Reducing the Stress of Homeschooling for Both You and Your Kids

Homeschooling is one of those necessities these days. Even though many schools have returned to normal, parents have started to pick up some great habits to help teach their kids more skills and knowledge at home in their spare time. Homeschooling can also be a fantastic way to bond with your child and spend more time with them.

Unfortunately, homeschooling can get stressful. What starts off as an innocent way to help teach your children new skills can eventually turn into something that is both stressful for parents and boring for your children. This makes homeschooling a rather negative experience and demands a lot from you. Luckily, there are ways to make it a lot more accessible and comfortable for everyone. So if you’re looking to improve your homeschool strategies, here’s a bit of advice for you to follow.

Simplify your household tasks and relax your standards

Household tasks are the responsibility of everyone in the house, but there can be times where it gets too much for parents to handle on their own. This is especially true if you’ve taken up the mantle of the parent that does all of the chores. In addition to homeschooling your child, these tasks can take up a lot of time and will make things very difficult in the long run. You’ll be tired, you’ll find it hard to focus, and you won’t have much time to plan lessons in advance to teach your child something productive or interesting.

In addition, everyone has different standards when it comes to homeschooling. Some parents are content with just helping their child with school homework and understanding different tasks, whereas others won’t be satisfied unless they plan an entire lesson out for their child. Since every parent has different levels of productivity and expectations, you should do what you can to lower those standards so that there’s less stress on you.

So in the future when homeschooling your child, try and focus on more important tasks and cut out any unnecessary fluff. For instance, set goals that you want to achieve for that particular day or lesson. It could be just to help your child with their homework or the focus could be to learn and practice creative skills. Try not to take on too much responsibility and don’t think of it as a necessity to have an entire lesson planned out for your child. Work off the resources they already have and what the school recommends; there’s a good chance that the things you teach your child now may be covered by the school in the future and there’s not much benefit teaching them early on.

In short, don’t put too much responsibility on your shoulders. Focus on optimising your time when homeschooling and don’t focus too much on getting your child ahead of the curve.

Make use of the resources that the school offers

Many schools have started to offer resources that coincide with the lessons that children are learning in school. This may include worksheets with sample questions and answers, or it could just be a list of the topics that they’ll be covering. The purpose of these resources is to help you plan any lessons at home and to help further your child’s knowledge. This can be a good starting point to teach your child some new skills, so it’s a great resource to use if you’re unsure how to plan your lessons or what to teach your child.

When using these resources, be sure to look over them yourself before you start using them. This can help make things a lot easier in the long run because you’ll have a brief understanding of what your child is learning and you can do a bit of research into more resources like educational YouTube videos. This makes it a lot easier for you to answer questions that your child may have, and having a deeper understanding of the topic means you can create your own sample problems to test your child.

Consider tuition instead of homeschooling

If you’re in a situation where your child is only being homeschooled then you might find it more acceptable to seek a tutor or sign them up for a tuition centre. Some of these are separate to from regular education system and can serve as booster classes to help grow your child’s knowledge and interest in a number of fields. Courses like 11 plus tuition are perfect for teaching your child new skills and preparing them for a return to school. Alternatively, you can hire tutors to come to your home instead. This is a good option if you’re in an area that has easy access to tutors.

Tuition can make it much easier for you to continue homeschooling your child during busy periods when you’re stuck at work, or have your own work from home responsibilities to take care of. It’s a good option to offload some of the pressure and will drastically reduce stress. However, you should keep in mind that tutoring and classes can be expensive, so make sure you’re fully aware of all of the costs before you decide to sign your child up. However, do remember that you’re getting a professional education service for your child, so the cost is often more than worth it if you’re choosing a reputable institute.

Is homeschooling still worth it?

Homeschooling is something we did a lot due to the global health crisis, but now that things are starting to clear up, is homeschooling still worth it?

This is a very personal question that every parent will answer differently. Home households are adamant that homeschooling is the better option, but others believe that putting your child in a group environment is important for their growth too. While there will always be a debate on what the best option is, it’s important to realise that there are multiple different paths through life and not everyone is going to flourish in the same environments. Some kids may prefer the idea of making friends in school and studying in a classroom, while others may prefer to study at home and make friends through other means.

Here are some common considerations of homeschooling that you should consider if you’re thinking of continuing or stopping:

• Homeschooling still offers socialization, but it’s a different kind compared to giving your child more freedom to talk to and interact with whoever they want.

• Homeschooling is extremely flexible and gives you many different options when teaching your child new skills and knowledge. You don’t have to focus on the same skills that are taught in schools and you can instead focus on practical skills that you personally believe will be helpful to your child.

• Taking a more direct role in your child’s learning process can often be a good thing. This means you can spend more time with your child and you become a much greater influence, meaning they’re less likely to pick up bad habits from the school environment.

• Of course, sheltering your child is also not ideal. You do have to expose your child to the outside environment now and then, but you can always take a more balanced approach that focuses on whatever benefits your child the most.

At the end of the day, homeschooling will always have some merits and children don’t need to go through the typical educational route of attending school. As long as you’re willing to invest the time and effort into homeschooling, you can still raise smart and healthy children.