in when I don't need to, and how to be friends with my kids and yet be their parent.

How not to be their friend all the time, but to give them the correction and the boundaries that they need so that they feel secure in my parenting and that I'm not just, you know, a friend, but I'm their mama.

And I've learned how to gradually, with time.

I'm still learning, actually, and I never stopped learning how to balance.

And let that be kind of a lifestyle of balance for me, where I'm not completely all about rules and discipline and authority.

But I'm not a pushover, and I'm not a parent that kind of lets my kids get away with everything.

So I like to talk to my kids as a form of discipline.

I like to sit them down and have them understand what they did wrong, if they did anything wrong that day.

You know, that's something that we like to sit down and have discussions about, and we like to make sure that.

Or my husband and I like to make sure that my kids have a thorough understanding of what needs to change, if anything, and why they need to change.

Whether it's an attitude, whether it's a behavior or a pattern of behavior which has become a habit.

These are things that we have to address in our home.

Every parent has to address these things in our homes.

And sometimes, depending on how we address them, can, you know, make a big difference in the way our kids perceive their home life, whether they're being treated with love and acceptance and understanding, or if they are just constantly being yelled at and scolded all the time.

So I'm guilty of having gone both ends of both directions where, you know, there are times that I have been extremely laid back and extremely just almost not really focusing much on the discipline aspect of parenting, especially when they were kind of in their younger years and everything was pretty cool, pretty nice, pretty chill.

Their personalities made it very easy for me to raise my daughter.

So I'm very, very, very grateful for that.

But there came a time when, you know, you start raising teenagers, it's a whole different ball game.

And also, you know, they have different personalities.

And with my youngest daughter, you know, I needed to really bring more boundaries to her as she was younger.

She needed a lot more of my support in that area when she was maybe 4, 5, and 6 years old.

So a lot of the training happened with her, you know, during the pre K, kindergarten, first, second grade years, where I really just poured a lot into creative correction for her.

But as she got older, it became easier to manage because I had already been instilling some of those values in her when she was younger.

But that's not to say that there are not different seasons of my life where I am having to deal with different Types of parenting styles and figuring out what works for me and my husband at the season we're in.

Because our kids are different because they're older and they need a different form of discipline.

So it's not just about discipline.

I'm going to talk a lot about the discipline in just a moment, but I'm also going to talk about understanding our kids and being patient with them, because I think that's all part of loving our kids.

And so I'm just gonna jump right into the discipline part because I'm already talking about it.

And I figured it would be just the first thing to discuss and sort of get that foundation laid before I get into the more whimsical love things, love topics.

So security.

That's the very first thing I think I wanna talk about.

You know, our kids really need security in order to feel grounded and loved in their homes.

They need security.

Every child needs to know that your yes means yes and your no means no.

And so I have learned.

I have learned to be firm, and I have learned to stand my ground when I need to stand my ground.

And I'll talk a minute also about when there are moments and times when you have to compromise because you realize maybe, just maybe your stance is too harsh as a parent.

And I've learned to be open to seeing things from a different perspective, not just because my kid wants it so badly, but because maybe it's not such, you know, a big deal as I, you know, made it out to be.

So sometimes it's okay to step back and rethink our decision, but for the most part, if you know, you're the parent, so if you say no and you don't, and you don't want your kid to do something or you want them to do something, and you're saying yes, and your kid needs to follow through with that and respect you as the mom or the dad and to honor your.

Your answers to them.

Teach them the right way to go means that they won't depart.

The Bible says that when we teach our kids the way to go, they won't depart from the truth.

So I've always gleaned from that scripture that what that means essentially, is that our kids, you know, are going to be tempted, of course, to leave the truth, to leave.

To go away, to do their own thing.

You know, the.

The.

The grass always looks greener on the other side, and there's always the glitter and the gold that's attractive in the world.

But at the end of the day, when they come to themselves, what do they come to?

What is their foundation?

What is their root of what they're coming to?

It's whatever you mama has instilled within your child from an early age.

That's what they come right back to.

That is their grounding.

So grounding our kids gives them a sense of security and lets them know, well, I can always fall back on this.

I can always fall back on my faith.

I can always fall back on God.

I can always fall back on my parents.

I can always fall back on family.

I know that their love for me will not change, that they will be there for me.

So those are the security things that we need to make sure are laid as a foundation for our kids so that they feel loved.

We show them that we're committed to their spiritual growth by staying consistent with Bible times.

Reading them the Bible, reading scripture with them, discussing the scripture, talking about God's Word.

So there's a scripture in the Word that says that we should teach our kids the ways of the Lord and talk about them all day long, all night long.

Let them always, you know, be on our mouth, and that the words of the Lord and the teachings of God will not depart from our mouth day or night, that our kids will always hear us speaking on His Word.

So I have a whole podcast about what the Bible says about teaching our children, and you can go back and listen to that episode when you get a chance.

But our kids really do need us.

They need us to secure that spiritual training with them.

And that can mean a number of things.

It doesn't have to mean you buy the nicest, shiniest, glossiest Bible curriculum out there.

You can do that if you want, if it makes you happy, if it's, you know, exciting to do, you can do that.

I've purchased a lot of Bible curriculum over the years just because it made me happy and it made my kids happy.

But there comes a time when you don't need all the extras.

You really don't.

All you need is.

Is the Bible and your presence.

Just show up, show up with your kids, sit around the table, sit on your couch, and have them open the Word of God and you open your Word, and together you break bread.

Together, you center your lives around the core of God's Word.

You talk about the Scripture.

You take turns reading scripture.

You ask questions, you see their thoughts and ask them if they understand the Word.

And so that's, you know, kind of how we do things in our home.

Because it is essential to us, to my husband and I, that we impart the wisdom of God through his Bible, through his teachings, through the Word, to our children.

Because we are not all knowing and all knowledgeable and all wise, but the God that we serve is.

And so when we open the Word of God, which is full of wisdom and we just read it, even just reading and not even doing anything additional, just reading it will nurture and nourish our children to the point where they're more receptive to wisdom, they're more receptive to knowledge, because that's what the Word of God does to you.

It refreshes you.

It's like a bath.

It's like taking a shower.

It just cleanses you.

Just the art of reading the Word of God together will cleanse you as a family and bring you together.

You know how there's a saying that families who pray together stay together?

And I firmly believe that you need to pray together, but also read the Word together.

Because when you read the Word together, you grow together, you grow spiritually, and you just become closer.

And keeping God in the center of it just makes you a stronger family.

Also, kids feel really secure when they know their boundaries.

They need to know their limits.

They need to know where they stand.

As I mentioned earlier, there were times when I was a little bit fuzzy on some of my rules when my kids were younger, because when they were younger, some things that kids do when they're babies, they're cute, right?

And then they grow up and it's not so cute.

So there are things that I learned over the years that, okay, this.

This habit is not as cute as it started off to be.

And so you start to learn what you let your kids get by with and what you don't let them get by with.

And you just set those boundaries, you start to have limits.

The kids know where you stand.

And, you know, you and your husband, your spouse, you talk about these things and you come to a mutual agreement so that, you know, everybody's on the same page.

Being on the same page is really important.

I talk about that in my homeschool boss, mama, goal planner course.

And I think I may have mentioned it once in the last podcast to you guys, but I definitely wanted to make sure that I told you about it on this podcast.

So if you don't already know about it, this is my segue real quick.

This is my little commercial break.

I don't have an official commercial break here.

So I'm just going to insert this and let you guys know that that course has been available for some time now, actually since the beginning of January.

And since I'm just announcing it, maybe for the first time, I don't think I did last podcast.

If I did, this would be our second announcement.

In that case, even though it's the end of February, I will go ahead and extend the sale.

And instead of it just being a new year sale, we're just going to extend it through, you know, we've had a month of thinking about loving, loving our children, loving our spouse, loving one another, and so we're just going to extend it and even through March.

So if you want to have access to this course in the month of March, go ahead and grab it.

And basically what it is, it's a all about planning your homeschool effectively.

And in that course I talk about coming together as a family to create your goals.

Goal planning is about family.

It's about coming together with your spouse and your children and sitting down and looking at what each of your child's talents, each of your children's talents and giftings are and what they can do, you know, to contribute to their homeschool.

And then you just sit down and you create those goals together.

And part of that is making a family mission statement.

So when I talked about, you know, having everyone be on the, being on the same page, that kind of discussion within a family makes everyone feel secure together as a family.

Having a goal and a vision for your family is super important and it just makes a big difference.

You wouldn't believe how big of a difference it makes.

I know when my husband and children sat down together in about, I think it was about three years ago, we created a list of the Zynga family values and our goals and what we wanted to do to live our lives so that everything we did centered around those values.

And it was one of the most eye opening things that we could have done together as a family because it allowed me to see my husband in a different light and it allowed me to see my children and how they perceive themselves within the context of our family.

It helped me also to see what they really want to contribute to the world around them, what they want to contribute to their family, to their, their sister, to their mom, their dad.

How do they want to honor their parents and give back?

So it just made so much of a huge difference in our family when we created this mission statement and set us on kind of a path for success is what, how I want to say it.

But the success as a family, you know, means a lot to me more than being successful at business or work or career or anything.

I just feel like your family, it's the one time that you get to invest in your children and in your husband and your wife.

And it's just the one time, you know, before everybody's lives take a different turn and your empty nesters and your life's in a whole different phase.

So I just feel like it's so important to tap into those moments.

So back to security.

So all of this to say, you know, if you want the course, please go ahead and grab it.

It's $40, and it's all audio for you homeschool mamas who are super busy and don't have time to sit down for video, you can just pop in and listen to these audios.

And it comes with a workbook, so go ahead and do that and I will tell you maybe a little bit more at the end of the podcast as well.

So, you know, our kids have been in an upheaval lately because we just moved again.

We were, as I mentioned on my last podcast, we had been in the middle, middle of moving into our brand new dream house.

And so God has really blessed us and we're happy to be here.

And so we're finally unpacking and the dust is settling still.

Even after we've been here a few weeks, we're still unpacking and getting things together.

But it's a wonderful move and a wonderful transition for our family.

But that said, you know, because of the turmoil of Lee, of moving and of transitioning and changing locations and transportation and what do we do now that we're not near the church we used to attend regularly?

And all these different things change in your life.

So even in the midst of these moves, you can create some sense of security so that your kids feel, you know, that they are secure, like they.

They feel that there's still love, there's still something they can look forward to that's the same every day.

So you can create general routines that your kids can look forward to and expect.

And that's all under the umbrella of security.

I'm going to move on real quickly because our podcast is getting a little bit longer than I had anticipated.

But the second thing that I think we should operate in homeschooling with love, is in patience.

And we operate in patience.

Now.

Patience is the fruit of the spiritual.

And when kids don't listen, when your day is blowing up, you just have to be patient.

You have to practice patience.

And it's not something that comes to you, and it's not something you just soak in and now you're a patient person.

You actually have to put forth your spiritual muscles to begin to work that muscle of patience, because it's not easy to use, and it's, you know, it's not there usually.

And as Christians, we have to work out our salvation, and part of that is those fruit of the spirit that we have to work to blossom.

And patience is one of those.

For an example, my youngest daughter, Zoe, was sick a couple of weeks ago.

She had strep throat, and we had just moved, and we had repairman coming in and out of the house that day.

She was so, so out of it.

Her appetite had completely gone, and she hadn't been eating anything at all.

And so I was really worried about her.

Plus, I'm in a new city, so I had to find a pediatrician nearby because there was no way that I was going to take a hike back to where we used to live to her older pediatrician.

So I just needed a quick, you know, doctor visit.

And then I also had to find somebody who would take our military insurance, which is not easy to come by sometimes.

And so at the same time, on that day that I had repairmen coming in and out of the house, and my daughter was sick, and I needed to find her a place to go to see a doctor.

Well, my oldest daughter was in the middle of her college application process, and so, just a side note.

Yay.

She has been accepted into a couple of colleges that she's been looking at, and so we're super excited about being on this part of the journey with her.

But that's a side note, and I'll share more with you about that later as well as she makes her final decision about where she wants to go to school.

But my.

My oldest daughter, Naomi, needed help with her college applications, and so she had deadlines looming that weekend, so I really had to buckle down and help her and also help her with her video auditions because she's applying for the music program.

So this is all happening on the same day while my husband is out of town on military order.

So he was not around to help me out with anything at that time.

And that's not to mention basic housekeeping.

Laundry to be washed, folded, and put away, meals to be cooked.

So this is the time when you ask the Lord when you're in a situation where your day is blowing up in front of you and there are things going wrong one after the other, and you feel the mounting pressure of circumstances upon your back, and so ask the Lord for patience to help you with Endurance to not only make it through the day, but to run your race, the race that is set before you.

It's not the race that is set before someone else.

And so everybody has a different calling and a different race to run.

But God can help you in your specific particular journey, and he cares about your journey.

So move forward in that and ask God for patience, because you're going to need a whole lot of it in this life, and especially if you're homeschooling your kids.

And then the.

The last thing I want to talk about is understanding.

Now, it's not necessarily a fruit of the spirit, but I like to think of it as a fruit that we bear as believers.

Because when you bear patience, you begin to understand people around you better and circumstances, and you become, again, you become more patient, but you also begin to open up your mindset and your heart space so that you can understand what exactly is happening.

And in this process, we learn, and I've learned how to understand the particular needs of each of my girls.

They are so different, and so I have to meet them where they are.

That means I forget state standards.

You know, I was in the charter school for so many years, and I was very focused on checking off those standards, you know, for a couple of years there, I kind of had to focus on that so that I could try to align, you know, what I was doing in my home school the way I believed God wanted me to raise my children, but still be able to utilize the services of the charter school.

And that became really a hassle.

And so if you've watched any of my videos on YouTube, you might have caught the one that I did last year, which is called why I Quit Charter School.

So if you want to take a look at that, I'll leave a link to that in the show notes as well as the E course.

And all this information I'm talking about, you'll find in the show notes on the block.

So, anyway, I have learned that even though I was trying really hard not to worry about state standards, you kind of have to.

When you're in the charter and you try to keep your kids up to par with what the state mandates, and it just, you know, it just wasn't worth it for us.

I realized that not only were we excelling those state standards, but a lot of the things that are nitpicked about concerning those standards are not even worth haranguing over and having, you know, your.

Your kids have to.

To suffer under the pressure of being, you know, nitpicked and Making sure that they're.

They're getting this right and getting that right on every subject and make sure you're right on level and that kind of thing.

Because a lot of things, you know, with homeschooling, you know, one kid can be excelling in math, but not so well in reading, but excelling another could be excelling in reading and not so well in math.

And then all your kids could be like super scientists because that's their genius, or they can have a music ability or artistic ability.

And so, you know, what we're good at individually cannot be captured with standards.

Right?

So it can't be put into a box.

And so, you know, when you need to address your child's needs on an emotional level versus an intellectual level, when it's time to put aside those books and just focus on the hearts of your children, you know, when it's time to do that.

So for me, the first step was pulling away from the charter.

I won't say they'll never do a charter again, but I definitely am completely done.

Hands, you know, clean, wiping my hands clean.

I'm done with that part of my life right now.

And so, so happy to be free of that.

Just going back to the way I used to do things years ago.

Just homespun, homegrown, homeschool.

And it's just been a beautiful thing.

And working with our Classical Conversations group, which we've really enjoyed, and it's just been a beautiful experience.

And so I've been, you know, putting aside those books and focusing on Zoe's heart space and showing love through understanding.

So after my youngest daughter, who's now 12 years old, she desired to be with her friends more often.

And she's matured and her social needs have begun to change.

So I wanted to show her that I care and understand about her social needs.

The things that she didn't need a couple years ago, she actually needs a lot more of now.

So I've been reaching out to our homeschool co op moms with girls her age so that they can get together and spend quality time during the week.

And it's okay in my book now that I can put aside a couple of times during the week, maybe a day or maybe two days at the most, you know, where I let her socialize with her homeschool friends outside of regular academic co op meetings.

And.

And this helps her with one of her emotional needs.

And it's just as important as her academic, if not more so, because it makes up who she is.

And so when we show our kids that we love them and we show them that their emotional needs are important to us, that we care for them in every aspect, not just their academics and intellectual abilities.

What we're doing is helping them to see that they are loved for who they are.

And also shifting their workloads is helpful if we see that they're overwhelmed.

If our kids are being overloaded, overwhelmed and feel the pressure of academia, then we need to, we as parents actually have a right to increase or decrease assignments as we see fit.

And that's one of the reasons why I really love our co op with CC with Classical Conversations because it helps us to be able to tone things down or dial up however we want to.

But within the structure that my kids actually needed to have with the social and with the academic and the weekly meetings.

So I just, I love it so much.

And then that, that kind of wraps up what I wanted to share with you and I hope this has been a blessing for you.

I did want to make sure that you got a little bit more information about the Homeschool Boss Mama course that I told you I would share with you at the end of this podcast.

So I will leave a link to this as well.

This is going to be at ChristianHomeschoolMoms.com you can find a link directly to this from the homepage and if you go to krishnahomeschoolmoms.com homepage scroll down a little bit and you'll see an option to click on the course which is available.

It's $40.

It's on sale for January, for February and it's going into March as I record this.

So I will keep it at $40 for March because I don't think I've announced this enough and it just wasn't launched the way I had intended to because I have been so busy.

But I want to make sure that you guys know this is available.

And meanwhile, I'm just going to read to you a couple of the things that are in the course in case you are interested.

So what you're going to get is a workbook.

You're going to get a lot of audios that you can listen to.

So you're going to get over an hour of audio lessons.

It takes you six step by step through planning your homeschool goals.

You're going to get a 34 page workbook.

It goes hand in hand with those audio lessons and then you'll get access to my resource vault.

You're going to learn some things like developing standards for your homeschool based on your family's uniqueness, not standards that are issued to you by the state or the government or anything.

It's your standards for your homeschool.

And then you're going to learn to recognize your individual and family based contributions in God's kingdom, which is a big thing because that is going to help you in how you raise your children, how you're parenting them, and it's going to bring together your academic resources so that it all makes sense and that you're not doing a lot of different things with your time.

You're going to discover your family's gifts and talents.

You're going to learn to honor the individuality of your children and recognize your personal value to your home.

School process.

Create that family mission statement, which is what I talked about earlier, creating academic goals for each child.

That is a huge one because when I sat down with each of my kids and created goals for them, I found out so much about just talking to them and asking them, what is it that you want to do this school year?

What are you interested in?

What do you love?

What do you want to learn?

What do you not like so much?

What worked for you last year?

What didn't work for you?

So just actually having conversations with your kids will make a huge difference in your experience with them.

We're going to talk about learning to manage your time around your homeschool philosophy.

Okay?

So you'll figure out what that philosophy is and then you'll learn to manage your time.

You'll create a family schedule that works for you, determine a schedule that works best for your family lifestyle.

And for me, my lifestyle would be the mompreneur life where I am balancing work, office, I'm balancing entrepreneurial endeavors that I have.

I'm very, very creative and I like to have my hands on a lot of different projects.

And I also like to make money.

So there's things I like to do, but I'm huge now on just like focusing and honing in on my music.

So I am starting to build up my my music.

I've got my songs ready, so I'm working on getting all of that together so I can come out with and release my music really soon.

So these are things that I'm doing as I'm homeschooling and living with my children and teaching my children my ways.

They're seeing that I'm getting to enjoy my life.

So all of this determining your teaching style, find your child's learning style, creating routines, choosing curriculum, using practical tools to help you plan.

All of this is in the course.

So I said all that to let you know that there's a lot in the course.

It's only when you think about it, it's only adding up all of the audios together.

You get like one hour total, you know, but the modules are little chunks, so you don't have to listen to an hour of anything at a time.

You just listen to a few minutes, and then you work on your workbook.

And you.

You're making sure that you're working through these workbooks, through your worksheets, and that what you're working through is actually beneficial to you.

So it's not just you zipping through the audios, but it's you working the audios and allowing those audios and the workbook to change your life.

Okay?

And then at the end of the audios, I give a prayer, a blessing over homeschool moms.

So I hope that you are able to hop over and grab that over at ChristianHomeschoolMoms.com click on course and you'll find out a lot more about it.

That is all I have for you today.

Be sure to check the show notes.

This is episode number 121.

And hop on over to the website and click on the link that says podcast.

So you'll find out everything you need to know about this show, including the show notes and everything, all the links that I mentioned today.

Okay.

And I'll be back in a little bit, whether it's a week or two, but hopefully, hopefully sooner.

I want to encourage you in your faith and share things with you that are.

That are helping me in my life and hopefully will help you.

Okay?

Thanks for listening and you have a blessed day.

Happy homeschooling.