What do you fear most about homeschooling? If we could see the list of others, whose list would be longer?
- Fear that I won’t prepare my kids for the world outside of my home.
- Fear that my extended family that is watching ever so close will inspect us at the end of the year to see if we failed.
- Fear that I won’t guide my children to fulfill their God given talents to the best of their ability.
- Fear of being a perfectionist on top of that being unorganized – is that possible?
- Fear that I will miss some vital subject.
- Fear that my children will get behind.
- Fear that I am the only one that loses patience with my kids.
- Fear that I am the only one where public school looks like the perfect solution on some days.
Does your list look similar?
What would make you more confident?
Knowing that you are not alone in your fears and knowing what worked and what did not work for others is encouraging.
However, there is one noteworthy step in my experience that stand outs among all others and that is goal setting.
Goals are not only essential but they are crucial.
Fears are normal in the beginning when homeschooling, but what is more important to remember is that you are now swimming upstream so to speak. You are going against the norm and that requires hard work.
Goals energize us to stay focused on our family’s needs.
We will avoid just floating along, responding to the moment or jumping ship to adopt the newest trend in homeschooling when our goals are specific and measurable.
The second important thing to remember is that your journey will be unique.
This point is so important I want to say it again.
Though some of your experiences will mirror my experiences and other homeschoolers, they will not all be the same.
How to Make a Strong Start in Homeschooling
Bottom line is you have to be able to measure progress for your own unique journey and you need a way to do that.
Look at how setting goals reduces fears, gives you very specific ways to measure the progress of your unique family and fortifies you for each year.
- We make progress based on our family’s need.
- Instead of wasting time checking out all the latest trends in homeschooling, we are analyzing our own efforts and measuring progress within our own family.
- We avoid boredom and a stagnant year because we are focused on whether we need to speed up our homeschooling journey or slow it down to meet our family’s need.
- Homeschooling is more purposeful and inspirational because out time is focused on meeting goals instead of coasting along.
Though I have made some pretty pages for you to write your homeschool goals on, you can write them anywhere.
I tout it all the time and that is though goals may sound good in our mind, when we put them to paper they are concrete.
Don’t ever forget what brought you to homeschooling in the first place.
If our goals and reasons are not in plain sight each day we give in to fear.
As time passes, it happens to all us and that is we forget why we chose homeschooling as a superior education. Those reasons quell any fears and keeps us plodding forward.
Like the subjects we teach our children, reminders are needed throughout the years when fears resurface.
Overcoming fears happens by not only arming yourself with homeschool knowledge but with goals.
When your goals are met each year, you don’t need the validation of others, either by testing or by family approval.
What are your fears about homeschooling? Where are your goals?
Hugs and love ya,
Also, check out these other posts.
When You Feel Like a Homeschool Failure
When does homeschooling become “normal”?
I loved your post! I agree that I struggle with those same fears from time to time as well. Goals are definitely helpful, they give me the measurable standard that we are progressing one way or another! I include my children in the goals so they are more vested in them. We discuss it one on one. I also let them pick a lot of what they’re learning (within guidelines, of course. They can’t master Lego Fan Fiction and that’s it!). Stopped by from the CreativeKKids link up.
Maria Hass recently posted…Signs, and Wonders, and Times – Oh my!
Love the tip on discussing the goals with them Maria. Let them partner with us on their learning and we have half the battle won. Thanks for stopping by!!
I fear messing him up socially, academically, career-wise. I suppose every mother worries about that though. Thank you for the words of wisdom!
Yes, Kelley we ALL worry about the same things but the thing that always made me feel better was knowing that I WAS going to do something about it. As long as I could fill their needs, I kept moving forward to the next day, week and year.
You are so welcome and glad to have you here.
Thanks Tina for the encouragement! With all the changes in our lives, it has been quite difficult for me to focus. I have been feeling very overwhelmed with our recent move and the tough family crises that we have had over the last two years.. Yesterday, I spent the whole day organizing our homeschool. I have used your beautiful templates previously, but this year, I think it is finally getting through to me the importance of goal setting. How do you handle it, though, when you set goals and then life throws a few curveballs at you and then the goals you set are not met? That kind of stresses me out. Thanks again for all your posts!
Cyndi Makan recently posted…2015 – A new homeschool year begins…
Hi Cyndi,
First, a big cyber hug to you. I can “feel” your heavy heart. Let me share a few things that may help when it seems like things drag on longer than usual.
1. Set SMALLER goals. We get feeling defeated when we have made too many goals and have too many unrealistic goals for things that we are going through.
For example, when my sister and husband both were in ICU for weeks and even months and it has taken both of them a year or longer to recuperate, one goal was to do “something learning related” for the day.
Because I had to drive back/forth everyday to hospital I couldn’t make specific goals because some of this was out of my control.
However, I did whip out the workbooks. Those great big ones you can buy from Sam or Costco that have a little bit of everything in them. I didn’t have the energy to do “assignments” so an easy workbook laid out that we could stick in a bag with a pen was simple, easy and doable.
Too, when we got back home, they could stick in an audio book I rented from the library.
2. Remember that you don’t need things the SAME. This is a change in your life and I didn’t want my kids thinking that things that came up in life were not important. But I wanted to model to my kids how to roll with life instead of thinking nothing happened in our life. I was teaching my children flexibility and I had to learn it too though it goes against my grain to not follow my schedule.
3. Point is to create VERY simple and doable goals.This is the time to use Netflix, movies and learning games to keep the boys focused on learning and it allowed me to take care of other things.