Latest / The Christy-Faith Show / Ep. 140 - How to Homeschool Multiple Kids Without Burning Out | Smooth Days Part 4

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Ep. 140 - How to Homeschool Multiple Kids Without Burning Out | Smooth Days Part 4 · The Christy-Faith Show

• 0:00
  Christy-Faith: Welcome to the podcast series, how to get smooth homeschool days. We're gonna break this up into four parts to take some pressure off your shoulders and bring joy back into your home. Teaching all of your kids at all different grade levels isn't supposed to be like running three separate schools run by one heroic teacher. And if you try to do that, you're gonna burn out by October. In our series finale, we're gonna tackle the multilevel homeschool.
• 0:23
  We've already talked about homeschooling littles, homeschooling the elementary ages, and homeschooling our teenagers. Now it's how do you put it all together? I'm gonna give you some life saving hacks that I return to year after year, and I'm gonna help you map out a realistic teaching budget. What we need during these years are solid systems so that you don't go crazy. It is possible, and I can't wait to go there with you.
• 0:56
  If you are homeschooling more than one child right now, this episode is for you. Your house feels like a circus. You have kids in all different grade levels. Maybe you even have a bunch of different grade levels and babies and toddlers. Your days are probably wrapped with exhaustion.
• 1:10
  Maybe you feel like a human pinball bouncing from phonics to fractions to essays to grading essays to soccer practice. You're tired of hearing your voice. You're tired of your house being a constant mess. And if you're anything like me, your brain stops working around 2PM. And you think, what did I get myself into?
• 1:29
  I don't know if I can do this. Well, mama, I want you to know that I have been there. And today, I want you to feel encouraged. Every homeschooling season needs to look different. Our kids are changing.
• 1:40
  Our values are changing. How we need to operate our days are changing, and that is a homeschooling flex. So if you're feeling a mismatch right now, I can't wait to have this talk with you today because a beautiful homeschooling life is something worth fighting for. A multilevel homeschool is not three, four, five separate grade schools run by one heroic teacher. And if you are feeling that weight or if that's how you've done things so far and you've reached your limit, today, we're gonna talk about taking that impossible weight off of your shoulders.
• 2:10
  We're gonna look at the actual arithmetic of your teaching day, how to build boundaries that protect your sanity, and how to train your kids for capability instead of constant dependence. If you're just joining us for the first time, you caught the last episode of a four episode series called Smooth Homeschooling Days. And what we did is we split up this four part journey to match the developmental rhythms of your kids. In episode one, we talked about homeschooling littles and what they need. How much time per day should you be homeschooling?
• 2:39
  What are the expectations academically? Emotionally, cognitively, what can a preschooler, first grader, second grader actually do? That was episode one. Episode two, we talked about similar things, but with elementary aged kids. Episode three, we talked about homeschooling teenagers and all the things about that.
• 2:57
  And then today's episode is our big wrap up where we're gonna talk about when you have multiple grade levels all in your home at the same time, how do you homeschool and keep your sanity? Now many of you guys know that I work. This is my job. Hi. You're listening to my podcast.
• 3:13
  This is my job. I do work full time, and I homeschool for kids. So I'm excited to talk about systems that work. And the first thing I wanna talk about today is one number that changes everything. And I know you've been where I have been too, where you sit down to plan your homeschool year, maybe in the spring, summer, you look at the curriculum choices, and you buy the beautiful scripted teacher guides for every single child and every single subject.
• 3:39
  And you think this is gonna be amazing. It all looks good on paper. But then what happens is by October, you're burning out. Now why? It's because you didn't do the math.
• 3:49
  Now no shame. People don't talk about this enough. When we are homeschooling kids in multiple grade levels with multiple ages, we have to be realistic about the time we have. There is a hard unyielding constraint underneath a multilevel day, and it is your direct teaching time. And the reality is, it's roughly when you really add it up, probably only about two to three hours a day.
• 4:13
  And I don't mean per kid. I mean two to three hours total. And I think if we're honest about how much time we actually have per day, one, it's freeing, and two, it empowers us to source well and source differently. Now the important thing to keep in mind is that younger kids do need more of our time. And by the ages of around seven or eight, that's what I like to coach moms to encourage their kids towards more capacity on their own and to set them up for success.
• 4:40
  That means scaffolding. That means giving them a really great schedule. One that they can follow, feel proud of, have autonomy over. Build a rhythm where the older kids are absolutely free to come to you with any questions that they may have or struggles that they're experiencing. Sitting down for math doesn't necessarily look like the two of you sitting down and then you teaching a math lesson.
• 4:59
  It's just not realistic when you have four kids. And if you have younger kids in your home, they are going to need more of you. Even though our kids are doing several hours a day of school, especially when they get into the elementary and junior high years, that doesn't mean that you are sitting with them for those hours. So my youngest, for example, who is 10, there is a time slot that we have together where she comes and does her literature and her English with me. Now I'm not sitting there doing it with her and teaching her everything.
• 5:28
  I've set her up with a really great curriculum that happens to be BJU Press Homeschool, if you're wondering. Their English and language arts is fabulous. And I am holding her accountable. I am checking her work. I am explaining anything that she doesn't understand.
• 5:41
  Sometimes I'm reteaching it if she's done a page and she doesn't quite understand it yet. We look over it and we do it together. While she's doing that work initially, I can be at my computer checking emails or making phone calls. And as our kids get older, that time progressively decreases a little bit. The time that they need us to re explain things.
• 6:01
  A teenager, for example, has maybe up to six hours a day of work, but they don't need you for all of those hours. They do need you still. They need you to check-in, to support them, to explain a hard concept, to grade an essay, give them feedback, those types of things, but they are intermittent. And I would say with my high schooler right now, it's probably under the schoolwork itself and me checking in accountability, helping him manage all of his workload. It's probably under thirty minutes a day, realistically.
• 6:32
  But think about it. Even if you have a teenager and a fifth grader in your home, that time does get eaten up pretty fast. That's why it is so important to have a routine. I highly recommend a printed schedule for everybody in the family, including you. My kids love to see what they are supposed to be doing when, and I have margin all throughout their day.
• 6:52
  And what I mean by that is, say math takes forty five minutes, I allocate an hour, and they like to see where I am and who I am working with when they are working on their thing. It also helps for them to see when they will be able to ask me any questions that they For example, I'm teaching my littlest one to read that we aren't interrupted in our lesson with their math question, and that you can easily fall into that routine. The first principle is be realistic about how much time you have, Set up a workable schedule. We did quite a few versions at the beginning of this year because we're managing a lot this year with a high schooler, two junior hires, and a fifth grader. And as your kids get older, work towards them being more autodidactic, which is just independent learners as much as possible.
• 7:36
  Now what do you do if all of your kiddos are young? Well, my secret sauce back in those years was any subject that we could do altogether as a family, we did. And actually, we still do that. With my three younger kids, we are doing bible together. We are doing science together.
• 7:51
  We are doing history together. We are doing read aloud together. Oh, we're doing our memory work together, and we absolutely love it. A lot of homeschool curriculum is written for multi ages. Ask about that.
• 8:04
  Look for that. Hunt for that on curriculum websites. Does the history curriculum, for example, have something that the junior higher can do, the elementary age kid could do, and activities for the younger ones like coloring pages. And if you worry that mixed age learning is academically diluting or shortchanging your older kids, I want the research to reassure you. A massive review of multi grade and multi age classrooms found no academic penalty whatsoever compared to single grade classrooms.
• 8:34
  But even more than that, it revealed benefit. And think about it. One room school houses have successfully ran this way forever. Now this doesn't mean that you combine absolutely everything. There are some subjects that really need to be separate, like teaching a kid to read.
• 8:49
  I think math should be grade leveled. I also think writing is a good thing to keep separate. But if you are teaching every single kid, every single subject separately, that's just recreating school at home, and that's not even what you want. In fact, I even use grade leveled curriculum. I just buy the grade level that I wanna buy, and then I have my girls do it together.
• 9:10
  I really don't care what grade level it is. For example, in something like bible or science. As long as it's close to where they are or slightly challenging, it's great. Have I had years where my little one struggled a little bit? Yeah.
• 9:23
  But I just lowered the expectations for her. Not a big deal, completely doable. But it's really great to be learning all the same thing together. Okay. So how does this play out with the actual day to day?
• 9:34
  Well, your morning can take a shape that could look like this, and this worked for me for many years. We always started with morning time. So our family together time first. It starts the day in a warm way. We were able to connect, do our family together subjects first, and then what we would do is we would transition to our grade leveled subjects after our morning time.
• 9:55
  If I had to work with one kid, I always made sure that the other kids were working on stuff that wasn't so hard where they wouldn't have a ton of questions. I was pretty strategic about doing it that way so that I made sure I was always doing the hardest subject for that particular kid with them. After we do all of our subjects, then we come together for lunch. Now, as I recall though, our lunch was usually around 1PM, not noon. And while I was preparing lunch, I would often have kids in the kitchen with me working on their stuff and asking me questions if they needed to.
• 10:26
  But I really liked having most of our academic heavy lifting done by one. That way, we could have a break. The kids could do their independent studies, their interest led stuff, and then we could all gather up for afternoon sports or extracurricular activities. Now to keep a flow like that, you do have to protect some boundaries. What are those exactly?
• 10:46
  We'll get into those right after the break. As you guys know, this show is free to you because our sponsors make it free, and I love them. So make sure to click on the links. If you're buying that kind of stuff anyway, man, please click the links and check out what they're doing. We love our sponsors, and as you know, podcasts are not an inexpensive thing to produce.
• 11:03
  So it is a wonderful way to say thank you. And also don't forget to like and subscribe or give me the stars if I deserve it. Those little robots behind the screen, they push out episodes that have a lot of engagement. So if you like watching this show and you think a friend could benefit from it, send it to her. Comment a word of encouragement.
• 11:19
  Ask a question. We read all of the comments. And they help boost the show and put it in front of more eyeballs. So thank you so much. It fills my cup.
• 11:27
  It really does. Homeschooling for kids means I'm juggling roughly 24 different subjects at any given time. And a few years back during a particularly busy season, I hit a wall. I needed some serious help with the heavy lifting of teaching everything myself and managing schedules for four kids. That's when I found BJU Press Homeschool, and we've loved their courses so much that we keep going back.
• 11:49
  Some families use them for everything and love it. I use them for certain subjects. Either way, total mental load relief. Here's what my mornings look like now. Let us take science for example.
• 11:59
  My three girls do that one together. They fire up the lesson taught by a real teacher, well produced, actual teaching, not just click through busy work. And I sit there with my coffee, watch them, or make breakfast, and we discuss the big ideas. Every BJU Press homeschool course prioritizes critical thinking, a biblical worldview, and hands on learning. I just guide the conversation and pick which activity or pages or projects we want to do, and everything's already planned out.
• 12:24
  They have an online platform included for you called the homeschool hub, and it keeps everyone on track, both me and my kids, without micromanaging or nagging. And when I have questions, I call my homework's consultant. These people don't just help you get set up. They're available for you whenever you need them. It's like having a homeschool expert on speed dial.
• 12:41
  Go to bjupresshomeschool.com or click the link in the show notes to find out more. I wanna talk about homeschool math for a minute, specifically CTC math, who I'm so glad is sponsoring this episode because you need to know about them. I'm picky about curriculum, and there are a few subjects I won't compromise on, and math is on the top of that list. CTC math is what I use with all four of my kids, and it's an excellent k to 12 math program. Rigorous, thorough, comprehensive, everything I want my kids to have in their math education, but without all the stress, the tears, and me having to learn long division all over again.
• 13:20
  Here's what happens at our house now. My kids log in. A real math teacher walks them through the lesson four to nine minutes clear step by step. They do their lesson and finish up with practice problems. The program grades them, and I don't have to remember how to do fractions with unlike denominators or where exactly they left off last week, which means I get to be the mom in the room.
• 13:42
  I can sit nearby, listen in, encourage, fold the laundry, and watch math get done beautifully. Easier on mom? No sacrifice on academics? Yes, please. Join me and tens of thousands of homeschool families using CTC math for their go to math curriculum.
• 14:00
  Links in the show notes. Grab your free trial today, and you'll see why we love it for our kids. Okay. Welcome back. We need to talk about what can really break a homeschool day down.
• 14:11
  And for me and probably for you, it's the interruptions. And not just the kids. The phone call, the text message, the portal not working and you having to look up a password. The dentist appointment that you made three months ago and forgot, and you realize, oh my goodness, we're only gonna get a quarter of what we needed to get done with school done because of the dentist appointment. And then all of a sudden, our days feel eaten up.
• 14:34
  Are you there right now? Man, that can be so frustrating. And then you're in a pattern of constantly feeling behind and chasing your weeks. I highly recommend for your kids to establish an interruption rule. So on the weekend, when everybody is calm, not in the heat of a lesson, maybe at dinner, you have a conversation with your kiddos, share with them what you've really been struggling with with the homeschool and that you'd like their help and pull out that schedule that hopefully you have and establish that when you're allocated to work with one of the siblings, that we have a new rule that mama can't be interrupted unless it is blood, fire, or flood.
• 15:10
  But we can't just tell them to wait without helping them build the skill of waiting. It is so hard for young kids to wait, and then they're worried about forgetting the question that they needed to ask. And, also, they might feel stuck, like they can't move forward on what they're currently working on. So it is kind of a big ask. So establish some rules and create a system.
• 15:30
  Maybe something like a hand on the shoulder, where if you're working with one of the little ones, the older child can walk up silently, place their hand on your shoulder, and you acknowledge them with a pat or a gentle nod so that they know that they are on your list. I would make sure that if I taught this rule that I would empower my kids while they're waiting for me to work on something that is easier for them, whether that is copy work or typing practice or silent reading. Tell them exactly what to do while they're waiting because it's very stressful for them if they feel like their day is being eaten away and they can't move forward at all. It could even mean that you make a list of the things that they can work on while they're waiting for you. So that's one way that you could do it.
• 16:12
  Another way that you could do it is have them write down their question. You could have colored cards, for example, like blue index cards or question cards. And they can place the card on the table next to you. And then you can address it when you're able to while you're sitting there and working with the other child. The truth is interruptions are a day killer.
• 16:30
  They've done studies on this. When someone is interrupted a massive amount time, it's not just those minutes that they're interrupted, but getting back into the work that they left takes even more time. You could probably just... When I say that, you're probably nodding thinking, yes, absolutely. I have to remember where I was.
• 16:47
  So setting boundaries around interruptions, it not only saves your sanity, but it also protects the child that you're currently working with. And remember, waiting is a vital developmental skill. So make sure your expectations are realistic regarding how much your child can wait at their age and teach them how to do it. We're really good at telling kids what not to do, but we're not that great as a society at equipping kids with how to do that thing that we want them to do so that they don't do what we don't want them to do. And the second boundary we have to talk about is the boundary with ourselves, our phones.
• 17:25
  And I'm just going to be honest here. I have to have my phone in another room. I am running a company. We are very busy with writing books, podcasting, Thrive Homeschool Community. There is so much that we have to manage.
• 17:38
  I have to protect the time with my kids when I am homeschooling. And it often means me leaving my phone in the closet while I'm with my kids. Plus, I don't want my kids to remember their childhoods with mommy having the phone in her face. I want them to remember me present and available and not distracted. Another boundary that we need to talk about is teaching our kids boundaries around our own personal space as moms.
• 18:03
  I remember when I had a five year old, two two year olds, and a baby, by the end of the day, I did not wanna be touched. You know, now where I love it when my kids come to me for hugs, there was a time where all I wanted was to sit and eat my lunch in peace or go to the bathroom alone. And what that looks like for you might look different than what the boundaries looked like for me. But here is what I will say, is we all have a limit, and a mom who never sets boundaries for herself eventually takes them anyway and usually in ways that she's not proud of, like yelling or short circuiting or getting dysregulated ourselves. I'm a huge believer in getting ahead of behaviors, and I think that's the case for us too.
• 18:41
  If we know where our limit is, let's go five steps ahead and set some boundaries so that we love being around our kids. Enjoying our kids and building boundaries around that is something worth fighting for. And that is the formula that's gonna help you homeschool in the long run. We want to build a life that is sustainable. And the third boundary is with the outside world.
• 19:03
  It is so easy to say yes to every play date, every field trip, every extracurricular activity. After all, we're accused of not socializing our kids anyway. But I found over the years, I had to protect our home days and our core school hours. I had to pick a dedicated window about 7AM to 1PM, and I had to treat it like a professional job. I wouldn't schedule a doctor's appointment, a dentist appointment, unless I absolutely had to.
• 19:29
  Nothing for myself either. No groceries, no drop in social visits, no play dates. And also think about your week and what you can give up. So if you have a co op one particular day, that leaves four at home school days. Maybe you set a boundary in those early years based on your family values and the goals that you have academically for your kids that it's really only one other time in the week that you can do an outside activity.
• 19:52
  That's during a weekday or during school hours or maybe none. You make sure to schedule them after school hours or on the weekends. Whatever works for your family. The point here is that you really need to conceptualize what you are comfortable with and protect it. Okay.
• 20:07
  When we come back, we're gonna talk about how to manage all of our responsibilities. So daily homeschooling rhythms, margin, and chores. It's a lot. Is your child struggling with attention, memory, reading, writing, or math? If you're experiencing this, you know how heart wrenching it is to watch them face these hurdles.
• 20:23
  You've poured love, time, and attention into their education, yet the struggle persists, leaving you feeling stuck and desperately searching for answers. You guys, I want you to know about LearningRx, a proven program designed to help your child's cognitive skills, enabling them to think faster, learn more easily, and perform at their best. I'm talking getting real long term help here with things like ADHD and dyslexia. LearningRx is backed by thirty five years of research, and their results are transformative. Use code HOME 50 for $50 off your cognitive skills assessment.
• 20:56
  Go to learningrx.com or click the link in the show notes. Alright. Welcome back. I have heard so many times moms tell me, Christy, I want to homeschool, but I can't homeschool my kids and also run my house. And I think that that's thinking about it all wrong.
• 21:10
  We're not doing school and running a house. We are running a house that has school in it. It's an operation all in itself. These aren't meant to be antagonistic forces that are constantly battling each other. And I found that the moment that I stopped treating meal preparation, laundry, and dishes as annoying interruptions, and I started folding them into our daily rhythm, our house started running at a much better clip.
• 21:37
  And I don't mean running a strict schedule. That's not good for kids. Predictability and reliability is good for kids, but not black and white strictness. So what I recommend are anchors. Think about building predictable rhythms with anchors like meals.
• 21:52
  Okay. So let me explain. In our home, we anchor and habit stack chores with meals, and it's actually on our school schedule. My kids wake up, they do a couple of subjects before breakfast. We sit down for breakfast, we eat, then we immediately all have cleanup responsibilities.
• 22:09
  One child is starting the laundry, another child is cleaning the kitchen, another one is doing what they need to do. Everyone has their jobs laid out, and we have a goal for when we regroup to start the next school subjects. Now do we always hit that target? No. But we do have our predictable rhythm.
• 22:24
  And between those anchors, the order is pretty much fixed. And I know that today, if you were to go on Instagram and scroll, you're gonna be sold these lies that kids need unstructured freedom and playtime. And yes, they do need that and a lot of it, but what they need more is stability and rhythms and security. A fifty year review of research on family routines shows that predictable family rhythms are directly linked to parenting competence, children's emotional adjustment, and even marital satisfaction. And we must build in that margin because of a proven cognitive bias called the planning fallacy.
• 23:02
  It took me way too many years to build margin into my schedule. I just always felt rushed, always felt late, always felt behind until I started building margin into my life. Okay. So psychology research shows that humans reliably underestimate nearly all the time how long a task will actually take, even when they've done the exact task before, and it took longer then. This is why when we build out our schedules and our routines, we gotta give ourselves breathing room.
• 23:31
  One huge recommendation that I make in Thrive Homeschool Community, we are not open all of the time, but you can get on the wait list, is I encourage moms to be time based homeschoolers rather than lesson based homeschoolers. And what I mean by that is, say you have a young kiddo and they're capable of doing a thirty minute math lesson. Well, not every lesson is gonna be able to be done in thirty minutes. So it's better to allocate a forty five minute slot that you plan on working thirty minutes. And when you're done with that thirty minutes, you're done.
• 24:00
  And you might be thinking, well, what am I gonna do with that extra fifteen minutes? Trust me, girl, it'll get eaten. You need it. Bathroom breaks, peanut butter spoons, meltdowns. The whole point is you don't feel like you're chasing your day anymore.
• 24:12
  And I think we also need to reframe household chores and taking care of our environment. When we homeschool, yes, our houses are messier. We're all in it. Both Scott and I work from home and we have four kids, and all of them have their own school subjects. I'm looking at my teenager stuff right here.
• 24:29
  But we all want a peaceful home and an orderly home. So don't view chores as stealing time from school. Think of chores as part of school. They're learning how to manage their own home. Not to mention academic benefits, sorting laundry, putting plates in the dishwasher, that's fine motor work, sequencing, spatial reasoning.
• 24:48
  A fourth grader running a load of laundry from start to finish is getting world class executive functioning training. A study of nearly 10,000 American children found that those who consistently did chores in kindergarten rated themselves as significantly more competent socially and academically in third grade. And they actually scored higher in math. Why? Because chores build a cognitive floor of capability.
• 25:12
  So we've been talking about building capability in our kids, but so many moms fall into this trap I have that we hand a workbook to our kids, we walk away, and we call it independence. And then we get frustrated when the child drifts, stops paying attention, or we come back and they're still on the same problem. We come back and they're in the same exact place before we left them fifteen minutes ago, and then everybody gets frustrated. When we come back, we're gonna talk about independence and how to use a model to build truly confident capable kids. You chose to opt out of the conventional school system because you looked at it and how it measured kids and said, nope.
• 25:48
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• 26:13
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• 26:35
  Love that. Love me some crunchy doctors. And there are different plan options. Maybe you just need major medical. They have it.
• 26:41
  If you want something a little bit more like me in perimenopause and I need a lot of labs, I'm on a plan that gives me free labs, free prescriptions, and no co pays. Sorry to get personal, but it matters. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but it's not. It's actually how health insurance should work. So if you are on traditional health insurance, just do this one thing for me.
• 26:59
  Go to summithealthshare.com and do the savings calculator. It takes you, like, two minutes because it will tell you what you should be paying for what you need. And when the pops up and you spit out your water, you're gonna be spraining your ankle running to the phone to find out more. And when you call, they will walk you through everything. Tell them you listen to the show because I've told them that you need to get the VIP treatment.
• 27:19
  Go to summithealthshare.com. A link is in the show notes. How would you like to know which businesses, doctors, and organizations in your area share your same homeschool values? What started out of necessity for my family, finding safe service providers and doctors has turned into something really beautiful. A whole community of colleges, businesses, doctor's offices, reading specialists, you name it, all in one directory.
• 27:44
  It's The Christy-Faith list, a place where homeschool families can find and give business to the people who share their values. And it is free for homeschooling families to search. And if you're a business owner listening today and you love working with homeschooling families and wanna reach more of us, sign yourself up. We wanna know who you are. The Christy-Faith list.
• 28:03
  Support the people who support you. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can search the list right this second. Welcome back. Let's dismantle something that causes so much homeschool frustration, and this is building independent capable learners. Now, I don't split hairs and I'm not the word police, but I will say that I do like a word better than the word independence when it comes to our kids being able to do stuff more on their own and being set up for success.
• 28:30
  Because independence, in my mind at least, kids are praised for not needing an adult. And actually, our kids do need us. A healthy attachment is absolutely appropriate. So I like the word capability. But again, we're not gonna be the word police here.
• 28:45
  I'm mainly making the distinction because culturally, independent is not really what we want. See, when a child is handed a workbook and left entirely to their own devices, we need to be careful that we're not abandoning them, and then getting mad at them for not having the skills to be able to work independently. When a kid isn't ready for that, they drift. They make mistakes. Maybe they do an entire math page just to realize all the problems are wrong, and then you're gonna get dysregulation and tears.
• 29:11
  What we do want though is we wanna set our kids up for success and work towards them being capable. A capable child is a child who can work and who knows that you are absolutely going to support them, look at it, explain everything they need, and they know that you are there if they need you. And did you know that when kids are securely attached, they are actually less clingy and most capable of working on their own? We need to make sure that when our kids hit a wall, they know that they can get help. And that capability grows out of connection with you, not distance.
• 29:43
  Not you're now in fifth grade. You need to do this all by yourself. We want our kids to work on their own and move towards that because they are so secure in our presence that they don't have to keep checking to make sure we're there or panic if they can't figure something out on their own. And to build this capability, what we like to use is gradual release of responsibility. Number one, I do.
• 30:05
  You show them the concept and teach it. Number two is we do. You do the first few practice problems together side by side. Step three, you do. They complete the page alone and then you check it.
• 30:15
  Now the check is the glue that holds the whole system together. Capable means the kid can do it more on their own, but the parental involvement is still available. So if you're wondering, okay, where does my child land on this scale? Let's talk about it by age group. And these are general ballpark, but I think they're helpful.
• 30:32
  So by the age of five, it's great if a kiddo can finish a familiar five minute task after you've got them started. They can put their math manipulatives back in the bin. They can play with a special toy basket for fifteen minutes while you teach a sibling. Ages seven and eight, they can run off a simple visual daily checklist. They can work alone for maybe ten to fifteen to twenty minutes depending on a familiar review page, not a new concept, and they bring their finished work directly to you.
• 31:00
  Ages nine and 10, manage an hour or more of their own work in designated blocks. They can come to you if they have a specific targeted question, and we can warmly dig in and help them. Early teenage years, I like to see kids starting to own their week, you know, by age 14 or so. They can sit with you on a Monday, they can plan their days with you, execute the work, meet you for a weekly review on some subjects. Other subjects might need a couple of times a week.
• 31:25
  Some subjects might still need every day. And the most important thing is that they feel supported. So we need to talk about a term that I coined called parental involvement index. If you've been around, you've probably heard me talk about it. I think it is so important when we are choosing curriculum.
• 31:42
  When we're shopping for curriculum, we're often asking, okay. What's the best curriculum for writing? What's the best curriculum for math? But we're not necessarily asking what's the best curriculum for our family and what we can handle. Because there is a lot of beautiful curriculum out there that requires mom to sit next to the kid for seven hours straight.
• 32:02
  And that's not realistic, and it's not sustainable. And moms at homeschool that way end up quitting, and it's not good for the kids either. So let's look at parental involvement index with our curriculum. So when we have this discussion of trying to help our kids be a lot more capable and start to do some more work on their own, you are gonna have subjects and kids that need you. I think we should be the ones that are teaching our kids to read.
• 32:25
  If you have a kiddo who struggles in math, you need to be sitting next to them during their math lesson. But there are other subjects like typing, copy work, memory work, things like that, where you don't need to be there sitting next to them. You can be working with another child or the kids could be working on their own. I generally have a two rule index for this. And what that is is I wanna be directly involved in the day to day teaching on a subject where my kid needs me.
• 32:50
  That's number one. So that could be the little one learning to read, a kiddo who struggles with composition. So you're sitting next to them helping them develop paragraphs. So that's number one is my kid needs me, and it could be for any reason why they need you. Their age, it could be something that they're struggling with academically.
• 33:06
  And then number two is if you want to teach it. So for example, I love teaching history. I always wanna be teaching my kids history. Could I throw on a audio book and then hand them living books to supplement and all of that and be out of it? I mean, technically, could, but I don't want that.
• 33:22
  I really wanna be involved in teaching my kids history. I find it so fun. I was a history teacher myself, and I absolutely love it. So follow those guidelines when you're starting to look at your day and trying to help your kids be a lot more capable with their schoolwork. Parental involvement index, very important.
• 33:41
  Balance those days so that you're doing and you are involved in what you need to be involved in and what you want to be involved in. Okay. So we have spent the last four episodes in this series together. And if I could sum up this whole journey, it would be these four sentences. Number one, with a preschooler and a little one, know what their brain can actually do.
• 34:00
  Make sure your expectations match that and stay close and connected. Usually, the hard days are when there's a mismatch there. Two, with your elementary kids, raise your academic bar, but protect your connection ratio because they still need you, and they will only rise for someone who they believe is on their side. Number three, with a teenager, start to hand over the steering wheel one piece at a time, but stay securely in the passenger seat as their cheerleader and their guide and their ride or die. And four, with all of them at once, all in the same house, a baby, a toddler, an emergent reader, an elementary kid, a junior higher, and maybe even a high schooler.
• 34:36
  Be smart and strategic about your days. Set those boundaries, set a schedule, watch that parental involvement index so you don't burn out, and involve your kids in running the household. Smooth homeschool days are not a discipline achievement, and they're not a scheduling achievement either. They are what happens when the expectations fit the child, the structure fits the mom, and the relationship stays warm and intact through both. And when something feels off or draining, problem solve to make it sustainable.
• 35:04
  If you feel like you can't do that alone, always remember that we have Thrive Homeschool Community to help you. I'm Christy-Faith. Thank you so much for walking this journey with me, and I will see you next week. You have my heart.