Latest / Motherhood Alliance Podcast / How to Balance Homeschooling with Work or Homemaking w/ Tina Hollenbeck | The Homeschool Loft
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome to the Motherhood Alliance podcast, the podcast dedicated to empowering moms and families on their health and wellness journey. I'm Brittany Sutner. speaker-1: and I'm Andrea Rankes. Together, we're here to explore holistic approaches that go beyond conventional medicine. speaker-0: Each week, we dive into topics that matter most to you, everything from nutrition and mental health to alternative therapies and natural living. speaker-1: We'll bring you the expert interviews, insightful discussions, and practical tips to make motherhood a little easier and help your family thrive. speaker-0: Please keep in mind that this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended to replace the advice, diagnosis, or treatment plans you have with your personal healthcare team. Please have a conversation with your trusted healthcare provider prior to making any changes or implementing any strategies or advice you learn from this podcast. speaker-1: Whether you're a new mom navigating the early stages of parenthood or a seasoned pro looking for new ways to support your family's wellbeing, you're in the right place. speaker-0: Here at the Motherhood Alliance podcast, we challenge the status quo, ask the tough questions, and offer a supportive community for moms who want to make an informed, holistic choice. speaker-1: Thank you for joining us on this journey. speaker-0: Let's get started. Hi, we are Britt Andrea from motherhoodalliance.com and we're excited to welcome you to a four episode series with Tina Hollenbeck, the founder of the Home School Loft. Through the Home School Loft, Tina provides support and encouragement for current and prospective home educating parents through free at one-on-one consultations, workshops, homeschooler gatherings, a bi-monthly podcast, and a very extensive community calendar, which lists a plethora of activities available to homeschool families. Tina is a former public school teacher and a veteran homeschooling mom. She's also the curator of the Homeschool Resource Roadmap, which is the most comprehensive curriculum database in existence. She's the author of Eight Great Smarts for Homeschoolers and an occasional speaker at major homeschool conferences. Her work is all about helping families feel confident, informed, and supported in their homeschooling journey. So whether you're considering homeschooling, are knee deep in it, or are simply curious, we're excited to share options and opportunities that exist for families all over Wisconsin. Let's jump into today's episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. We have Tina here with episode three. Welcome back, Tina. Thank you. Our first two episodes have been jam packed. Like if you didn't think that there was that much talk about homeschooling, you were wrong because we have filled these episodes and Tina has had like stats and facts and she's had she's so knowledgeable in this area. In our first episode, we really kind of did an awesome overview on homeschooling and the different options for schooling. She really helped us. understand the different options, the pros and cons of each one. We also talked a little bit about common FAQs or fears that parents have when they're even thinking about homeschooling. And then in episode two, we really broke down the curriculum analysis paralysis because there are a million curriculums out there. And where do you even start when you want to start this journey? And so thank you, Tina, for sharing your knowledge with those. But I think another big hang up parents have when they're thinking about this is how, especially if it's a working parent. ⁓ yeah. Can I do this? speaker-2: pleasure. speaker-0: if I'm working. And then how do we balance this with all the other tasks of life? What would you say to someone who's worried about that? speaker-2: Which one? speaker-0: Well, maybe let's just start with the working one because that is such a big one where people have a passion on their heart to serve people, whether it's through their own business or they work for a company, but they work from home. How can you actually balance work and homeschooling? speaker-2: It is possible. I know a lot of two income working families and as I mentioned before, single parents who are still homeschooling. It takes some creativity and it takes just kind of working through and thinking through your actual situation. Because homeschooling is a commitment and it does take time and effort and you can't just plunk your child on a computer all day long. You have to be involved. You have to get them out and about because we don't want that stereotype of they're not socialized kind of thing. But I know a lot of families who do it. There's a bunch of different ways to do it. Sometimes there are, and I will just, we'll kind of stereotype here. Most of the lead educators in a homeschool family is going to be mom. Not all the time. Sometimes dad is the lead educator and I've known a couple of those families and those homeschooling dads, if you're listening, you're the primary educator. It's amazing because you're kind of in the minority. You go to homeschool meetup and you're the only guy, right? So I want to give those guys a special credit, but a lot of times it's the mom, right? So I know working homeschool moms who they work from home. and they are able to talk to their bosses and say, look, if I start at five in the morning with my tasks, because they're not, let's say, customer facing, kind of thing, right? And can I work from five to 10, and then I'll do stuff with my kids, and then I can come back in the afternoon when they're doing their own thing or whatever. There are lot of employers that are willing to do that. think... since COVID, employers had to get creative at that time because kids were all home. And so if you wanted to keep an employee, you had to work with them. And I think if you would come to your boss and say, can we do something like that? A lot of bosses are willing to work with you on that. Another way that I know homeschool parents do this is, let's say mom has to work outside the home and it's not an at home job, parents try to coordinate their schedules so that one of the parents is always home. And maybe the academics happens mostly with mom because mom feels more comfortable with that, but they save math for dad or whatever it might be. But the parents will work together to coordinate their schedule so that somebody's always there. Involving grandparents, involving other siblings, your siblings, so aunts and uncles, friends. We mentioned one of the prior episodes, it's not legal to ask somebody else to homeschool your children if they're already homeschooling their kids. I should circle back to that because like... I'm not homeschooling my kids anymore because they're graduated and I've got my grandson but he's not sick so he doesn't fall under the homeschool law. If somebody were to ask me, I would not do this for free. If somebody were to ask me could you homeschool my children or my child? I legally can do that. You can legally designate somebody else to do that for you. Obviously you need to pay them because that's a service provider that they are doing for your child. It doesn't matter if it's one child or 10. If somebody's willing to do that. for one family unit, it is legal as long as they're not homeschooling their own children. speaker-0: Another example of that would be if, let's just say I'm homeschooling, but there's a couple subjects like, hey, grandma, my mom or whatever, can you be in charge? ⁓ You're going to have the kids on Mondays and Tuesdays because I'm working. Could you do math and XYZ with the kids? And you're kind of in charge of that part of the curriculum. speaker-2: Absolutely. And if you're on the same page with grandma and that's all good and you trust what she's going to do and all that because you're still as the parent who signs the form, the homeschool form, you're still accountable to that. But there are a lot of family relationships that absolutely. it's such those kinds of things are really cool bonding experience between grandchildren and grandparents, even if it's quote unquote, just extra stuff. Right. I can't even sew a seam, for example. But my mother-in-law is an amazing seamstress. So she taught my girls quite a lot. And when they were six and seven, we took the Laura Ingalls tour across Wisconsin into Minnesota and South Dakota. My mother-in-law made them Laura Ingalls dresses. Then when they were a few years older, we went to Williamsburg. We took a driving trip to Williamsburg and they were like 11 and 12 at the time. So we went down to my mother-in-law's as she was making them colonial style dresses and they helped. That was amazing because they were old enough to help. So to involve grandparents in that way, grandparents usually have so many skills and interests, and they want to share. And so it's a beautiful way to, again, core academics. I know a gal who's in Wausau who she's going to start homeschooling her son. And her father, or father-in-law, is a retired math teacher. And he said, could I do math for you? She's like, yeah. speaker-0: you speaker-2: So you're not. can do that. And the only, you know, provision or restriction about that is if it's another homeschool family, your kids can't be with them full time. Other than that, this guy's kind of the limit. speaker-0: Well, OK, but just to also reiterate another aspect that I'm sure people would think about if I'm homeschooling and then my friends, Martha and Mary are also homeschooling and I'm like, I love math. I don't like science. You love science. You don't like math. You're really good at English. OK, everybody send my kit, your kids here on Mondays and we're going to do this. And then everybody goes to Mary's house on Tuesdays. So that's the one that you're saying is not. speaker-2: can on a limited basis. One thing I know comes up a lot, people don't want to like dissect animals on their kitchen table. And so there, some families in a homeschool group would be like, you know, we're going to do a biology co-op this year. And so, you know, Sally, the homeschool mom is going to do all the science and dissections at her house every Tuesday afternoon or something like that, but because they're all choosing to use the same science curriculum. So like the reading and that kind of thing would probably be with the children at home, because that's like teenagers. So they do that at home on their own. but they go for lab with the other mom. So you have to be careful about it to not do too much. I do have an article on my website about this, like, what's a good rule of thumb? One of the provisions we didn't talk about before in the homeschool law is that it actually has been legal from the beginning. If you want to send your child to public school in your district for one or two classes a semester, you literally can do that by law and still be a homeschooler. So. What I like to say, this is not an official part of the law, but that amounts to, if it's two classes, let's say it's two hours a day, eight hours a week, that your child's going to be legitimately homeschooling still because that's part of the homeschool law, it's in the law, but over at the local public school, taught by non-parent teachers in the presence of unrelated children, right? So I recommend using that as a rule of thumb. If you want to have somebody else teach science or math or whatever in a co-op setting or just a family setting kind of thing, if eight hours a week is okay legally using a public school, use that as a rule of thumb. And if you're going to outsource some of your stuff to another homeschooling friend and share some of that, don't do more than eight hours a week, max. And I really don't know anybody who does even close to that, right? It might be, yeah, this is gonna be our two hours because I'm working on Tuesday, Thursday, so. Can you include them in whatever it might be? ⁓ But again, that's not the legal language, but I think it's a fair way to extrapolate what the law literally does say to make us feel comfortable, like we're not outsourcing too much. speaker-1: Yeah. Okay. Again, it comes down to integrity. speaker-2: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. If you're trying to just pawn off everything on other people all day long, then you might want to rethink homeschooling. speaker-0: Well, and then you know going back to the working thing It's just the brief example that you gave and everybody would look different But if if somebody was getting up early to do some work at home before the kids rise and then they're doing their Homeschooling during the day and then they jump back on their computer or work in the afternoon How can a parent not get burnt out? speaker-2: That's a really good question. I think this is like mom in general. We can very easily get burned out, whether we are navigating our kids' school schedules and all of that, or we're homeschooling and everything else. We have to make margin and time for ourselves. It can't just be about always putting out for other people. So that does, I guess it comes down to some time management. With the homeschool piece, one of the ways to help with that would be to, as a child's able, help them to become self-directed with their studies. When you have a little child who's five or six years old and they're not reading yet, obviously they need your help for a lot of things. But homeschool lessons only take maybe an hour a day in that case, broken up into 10 or 15 minute increments. it doesn't take all that much longer to do that. But when you've got a child who can read, it's a really good skill for them to not have to have mom sitting with them all the time. It actually is a good life skill. One of the things that colleges love about homeschool graduates is they already know how to learn on their own. So they don't have the freshman fail that a lot of other kids have because they already have learned to do it. So moms shouldn't feel guilty if they're saying, OK, I'm giving my child a little math instruction, and then they're going to go off and do the assignment by themselves. You're actually teaching them to be self-sufficient, and that's a good thing. So it shouldn't be that we have to micromanage every single moment of a child's homeschool life. that actually does them a disservice and it helps us if we can release some of it. There are some online curriculum programs too. One of the first things I did with my girls was ⁓ I started using an online math for them. Because if my girls were ever going to be stressed out about anything, it was math for them. And that could become very stressful for us as a family because here I'm trying to navigate the math and they're both crying over it. I get it, math is not their strength, but you have to do it, right? Legally and just life. ⁓ And so I found a really good math program online that I liked and they as much as they can like math They liked it and it kind of took the pressure off of me and it made us sure our relationship wasn't going to get wrecked over math But yet they were still learning it and I wasn't just you know abdicating my responsibility for math and there's there's ways you can do that with any subject if there's a particular thing that you that you do need to do that for speaker-0: And I suppose if somebody's starting to really feel burned out, then it's really just looking at, well, which one is your priority? Right. And then and how can you lessen one of them if that's an option? Right. I guess on that line, because you also have housework and dinner to make. mean, dinner alone is like a stressor for parents, because that happens every day. These kids want to eat every single day. speaker-2: And if their homeschool is in their home, they want breakfast and second breakfast and then lunch yeah, they're bunch of hobbits. Yes, they are. speaker-0: And so even just like meal prepping, you that can be a chunk of time every day. And so even if somebody's not working now, if they're working that compounds, but even if they're not working, balancing, feeling present within homeschooling and knowing that that's your quote unquote job of the day, but then also balancing the house and then other responsibilities, especially a lot of us are in the sandwich generation where we're also having to take care of our parents a little bit. things like that. Do you have any tips for kind of navigating the housework and the other necessities of life? speaker-2: Yeah, so one of the things would be to set a routine. I'm not advocating saying math is 9 o'clock every day and then science is 10 o'clock. That's just too stressful. the routine, like I talk about, if the morning can, a lot of times kids' brains are fresher. So it does make sense to try to do the academics in the morning. But you can get done lunch or shortly after lunch. And if you can train your kids, again, they're not three years old, so hopefully they can kind of self-direct and not kill each other while you do things. But if you can say, I'm going to commit to the mornings being focused on school, and then the afternoon, they're going to be kind of entertaining themselves. I'm here, I'm doing my thing, but that's when I'm going to prep dinner. And I'm going to set a time, and I'm going to say 1 to 1.30, I'm going to get that stuff going so I can put dinner in the oven at the same time every day. I'm gonna clean. One of the things I did was, I forget which method does this, but I cleaned a room a day. Took 20 minutes, right? After the, like, you have to kind of initially clean, like, okay, I need to get rid of the filth in my house, I need to take an afternoon, hubby take the girls out so I can do this. But once the kind of basis is there, 20 to 30 minutes in the living room, you're done. Then you just cycle back, the living room happens a week from there and you do the kitchen the next day. That really helps. And also getting the kids in. speaker-1: I was just going to say. speaker-2: that I mean, think whether you homeschool or not, that's hugely important. Homeschool kids are home, right? So not only are you helping them learn life skills that they're going to have to know, which might be more important than math, right? In the grand scheme for some kids, they're right there. So you're helping them. They're helping you. You have to be okay with the task not being done perfectly at first because kids need to be trained. And so you do have to let go any kind of perfectionism you might have about this is how the bathroom needs to be cleaned. If your child's listening to your instructions, and they did the best they could and it's not to your standards, let it go. Sing that song from Frozen. And it's okay because within six months, they're gonna practice that bathroom task every week and they're gonna have it glowing. so, yeah, you have to give some grace to yourself and to your kids as well, but involve them. It's a blessing and it's a good thing. speaker-1: Yeah, I know with us we have like a routine. like with my boys, I had to train them like this is how I want the bathroom to be done. This is how I show you. This is how we clean the toilet. And now I can and they're 12 and 10 too. So I can say, OK, one of you guys go clean up the bathroom. One of you guys go clean up the living room. You know my standards, right? And so, you know, maybe it's like in the morning we do a quick clean and you have your jobs assigned or whatever. speaker-2: did that. made up, so I used an organizational tool for the homeschooling, which we can talk about, called ⁓ work boxes, but for even the house chores. We had just a door that was where they're going upstairs. I call it our do-it door. And I made a chart with pictures when they were even young, and I put every day what they had to do, and that helped to kind of organize their brains for what we do in the morning, what we do in the afternoon. Kids can do that. And there I've seen myriad of these online where, what are age-appropriate chores for kids? So even two and three year olds can start to be trained in how to do some of these tasks, whether you homeschool or not, and then they can get more and more responsibility. And sometimes this kind of depends on family values, but sometimes kids like nine, 10, 11 will be like, how can I earn money? Well, guess what? Like you don't get an allowance for cleaning your bedroom. That's part of living in our family. But if you want to do extra things like load and unload the dishwasher, or you want to clean the cat boxes because I don't want to anymore, I will pay you a little bit of money. but you're also giving them more skills and getting some of those tasks out of the way that maybe you don't really want to do. speaker-0: Yeah, we've done some of that too. And even still to this day, my kids in the morning, they use, I have a kind of a checklist and it's, it's basic things, but also they forget otherwise. I swear if I didn't remind them to brush their teeth, they would never brush their teeth, especially in the morning. But I would just create these, these charts. Now I don't need pictures anymore, but I laminate them and then they use a dry erase marker. And so it's just their mental checklist and what they need to do in the morning. speaker-2: It's not a battle between mom and kid. that the list is the speaker-1: Now you're not. speaker-0: Yelling. Your list done. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Cause then we're ready to start our day. Yeah. And then another easy one is packing list. So we, we are blessed that our parents live an hour and a half away. My in-laws have a cab and that's a little over an hour away. we do frequently leave on weekends. Packing is constantly happening. And so I do have packing lists where they're just laminated. They get a dry erase marker when they were little. I would fill it out. have like a box on there. So it'd be like, shirts and I did have pictures on there like a t-shirt with a picture and I'd write like three in there and so they could go pack their own suitcases. And now you know now they're old enough where I'm like we're gonna be gone for three nights it's gonna be freezing outside and they can pack appropriately and if they forget things there's natural consequences. speaker-2: And it's not maybe folded the way you would fold it, but who cares? They're close. So yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, one of the things I do want to talk about with homeschooling that I think a lot of parents think about is having time for themselves because let's just use a stereotypical family. And I know this isn't always the way that it works, but let's say the dad is going to work. He's gone from 8 a.m. until five or 6 p.m. He gets home. He can lay on the floor and play with the kids, play a game, maybe veg out a little bit. Kind of gets a break, a mental break from work. I feel like as a mom, oftentimes once you are a kid, your job is 24 seven, especially when they're little little and they're awake at night and you're just like, literally, I don't get a break unless I request a babysitter or a date night or something like that. Yeah. How, when you're homeschooling your kids, they are now home all the time. They, I'm sure they love each other, but they're fighting all the time. Your sanity can start to go out the window. So how do you maintain that? speaker-2: So a few things that I did was, even after my kids gave up nap, we had an afternoon rest time. different people have different values about this. And my kids are 23 and 24, mind you, so it was DVDs. We had a movie every afternoon. And it was the rules where you sit on one piece of furniture separate from each other. You could bring a book, you can bring some toys, but you need to be quiet. And because I'm an introvert by nature and I did need, I said, I need to rest my ears. And these other little kids I was babysitting were sleeping too, so that helped, right? But, and they got to choose and they got to pick a movie. And it was always things that I vetted. So you can still do this with streaming services, right? But it was things that I vetted that I knew anyone were safe. It's an hour and a half, but it made a world of difference. And I was just around the corner. So if something happened, I was right there. but I could hear and I knew and most of the time they were pretty good about it. And I think they appreciated having the downtime as well. Then my husband, and I think, you know, if you're a dad listening or if you're a wife, get your husband to listen to this part. One of the main ways that the non-homeschooling parent, usually the husband, can support is to volunteer that time where the mom can go away. So my husband did nighttime routine with my kids every... When they were little it was obviously, you know, helping to brush the teeth and the bath and all this other stuff. I did bath and then he did everything else. Reading the bedtime stories, all of that. And even when they got older, he loves books. And so it was still, we're doing a nighttime read aloud. They could read, doesn't matter. He was reading stuff to them that was above their reading level and it gave them relational time. And then I just had down. I could just go be quiet after dinner and veg out. That made me a much better wife once the kids were in bed, by the way, too. So dads, you know, that's actually a good thing. You're letting your wife calm down so she can actually be a wife as well. And then the other thing that he did, most Saturday mornings, he would take them on daddy daughter dates and he would leave the house every Saturday morning. It was such a gift that I had four hours or whatever to myself. And so if there's different ways that the husband can do that. And even just like I said, I arranged afternoon rest time. He wasn't home, but that was a rule that we set for my kids. Just those little snippets of time, and then join homeschool groups and find ways to do some of the mom activities. Most of the groups will have, this is mom's night out, this is that. Make other homeschooling friends, and you can shift childcare and those kinds of things so that if you're going nuts, yes, you can drop your kids off at the friend's house for the afternoon so you can just have time for yourself too. speaker-0: That's very helpful. you know, it doesn't just have to be dad. could be if you have grandparents around. can, hey, every Monday afternoon, can you like, it's not asking much. Can you or every other Monday afternoon, just something I can like plan on. And then, you know, even just as much as I know there is education in like grocery shopping, things like that, sometimes just going to Costco by yourself, even though you spend way too much money and you cry a little bit inside. It's just like nice to be able to go and walk around. speaker-2: Yeah, isn't that funny that that's like a relief time, it is grocery shopping. Okay. speaker-0: Meeting up with a friend and going for a walk, that's really what we all need. speaker-2: Yeah, yeah, and again, most grandparents love those opportunities. you know, if you've got that kind of a relationship, take advantage of them in the best way. speaker-0: Okay, to finish out this episode, I do want to talk about a couple of the resources that you have. You do your own podcast. speaker-2: I do. Yeah, you guys were on it. So that was a great episode. So it's called The Loftcast 2.0 and you can find it on our website, homeschoolloft.com. There's a tab that says podcast. It's on really any platform. So if you just search for Loftcast, you will find it, but we link to one of the platforms. I think it's Spotify. I'm not sure which one that we link to there. So you can always listen to our episodes. We do two episodes a month and we drop on the first and the 15th of every month. We've been doing it since 2021. So we've got quite a few episodes at this point. And my co-host, Kristi and I just talk all things homeschooling. And we have a lot of guests on as well. And Kristi is a veteran homeschooler as well. She has three kids. She homeschooled all the way through. And her oldest is like 30. So she's been doing it even longer than I have. And she's a delight. And like I said, we talk all different things and have some really cool guests on. speaker-0: Yeah, you have so many awesome free resources for families to learn from. And really what I also love is in the last episode, we talked briefly about your one-on-one consult that you'll offer for people. But because you've put together this homeschooling curriculum roadmap and you have this podcast, mean, honestly, families even outside of Northeast Wisconsin or even outside of Wisconsin, you're a great resource. speaker-2: them. I hope to be, you know, that's the goal. speaker-0: Yeah. All right, you guys, we have one more episode coming up. We're going to be hitting the hot topic of homeschooling high schoolers. think a lot of people are kind of like, well, end of eighth grade. Like then they, then they kind of go into the world or ease into the world, but still under my roof. Right. They can still be homeschooled at home. We're going to, we're going to break down a lot of common questions. They're like, how do credits work? When should families start thinking about high school planning? Just like all these different FAQs that come around this topic when our kids get older. I'm excited to dive into that. 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