It’s that time of year again, where homeschool moms and teachers alike start to feel that weariness of the school year. Homeschool burnout isn’t a new thing – in fact it isn’t even unique to homeschoolers. I have friends who are public school teachers who experience burnout about February/March each year too.

My biggest tip for overcoming homeschool burnout is to give yourself permission to take a break, or change things up – like taking the day off to celebrate Robinson crusoe day   .  Take a ‘unschooling” day or a field trip. Try a new project. Curl up together and watch movies (yes they count as schoolwork too!) or listen to a free audio book from Librivox.org or the library. Or my favorite, play in the garden, or head to the park for the day.

Learning will take place. Taking time off from the schedule or plan will not set your child back – in fact it probably will help you all focus more. As homeschoolers we have that flexibility. There is no reason why things “HAVE” to be done on  a certain timeline. It will get done – learning will happen. I promise.

The key to overcoming homeschool burnout is to let go a little. Recharge, Get re-filled. Spend sometime  in God’s world and in God’s Word. And know that through Him, by trusting in Him, it is possible to overcome the dullrums and weariness that cause homeschool burnout, and that your children are wonderful, creations of His, fully capable of learning.

Here a few more resources/articles that we’ve shared on Living Life at Home in the past, that are still relevant. I hope you find more encouragement and ideas for overcoming homeschool burnout here:

• Overcoming Homeschool Burnout – Part 1 - More of my thoughts on overcoming homeschool burnout and how I plan for the inevitable February burnout period.

• 26 Tips for Overcoming Homeschool Burnout - Karri Feiglein – a homeschooling mom of 6- shares her 26 tips on how she overcomes homeschool burnout

• 7 Tips for Overcoming Homeschool Mommy Burnout - Lorry Nell, a homeschooling mom of 4 – and former public school teacher – shares her tips for overcoming burnout.

• Homeschool Mom Encouragement from Karri - Karri Feiglin shares more of her great insights for those times we become discouraged as homeschooling moms, and for when homeschooling and parenting seems so hard.

• Joy in the Journey - Homeschooling, work-at-home mom Kimberly Eddy shares her thoughts on finding joy in the journey of life and all the roles and challenges we face

• 59 Ideas for Taking Care of You - Vetern Homeschooling mom, Cindy Rushton, of Rushton Family Minstries, shares her 59 tips for taking care of you.  My favorite tip: “Go Fly a Kite!”

• Take Homeschooling Outside with Spring Science Notebooks - Here’s a fun thing to do when the kids don’t want to be indoors anymore – take learning outside with notebooking – another great article from homeschooling vetern, Cindy Rushton.

 Enjoy!

…Shannon

Heart Disease – Heart healthy – you may hear these terms and think of them for others, maybe even your husband. I know I do. But do you ever stop and think about how they relate to you?

Are you taking care of your heart?

February is American Heart Month, and that relates to us women as well, especially those of us who tend to put aside our own health needs while we are taking care of our families and our work.

 Heart Disease is the biggest cause of death in women in the United States – bigger than even breast cancer.

I’ve written before on the importance of taking care of you, and how not taking care of my own health while balancing work and family has caused problems. But are you taking it to heart?

In Dec of 2008, a dear friend, a fellow homeschooling, work-at-home mom, had a heart attack. Ever since, she’s struggled to regain her health and her life.

She’s spent more time in hospitals than at home, her young daughter (who is a year old than Little E) has stopped homeschooling and is going to a public charter school and she’s been bounced around between home, friends, and family while her mom works hard at becoming healthy again.

Heart disease in women is very real. Are you taking care of your heart?  What would happen to your family if you had a heart attack?  Sometimes waiting to take care of your heart until you are in my friend’s condition is just too late.

This month, I encourage you to take some time and evaluate your own heart health. I’ll be sharing some free heart-healthy cookbooks throughout the month.  But to get you started, here’s two free resources to learn more about heart disease in Women and help you evaluate your risks.

The Heart Truth for Women: An Action Plan – a 4 page e-pamphlet from the National Institute of Health that covers:

• What is Heart Disease
• What factors increase your risk of heart disease 
• What steps you can take to prevent heart disease
• Additional resources for overcoming the risk factors

 The Healthy Heart Handbook for Women – a 127 page ebook from the National Institute for Health that covers:

• What is Heart Disease
• How Heart Disease impacts Women specifically
• What Are the Risks of Heart Disease
• How other factors, like birth control pills and menopausal hormone therapy, impacts your heart health
• How to evaluate your own risk for heart disease
• How to prevent heart disease
• How to get help if you think you concerned about your heart

Please remember, it’s not selfish to take care of you. Doing so helps your family in the long run.

Because I care about you…

…Shannon

Earlier this month I shared why I don’t set New Years Resolutions, and how valuable it can be to look back over the previous year during the goal setting process. Today I’d like to encourage you to take a look at your goals for this year and ask yourself two questions:

- Why? 

and

-What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?

Last year, my private goal  – the one I accomplished – was centered around my relationship with my husband and my relationship with my kids. I needed to strengthen my family relationships.

If I didn’t, my family would suffer. My marriage would crumble, and that was unacceptable to me.

My kids, specificially Z, J, and K are getting older, they aren’t little kids anymore. And I needed to strengthen our relationship as we move into the older tween and teen years. I was unwilling to risk “losing” my children because they had moved on, but our relationship hadn’t.

That was my why. That is why my other three big goals did not get accomplished, because the “why” I had for them was not as large and as important to me as this one goal’s “why”.

So, when you look at your goals for this year, for this month, or even this day, ask your self “Why” and “What will happen if I don’t accomplish this goal?”

Write down in positive terms how your life will be different when you accomplish your goal. Hold it in your mind. Re-read it periodically.  Filter your decisions through it.

Whatever you focus on, grows. So focus on the positive,  focus on what you can accomplish, and do it.

I believe in you.

…Shannon

Now that the hype of New Year’s is over and the kids are back to their activities and schoolwork, let’s take another look at goal setting and more specifically the goal setting process.

Goals are different than new year’s resolutions. Goals are concrete, measureable, realistic, and if done properly come with a plan of action. Goals create visual and mental targets to hit. It’s hard to get somewhere if you don’t have a destination clearly in mind. Goals provide that destination, while your plan of action gives you the map to get there.

One of the first steps in my goal setting process, whether I’m setting personal or professional goals for myself or educational goals for the kids, is to take a look at the previous year. 

I’m not one to dwell a lot on what’s happened in the past. It’s not productive towards moving forward. I learn from it, make adjustments, and draw a line in the sand and move on.  But once a year, I look back on the previous year with three objectives in mind:

• to evaluate where I’m at on my long term vision and goals
• to determine what progress I did make and celebrate it
• to identify one thing that needs to change the most going into the next year.

Beating ourselves up over missed goals is not productive. Just because we missed our timeline doesn’t mean we missed our goal, we can take a look at the progress we made and see how very far we’ve come and how much closer we are to the goal than we were a year ago, and we can celebrate that.

For example, last year I publically shared three BIG goals that I had for the year: debt free, fit & healthy, and an income goal for my business. None of those goals were fully reached; they are still in progress.

But when I look back, I see the thousands and thousands of dollars in debt that we paid off, bringing us closer to debt free.  While I strugged with new health challenges this year, I made significant progress towards my goal of being a fit & healthy mommy. Health has to come from inside, before it can be reflected outwardly.

Professionally, the income goal wasn’t hit, and yet the foundation was laid. I made major changes in my business last year and crossed off most of my action plan for the year. When I mapped out what my business currently looks like and what assets I have in place through steady progress last year, I find myself  in a much stronger position to make that income goal a reality.

Now it would be easy to look at these three big goals and say, “didn’t make it, so I’m not going to.” and give up. But that would be a waste of all that progress. AND… it’s not the full picture.

Because I had one thing, one goal last year that was the most important. I kept it private, but filtered ALL my decisions about how I was going to spend my time and place my focus through it.  It was about relationships – specifically my marriage and my relationships with my children.

To me, it doesn’t matter if I hit the other goals if my marriage suffers or my relationship with my kids suffers. Dont’ get me wrong, I have put work and income before them before and the price was WAYYYY too high. This last year I wanted to continue to repair and strengthen my relationship with my husband and invest into that relationship, and I wanted the kids to know that they were just as, or even more important than the other things going on in my life.

And in that area, I totally succeeded. Goal was reached. And that is the best success of all.

By taking a look at progress made during the year, I can now set forth goals for the coming year, and identify the one thing that I need to focus on to balance out my energy and focus for the coming year.

If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to take a look at all you accomplished last year. Yeah, stuff happened, but you made progress. Identify it, Celebrate it, …. and let go of what didn’t happen. Let’s focus on what did, and what’s coming in the next year

I believe in you!

…Shannon

P.S. this works wonderfully for setting educational goals for the kids too. 

A new year. A fresh start. And all over the globe people are making new year’s resolutions. Full of hope and promise, millions will spouting about what they want to do in the coming year: quit smoking, lose weight, write a book, start a business. Whatever it might be, new year’s resolutions are set with the best of intentions, and I commend that. But I won’t be joining in.

Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely things that I want to accomplish in the coming year. And last year, I set forth the year with my own list of things to accomplish. But they aren’t New Year’s Resolutions. They are part of a bigger plan – my personal vision for  success – and part of a specific strategy and set of goals I’d like to accomplish.

You see, New Years Resolutions are all well and good, and are usually set with the utmost intention to meet them. But yet, in 6 weeks most people will give up and say they tried and that’s it, maybe next year. And in 4 months, the vast majority of people have abandoned their resolution.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I want, for me, for my family, and for my friends, clients, and readers. Each year I want to make progress towards becoming better, towards becoming the person that God has laid on my heart to become. And I wish that for you too.

This year, instead of making a new year’s resolution, map out who, in your heart, you want to be in the key areas of your life. And then pick one thing to work on – just one – that is your most important focus for the year. Then figure out what you need to do to improve in that one area, map it out.

And don’t give up. Success isn’t about perfection, arriving, or getting it right all the time, it’s about moving forward and growing into who you are meant to be, in whatever way that means for you.

Just remember, you matter – and you matter to more people than you realize. This can be your best year ever. Cast your vision of success and work towards it. Believe in yourself, the dream in your heart, and have faith. You can accomplish amazing things with God’s help and the willingness to keep moving forward.

I believe in you.

…Shannon