Exhaustion, chronic stress, mental distraction—are these the symptoms of some mysterious disease? Or just a day in the life of a homeschooling mom? They don’t have to be, says Carol Barnier, as she joins HSLDA President Mike Smith on today’s Home School Heartbeat.
Mike Smith:
This week, we’re pleased to have Carol Barnier on the program with us. Carol is a speaker, an author, a wife, and a homeschooling mom. Carol, welcome!
Carol Barnier:
Thank you for having me!
Mike:
Carol, our topic this week is something many—if not most—homeschooling moms struggle with. And why do moms, especially homeschool moms, run themselves ragged? Is this really necessary, Carol?
Carol:
You know, I call this the problem of the list. The list that can kind of eat your life. Because we start homeschooling quite merrily—I mean we start with this reasonable, sensible list of things that we want our children to do, but then we go off to a support group meeting and, you know, we meet that woman whose children all play a stringed instrument, or maybe in the hallway we meet some woman, her child’s Lego-robotics entry gets him a trip to the White House. I don’t know—before you know it, you come away with a list of way too many things on it. I think, we homeschooling moms, we regularly need to remind ourselves to create a reasonable, unhurried list of objectives. And every so often we just need to reassess that list and determine if we’re trying to do too much. ’Cause chances are we are. It just kind of goes with the territory. We need to remember, we’re not just running a school here, but we’re also supposed to be enjoying being a family.
Mike:
Well Carol, thanks so much for those very helpful insights! And we’ll talk more next time. But until then, I’m Mike Smith.
