There were a few things when I first started homeschooling that never even crossed my mind and one of those was unlearning how I viewed the concept of learning and what that truly meant.
When I first started homeschooling there were numerous times when my boys spent the entire day playing with legos, or they created an amazing fort in our trees behind our house and instead of feeling peace, I would feel almost a panic. I felt guilt that we didn’t do any quote un quote school that day. I had thoughts like oh man we are so behind, they aren’t learning anything.
We have been programmed from a very young age that learning happens when it looks a certain way. If a child can’t produce evidence that they learned something, then our brains scream that learning isn’t happening. But what if it’s not the environment, or even about your child’s learning. What if it’s about the way your mind was trained to define learning in the first place.
Learning is simply the process of creating new connections in the brain that change what we know, how we think or how we act. The sooner you can understand this concept the less pressure and stress you will have.
Three Learning Lies That May Be Engrained In Our Minds
Lie #1: “If it doesn’t look like school, it’s not real learning.”
The reality, the truth that I have found over the years is that kids learn constantly through play, conversation, curiosity, repetition, and life.
- Building LEGOs as their brain starts to think like an engineer as they build new creations every single day.
- Baking is a fantastic form of play and learning and includes math, measurements, and ratios.
- Building forts teaches spatial reasoning, physics, persistence, planning and collaboration when other kids are involved.
- Even fighting with siblings unfortunately is real learning too as they develop emotionally.
Lie #2: “If I can’t measure it, it’s not happening.”
Honestly out of the 3 lies, this one was the hardest for me to get over. How do you measure growth in confidence, curiosity, problems solving and the ability for a child to emotionally regulate himself? I soon found out that the most important growth is invisible, what you can’t measure. A child can be making massive internal growth with zero worksheet evidence.
Have you ever seen that cartoon picture of kids standing in a line and they had all made a tower and they were being measured to make sure they all met a certain height. This boy had created a tower that was incredible, it was detailed with lots of different levels but it didn’t measure up to the measuring stick. They didn’t recognize how amazing and detailed his structure was next to everyone else’s. All they saw was that it wasn’t the correct height.
If we aren’t careful we can get caught in this lens. The truth to this lie is that learning is happening a lot more than what can be measured.
Lie #3: “Good moms always have a plan.”
When we over structure our days meaning plan out every minute, it almost always is because we feel uncertain or unclear of the path we should take. If you over structure everything you start to trust your schedule instead of trusting the process of natural learning.
Here are a few signs that you are overstructuring your homeschool day:
You feel behind even when nothing is actually wrong. If your day doesn’t match the plan, you may feel like you aren’t doing enough. You may feel this even if your kids are playing, connecting and learning naturally. With a supportive structure, when your day changes, you simply adjust. But with over-structure, any change feels like you’ve fallen off track.
The schedule matters more than the people in front of you. There have been so many times when I wouldn’t allow us to go down a rabbit hole because I knew if we did we wouldn’t have time to finish everything on the schedule. This is a key signal that the structure is leading your day instead of serving it.
If the structure is what calms you instead of the connection you are making. Our connections and relationships with our children should be the driving force, however if you only feel grounded when the schedule is being followed this may be a great time for you to reevaluate your structure.
I’m not saying that structure is bad, in fact structure has been proven to be good for all of us but just like anything in life, there is a balance that we need to find that serves you and your children well.
Why Does This Matter?
It is because of our thoughts. It is stemming from our thoughts and belief and the years of school exposure telling us that learning is only happening when you can see the results. If our thoughts are telling us that learning only happens a certain way, if your child struggles learning that certain way, you are going to be on the struggle bus.
The good news is, you have complete control of your thoughts and you can change them. It’s not an overnight process but you can begin to reframe this thought.
When you start to panic or worry that learning isn’t happening I want you to stop for a second and ask yourself, “What am I assuming right now?” Instead of saying are we doing enough, ask yourself is my child growing here? Is my child curious? Is my child engaged? Do they have space to think and explore?
Homeschooling isn’t just about teaching your kids differently, its about thinking differently yourself as well. You are the only person in the world that can provide what you have to give. Capitalize on that. Trust that. You are the expert for your children. This is a condensed article that comes from my podcast LIFT Where You Stand: Confident Homeschooling. You can listen to the entire episode HERE.
If something in this post resonated with you, or if your soul feels tired, overwhelmed, stretched thin, I want to personally invite you to a FREE Workshop. This Workshop will leave you feeling more confident and give you some direction in your homeschool. Register HERE!