Design a Homeschool You Love, for the People You Love

This is not the first time I’ve written about this – nor I’m sure, will it be the last. It’s something I’m really adamant about, in life in general, but especially in homeschool life.

The other day I was talking with a homeschool mom friend about our Easter plans. I told her we were hiding Easter rocks for my son this year and she asked, “why?” I answered in the moment, something a little flustered about our values and having fun and focusing the day on Jesus, before asking about her traditions. I get self-conscious sometimes when we design our own approach to something, whether it’s cultural or educational, because it always feels a little uncomfortable to look different from everyone else. Especially when the other people are friends or family who share a lot of the same values.

The other reason I sometimes struggle to explain our choices, when they differ from the norm, is because I never want to make anyone feel badly about their approach to the same experience. So, rather than tell you my specific reasons for choosing not to dye eggs, hide plastic eggs, or even wooden ones, I want to shift the attention of the conversation from the specifics to the overall point: intentionality.

I became a mother in the first weeks of the pandemic in the U.S. As a result, there were hundreds of things I’d imagined doing with my baby I never did. I absolutely grieved many of those things, but sometime around Christmas 2020 I had this realization: so many of the things I imagined doing, I’d only imagined because that’s what everyone does!

So why do I do Easter rocks instead of eggs? Why did I choose to homeschool? Why do we have a book party on Halloween? Why don’t I throw birthday parties with décor and favors? Because I don’t want to look back and realize I did something because everyone else was doing it. I want to be intentional in parenting my specific, whole person child, from my position as a unique and whole mother and also honormy husband’sposition as a unique and whole father.

This intentionality drives my homeschooling. Not just my choice to homeschool, but my approach in how we will homeschool. And I think it should drive yours too. Your homeschool shouldn’t look like anyone else’s. No one else’s homeschool should look like yours. My homeschool, and your homeschool, should be driven by our contexts, defined by our family cultures, and designed by and for the unique, specific, whole persons in our homes. Durenda Wilson, in her book The Four Hour School Day, says, “It’s important to remember that each family is different and has to make its own way in the homeschooling journey…find more specific direction for your family, and you will grow in confidence.”

Yet I find so many homeschooling families, mamas in particular, are looking for someone to just tell them “how to do it.” They’re looking for someone to give them a magic solution. They’re on the search for someone to hand them the perfect schedule. They’d love it if someone would tell them which curriculum is the right one. They hope someone else can identify the specific homeschool style that’s “best.” This is how families end up with a curriculum they spent hundreds of dollars on and have thrown out by mid-fall. Or worse, they give up homeschooling all together. The problem with someone else telling you what to do is, they don’t know your family culture, or operate in your context. They might have figured out a great system for their kids, but their kids aren’t your kids.

We have to make it our own.

This doesn’t mean we can’t take inspiration. It doesn’t mean we can’t take advice. We should even try out suggestions in our own homeschools, but we have to make them our own. We have to tweak them a little or adjust them or pull out a few “good” parts which are a fit for us, and leave the rest.

It’s like this: have you ever had a friend who had a ton of success with a diet but you tried it and it did nothing for you? Well, your bodies are different! Sure, there are some overarching principles about health, but each body responds to foods, medicines, toxins, and environments differently. You might even find your friend’s diet worked for a short time, but then it either stopped or it wasn’t sustainable for your lifestyle. Or maybe you tried a workout from an Instagram influencer and had a similar experience; no success or short-lived success. The problem here isn’t with your friend or the influencer in general. The problem is when we expect the same results for our bodies when it’s given the exact same treatment as someone else  whose body has different context and design. Does your friend have your genetics? No. Does the influencer live in the same environment as you do? No. Do either of them have the same day-to-day pressures in their lives as you do? No. But if you made small adjustments eventually you might gain some confidence which would lead to big adjustments and figuring out your own design entirely.

The same is true of homeschooling. Which is what led me to Re-create Camp for my family. I was reading all the homeschool books (and still am) and listening to the podcasts and seeing the beautiful homeschooling Instagram accounts, and felt tempted to try to replicate or buy someone else’s reality. But, because of I’ve had quite the health journey and developed an understanding that you have to make it your own for it to work for you, I was able to start reflecting about how to make it our own. I could see in my son already an energy to be active and a desire to be outdoors, which I’d seen in kids – especially boys – at summer camp. It got my brain going and reflecting and remembering. I discussed with my husband my memories of camp and how I thought they could be beneficial to us in designing our own homeschool. I told him about themes at camp and how they reminded me of what I was learning about homeschool unit studies. I told him about hikes and nature crafts and how those resonated with what I was seeing is part of the Charlotte Mason culture. Many of my summer camp memories sounded a lot like the Wild+Free community. I told him, “I don’t want to put us in one of these boxes, I just want to recognize how my approach and our values align with some homeschool stuff and then adapt it and make it uniquely ours. I want his (our son’s) childhood to be unlike anyone else’s. I want our homeschool to be distinctly ours.”

I want your homeschool to be distinctly yours too.

What stops us? Fear. In Wilson’s book, she lists several fears of the homeschool parent, including: not being enough, failing (our kids, ourselves, in educating them well), continuing through adversity, comparing kids to the educational yardsticks others are measuring their kids with, comparing ourselves to the educational yardsticks we perceive, our kids’ success, and what others will think.

I think one of the reasons homeschool parents hesitate to make it their own is they fear they won’t teach their kids “correctly.” There’s this notion, if you’ve chosen this less conventional path, you could fail to teach them all they’re “supposed to know.” Let me pose this question: what is any one person “supposed to know?” We live in the information age and all evidence points suggests this level of information generates a stress and strain on humans we weren’t designed to handle. Just because all the information is at our fingertips doesn’t mean we should know it all or even attempt to grasp it all. Instead, we need to learn how to learn what is relevant and meaningful to us and how to discern what is for us and what to leave alone. Home educators are not required to “teach them everything there is to know.” (For the record, schools aren’t teaching them “everything” either – what would “everything” even mean!?) There is not a right or wrong way to educate, generally speaking. But for each individual there are better ways to engage their learning. The way to find and amplify those better pathways is not by conforming to or replicating what others are doing. It’s to slow down, find your assets, understand your kid(s)’ interests and learning strengths, and keep designing for yourself.

If this is resonating with you but you’re not sure where to start, I invite you to reach out to me. I’d love to help.

I offer a reflection guide to help you find your own “Camp Redwood” to re-create. You also might also really enjoy my tool to define your family values and homeschool values. It is a vital part of the path leading to a plan to make it your homeschool your own and without this tool my husband and I would have certainly gotten stuck in the mud of how to make it our own. I also have a 10 step guide to help you make a homeschool schedule that works for you. 

I want to encourage you. I want you to know I believe you can do this. Not just homeschooling, but homeschooling unlike anyone else. Homeschooling in a way you can look back and say you were intentional about homeschooling and parenting and you did it all in a way to honor all the unique, specific, beautiful, whole people in your home; from your kids, to your spouse, and believe it or not, even you. 

Originally posted 4/2/24 on old website