The Secret to Homeschooling without Stress

I’d love to be able to start this post with a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion goal focused men­tal­i­ty. I’d say some­thing like: The secret to home­school­ing with­out stress is to pray often, describe God’s pur­pose for your fam­i­ly, write down your fam­i­ly’s goals, work hard, and trust God. For which, we have some great tools to help you. How­ev­er, we’ve all had those days where although we know the truth, we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly live the truth. Frankly speak­ing, we don’t prac­tice what we preach because we get over­whelmed and our sin hin­ders us. 

Instead of regur­gi­tat­ing the high-mind­ed objec­tives that cre­ate a ‘teach­ing from rest’ envi­ron­ment, let’s look at 5 prac­ti­cal steps you can take to reduce your home­school­ing stress: 

1. Inspect what you expect : If you want your stu­dent to pro­duce a decent essay or fin­ish his math home­work. Take time to check his work. Here’s a math teacher time sav­ing trick: don’t check all of the prob­lems, just pick a few at random. 
2. Involve your spouse : You know that whole inspec­tion thing? When my guys enter mid­dle school they have a week­ly inspec­tion meet­ing with me and anoth­er one with my hus­band. We both look at every­thing, but focus on slight­ly dif­fer­ent goals. Between the two of us, we give our chil­dren account­abil­i­ty and encour­age them to do good work. 
3. Com­bine as many ages as pos­si­ble : Can a 6^th grad­er and 3^rd grad­er do math togeth­er? yes! Can you prac­tice writ­ing skills for a 4^th grad­er, 8^th grad­er, and sopho­more in the same dis­cus­sion? yes you can and doing so will sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er your stress level. 
4. Encour­age and reward inde­pen­dent learn­ing : Why do my boys start their school as soon as they can? Because after they fin­ish they have free time, to do any­thing they want. How do they know what to work on each day? They use a cus­tomized grid that I’ve assem­bled for them and have includ­ed as a pages or excel for you at the bot­tom of this email. 
5. Prac­tice mutu­al respect : I respect my boys’ efforts, work, and time. They respect me. It’s a mutu­al rela­tion­ship in which we serve and respect each oth­er. If you want healthy bound­aries then prac­tice mutu­al respect. 

There it is! 5 sim­ple prac­tices that you can start now whether you are start­ing a new semes­ter this week or not. Stir these togeth­er, cov­er in prayer, and trust God to lead the way! 

What’s the one tip that you’d give a new home­school fam­i­ly? Is there some­thing that you prac­tice in your home that elim­i­nates many moments of stress?