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The Homeschool Problem Nobody Talks About: How We Show Up Matters · Making Everyday Magic: The Podcast

• 0:00
  Okay.
• 0:01
  I don't think most homeschool problems are actually curriculum problems.
• 0:07
  Welcome back to Making Everyday Magic.
• 0:09
  My name is Shanna.
• 0:10
  If you are new here we are a homeschooling family of four.
• 0:13
  We are entering our 10th year of homeschooling.
• 0:16
  That's right, a full on decade.
• 0:18
  And today I want to talk with you about something
• 0:22
  that you may not even realize is bringing you tons of success, or
• 0:28
  is your imminent failure
• 0:30
  when it comes to homeschool?
• 0:36
  Before we go any further, please scroll down and hit the big red subscribe button.
• 0:39
  Turn on the bell for notifications and give this video a thumbs up.
• 0:41
  As always, you can find me right on down in the comments
• 0:43
  or over on Instagram at Making Everyday Magic. Hi!
• 0:47
  This is going to be another uncomfortable conversation with Shawna.
• 0:51
  Guess what?
• 0:52
  It's important to me to have these conversations. Why?
• 0:55
  Because it comes up to me in my real life.
• 0:59
  Or I see things and I'm like,
• 1:02
  We should talk about it.
• 1:03
  Because often, as you guys know, if you saw a recent video,
• 1:07
  I say the thing and then people are like oh my gosh it's the thing.
• 1:10
  And oh I thought the same thing and I'm so glad somebody said the thing.
• 1:12
  And then we talked about the thing.
• 1:14
  And then the world gets a little less
• 1:17
  mystified and change happens
• 1:20
  and progress happens and it is good and it is important to say the things.
• 1:24
  So I am here today to say the latest thing
• 1:27
  that I realized we as homeschool parents will,
• 1:32
  if we're having a struggle, we will change everything.
• 1:36
  We will change our planner.
• 1:37
  We will change curriculum.
• 1:38
  We will change so many things.
• 1:42
  We will eliminate food dyes.
• 1:45
  We will detox our children.
• 1:48
  We will reach richer.
• 1:50
  We will do every single wool thing.
• 1:52
  That isn't the thing that I think makes the most difference.
• 1:55
  And I think the thing that makes the most difference is
• 1:59
  you. Yeah.
• 2:01
  You did. You know, it's you as a mother.
• 2:04
  I have been a mother for 14 years, over 14 years now.
• 2:08
  And as somebody who had a mother,
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  I want you to recognize that
• 2:16
  your attitude impacts every single person in your home
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  as a parent, as a member of society, as a member of a group, as the person
• 2:25
  who homeschools your children, your attitude
• 2:29
  impacts everyone, your expectations,
• 2:34
  your tolerance, what you do, what you say, how you act.
• 2:40
  The tone of your voice impacts every single person that you live with.
• 2:46
  And honestly, it spreads and it infects like a fungus.
• 2:50
  It truly, truly does.
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  If you're in a bad mood
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  and you take it out on the next person, that person takes it out on somebody else.
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  It is a wicked web of crazy.
• 2:58
  And I don't think that we talk about this enough in homeschool.
• 3:01
  As parents, in this day and age, everything is crazy.
• 3:05
  Everything is expensive.
• 3:06
  The noise from the news is something
• 3:09
  that we genuinely couldn't fabricate if we tried.
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  It is intense. It is crazy.
• 3:15
  It is overwhelming.
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  We are genuinely more work to more stressed, more informed,
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  to a completely negative degree than we have ever been
• 3:25
  as humans, as mammals, as parents, as homeschoolers,
• 3:30
  as educators, as women, as men, as friends, as everything.
• 3:35
  It is so important to recognize
• 3:39
  that we are the point of change in our homeschool.
• 3:43
  Are we always the defining moment of success or failure?
• 3:46
  No, we're not, but are we almost always the first point of success or failure?
• 3:52
  Yes, we are, and I think we take that for granted.
• 3:55
  I don't think that we realize how completely we are
• 4:01
  impacting our home for children,
• 4:04
  our relationships and our homeschool.
• 4:07
  I genuinely think that we as homeschool parents, spend
• 4:10
  an incredible amount of time trying to fix the wrong things.
• 4:16
  It isn't the curriculum, it's your reaction to the curriculum.
• 4:21
  It isn't that
• 4:24
  you don't want to be with
• 4:26
  your kids, it's that being with your kids can be really hard.
• 4:29
  There's a reason that so many people, when you say,
• 4:31
  oh, I'm going to homeschool, so many people are like, I could never do that.
• 4:34
  I could never be with my kids that much.
• 4:37
  I need a break.
• 4:38
  I need those things.
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  It's really important to recognize when that's true. And
• 4:43
  if you are somebody who
• 4:46
  recognizes that they get frazzled easily, that they get upset that their attitude,
• 4:53
  their internal temperature impacts
• 4:56
  those around you and your homeschool.
• 4:59
  If you carry in a bad relationship with math and it just stresses you out,
• 5:03
  how are you supposed to help your learner with math?
• 5:06
  How are you supposed to do the things?
• 5:07
  How are you supposed to model
• 5:09
  to your children what it looks like to overcome adversity?
• 5:12
  Because let's not kid learning isn't linear, okay?
• 5:15
  It's not just a slope straight up. It's hard.
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  It can get messy, and it can be a situation
• 5:20
  where your kids need you to be able to model calm, reassurance.
• 5:25
  We have a saying in our house, you can't learn.
• 5:27
  Like if you're fussy and you're grumpy, your brain is overloaded.
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  You literally cannot learn.
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  Everybody is best served if we take a break, if we reset.
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  It is important to me that we notice that we are burnt out,
• 5:41
  that we are overwhelmed, and I don't think enough people talk about
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  the impact on homeschool
• 5:49
  by the people in charge of homeschool.
• 5:54
  My home was always this way.
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  My home is this way.
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  I, whether I want to be or not, set the tone for my home.
• 6:02
  And it is that way with my spouse and with my kids.
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  And no. Do I want that much responsibility?
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  Absolutely not.
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  Do I feel like I deserve that much responsibility?
• 6:10
  Absolutely not.
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  But being the default homeschooler, the default parent, because I
• 6:15
  literally have the most face time, my reactions, my
• 6:21
  emotions, my stress level
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  directly impacts everything that goes on in my heart.
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  So if I get up on a Saturday morning and I'm rage cleaning people now,
• 6:33
  something's that something's going crazy.
• 6:35
  This applies to your high school.
• 6:36
  If you wake up late, if something isn't the way you need it to be on a Tuesday
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  and you just are in a bad mood, I guarantee
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  you only more wheels will fall off as your day goes on.
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  Okay, it is not going to get back on track unless you actively put your train
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  back on the track.
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  I want you to recognize that this is hard.
• 7:00
  Life is hard.
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  Adulting is hard. Female.
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  Hard American hard.
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  Living is hard. Bill paying is hard.
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  Homeschooling is no exception.
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  And what you bring to it is what you're going to get out of it.
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  So, so many people will talk about how their kids have a really bad attitude
• 7:19
  when it comes to homeschooling.
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  Have you put the steps in place to make sure that they know
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  what to expect, and then made sure
• 7:27
  that what you are putting out into your homeschool is expected?
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  Have you put your kids in a place where they know
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  what every day is going to look like,
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  what their schedule should look like, how they can serve themselves,
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  what the mornings look like, what time do we get up?
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  How do we start those things?
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  By having consistency in our homeschool,
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  I know that I am better able to serve those in our homeschool.
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  My routine is more predictable.
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  I like to get up before the kids. Why?
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  Because I like to have already gone
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  through whatever needs to happen in my day before I see my children.
• 8:00
  If my kids are up first, it throws me off and then I'm not having the best day.
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  I need a quiet cup of coffee,
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  and I need to have mentally run through my day
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  to know what to expect and what needs to happen before I have
• 8:11
  other people asking me what to expect and what needs to happen.
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  We have consistency.
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  We have a schedule.
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  We have systems in place that keep me from being the primary load
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  bearer in this structure that we call our homeschool and our family.
• 8:28
  By doing these things, it helps keep me in an emotional
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  setting that is good for everyone.
• 8:36
  I want you to recognize that how you show up
• 8:41
  directly impacts what is happening in your home and your homeschool.
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  It is so important.
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  So many people. I've never heard anybody talk about this.
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  I have never heard anybody put it together.
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  That what you do when you show up is what you're going to get
• 8:56
  out of your homeschool, out of your home, out of your family, out of your kids.
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  So if you show up to a place where you don't want to be,
• 9:02
  why would they want to be here?
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  If you show up in your already stressed, they're going to show up already stressed
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  because you're snippy, because you have an attitude,
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  because you genuinely
• 9:10
  don't have the capacity to be doing the thing that they need from you.
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  It is so important that as mothers, as women, as parents, as homeschoolers,
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  as as anybody that we show up,
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  if we're going to bother showing up, show up and give people the best of you.
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  There is no situation in the entire world that I can think of
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  is more important than in your homeschool, with your children.
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  Your children deserve the best of you.
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  They just automatically do.
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  They are granted the wonderful cosmic burden, the wonderful
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  cosmic expectation to believe that they are getting the best of you.
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  More often.
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  They will be the biggest fans you will ever have in your entire life,
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  your children.
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  So if you can show up and give the best of yourself to them,
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  you're going to get the best of them for you and for you, for your home,
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  for your homeschool.
• 10:00
  Okay, so if you are having a lot of pushback
• 10:02
  and a lot of strife and a lot of stress, then you're wondering what's happening.
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  First and foremost, start with you.
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  What energy are you bringing?
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  And keep in mind that this could be that you are bringing doormat energy,
• 10:16
  and that's the wrong energy to bring to okay?
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  Don't be Reiji, don't be a doormat.
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  Bring the right energy to your home and homeschooling your children.
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  Okay, that is the most important thing that you can do.
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  Make sure that everyone knows what to expect.
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  Even my husband,
• 10:31
  who is rarely here for homeschool, knows exactly how our homeschool runs.
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  He may not know what page we're on,
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  but he knows exactly how to step in and make sure it gets done.
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  Because we have expectations, we have routines, and we have consistency.
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  It is so important and I want you to hear this.
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  If you don't hear anything else, how you show up, you're the captain of the ship.
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  You're watching this video.
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  That means you are, in all likelihood, the primary caregiver of your children.
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  Whether you are a mother or father, I do not care.
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  You are the primary caregiver of the children in your charge,
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  and that means that your tone sets the course of the ship.
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  Are we in terrible, torrential, raging waters, or are we
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  smooth sailing, happily rafting down an easy river?
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  It is up to you and you decide that.
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  I'm not saying they're not going to show up and try to sink your battleship.
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  I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is,
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  the most consistent indicator of the way it's going to go is going to be.
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  You guys, I hope that you found this helpful, entertaining, or informative.
• 11:29
  If you did, please scroll down,
• 11:31
  hit that big red subscribe button and turn on the bell for notifications.
• 11:34
  I want you to remember because I need this reminder.
• 11:38
  I need this reminder. Often I tend to get a little frantic.
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  I tend to get a little high energy.
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  I tend to get a little stressful.
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  No one in my house appreciates this.
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  And then it festers and it builds and it kind of like ricochets off of everyone.
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  And the energy is just increasing and increasing and increasing and increasing.
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  Not in a good way.
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  So it is important for me to realize that often
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  I set the thermostat, I set the temperature in our home.
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  I do whether I want the job or not.
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  It's true, and it is on me to make sure
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  that the temperature is set at the right place.
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  I can't control if it goes off the rails after that, but
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  what I can do is make sure that my energy and my attitude
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  shows up in a manner that's going to best serve the outcomes I want,
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  which is educated, children, happy, well loved, well cared for children.
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  That's what I want to happen in my home.
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  And that means that I need to have my hand on the steering wheel.
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  Okay, so I can't get too emotional. I can't get crazy.
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  We're not having yelling matches.
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  We're not screaming at each other.
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  Those aren't things that are happening.
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  I'm not threatening. I'm not being ugly.
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  I'm not being inconsistent because that's another problem.
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  If you're not showing up,
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  if you're not setting the time to get to the place,
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  if you aren't consistently making sure your kids know what to expect
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  and following through, that is a recipe for disaster.
• 12:55
  So just a reminder that you are you are super cool
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  and you are one of the most important parts of your homeschool.
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  So please, while it is a great responsibility.
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  It is a great gift.
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  The people around you are going to mirror those those emotions for you.
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  They're going to want to make you happier.
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  If you're already happy, they're going to want to spend
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  the time with you that homeschooling takes if you're more pleasant to be around.
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  So just a reminder, because again, it is a reminder that I often need
• 13:28
  that you have so much impact,
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  you don't even realize how much impact you have, how important you are
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  to the success of those around you simply by having a good attitude.
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  So let me know.
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  I have definitely said some irrational things, but what?
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  What do you think is important for you?
• 13:49
  For you to kind of set the tone for your home, for homeschool, for your children?
• 13:54
  I would love to hear it down in the comments.
• 13:57
  Together guys, let's keep making everyday magic.