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[00:00:00] Amanda Capps: If you’re feeling like it’s you, you’re probably right. If you’re feeling like it’s something with your child, you’re probably right. If you’re feeling like it’s the curriculum, you’re probably right. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts.

[00:00:17] Gretchen Roe: Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe, and I’m delighted to welcome you today to this event. I am the now graduated homeschooling mother of six. They’re all grown. Most of them are flown. I’m looking forward to having this conversation with my dear friend and colleague, Amanda Capps. Amanda, I’m going to let you introduce yourself.

[00:00:39] Amanda: Hi. I am the current homeschool mother of eight children. I have graduated two of those eight. My 2 oldest are 22 and 18 and are grown. Only one is flown. Then I’ve got ages all the way down to four. I’m going to be homeschooling forever. I’ve been a grateful employee of Demme Learning and in some capacity supporting customers for the last 15 years. Yes. I’m a second-generation homeschooler, and everything about home education and education itself just has always just been near and dear to my heart. I’m very excited to join this conversation.

[00:01:24] Gretchen: Right. Actually, you’re responsible for this conversation because about three months ago, you emailed me after a conversation you had had with a customer online. Since then you’ve changed job positions. You’re now one of our placement consultants, but at the time you were a customer service representative. Tell us about that conversation.

[00:01:47] Amanda: There’s just a lot of times where a customer will reach out to us and express different concerns or struggles, and they’re really just trying to figure out, is it the child? Is it the curriculum? Where have the wheels come off? What’s going wrong and why? Sometimes that can be a challenging thing to diagnose and course correct. It can just be tough.

[00:02:16] Gretchen: Particularly if you’re new to this journey, it can be weird because you don’t– It’s very difficult to figure out where the lines are between one, the other, and the third. Today we really wanted to take some time to have a conversation about this because I think this is a really important conversation, and I know this time of year a lot of parents are really struggling with this issue. Amanda, can you talk a little bit about choosing the curriculum? Let’s start with that portion of the conversation because I think it’s always valuable for us to understand, have we chosen the right curriculum?

[00:02:59] Amanda: Absolutely. Even as a seasoned homeschool mom and a second generation homeschooler, sometimes this can be tough. There’s so many different options out there. Everybody is promoting their curriculum as the be all end all, and it’s going to just make your life easier and-

[00:03:19] Gretchen: As they should.

[00:03:20] Amanda: -and do your laundry and cook your meals. Just kidding. Just kidding. [laughs] We wish. We wish. We’re not there yet. The reality is God’s sense of humor in giving us very different and very unique children can then oftentimes translate into very different and very unique curriculums depending on what their needs are. I think the first questions that are really critical to ask yourself are, what are the things that I’m looking for as an instructor? Are there certain preconceived anxieties or excitements that I’m bringing to the subject that I’m trying to get a curriculum for?

Be that math, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, history, science, you name it. Then the next question definitely has to be, what does the child I’m teaching really need? What are they showing me as far as their strengths, their weaknesses, their struggles, their challenges? How do I best craft an experience that is going to set them up for success, but also maintain academic rigor, but also not drive us both crazy?

[00:04:48] Gretchen: Sometimes when we begin the homeschool journey, we begin in the middle of the year or we are intentional as your parents were, but we still inherit curriculum from someone else. Sometimes we’re not good students. I did say that because we want to jump right in and get started with the curriculum and we don’t take the time to educate ourselves about the materials we’re using. I am guilty of that. I did it myself and I know-

[00:05:23] Amanda: Same.

[00:05:23] Gretchen: -everyone can see themselves in me. I know you’ve done that because we’re in a hurry. We live in a very busy world. More information comes to us in a day than came to our parents in the whole of their lives. It can be overwhelming. Maybe the first thing we need to do is to take a notebook and instead of diagnosing, take a notebook and say, “Okay, these are the things I’m seeing.” I know you’ve done this. Walk us through that process.

[00:06:01] Amanda: That can look very individual based off of your student. Different students are going to have different needs. Different students are going to have subjects that they are naturally interested in and gravitate towards. That’s a good thing. Anytime you can get interest and attention span as a buy-in right off the bat, you’re probably going to be relatively successful no matter what you use. If there are anxieties, if there are low self-esteem or– Let’s face it. There are children who just don’t want to work hard. If it’s hard and they don’t know it just instantaneously because we live in a society where things are so instant now, because of technology, because of the access that we have–

[00:06:55] Gretchen: [crosstalk] We want to make sure though that we differentiate between something a child doesn’t want to do and the word lazy.

[00:07:04] Amanda: Oh, yes. Children are not lazy. No. They are always going to give their best effort, but there are definitely certain methods or certain methodologies that can rub the wrong way and just really drain that motivation or that focus ability in your kids. I have yet to meet a child that doesn’t want to be successful and that doesn’t want to please and perform. Just sometimes getting there, that curriculum or certain dynamics going on can be the roadblock.

[00:07:42] Gretchen: Absolutely. I know in my family, it was different roadblocks for different children. The solution wasn’t always the same. That can also be exhausting. When you’re a parent of multiple kids, you think, “Geez, I’ve got this not working here. I’ve got this not working here and that not working there. Which one do I sort first and where do I go?” My practical advice there is if you’ve got more than one child who’s struggling in different disciplines, start with ardent observation of the eldest child. We say this often at Demme Learning, Amanda. Why do we say that?

[00:08:21] Amanda: Because they’re the child you legitimately have the least amount of time left with. Time is essentially of the essence. It really is, and there’s no way around that. Little ones you’re going to have more time. You’re going to have the ability to try more things and start and stop a little bit more and it’s not going to have that negative impact. One of the things that we find a lot of times is parents who are waiting too long.

They’ve noticed a struggle. They’ve identified a problem. That child’s getting to be 13, 14 and 15 years old and we’re still stuck with multiplication facts. That’s starting to become a real emergent situation where we have to quickly get some patches in the skills and the foundation so that we can move into that higher level learning successfully.

[00:09:22] Gretchen: In speaking about the curriculum, what’s the first thing you do? I should say as an aside, most of the time when we have a struggle, we blame the curriculum, unless it’s math. Then we blame ourselves. When you’re evaluating that, sometimes it’s best not to say anything and just observe your student. Give me some questions for parents that they can ask because I think even a seven-year-old knows why they dislike doing something. What are some of the questions you have asked your children when you’ve gotten pushback?

[00:10:07] Amanda: Absolutely. If I have my eight-year-old melting down, a lot of times I’m going to say, “Hey, what’s going on in your body? Why are you feeling this way? Have we been sitting here too long?” First thing I’m going to look at is the clock. How long have we been sitting here? If it’s more than about 10 to 15 minutes max– I would say 15 is on the long end of what would be acceptable for a child that age, as far as attention span. Then, if there are any attention deficit issues, let’s try less than 10 minutes. Let’s try to even just make it to 10 minutes and consider it a success.

A lot of times, they might just be frustrated because it doesn’t make sense or they’re confused or their shirt is scratchy or their sock has a hole in it and they can feel it. Or they’re hungry. There can be so many extenuating factors with kids that sometimes it literally is just as simple as asking them, “Hey, what’s going on? What are you feeling? What’s irritating you and you’re not bringing your best self to this session?

[00:11:28] Gretchen: In evaluating children, we have to take in a couple of factors and you’ve named several. First of all, if a child has attention deficit, you’re going to have to shorten that interactive time. I’m also going to make the case that if your child has attention deficit disorder, it’s a higher priority for you to be there with them. Maybe you don’t even need to sit and talk to them, you just need to body-double them so that you’re in the room.

Sometimes that can be enough. I’m surprised I had a conversation at a conference this past weekend with a mom who said that she had a child who was struggling and I asked her some questions and she all of a sudden said, “Oh, my goodness, it just occurred to me. I give this particular task to the child and then I go off to help another child.”

[00:12:22] Amanda: Which can be very tempting when you have multiple children. You’re trying to divide and conquer and have enough of yourself to go around. There’s no judgment here. We’ve all been there. We’ve all had those days. Sometimes we just have a day where one particular child is just really dysregulated and they’re just having a bad day. Maybe that’s where we put the major academics on the shelf and we just let them listen to an audio book or we let them go cook something in the kitchen and be creative.

Maybe they need some big muscle movement to just get things regulated and back on track. Nature walks are a great way to recenter kids and to give everybody a little bit of a brain break, get out into some fresh air and some sunshine. That can turn anybody’s day around. Mom can suck down a cup of hot coffee. It can really change your world. [laughs]

[00:13:21] Gretchen: This is true. I also think, now it’s ever more important that parents communicate with each other, particularly if it’s a two-parent family, because more and more of us are sharing the educational experience. A husband teaches one curricula, a wife teaches another curricula. Sometimes dad is the primary educator. It’s really important to be– I think the most valuable phrase in that arrangement is to say to your spouse, “What did you hear me say in what I’ve asked you to do?” I guessed a couple of weeks ago said something that was wildly valuable to me and I’d never thought about it this way.

She said, “When you have a child who has a struggle with a parent who is teaching a particular curriculum, you also have to ascertain, is it how the parent is teaching or is the parent trying to adhere to what you’ve asked the parent to do instead of doing it the way they’re comfortable?” I never thought of that before. I actually apologized to my husband over dinner that night because I said, “It never occurred to me.” He said, “If you hadn’t told me how you wanted me to do it, I wouldn’t have been able to creatively figure that out”. In that context, it’s a yes and. You need to have that conversation with whoever the instructing spouse is so you can figure out whether it’s you or not.

[00:15:06] Amanda: Sometimes that’s a grandparent. That’s one thing we hear in customer service quite a lot is we have a grandparent phoning in either a grandpa or a grandmother and they’re helping out with this educational journey because maybe they homeschooled the parents, but due to whatever circumstances parents are having to work and a lot of two-parent homes are having to have both parents in the workforce and providing.

Yet they still want to cultivate that home education experience. They still want their children to be educated in a home environment. Grandparents are stepping in or tutors are stepping in. Again, your child’s experience is only going to be as good as your involvement in the process and you asking those questions and you being aware of what the instructors who are working with your children are seeing, observing and experiencing.

[00:16:03] Gretchen: Sometimes it’s also personality. Sometimes the parent who is the primary instructor just is so much like their child that just to have somebody to come in for a couple of days to offer a reset. I also want to say one of the most valuable things I did, I had a child with whom I was having quite a conflict over a particular curriculum and I knew it wasn’t the curriculum because earlier in the year we had enjoyed it. We just hit that wall. I ask a friend to come. She was also a home educator using the same curriculum. I asked her to come and use that curriculum with my child for two days.

Then I observed. It was surprising. We were doing it at the wrong time of the day. That child was toast. Earlier in the year, it had worked fine but we had allowed that child some creativity and she was tucking some things in academically earlier, so by the time she got to that discipline, she was at the end of her rope. I wasn’t seeing it because I didn’t think about it that way.

[00:17:23] Amanda: Absolutely. No, that’s incredibly valuable. That’s a point that I think is really important to make. Your child’s needs and energy levels and the amount of sleep that they’re getting, like that changes. It’s funny that you said that because my son Cooper who will be turning 14 in May, he’s always been my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed early in the morning. He likes to get up when it’s still quiet and suddenly-

[00:17:50] Gretchen: Oh, oh. I think I know what you’re about to say. [laughs]

[00:17:53] Amanda: -that is shifting and he’s struggling to get out of bed and he likes to sleep in a little bit more. Whereas his sister Eva has been that way from about 10, 11. She’s just never really been a morning person kid. That is just not in her wiring. She is awake, but probably not what I would consider functional for about an hour to an hour and a half after she wakes up. I also had a friend and fellow homeschooler. She’s actually my sister-in-law. She cornered me the other day when we were visiting and she said, “I heard this thing. It said that the firstborn daughter is the father in female form and the firstborn son is the mother in male form. Have you seen that in your kids and in your experience?”

I was like, “Absolutely.” [laughs] I can definitely see how people could make that assumption. Sometimes, yes, the child that is the most closely resembling you and your personality is the one you’re going to butt heads with the most just because you’re wired similarly. Sometimes that means you get along better. It really just depends on the kid.

[00:19:08] Gretchen: I saw that same thing. In my household, it’s the opposite. My firstborn son is me and our firstborn daughter is my husband, which is really funny. If you know your own personality, it’s easier. One of the most heinous things I did to my children is I’m an early riser and I’m ready to go. As soon as my eyes open, I can be ready to go. That’s not the man I’ve married. He wants two cups of coffee and absolute silence for the first hour of his morning. He doesn’t even want me to flip the light on when I wake up because he wakes up slowly.

It was difficult for me to recognize that half of my children, actually four out of six of my children were him and only two of them were like me, who were early risers and on it. If we know ourselves, then it’s easier to see what’s reflected in our children. I think it wasn’t until I got my third teenager that I went, “Oh, maybe there’s a difference here.”

[00:20:22] Amanda: Let’s just talk about the uncomfortable elephant in the room, puberty. I personally would love to have words with the person who decided we needed to throw the alphabet into math. During the same time, our kids’ brains check out and their bodies are changing rapidly. This is the worst idea ever, and I have faced this multiple times with kiddos. Another thing too, I had a daughter who sustained a concussion in sports, and she lost a year of math. We had to repeat pre-algebra, even though we’d already completed it once because of a sustained injury. Things like this are happening in your child’s life. They’re things you don’t have any control over, but yet you have to adjust anyway.

[00:21:12] Gretchen: Right. You said something really important, lost. Very often when we come into the homeschool journey, when our children have stepped out of school, when we’ve pulled them out of school, it’s very easy for us to think they’re behind, I need to catch them up. It’s easy to use that word. When I say in front of my child, “This is Owen and he’s behind,” Owen doesn’t hear, “I just have some things that I need to catch up on.” Owen hears, “There’s something wrong with me.” We need to be very attentive to how we speak in front of our children.

[00:21:56] Amanda: Absolutely, because those words and those tapes become their inner voice.

[00:22:02] Gretchen: We’ve talked about several things that we thought of in advance. Now I want to make an observation based on something else that this parent said a couple three weeks ago. I think this webinar was so valuable. I will include it in the show notes. It was a conversation with a full-time working mom. She added lots of information that heretofore I hadn’t thought about. Instead of going all the way through a year, she re-evaluates her curriculum every 11 weeks to see what’s happening.

She actually sits down with her two sons and asks them how it’s going and then they make adjustments based on that conversation. I asked her, “You really follow their lead?” She said, “No.” She said it’s student-informed and parent-directed. Sometimes you have to be the bad guy and say, “I know you don’t like this, but you have to do it anyway.” Sometimes there are adjustments that you can make.

[00:23:13] Amanda: Absolutely. That actually happened with me and my oldest. My mom chose to put me through Apologia High School Science. Science was not my natural gifting or strength. I managed through.

[00:23:30] Gretchen: Not the first book you pulled off the shelf every day, right?

[00:23:33] Amanda: Yes. No, it was not something that I would say I enjoyed, or because of the rigorousness of it that I retained as much as my parents were probably hoping that I would. My mom had the books and it just made sense to go ahead and start my oldest daughter on that when she was ready for biology.

[00:24:00] Gretchen: Just forgot that you didn’t like it, huh? [laughs]

[00:24:03] Amanda: Right. Praise the Lord. She had the gumption to say– About three weeks in, she was just like, “Mom, it’s so overwhelming. I am so overwhelmed by the amount of notes and the vocab.” She was very specific about what she was struggling with. She was able to articulate and tell me, “This is what’s happening, this is how I’m feeling.” Again, this was not very long after having that whole concussion situation. I was like, “Yes, we need to look at something else.”

We went with a much more overview-type science curriculum that just was like, “We’re getting the information in there, the pertinent information we need to know.” We’re not doing this crazy deep dive because she’s not going to be a marine biologist. She’s not going to go to college for biology. It’s not in the cards for her.

[00:25:00] Gretchen: One of the things I think that we laugh about now that all my children are adults is I had a particular earth science curriculum that I absolutely loved, as did four of my children. It was funny to see when the child who really didn’t love it got into that curriculum because unfortunately, she had three older siblings and yours truly fussing at her. I look back on that now and I think one of the things we also need to do is we need to be very careful to draw lines that our children can come to us, but I don’t want my children to be criticizing each other for their performances because I want my children to grow up to be friends as adults.

That makes a terrific way to think of how are you– If you’re having a conniption fit in front of a child, it happens. We’re all human. You have to keep those accounts short. I know you as a parent, because you’ve got multiple kids at the table or in the process at the same time, I know you’ve had to think about strategizing who moves where and who works well together and who does not. In this sense, it’s the kid, but maybe it’s not the kid in the curriculum, it’s the kid you’ve chosen to help them. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:26:40] Amanda: Absolutely. My firstborn son, but fourth child, my youngest daughter, but fifth child, those two are like fireworks. You put them in the same room, somebody is going to be fighting or crying within 30 seconds.

[00:27:01] Gretchen: It just doesn’t work?

[00:27:02] Amanda: No. No, they just are not compatible. Yet that daughter has definitely got some attention challenges. Very bright, very precocious. Now my oldest daughter, who has the patience of Job, nothing ruffles her. We have found that she’s just in her bedroom. She’s set up a little table for Ellen and all she does is body double. She’s not really necessarily engaging and not able to do what she wants to do, but she’s just there. She’s just a physical presence. It’s a quieter environment and this has just been hugely successful for Ellen.

We tried this with me, with my office, and it was just a little bit too chaotic and a little bit too noisy for Ellen to really feel comfortable body-doubling with me. We had to change. We had to give that idea up and try something else. We kept trying things until we found something that was successful. Sometimes that’s it, a different room, a different chair, a different– You never know what that one little thing or multiple things that are adding up that are leading to the meltdown can be from.

[00:28:30] Gretchen: Now we want to circle back to something you said. Are you comfortable with and aware of all the available tools and resources for the curriculum you have chosen? You want to elaborate on that a little bit?

[00:28:45] Amanda: Yes, because that’s what a lot of our customer service calls are about. [laughs] Sometimes a customer will call in and they’ve got various asundry materials and they’re trying to figure out, where are the solutions? Where do I find the instructional videos? What resources do I have for extra practice sheets? What other tools are available? Yet we have all of these great resources. Taking the time to be well familiarized with all of the resources and the tools at your disposal so that when you’re sitting down, you can be involved and connected and ready to go and have everything that you need to be successful, is huge.

It also teaches your children to do the same thing. They’re going to model what they see. If you’re flying by the seat of your pants and you didn’t really do your homework or you didn’t look ahead a little bit, that’s going to be apparent to them too. They may try to pull that same stuff with you and then you’ll be frustrated with them and they’re like, “Wait, why are you frustrated with me? You’re doing the same thing.” I’ve definitely felt that. We did a webinar on perfectionism. I think a lot of times that anxiety piece can be tied to that performance piece and that perfectionism and like the child is holding themselves to an impossibly high standard that the parent hasn’t even asked of them.

It’s just in their DNA. It’s in their wiring, as a firstborn daughter, can I just say constant from literally– I cannot remember a time where I wasn’t striving for perfection or dealing with anxiety. Knowing that about myself changes how I approach things and the things that I put on myself so that I don’t set myself up for feeling that anxiety and that failure and just, “I’m overwhelmed and I can’t do it if I can’t do it perfectly.”

[00:30:48] Gretchen: [crosstalk] You said something very interesting, which I think is important for us to revisit and that is, if you are prepared, you’re more likely to have a successful experience than if you’re flying by the seat of your pants. If you have the personality that most of the time you fly by the seat of your pants, I know those people very well, a little bit of proactive planning can sometimes alleviate some of these things that you’re seeing happening.

Just like they say on a plane, put the oxygen mask on yourself before you help a child. The first place to begin perhaps is a little bit of diagnostics of how did we get here? Because sometimes, unfortunately, we’re the cause of how we got there. In this last couple of minutes, what are the closing thoughts you have for our listeners today?

[00:31:51] Amanda: If you’re feeling like it’s you, you’re probably right. If you’re feeling like it’s something with your child, you’re probably right. If you’re feeling like it’s the curriculum, you’re probably right. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. As a placement specialist, my job is to ask really in-depth questions and really try to get to know your situation and your kid so that I can help you place a child properly. That only works as well as you know your child and you are able to articulate and tell me what your experience is. I think it really starts there.

No one is going to know your kid, no one is going to have the insights, and the clues that you do because you grew them, you had them, you’re growing them, you’re growing right alongside of them. Embrace the beauty of that, embrace the journey. Trials are short-lived. Challenges are short-lived. Usually, there’s a solution. Don’t hesitate to reach out. Sometimes I think the biggest struggle is we just sit in isolation. We sit or we Google it and there’s no real feedback. There’s no real dialogue happening. We’re here on the phones. We’re here in live chat. You can text our 800 number. I get it.

[00:33:21] Gretchen: Sometimes in email. Yes.

[00:33:23] Amanda: Yes. Send an email. Sometimes the background is– Everybody’s going insane and having a phone conversation isn’t doable, but there are ways to get the support that you need. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

[00:33:35] Gretchen: Yes. I think that is probably one of the most wildly important things. I want to say this in closing. Sometimes when you have this kind of a struggle, when you share it with your spouse, particularly if you’re the mom who is home-educating, husbands are by their very nature created to fix things. I don’t always want a fix. I just want to be heard. I’ve been married now for almost 44 years and it took me probably 39 years to teach my husband to ask the question, “Do you want a solution here or is my role just to listen?”

Sometimes the best thing to do is to find a friend who may be taking the journey in the same capacity that you are and as I did when I was trying to figure out why that curriculum wasn’t working for that one kid. Reach out and seek some help. Get your tribe together to help you figure out what’s going on. Amanda, I know you have a tribe. Maybe there’s a parent who just heard me say that and doesn’t understand what that looks like. Can you elaborate a little bit?

[00:35:01] Amanda: Oh, gosh. Yes. No, you’re homeschool mom tribe– It’s interesting because I have friends who have made the decision to put– They homeschooled for a certain number of years and they have put kids into private education or into public school. Those friends aren’t any– Their insights and their advice isn’t any less valuable. The people that you spend time around and that spend time around your kids are going to pick up on things. They’re going to have feedback. They’re going to see things where maybe you have blinders.

If you have a good friendship, if you are teachable, which is one of the things that I tell my kids all the time, I’m like, “Be on time, be teachable, stay off your cell phone,” you’re above 90% of the population already right there. Same deal with your friends. If you are able to receive feedback, because that is not always something that comes naturally to people, especially when it comes to their kids, so just be aware if you ruffle or get nervous about that type of an exchange, then you’re probably not talking to the right person.

If you are and you can receive that feedback, oh my goodness, the wealth of information and just the support. Sometimes they’re just going to say, “I’m sorry. I know this is hard, but I’m here for you.” That is invaluable.

[00:36:27] Gretchen: The other thing I think in closing that’s important is to recognize that dynamics are changing. We have more fathers than ever who are the primary educator for their children. They need to find a group to support them as well. That might be a little bit more difficult. It’s more difficult when you’re a man to go outside yourself and ask for help. It’s every bit as vital as it is if you’re a mom.

I want to thank you all for joining us this afternoon. It’s been our pleasure to come into your living room. I know I always look forward to an opportunity to collaborate with Amanda. We wish you the joy of the journey. The days might be long, but the years will pass very swiftly. Thank you all for joining us today. We’ll look forward to coming into your living rooms again next week. Take care, everybody.

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