How Establishing Habits Helps Your Homeschooling Journey [Show]

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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:04.937
Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. Our mission here is to help families stay in the learning journey wherever it takes them. This bonus episode was previously recorded as a webinar and was not created with the audio listener in mind. We hope you will find value in today’s episode.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:23.670
Hi, everyone. Welcome to 2023. Happy New Year to you all. We are so excited to have the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with you today about forming good habits. And boy, I tell you what, I think as veteran homeschool moms, these two ladies joining me know exactly what it means to create habits that you think are good. And then they kind of surprise us a little bit. So we’re here to absolve you of any guilt that you might have for a habit you thought was a good idea that didn’t end up to be that way, or a habit you haven’t yet created. And we have lots of things that we want to talk to you about today. So by way of introduction, my name is Gretchen Roe. I am the Community Relations Coordinator here at Demme Learning, and I’m delighted to have the opportunity to welcome my two panelists today. We have so much to talk to you about. My husband and I are the homeschooling parents of six. Five of them are now college graduates. And I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I promise you it’s not a train. Our youngest is a senior in high school and will graduate in a couple short months. And these ladies will hold me up when that happens because it’s going to be tough. I would like to introduce both of them today. Both of their last names begin with C. So we’ll start with Amanda because she’s CA, and then we’ll go to Lisa because she’s CH. Let’s go, ladies.

Amanda Capps: 00:01:57.067
Thank you, Gretchen. I am thrilled to be here today. I am Amanda. I am the homeschool mom of eight. I have a little bit of a unique background in that I am a second-generation homeschooler. So that adds some fun and I think sometimes a real blessing to the mix. And I’m coming to you from Northwest Arkansas, where I have been with Demme Learning for the last 13 years in customer service. And so chances are if you have called into our customer service line or placed an order or needed help with anything, you may have had a chance to talk with me. I really enjoy supporting the customers and walking alongside parents as they home educate.

Lisa Chimento: 00:02:40.287
And my name is Lisa Chimento. I am a Customer Success Consultant and Placement Specialist here at Demme Learning. I’ve been with the company for almost six years on a full-time basis, first as a customer service rep and then moving into this role. And before that, I worked at the homeschool conventions for probably about 15 years at the Demme Learning booth. So I had an opportunity to speak with lots of folks there. My husband and I homeschooled our four children for 25 years. They are all adults and out of the house now. It was a marvelous opportunity. Not every day was glorious, but on the whole, it was probably one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. And an opportunity for me to learn some of the things that we’re going to talk about here today. And there was a lot of trial and error. So like Gretchen said, we absolve you because mistakes are how we learn sometimes and that’s okay.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:38.834
Absolutely. And I think it’s important to note as well that I just watched an absolutely wonderful TED Talk this morning by Shankar Vedantam. He is the podcaster who hosts the Hidden Brain podcast. And he was talking about making decisions for your future self. And this is the second time I have listened to this particular podcast because it really is a true thing. When we began our homeschool journey, we were inadvertent homeschoolers. I wasn’t an intentional homeschooler like Lisa and Amanda were. I became a homeschooler because my eldest daughter was told she didn’t need to memorize her multiplication tables. And I thought, “Oh, yeah? I’m a good German girl. I’m going to make that happen.” And I did. But I have to tell you, in retrospect, I could have made it happen a lot more kindly. So the things that we learn along the way are valuable. Don’t ever think that you’ve made a mistake. You have an opportunity to make a new decision and that’s a wonderful, wonderful experience. Because the homeschooler you will be next year is different from the homeschooler you are today. And I think that’s a very important thing. Lisa, you brought up a really important thing in our chat this morning, and I want to really begin with that. Which is establishing the habits around what the requirements are for the state in which you home educate your children. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Lisa Chimento: 00:05:09.524
Yes. Certainly. Particularly for those of you who are homeschooling for the first time, state to state, the laws differ. So it’s really important, if you haven’t already, to find out what your state’s laws and homeschooling requirements are with regard to reporting and recording results. And then whether or not there needs to be a year-end. Hslda.org has a really nifty US map on it, and you can just click on your state and they’ll give you all those details. You can also contact your state’s homeschooling support group and find more details there on what your state requires on those two things, because this will be important for you to know. Not only to be able to meet those state requirements, but also to help establish the habits that you need to establish in your home to meet the requirements.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:01.153
Absolutely. And Amanda, you had spoken about jars and rocks. And I think that’s a great place for us to begin.

Amanda Capps: 00:06:10.756
Absolutely. So I like to use this illustration because I’m a rather visual learner myself and this really stuck with me. And so I like to think of our oldest kids as the biggest rock in the jar. So if you picture a jar, picture the number of high schoolers, maybe middle schoolers, or upper middle school students. Those are the kids that you have the least amount of time left with. So they need to take the priority. And potentially, while they can be independent, they might take some of the majority of your time. And there’s a lot out there as to when or how independent can a student be at what age. And we may delve into that here a little bit later. Then you’ve got your pebbles, should be kind of your middle-range kids. And then fill the sand in with everything else. The extracurricular activities, the toddlers, anything else that’s happening in your environment that can impact that learning situation. You really kind of have to think about it and prioritize it that way to be the most effective with your time and theirs.

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:28.425
I think anybody who has homeschooled for any length of time has found the joy of teaching a young reader the beginning process of reading. And boy, that’s a whole lot of fun. It’s not quite as much fun to do biology, particularly when you’ve got the frog on the table and it smells terrible and you’re trying to teach that process. But let me also encourage you that looking back in retrospect– now, my children range in age from 37 to 17 and I can tell you that I wish I had invested more time with the older children when they were younger instead of being so excited about the one who was Raising Cain in the background. And we’re going to talk a little bit about that because as you establish habits, one of those habits is going to be how can I control chaos? Because let’s face it, if you have more than one child, there is chaos, and it becomes an interesting proposition for you to figure out where your priorities need to be. In that process, one of the things that we talked about is an easy habit to establish, and that is planning your homeschool day around your meal times. Lisa, can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I think this is probably the single most valuable piece of advice I was given. And I know you’d say the same.

Lisa Chimento: 00:08:54.887
Yeah, it absolutely was. When I was in my second year of homeschooling, we had to move from New York to Florida. I had two little boys and a brand-new baby, and I was raised in a home with a very loving father, but not a lot of organizational and time management skills. So that was not something that was inbred in me and at an early age. So I’m learning on the job here as I’ve got these three children and now I’ve started homeschooling and then we’ve moved. So I had no support. I joined a support group, which I highly recommend if you have one in your area. And probably the first meeting that I attend was some marvelous woman standing up and sharing some ideas with me. And she said something that just jumped out to me, and that was, “Plan your school day around your meals.” And up until that point, I had been planning my meals around my school day. And inevitably, you end up with very hungry, grumpy children. And so things start going sideways pretty quickly when that happens. So instead, I set my meal times and said, okay, “We’re going to have lunch at this time every day. We’re going to have dinner at this time every day.”

Lisa Chimento: 00:10:08.033
And so once we got started with the school day, I knew that I had to stop whatever we were doing by a certain time and say to the kids, okay, “We’re going to stop for a while. This is the time for you to pick up and put away whatever we’ve been using.” A quick straightening up, and let’s get the meal prepared and give children the different– delegate the different jobs that they can do: setting the table, helping with the meal. And then you’ve got a peaceful meal and you’ve got stomach-satisfied children. And when that’s finished, then you can get on with your day. And then the same thing happens at dinner time. And my gosh, what a difference that made to us in terms of accomplishing things and also accomplishing them in a happy, peaceful way rather than stressed and hungry and all kinds of things going in the wrong direction.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:00.572
Now, Amanda, you delegate meal prep to some of your kids as well, don’t you? So how does that work in your household?

Amanda Capps: 00:11:08.776
Yes. So I don’t think I said in my introduction, but I have children that range in the age from 20 down to two. And I have every age in between. And I was talking with a friend the other day that I said, “Nothing ever prepares you for parenting all these different age groups at the same time.” I have young adults, I have teens, I have tweens, I have all those that are stuck in the middle, and I have toddlers. And wow, is it a lot to try and navigate when you’re parenting all those different seasons at the same time? But yes, meals are something– I do have children that enjoy cooking, that cooking is a strength for them. I also am always, as a mom of many, looking for ways to maximize schoolwork outside of a workbook. So anything outside of our traditional curriculum style stuff, so that can very well be assigned as far as meal planning, budgeting, doing the shopping, doing price comparison. In our case, we’re typically doubling, tripling, or quadrupling a recipe, depending on what it is, because most recipes out there are for two to four, typically. And so all of those are very valuable skills.

Amanda Capps: 00:12:29.359
And so we have a bit of a schedule set up to try to keep everything moving forward well. And then, I agree with Lisa, mealtimes and hungry students is a thing, but also students who are well rested. So I feel like sleep schedules and meal schedules are probably the two most important things that you can establish and have a consistent routine. Not that we can’t have some times where we stay up late or we have a movie night or just whatever going on. But if you can stay as consistent as possible with sleep and meal schedules, you’re going to do yourself and your kids a huge favor.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:08.284
I can tell you that probably the most difficult campaign– because let’s face it, when you’re a mom, you are a marketer, you’re a campaigner, you’re all those things. The most difficult campaign I’ve ever had to wage with my six kids was to get them to understand that as adolescents, they had a greater requirement for sleep than the toddlers did. And my goodness, is that a hard one to sell. I had a conversation just yesterday afternoon with my 17-year-old who said, “Ah, why is my head so fuzzy?” And I said, “Maybe it’s because the last five nights, you’ve been up till five o’clock in the morning.” He has some friends overseas that he has enjoyed gaming with over the holidays. They’re in the middle of their day, and he’s in the middle of his night. And now he’s wondering why he’s having a difficult time getting back to schedule. So if that’s a habit that you could establish – a regular bedtime, a regular mealtime – that would be huge. And I really want to offer you all throughout the day a couple of quotes that we found about habits, because boy, we found a bunch of them. But I think one of my favorite ones was John C. Maxwell. And he said, “You’ll never change your life until you’ll change something that you do daily. Your success is found in your daily routine.”

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:34.710
Now, I say that to encourage you, not to admonish you. And what I want you to do is I want you to look at what was your routine before the holidays began for you. Maybe you’re thinking back all the way to before Thanksgiving. Think about what that routine was and the things that served you well and see if you can reincorporate those into your schedule. And if there were things that didn’t serve you well, here’s an opportunity to discard those things and begin again like Finnegan, as we used to say in our family. The one thing I want to encourage you as you take away from the time that we’re going to spend together is, change one thing. As a homeschool mom, we set up to change a whole bunch of things. It’s January. We’re going to do everything differently. And then three weeks from now, we’re exhausted and we haven’t succeeded. So change one thing and let that one change create a different environment for your heart and your spirit, and then figure out how to change the next thing. Amanda, you talked a little bit about this when we were talking about mom can’t do it all. So can you elaborate on that a little bit? I think what you have to say is terrific.

Amanda Capps: 00:15:58.209
Absolutely. So there is one of me. There are eight of them and a husband who can either be another parent in the mix or sometimes we do need to loop him in with the kids. It just depends on the day if we’re being real. And so based on that, I’m always looking for opportunities where I can either delegate or sometimes depending on the personalities of my children, I can pair kids up. Older children with a younger child can sometimes work very, very well if mom’s time is spread a little thin, and they may need a little help in something that that older child is already proficient in and good at. And it gives you the opportunity to cultivate teaching skills in an older child. And also, it gives them the chance to review something that they may not have visited in a while. So I feel like overall there are certain children of mine that I cannot put together in a learning environment or one in authority over another, or we will have World War III on our hands in this house. But there are kids that do have complementary personalities, and especially with my oldest two, they are kind of seen as the adults as well in the mix. And so they garner the respect needed to help out with some of those things.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:28.296
Lisa, your kids were close in age. So unlike Amanda where she has a wide range of ages, and as I had a wide range of ages. Your kids were really close together. So can you talk about maybe forming the habit of looking at your academics and how you could combine them? I know that you’ve talked about this before.

Lisa Chimento: 00:17:53.974
Yeah. Actually, the two boys are the closest. They’re two years apart. And so once we really started going with homeschooling, I opted to do unit studies. And it was so much fun. They did their math and their reading separately according to their own levels. But we did history and literature and science and social studies and geography and all of those different kinds of things together in unit studies. Back then, Konos was the big unit study curriculum, and we had Konos. It provided us with a beautiful reading list. Oh, my goodness, it was endless. And so we spent a lot of time at the library. We did a lot of combined reading at home where I did read alouds and they would color while they listened. It was the opportunity for us to get in such good things. And we just decided what things we were interested in, and we went and studied them together because the boys could do it. And even when my daughter, who was a baby when we first moved, as she started to grow, she just tagged along and did what we were doing. If we were doing some kind of a fun thing that required a dress-up, I would pop something on her too. And she felt like she was part of it. And she really enjoyed that time.

Lisa Chimento: 00:19:11.864
But it really did help getting through material and learning things that would have been a little harder to learn if I was doing everything separately with every child at different ages. So you can do that. You can look at it. And I’m just going to throw in one little thing here. For those of you who have newborns or young babies or toddlers, this is where you really need to give yourself a lot of grace. I don’t know if you found this too, Amanda, but I found a three-year transition with every baby. For three years, things were going to look different depending on their sleep schedule, their eating needs. If I was nursing, all of those kinds of things came into effect. And it wasn’t for about three years that they settled into the same routine as the rest of us. But that was a surprise to me the first time around. And then, when my fourth came, I was prepared for it. So be easy with yourself that you might create a lot of plans and you might need to be really flexible with them because babies don’t always want to go with your plans.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:20.840
Absolutely. That is so very true. And one of the things I think that we talked about, which I think was very valuable, is parental transparency. And that is, to be honest, in front of our kids, what we’re struggling with, what works for us, what doesn’t work for us. And sometimes, we fail to take into account that our kids are ardent observers. I’ve gotten some really good feedback when I’ve been humble enough to solicit it from my children about things that might be different if I ask them how we could cooperate together better. And so that might be something for you all to think about. Amanda, I think you were the one who posted in our list because we planned this fully a month ago about science and history being repeated in high school. Or was that you, Lisa? Because I want to talk about that for a minute and where you spend your time is as equally important as how you spend your time. So I’m going to ask both of you to talk a little bit about that.

Lisa Chimento: 00:21:32.944
Yeah, I did mention that. And it’s one of the reasons why I was perfectly okay with doing those kinds of unit study things and not worrying about having to have a textbook and a strong, heavy curriculum for every subject. And Amanda and I talked about this too. We agree that math, reading, and writing, those are your core. And just like the illustration she gave with the jar of rocks, those are your big rocks. Put them in first, and then you can fit smaller things around them as time permits, as your own ability to compensate and stick with it permits, because you do get tired. And sometimes, you just don’t have the energy to get to everything. But put the focus on those first three. And it is okay if you don’t get all the science and history in at those early stages because those subjects do repeat. I found that we were covering a lot of the same material when they were very young, when they were middle school students, and then again in high school. And if they go to college, they’re going to hit it again. And those are the kinds of things too that parts of it will be forgotten. You might spend a lot of time on a heavy-duty science or social studies curriculum at a young age, and three years later, find out that they may not remember much of it at all. That’s perfectly okay. So those kinds of things can be repeated, but the math and the reading and the writing, those are your core. Those are the things that they are going to need to learn everything else anyway. And those are the things that need to be focused on and be consistent. Math, particularly, is a lot like a language. If you’re not using it regularly, it’s very easy to forget. So be careful about letting time go by with a subject like math. That one needs to have a priority.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:26.845
Okay, I’m going to pause here for a second because I know Amanda has things to say about this, but I’m going to throw you a curveball, Amanda. And I know that I can do this because you think on your feet very well. Why is math like a language? And I know you entertain conversations all the time from parents who want 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old children to be able to do math independently. And I think it’s important for us to pause and explain why that language has to have communication with someone else.

Amanda Capps: 00:24:02.492
Absolutely. So a big part of our Math-U-See curriculum is that engagement, that one-on-one tutorial. And when I talk to parents and I hear that things are struggling, that we’re having difficulty, whether it’s retaining facts or we’re bogging down in pre-algebra because the concepts have gotten multi-step, there’s a couple of things that are really, really, really important and sometimes neglected. One of those is there’s a fantastic glossary in the back of the student workbook and the teacher’s manual that have all those amazing vocabulary words that we don’t have in our everyday vernacular because we don’t speak mathematics, and most of us weren’t raised with strong mathematical backgrounds. I’m very fortunate that at some point in my homeschooling journey, my parents did find Math-U-See and I was able to course correct that sinking ship of a subject in my own life, and then it has also given me the confidence to support customers and to teach my own children, but I think it’s really, really important. That’s one of the reasons, piggybacking off of some of the things that Lisa was talking about, we do school year-round because I have some different learners who have learning challenges such as working memory, dyslexia, ADD, ADHD. And those particular diagnoses add elements of challenge to academics, they just do, and retention is part of that. It’s a piece of that puzzle.

Amanda Capps: 00:25:43.667
And so what I have found is between adding children constantly to the family and having those things going on within my students, it has just made sense to us to school year-round so that, one, we can kind of take shorter breaks more frequently or when we need to, and we keep our rhythm. I also find, if I take a long break, it’s a lot harder for me to get back in the swing of things. So this is something I’ve learned about myself as I’ve evolved as a homeschool parent. And then obviously, if reading is such a critical skill, if literacy is such a critical skill, if you have a child that struggles where that learning process of reading has been inordinately challenging, you’re going to have to invest more time and effort, and there may be outside resources and outside therapies that have to come into play. That has happened with some of mine. I have had four out of my eight kids need vision therapy. Two of them, it has just been just some simple tracking things and it’s gotten them back on the right track, and they have had no issues since. And for two others that actually have dyslexic diagnosis, it’s been a little– it’s been a lot more involved than that. I had one daughter who didn’t even recognize letters consistently in the alphabet for almost two years. That was a struggle to get past that hurdle. So, again, lots of grace. Also, observe, look for what’s going on, and then it’s not always the academics, it’s not always the schedule that’s the problem.

Gretchen Roe: 00:27:25.233
Absolutely. I think Amanda’s made a really important point. And that is you as the parent, whether you’re a mom or a dad, are the most ardent observer of your student. You’ll know things have changed, things are different as they evolve and grow and mature faster than anybody else will. And you have to really be a dedicated student of your student, and that is really super important. Now, Amanda’s mentioned a couple of things here, ADHD and dyslexia yeah. And if you suspect those kinds of things, I want to encourage you, first of all, before you do anything else, to start observing. Observe if you have a child who can’t hold it together past a certain time of day. Maybe your habit needs to be starting school with that child earlier. Maybe if you have a child who has a very short attention span, you need to think about children have an attention span of their age plus two to three minutes. And actually, I spent most of my Christmas break listening to a man whose name is– he’s a professor who specializes in attention deficit disorder. His name is Dr. Barkley, B-A-R-K-L-E-Y. And if you put into YouTube his name and the letters ADHD, you can find lots of information. He is terrific. And his advice is take whatever your child’s age is and take 30% less of that and recognize that you need to break the academics into those size chunks.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:18.662
In fact, I listened to a presentation that he did yesterday and he said, “If you have a child who has attention deficit disorder, no amount of sentence and word or construction therein captures their attention because it’s not really attention deficit disorder. It’s a focus disorder.” So no matter how creatively you say it, you’re not going to necessarily get through to them. So his advice was keep your instructions very brief, ask for feedback – what did I just ask you to do? – and then check in with them very frequently. His advice was every 10 minutes. And he said, “Take your phone and set a timer on your phone.” And every 10 minutes, you go back to check in with that child. And he said, “That’s what keeps your kids from riding it off the rails and you having havoc to ensue in your household.” So maybe that’s the habit you need to establish. Setting a timer on your phone to check in every 10 minutes with your child to see, how is it going? Amanda, I want to circle back around to you to the rocks. Math, reading, writing. I know that in your household– Lisa has talked about how read-alouds were wonderful for her but you’re spread a little bit thin. So I know that you use Audible as a read-aloud, and that’s a really great way to accomplish the task. And everybody gets to listen. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Amanda Capps: 00:30:52.931
Absolutely. So my main goal is work smarter, not harder when it comes to approaching my life. Because there are so many people and so many moving parts, yes, I will absolutely say chaos can ensue very, very quickly if we are not staying on task. And it can be rather exhausting to be the executive function for numerous people, including yourself. So that is a skill that I have had to hone. And you’re so right. I mean, the mother that I was when my first daughter was a baby versus the mother I am now as a 20-year-old, we are growing alongside of our children. That is a process that is constantly happening and it’s important. But it’s also important sometimes when she makes comments about something a younger child is doing or she assumes they’re getting away with, sometimes I can look at her and say, “I’m sorry.” I was harder on you because I thought I had to be. I didn’t know. And I was so wound and so stressed out about making sure I was doing everything right because I mean, really isn’t that in our hearts to just want to do the best? And yet I think sometimes that part of it gets missed in our kids. It’s like, “Wait a minute. I was literally sacrificing and doing everything I could possibly think of to make your experience the best. What do you mean you didn’t pick up on it?”

Amanda Capps: 00:32:34.451
And it can be like, “Give me a little– cut me a little slack here,” so I think that’s important. Yes, I feel like it’s incredibly important to get those core subjects in. I think a lot of times we’re looking at highlight reels on social media. We’re seeing all the field trips and the extracurricular activities and the fact that the six-year-old is taking German and is fluent and this and that, and we can get really down on ourselves and think, “Oh my goodness, I am failing on so many levels.” And yet that’s really not true because again, we’re only seeing the highlights in someone else’s life. We’re not seeing the behind-the-scenes. We’re not seeing the dog puking on the floor and the car breaking down and the washing machine flooding the utility room and all of those things that are just the inevitabilities of life.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:34.151
Absolutely. I think that that’s really important. Lisa, I know that you have some really valuable advice with that regard because you’re a couple of years past the homeschooling journey. So now you’ve had the litmus test of being able to look back on all the things that you accomplished and be able to say, “These are the things that I did well, and these are the things I wish I would have done better.” So can you share a little bit of that wisdom?

Lisa Chimento: 00:34:01.609
Yeah. And because I’m speaking with customers almost every day, sometimes I do hear those words that Amanda was just saying, “Oh no, I blew this,” or, “I feel like I’m failing my child because I didn’t pick up on something earlier than now or didn’t make a correct decision about a curriculum,” or whatever. And I just have to say to them, “Listen, I homeschooled for 25 years and I used Math-U-See during those years, and I didn’t do it all right.” I’m giving advice to customers and moms and dads now of things that I didn’t do myself because I didn’t know. So we need to see this as lifelong learning. And it’s not just lifelong learning for our children, it’s for us too. What Gretchen said at the beginning is so, so important. It’s so easy to see our failings and see the mistakes that we’ve made and consider them as failures. We need to learn how to reframe this as opportunities for deeper growth, and that happens with all of us. And this ties in also to what Gretchen said earlier about transparency. It is okay for us to go to our kids and say to them, “I know that we said at the beginning of this year we were going to do such and such. And we gave it our best try, but it turns out that that doesn’t work very well for us. What are your thoughts on this? Did it work for you? Did you like it? Did you hate it? What do you think we could do better?”

Lisa Chimento: 00:35:31.162
And soliciting their feedback is so valuable because then it sets you all up with the same expectation. It’s not you creating one expectation for yourself and your kids have no idea about it and then you’re angry and they’re in trouble and it’s a downward spiral that way. But when you do solicit– and it also gives your children a chance to learn to forgive you, and they learn how to forgive themselves when and then they make mistakes. And learn how to respond properly when they make mistakes. Some kids out there are perfectionists. We want them to learn how to address when they make their own mistakes and be able to move on and not get stuck on that point. So all of this, it’s all timing together. I love what Amanda said earlier, we need to impart grace to our kids but also to ourselves. We’re all still learning.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:29.451
I have a great quote I want to add to the discussion at this point. It’s by Seth Godden and he said, “Wouldn’t it be great to be gifted?” In fact, it turns out that choices lead to habits, and habits become talents. Talents are labelled gifts. But you’re not born this way, you get this way. And you have a talent because you have embraced the role of homeschooling. And now you get to practice that role and see where it goes from here. And that makes such a tremendous difference. If you can model humility for your children, and say, “I’m learning right along with you.” How much easier it is for them to step back from that perfectionism. As a matter of fact, we see perfectionism so often in so many families. And we council families toward it and we talk about the places we sought in our own lives. And we’re about 20 minutes left in the day today and I want to turn our attentions to some of the things that people have said about those questions here on my display screen. But I also want to refer you all to two webinars that we did in the latter part of the year last year. And one was called, “Relaunching the shift.” And that was a terrific webinar we did back in December. You can find that in our podcast– not podcast.

Gretchen Roe: 00:37:57.839
In our blog. You can go to demmelearning.com/blog and put in relaunching and it will find it for you. That was with my guest Hannah Cook from Book Shark. And we were talking about five ways you could look at the progress you’ve made, and how to now adapt yourself into the New Year. And I think that willl help you establishing some habits. And then Amanda and I had the opportunity to do a webinar in November talking about learning preferences. And if you haven’t delved into this, we want to encourage you to talk with your kids about it. And look at their learning preferences. Because I promise you, if you have more than one child, that child doesn’t learn the way you do. Because statistically, that’s what they say is the truth. And the truth of the matter is, some of us as homeschool parents have embraced the idea of learning preference so thoroughly that we become a pretzel to our children. And you know what? Lisa, I think it was you, or was it Sue Wafter who said, “Your child’s first employer is not going to ask what your child’s learning preference is.” I think that was you. And the truth of the matter is, yes we have a preference for how we learn, but we have to learn in multiple modalities. And that’s one of the things that all the Demme Learning products allow us to do is to learn in those multiple modalities.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:25.560
Ladies, I want to turn my attention here to these questions about– because man, we had some really good ones. And we had a lot of registrants for the third of January. That was pretty exciting. Lisa, I wanted you to talk about helping a teenaged boy establish study habits that will help him into his college years. Knowing that you sent three of them off to higher education. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lisa Chimento: 00:39:57.955
Oh gosh, okay. So well, I think, first of all, some things need to start, if you can, at a younger age. If you’re just starting out, and they’re teenagers, that’s a separate issue. If you still have young children, you want to get some things established, early on. And you can set up, even for a very young child, some simple guidelines on what you’re expecting them to accomplish during the day. And whether it’s their morning routine, of getting ready and starting their day, or chores throughout the day, whatever, you can set those things up. I remember, what I did for my boys when they were little, with all four kids, actually. And I just created a simple chart with some instruction. For the littlest ones, I put pictures, icons, so I put a toothbrush and a toothpaste tube, to remind them that they had to brush their teeth in the morning and before bed. And little things like that or a bed, showing them that they had to make their bed. And then I put it into one of those page protectors, those clear page protectors, put it up on the inside door of their cabinet. And then they could check it off, Monday through whatever days you want to do that for, and that helps.

Lisa Chimento: 00:41:15.332
Later on, as they are getting older, they are going to be working more independently. And I think one thing that really did help me was that I asked them to please come and tell me what they had done. And it helped them to start to take a little more investment in their own education. Because I let them know, “Right now, you’ve got me, and I care about you. I love you, and I’m going to be on top of this. But at some point, you’re going to be instructed by someone else. And if you start to slack off on your work, they’re not going to come after you. They’re not going to ask you how you’re doing. But what they will do, is they will truly appreciate it if you come to them and say, ‘I’m having trouble with this. What can I do to improve? What can I do to up my scores? What can I do to get more information because I’m not understanding whatever topic the class is on?'” So I think a big piece of this, for a teenager, is to let them know that they need to take value in their education and take responsibility for it. And I think the first, best way to do that is to have them account to you or to dad, or however you want to do this. But when you’re doing it in your home, you’re doing it in a safe place so that, if they make mistakes, you can correct and then try again, rather than throwing them out, unprepared, to do that.

Lisa Chimento: 00:42:41.461
But I think that was a big piece for me, for my kids, because then, I didn’t have to tell them what to do all day. “You should be doing this, you should be doing that.” I let them create that schedule, but then they needed to come and report back to me and let me know what they were doing. And they had to also let me know if they were stuck on something. If they didn’t understand, if they needed more work, that had to come to me. And if they didn’t, and then time went by, then I said to them, “You’ve neglected to do this thing. And now, do you see where it’s gotten you?” So again, when you’re learning from our mistakes, and that’s a teaching opportunity there. I don’t know if that answers everything you needed.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:20.470
I think that’s a great answer. I will tell you that, having had three teenage sons myself, the way that I learn is I take copious amounts of notes. And I have attention deficit disorder myself. So if I’m in a meeting that’s an hour long, there’ll be six, seven pages notes here because that’s how I stay focused. And that may be what your student needs to do. And what I would do when I was studying is, I would literally take an index card, and still have a bunch of them, and I would rewrite those notes, in brief form, on an index card. So that’s what I tried to teach my kids to do. And then my eldest son showed up and said, “You know, I don’t learn that way I learn best by listening. So this will tell you how long ago it was. He said, “Can you get me a handheld cassette recorder so I can take my notes and translate them and speak into them”? You know what? You got a recorder right here in your hand all the time now. So for a student who learns best auditorily, that’s a great way to translate that. If your student doesn’t yet know at the age of high school how they learn best, that would be a habit you should explore. Make a habit of figuring out what translates best to retain information for your student, because it will be different for every student. And Amanda can speak to that. Every one of her kids learns differently. Amanda, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about balancing self-care and parenting.

Amanda Capps: 00:44:58.298
Sure. But real quick, I want to piggyback off of something Lisa said, just because I know this is how I would think if I had heard that same thing. I would be sitting there going, “Okay, I’ve got to make a chart. And I’m going to d–” there’s a company called Neatlings. They’re on Amazon. They do exactly what Lisa just lined out, but it’s all done for you. And you can actually do it per number of kids.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:22.346
Spell that out for me.

Amanda Capps: 00:45:23.665
N-E-A-T-L-I-N-G-S, Neatlings.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:27.427
Terrific.

Amanda Capps: 00:45:28.952
And so it’s basically something you attach to the wall that has pockets. You have cards for every imaginable chore. You have blank cards that you can add your own to make it unique for your family. And so at the beginning of the week, you would set out all the cards based on the day of the week per child, and then they would turn those back into you once they’re completed. And it’s a very efficient, very well-done system. And it doesn’t require you to invent the wheel. If you have a couple of kids doing it old school and doing it yourself, 100%. If you have eight, it’s a little bit more like, what can I find that’s already done? And we can just get this baby going.

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:16.072
That’s terrific. So let’s talk about self-care.

Amanda Capps: 00:46:19.992
So this is one of those areas that I have had to learn and to grow and to develop good habits in. One, this was not something that was modeled well for me growing up in a homeschooling family because mom tends to be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of education. Let’s just be real. That’s how it ends up working out. And there are not enough hours in the day and there is not enough of you to go around. So what I tell new moms that I am mentoring or that reach out to me and go, “Oh, my word, you’ve been homeschooling forever. What are your secrets”? I say, “You have got to take care of you. You’ve got to refill.” You cannot pour from a burnt out, over wrought, under slept, undereaten place. I mean, that is just not going to be your best. But in the effort to be the best, a lot of times we shortchange those things that are the most important. Getting out and taking a walk. You can take all the kids with you. Getting out in the fresh air and in the sunshine, super important. Nature notebooks are a fantastic way to incorporate outdoor time and learning at the same time.

Amanda Capps: 00:47:37.405
Read a book that has nothing to do with education or self-help or bettering yourself, your environment, organizing your home. I mean, just a good fluff, entertaining, at least once a year, twice a year. If you really can shoot for once a quarter, that’d be fantastic. Just something that gets you out of mom and wife and director mode. A a bath, telling kids, “Do not knock on my door for 30 minutes. I’m going to soak in a bath. I’m going to do some Epsom salts and some essential oils and just relax,” and let your muscles relax. And just let your mind be. Put the phone away. Don’t read the book. Just decompress and chill. Having a good support network, other moms, Lisa already touched on a support group. There’re Facebook support groups. There’re live in face-to-face support groups. Those can be great. Find your tribe of moms that have the same goals, have a lot of the same things that you’re looking for where you want to be in your journey, and then ask them, “How did you do this? What are the systems that you put in place? How did you make this happen?” and make it look so you know easy. Those are really some of the best ones that I can think of right off the top of my head. But the others are make sure you’re getting enough sleep, make sure you’re eating well, take your vitamins, do those things, get some movement out there, get some sunshine on your face. All of those things are going to help tremendously.

Gretchen Roe: 00:49:12.426
It’s like they say on the plane, “Put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your child.” I think that I have an observation that I’d like to make. One of my kids made this observation over Christmas talking about her own children. And she said, “Kids are egocentric. They only see the world from their perspective.” So the amount I sacrifice for them is totally lost on them. And honest to goodness, I looked at her and went, “Holy cannoli, I was waiting for you guys to acknowledge all the sacrifices I made on your behalf. And you couldn’t do that.” So if you as parents, as moms or dads, are making all these sacrifices and your kids are like, “What’s the next thing they want from you?” recognize that that egocentrism comes with being a child and find your tribe to support you. Don’t expect your kids to be that support. I think that’s huge for us to be able to understand. I loved this question, Lisa. So I’m going to toss this one at you. Habits that prevent pushback from kids. And I don’t think those exist because I think it’s in a child’s nature to give you pushback. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just in my family. We are a good German family and I have six firstborn children. And so they all give pushback. You’re a good Italian family. I imagine you probably had the same. But what advice would you offer to this mom?

Lisa Chimento: 00:50:54.703
I think the first thing I would say is to sit down and talk. Having a conversation is such an important thing. I think that a lot of times we think that we have to come up with all of the instruction, all the direction, all the rules, all everything else, and the child has to do those things. But it does often cause conflict because you have certain expectations that they don’t get. So having that opportunity to sit down and say, “Okay, this is what we’re doing. This is our homeschool. What kinds of things are important to you? What things would you like to see us be doing together?” And have that conversation and be willing to agree with each other that, “Okay, I’m going to take some of your suggestions and you’re going to take some of my suggestions so that we can all work together and then everybody’s going to be happy.” And it’s teaching them how to compromise, how to deal with a group dynamic where you don’t always get your own way and that you can give a little and also receive a little bit that way. I think that there also needs to be– and we haven’t touched on this yet, but I hope it’s okay that I mention it there’s that aspect that Amanda said of there’s only one of you as the homeschooling parent and sometimes many multiple children.

Lisa Chimento: 00:52:13.395
And it’s important for our children that we prepare them, not just academically, to go to college and have a career, but to be able to be good citizens and to be good adults, kind people and cooperative people and people that can enter into a healthy relationship with a mate, with a boss, with another instructor, with a friend, a neighbor. And so it means being willing to give of themselves a little bit. And so things like chores are such an easy way to teach that. And I think I mentioned it during our planning meeting. One of the best things I ever read was by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, and they were pioneers in homeschooling in America. Their stuff might be hard to find these days because it was written such a while ago, but they made a quote once and it said, “If you can walk, you can work.” You can give even a two-year-old simple task like folding dish towels or handkerchiefs when the laundry comes out or putting the napkins on the table or cleaning things up off the table after a meal. And it gives everybody a sense of not only that they are participating and contributing, but accomplishment that creates real self-esteem instead of trying to produce fake self-esteem by telling someone how wonderful they are all the time when they are doing nothing to help anyone else but themselves. So we want to give them real opportunities to gain self-esteem for themselves by accomplishing things, by setting goals and working hard to achieve those goals, by contributing and giving of themselves and their time and their effort and their care to someone outside of themselves. And I think all of that really, really helps. I don’t even remember what the question was. I’m sorry. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:07.793
No, I think you did a terrific job of answering it. But I think there’s also a flip side here to the things that we’ve discussed today, because we’ve really encouraged you to sit down and seek feedback from your children.

Lisa Chimento: 00:54:19.508
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:20.118
Bottom line here is you’re responsible for the academic experience. So if your teenage boy says, “My idea of a perfect academic experience is to play GTA III for the next 10 hours,” that’s not a happening thing if you follow my drift. At some point in time, you have to be responsible. And regardless of how your children react, you have to be willing to make the hard choices and say, “This has to get done.” I laughingly say from stage at homeschool conferences all the time, “I hate doing laundry, but I’m too cold to live in a nudist colony. So somebody has to do it. It has to happen.” And that task happens to fall to me. Now, does that mean I do everybody’s laundry? Nope. I do mine and my husband’s, and I have taught my children by the age of eight to do their own laundry. This Christmas was fun because I inadvertently left a red napkin from Christmas in a white load of laundry and turned everything pink. And my adult children enjoyed that immensely. But that’s where you go back to that conversation about humility. Yep, I screwed up, and now we’ll move on from there. I’m still trying to get those pink clothes back to white. But in the closing moments, ladies, we’re almost at the top of the hour. So let’s begin first with Amanda. Amanda, what are your closing thoughts for our attendees and those who will view this today? And then Lisa, I’ll let you give us your closing thoughts as well.

Amanda Capps: 00:56:04.739
I would just say, as a recovering perfectionist myself, I completely agree with the adage of one thing at a time, one baby step. Just pick one thing that is really going to make an impact and work on getting that consistent before you add anything else to the mix. I have been that person with the brand new sparkling planner and everything and every day and a new workout and a new diet and a new school schedule and this. And yeah, you’re right. In two weeks, it all blows up in your face, and you throw the planner across the room, and you sit there and eat copious amounts of chocolate and feel bad for yourself that you didn’t have it in you and your perfect type-A personality to pull off that type of a feat. And I think it’s really unrealistic. Another thing that I just want to throw out there is we’ve thrown around the word expectations a bit in this particular round table. And I heard a quote that said, “Expectations are premeditated resentments.” So keep that in mind because a lot of times we can set these lofty expectations for ourselves and for others and then be just crushed when we aren’t able to hit that mark or hit that. And it really may not have been a very good or a very achievable mark to begin with. And maybe we would have been better compromising or lowering our expectations to something. We want to set ourselves and our students up for success. We want to encourage and foster a love of learning and a love of lifelong learning. And so we need to create an environment where questions and conversations and ideas and engagement and dialogue happen. And we can’t do that if we’re blowing whistles and goose-stepping like the sound of music.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:17.311
Lisa?

Lisa Chimento: 00:58:19.007
I think for me the thing to encourage you all to do is to be willing to ask for help. I think support is so important as a homeschooling parent. It was my saving grace. Having moved to a new state with three little ones and embarking on this journey with nobody that I knew, it was so important for me to go out and find support. And I’m so thankful. I found a great group, and I made wonderful friends that way. My experience has been that homeschooling families are usually very generous with their wisdom and their experience to share with you. They will often, if you ask, show you what they’re using, what curriculum they’re using, and tell you how it’s worked for them, let you know what they’ve tried in the past and why it didn’t work for them. That aspect of being willing to accept from other people, but to be willing to ask for the help, you may not just get it by sitting back and waiting for somebody to tell you how to do all of these things. But if you can go, initiate, and make that request out there, you will find the help that you need. Not all of us were set up in childhood to do this well. I wasn’t. And I learned on the job, and I learned with my kids, and I made lots of mistakes, and I asked for forgiveness quite often. And they were so forgiving to me, my children. And it was a humbling thing, but it was a wonderful thing. And we can go on learning. Ask for the help. Find the support you need. We are here. Demme Learning, everybody who works here, loves working with homeschooling families. Call us. We have a toll-free number and just call and ask whatever you need. Don’t be afraid. That’s what we’re here for. We love supporting you.

Gretchen Roe: 01:00:10.579
Absolutely. I think it’s important for you all to know that everyone who works first line with customers, with our families, has homeschooled, was homeschooled, is homeschooling, understands homeschooling, has advocated for homeschooling. We understand your journey, and we love to help you in that journey. I want to leave you all with a quote from Albert Einstein, which I think is great, that says, “The world we have created is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without us changing our thinking.” So we wish you the joy of changed thinking in this new year, and we hope you’ll join us again in the coming weeks for the webinars that we have planned for you. We have a lot of exciting things on deck. Look to our blog for support. If you don’t have that local support, go to our blog, demmelearning.com/blog. You can find all the webinars that we did in the last year posted there, plus a lot of really good information. And if anything, Brooks, a question for you, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We want to join you in your journey. Take care, everyone. Thanks for being with us today. Bye-bye.

Lisa Chimento: 01:01:25.832
Bye.

Gretchen Roe: 01:01:27.236
This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or go on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it.

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