5 Lessons Learned from the First Day of Homeschooling

8 years into homeschooling, and there's still plenty to learn

It’s not my birthday, but I sure do love my students, and I do really love teaching, although sometimes I forget it! And the teacher’s expression here reminds me of what a joy it is to teach my children. Also, I wish it were my birthday, because I really like getting presents and I also enjoy cake. Source.

Dear friends,

Some days you have to make yourself laugh, or you’ll start to cry. Some days you just let it go and you do both. Yesterday was such a day, filled with so many good school things that they swelled up so big that they crowded any other good things out. At the end of the day I could only pray, “Lord, come find me where I am lost.”

That is to say: it was the first day of the homeschool year. Our eighth homeschool year, this time encompassing four kids in grades K-9.

Here are five lessons (some of them reminders which I had forgotten since last May) that I learned yesterday:

1. Don’t have all the kids do their math at the same time.

   Math is our most mom-intensive subject. Everyone needs Mom at some point during their math lesson, and the younger two need Mom almost nonstop. Starting today, I will stagger their math throughout the morning, like a wise veteran smart homeschooling parent, not the nincompoop I was yesterday.

2. Buy more prepared snacks.

   Yes, I had become complacent about snacks, giving them (or letting them prepare) cheese and crackers, yogurt and fruit, bagels and cream cheese, and other snacks that require some preparation throughout the summer. I don’t have time for that during the school year! So yesterday aftenoon I wrote in big letters on the grocery list, “BUY PACKAGED SNAX AT COSTCO,” preferably ones with high protein (thanks for the advice,

   Ivana Greco
   !). Apparently I don’t even have time to spell “snacks” correctly. Yes, I am a Harried Intellectual Parent!

3. Take your darn contacts out and lie down with your eyes closed for a bit.

   Am I the only one with this dilemma — that I can’t close my eyes for more than a blink without my contacts getting all messed up and needing to be rinsed? This keeps me from catching even ten minutes of actual rest in the middle of the day. Well, NO MORE. I will just take the darn things out and lie down for ten minutes after lunch. Or twenty. Or thirty. Why do people always act like ten minutes of rest is enough for a busy homemaking-homeschooling-work-from-home parent? It is not. Take that, you chipper internet self-care articles saying “just give yourself ten minutes with a cup of tea¹ and all will become roses and butterflies around you for the rest of the day!”

4. Nip schoolchild complaints in the bud. NO COMPLAINING.

   Complaints will drain you even faster than I drained my margarita at girls’ night last weekend, and perhaps even faster than I ate the guacamole that we got with the chips! ‘Nuff said. (For tips on effectively addressing bad habits of complaining and whining, read

   Leila Marie Lawler
   ‘s treasure trove of related strategies at her off-Substack blog, including her recent post on minimizing hollering.)

5. Remember that God opens doors in all sorts of walls if you ask Him for help.

   How will I get anything else done, now that we’re moving into high school homeschool and our schoolwork takes more hours per day? How will I write? How will I recreate? How will I cook dinner? (The crock pot chicken yesterday didn’t cook through for some reason and I had to make last-minute scrambled eggs — and then go calm down while everyone else ate.) How will I think more than two words in a row before someone interrupts me?

   Well, apparently I wrote 40 published essays plus numerous Substack posts plus helped edit a magazine plus wrote a book proposal with a toddler jumping on my back during the last year, when I also homeschooled, and so perhaps we can have confidence that God does provide ways to do things to which he calls us, whether it’s homeschooling or cooking dinner or writing and editing. I don’t know how it happens, but it does.

Also, I remembered yesterday that I love teaching my children! There were many delights in the day: one child picking up his reading magnificently — another taking tremendous delight in a new scissors activity — yet another doing excellent math work — and still another excitedly reading out passages to me from a translator’s introduction the Iliad. And the feeling, at the end of the day, that I am doing good work, even if it is daunting on the first day. This is good, and so I can trust in God’s stewardship of my own self within it.

So in conclusion, if you pray for me, I’ll pray for you, and gradually we will see the fruits of our labors and our trust become more and more visible! As John Henry Newman wrote, “Keep Thou my feet/I do not ask to see/The distant scene/One step enough for me.”

There’s no easy path for a caring parent, but there are many good and sanctifying ones (whether they include homeschooling or not)! We just have to keep at it, doing our best to discern well (if you need help with this, the work of my friend

Kerri Christopher

is amazingly helpful!), to meet competing needs, to do our duty, and to trust and allow God open doors and push us through them (as the very wise

Nadya Williams

advises).

In terms of any help I have to offer, well, let’s talk about it in the comments! And you can read pretty much everything I’ve written (other than my hopefully-will-be-a-book!) on homeschooling through the posts listed here.

Onward! We can do it! If you need me, I’ll be in the snacks aisle at Costco!

And also, do tell us: What have you learned over time about keeping yourself going, cared for, and cheerful in the work of parenthood (and/or homeschooling)?

Yours,

Dixie

1. Also, sorry, no, I need coffee, not tea. Although I’ll take the tea if it comes with tea cake!