why we decided to homeschool

sharing more about how long we intend to homeschool, and why the heck we’re doing it with just a little over a month left of the school year. 

Hi friends!

I hope that you’re having an amazing week and I’m so pumped that so many of you have signed up for our Spring Forward wellness challenge. Make sure to sign up here – it’s totally free and it’s going to be a ton of fun. If you’re looking for a blast of motivation as we head into spring, this is the perfect way to do it!

For today’s post, I wanted to share a little bit more about our homeschool journey and what’s going on. I’ve alluded to the fact that we’ve had a rough time the past few months and it’s been difficult to navigate how and what to share. I’ve always been open with you guys when it comes to my life, but the purpose of the blog has always been to share MY experience; not my children’s. It’s a tricky line to walk, especially when they’re a huge part of my life and I feel like so many of you are a part of our family. At the same, I never want them to feel like their privacy has been invaded by what I share here, so I’ve always tried to take a delicate approach to my content, especially as they’ve gotten older.

The nutshell version is this: we ended up transferring Liv to another private school in January. We were all struggling with the mind-boggling amount of homework, tests, and assignments. It was especially hard with her competition dance schedule. We switched studios and cut her hours in half, and she was still up until at least midnight every night (for the past 2+ years) trying to finish everything for school. I’m a huge believer in hard work and I think academic rigor has its place, but it was too much for everyone. So, she switched and has been thriving.

When she switched schools, it was the first time P hasn’t had her big sis at school, which was challenging for her. The Pilot also retired, which was a huge transition, and she started to have more frequent stomachaches. (Her stomach has bothered her on and off for years, which has always worried me since she had severe reflux as a baby and was on Prilosec and Zantac, which has been recalled for terrifying reasons.) She saw multiple doctors, had an ultrasound, her stomach was deemed “healthy,” and their only suggestion was to put her on a PPI again. She was also doing CBT weekly, and sometimes twice a week. Her stomach pain and anxiety got so bad that she missed many days of school, and we were here trying to keep up with the insane amount of homework, classwork, and tests.

The Pilot was home for retirement and was teaching her the content, making sure she completed the huge packets of classwork, and taking her to school for tests. He had go back to commercial airline training and I couldn’t fathom solo parenting, working, and trying to keep up with all of the school work she was missing, so I asked her to either choose to go back to school or we could pull her out, and she said, “Please homeschool me.”

I never intended to be a teacher, but I’ll do anything for our babies and if it’s what P needs right now, I’m going to do it.

(We love Nicole the Math Lady! An amazing rec from Brittany.)

Also worth mentioning here that I decided to do a Food Sentivity Test (and some other functional labs) and got to the root cause of some gut issues, and her gluten sensitivity was severe. No wonder her stomach was hurting :/ Since she started the protocols and removed gluten, her stomach pain has greatly reduced.

Our plan now:

– She’s on the waitlist for Liv’s new school but realistically won’t be able to get in until 5th grade

– We’ll homeschool until then and if she decides to go back, that’s great, and if she doesn’t want to, that’s ok, too.

The funny thing is that I used to be really wary of homeschooling. Pre-kids thought to myself, “How on earth can a parent expect to teach their kids more effectively than a teacher?”

During the girls’ time in school, we’ve had some extraordinary teachers who are everything teachers should be. They love kids, love what they’re teaching, they are above and beyond. But at the same time, some teachers are…not good. They say bizarre things in class, shame children in front of their peers, and this happens in a private school environment ALL the time, when you are paying for your kid to be taught by instructors who don’t seem to like children at all. A vast majority of the time, we spent the three to four hour block each night teaching anyway, because they weren’t taught the content during their classes.

Growing up, I also thought that homeschooled kids were probably awkward because they don’t have as much social interaction. The reality is that all of the homeschooled kids I’ve met are kind, articulate, friendly, and incredibly smart.

Even though I’ve seen friends homeschool and kind of daydreamed about how how fun it would be, I didn’t consider it a possibility because I work from home, juggling client calls, content creation, podcast interviews, Zooms, IHP work, etc. I didn’t feel like I could add another things to my plate, but I didn’t even think twice about it when we got to this point. I’ve shuffled my schedule around a lot so that most of my content creation is done over the weekend, and the beauty about homeschool is that it only takes around two hours each day at this age.

This post is already super long, so I’ll share another post soon with the curriculum we’re using and how we structure our days.

Thank you for your kindness and being so amazing over the past few months. It’s been a rough year in many ways (this is just one of them) and being here with you all each day is a major bright spot. We finished our first full week of homeschool and I’m feeling pretty excited and hopeful about it! I’m also thankful that we get to spend some extra time together and are looking into all of the cool homeschool activities that Tucson offers!

xoxo

Gina