[00:00:00] Laurie Wardle: What makes those hard days feel so heavy is our own unmet expectations. We had a picture in our minds of how the day should go, of how our child should respond, and when that reality doesn’t match that expectation in our heads, it can feel discouraging, and really, even more than that, it can feel personal.

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[00:00:30] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe, and it is my great pleasure to welcome my dear colleague and friend, Laurie Wardle, to talk to you today about resetting the homeschool brain. The title of our conversation is The Homeschool Brain Reset: Turning Resistance into Readiness. Laurie is so eloquent at how she talks about this. You will be encouraged, and I’m going to let Laurie take it from here.

[00:01:00] Laurie: Hi, guys. Let me give you a little bit of background. I started homeschooling back in the ’90s, and I’ve been talking about emotional regulation since that time. Last year, I had the privilege of teaching one of my grandsons, and at that time, he was eight and was struggling. I went into the year thinking that there were a few learning challenges, and it turns out he’s just really extremely introverted and needed some help in regulating his emotions. Once I started planning the year, I incorporated a few therapies, so he would have tools in his toolbox.

These therapies related to some proprioception, and that’s just basically how your body is feeling in space. We did emotional regulation. My daughter has done a really good job using the Stoplight Approach, where it’s just the colors of the traffic lights. Green would be calm and regulated. Yellow would be frustrated and anxious, and red would be overwhelmed and angry. We already had some vocabulary going into this, which I feel like is a big strategy of establishing regulation.

Again, for decades, I have said educators do a great job focusing on academics and physical well-being like eating right, exercising, but we don’t often focus long enough, hard enough, or sometimes even at all on emotional hygiene. With my little guy, I found a book. I used the Self-Regulation book for kids, and it was for ages 8 through 11. I think the author’s name is Gina Berman. I’m pretty sure. It’s just a really good little handy workbook that is a launching pad.

This was different than what I’d used with my own, but similar information and had a lot of really good emotional exercises. It took a few months to get his nervous system regulated, but once we did, it just opened up the world of learning, and we ended the year with a very well-regulated, eager-to-learn little guy. I just think that’s where my heart truly lies, just helping parents and children learn how to understand, how to express, and care for their emotions because of how directly tied it is to our lives and our learning.

[00:03:35] Gretchen: Absolutely. I had the privilege of interviewing a guest about a month ago. Her name is Jess Alfreds, and she runs something called the Carolina Kids Co-op. They have over 200 kids in their co-op. It’s a completely outdoor co-op, but the way they set up all of their academics is the first thing they teach is the emotional skillset. She said the academics fall so seamlessly behind that if the emotions are regulated.

This is what we’re going to talk about today because I think there’s not enough time to talk about this. We should be talking about this with some degree of constancy, mainly, I think, because we live in a world that there’s so much more coming after us and at us than came to you and I, Laurie, when we were kids. The first question, Laurie, I want you to answer is, why does homeschooling feel so much harder than we expected? I know at every point for every homeschooling parent, sometimes this question comes up.

[00:04:37] Laurie: I think, Gretchen, you and I have talked about this a lot. Sometimes I think it is what makes those hard days feel so heavy is our own unmet expectations. We had a picture in our minds of how the day should go, of how our child should respond. When that reality doesn’t match that expectation in our heads, it can feel discouraging. Really, even more than that, it can feel personal, like there’s a personal front to what’s happening to me.

That gap between the expectation, that expectation of your student is going to be collaborative and have a zest for learning. Sure, those days do happen, but then there are those other days, the ones that tears and pushback are just absolute, total shutdown. That reality, those less-than-perfect days, it actually can put pressure on you and your child. Those emotions and even the brain chemistry that we’re going to talk about later on today, they play a huge role in how learning actually happens on the day-to-day.

One way I like to describe this, first of all, is nobody does this perfect. I didn’t do it perfect. My husband didn’t do it perfect. When you hear these things today, I really want you to really think about this as these are tools in your toolbox that you can go to, not perfection. The first caveat I would share with you is homeschooling isn’t just about academics. It happens in a relationship, and that relationship is in the sphere and the culture of your family. The most important thing is the relationship, not the lesson.

The second thing that I think we’re going to keep at the top of our brains is resistance it’s not necessarily defiance or a sign that you’re failing as a homeschooling parent. A lot of times, it’s just actually a sign that your child feels safe, safe enough to let their guard down and show when they’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed. It’s in this homeschool environment that they can practice having emotional, healthy responses to the stress that they’re feeling, whether that stress is internal between their own two ears or whether it’s actually external.

[00:07:14] Gretchen: Laurie, I love that you say that because I think so often the first thing we interpret, and maybe this comes a little bit from how we’re raised in the church, the interpretation is resistance is some sort of defiance that we as the parents need to straighten out. That’s not what’s happening. I love how you framed this, that it is actually a sign that you’re doing something right.

[00:07:45] Laurie: Exactly.

[00:07:47] Gretchen: That’s amazing. Can you tell me, then, a little bit? You had said, I don’t know how deeply I want to go into the chemical elements of this, but I told you I wanted you to. Can you talk a little bit about cortisol and why it matters?

[00:08:02] Laurie: Sure. Cortisol is basically the brain’s go-to stress signal. When the brain senses some kind of threat or loss of control, it releases cortisol to help the body respond. In homeschooling, we think of that as, oh, that we’re in real danger, like a bear is chasing us. It looks different in the homeschooling arena. For kids, and honestly, for me as an adult too, it can feel like feelings of being overwhelmed, not understanding what’s going on, worrying about disappointing someone, or being stuck in something. For instance, stuck, let’s say, in a math problem or a math concept, that feels like it’s never going to end, and I’m not going to get it. Your amygdala takes over and cortisol levels arise and it shows up as behavior.

[00:09:06] Gretchen: Our cortisol levels are naturally higher in the morning when we wake up. The idea is that they gradually decline as the day goes on so that we can sleep successfully. When we have stress or anxiety or conflict, and we keep spiking those cortisol levels back up, we’re creating the very thing we don’t want to happen. You put this so well, but I’m going to ask the question the way you wrote it, which was, why do kids argue or avoid work or just shut down?

[00:09:42] Laurie: When that amygdala takes over, we’re all familiar with that fight, flight, or freeze. Again, the bear isn’t chasing us, but there is some sort of stress that’s happening to our bodies at the time. It looks like this. A fight in a homeschool situation or even in a classroom situation would look like arguing, defiance, or refusal to do some work. Flight would be avoiding, distracting, taking constant breaks, and freeze tears, shut down. I don’t care.

This isn’t going to matter to me later. I don’t care. That is still all a part of that amygdala taking over your prefrontal cortex where learning is happening. It literally physiologically shuts learning down. I would like to think of it this way. For parents, it’s a shift in your mindset. Your child isn’t being defiant on purpose. The behavior is the message from the brain. Our goal as parents and teachers is to become really adept at interpreting that behavior of our students.

[00:11:01] Gretchen: I really wish I had had this information. I think you and I had this piece of the conversation before we actually turned the recording on. I wish I had known this because I laughingly say I gave birth to six firstborn children. The truth is, when their thinking brain goes offline, we can’t push them back into what we want them to do. What happens next? [laughs] What do we do?

[00:11:30] Laurie: It’s not that I didn’t try at times to push me.

[00:11:34] Gretchen: I imagine, Laurie, though, that you were a very gentle encourager to, “Now, I’m a good chairman. I’m an only child. You’re going to do it because I said so.” There was friction there that was probably born of the fact that, “Don’t you dare tell me now.” I’m sure there are moms in our audience who hear that, feel that, but then there’s also moms who are like, “I just don’t want conflict.” Where’s the sweet spot?

[00:12:04] Laurie: Sure. This is a confusing, I think, experience for parents because the truth of the matter is we’re not neutral when we come to this. We’re bringing ourselves into this relationship. I’ll just paint a scenario. One day, your child completes the work with very little difficulty. The next day, that same task, they’re crying or pitching a fit or throwing themselves on the floor. It can feel that they’re being inconsistent or choosing not to try or they’re being lazy.

In most cases, the difference isn’t motivation; it’s the state of your brain, and it really does depend on the brain’s thinking center, that prefrontal cortex that I mentioned. This part of the brain handles focus. It handles reasoning and working memory and problem solving. When a child is calm and regulated, the system, I’ll just use a computer term, is online, and it’s working very well. The child’s nervous system is constantly responding, just like ours does, to many small stressors. They could have had poor sleep the night before.

They could have had a big row with one of their siblings, and now their cortisol levels are high before they– You may or may not even be aware of it. They could feel really terrible about this subject, so their cortisol levels rise when you pull the book out. I have my oldest, I’m telling you, even as an adult, first thing we ask her is, “Have you had anything to eat?” She gets so angry, it’s not even funny. They might have just stayed up a little too long that night, or exercised too long, and they’re fatigued.

[00:14:02] Gretchen: I think that ability to recognize how integral sleep is to being able to learn successfully. I noticed this in the last couple of years. I think you and I talked about this when we were together in Ohio a couple of weeks ago. The number of parents who aren’t enforcing bedtime so that their children with their developing brains can get enough sleep, sometimes that friction is born not of the friction itself, it’s just because their brain doesn’t have the chemistry to make it work.

[00:14:35] Laurie: It’s exhausted. In sleep, your brain repairs. It’s really, really, really important that brain is able to rest and be ready for the next day. That is super important.

[00:14:51] Gretchen: You said something in the notes that you prepared that are so wonderful and thorough. I can’t wait to publish these show notes. They’re going to be awesome. You said something that’s really important, and that is, from the outside, it looks like the child forgot, but what’s happening is they can’t access it in the moment.

[00:15:10] Laurie: That’s exactly right. The skill hasn’t disappeared, the brain just simply isn’t operating. That prefrontal cortex is not engaged. It’s just not. You just need to know the skill is still there, they just can’t access it right then.

[00:15:29] Gretchen: When we’re dealing with an elevated cortisol level, and we’ve recognized that as a parent, what are our tools? What can we do?

[00:15:39] Laurie: There’s a whole lot of things that you can do. First, understanding that it takes a hot minute for cortisol levels to diminish, sometimes 10 to 20 minutes depending on how elevated they were, sometimes a whole 24 hours. I used to say, if my cortisol levels were up and their cortisol levels were up, and we were trying to push through, this didn’t happen very often, Gretchen, but honestly, I called those park days.

I have been known on occasion, not very often, to say everybody put their books down, and we went to the park. I got a book to read, and the kids went to play, and we did no school that day, just because none of us were in a place for me to teach or for learning to even happen. It didn’t happen very often. I’m not suggesting once a week. What I am suggesting is recognize yourself and recognize where your kiddos are. That was a big strategy I used.

The goal isn’t just stopping the stress in the moment. It’s helping the brain learn some strategies so that learning can happen without staying stuck in that stress. We’re going to talk about those strategies of the learning loop. Stopping lessons before the frustration peaks is my first go-to strategy. I would do some exercises, go get a cup of tea where you’re keeping those things really small, using frequent breaks, changing the learning format.

Go out on your patio if it’s a pretty day. Just have your child stand and do their work at the board. Have shorter lessons. I do this for math particularly because it can be really overwhelming for people who label themselves as non-math minded. Do a short session in the morning, wait two hours, or the whole rest of the morning and do another short session in the afternoon. That way you’ve gotten your 30 minutes in for the day, but you’ve broken it up.

[00:17:59] Gretchen: When you were working with your grandson last year, because we both agree that, gee, we wish we’d had all these tools when our kids were young. When you were working with him last year, tell me a little bit about how you observed him to go, “Oh, we’re getting to the end of– I can tell that his behavior is changing.” What I’m looking for here is what are some signs that you knew that he was tying the knot at the end of the rope?

[00:18:28] Laurie: He would lack of focus. There would be times when I would catch him just staring out into space and like, “We need a break. We just need to get up and do something else.” I also give permission for kids. I’m not a big believer in sitting. It was completely okay that he stand at the table and not just sit all day. I also have done a lot of research on attention span for age appropriate for an eight-year-old.

I think you and I have talked about this for– I think you say it in your talks, where you’ve got your child’s age plus two to four minutes to impart new knowledge in about that same amount of time. I kept everything short. Let me give you an example of that. I might schedule 30 minutes for math, but within those 30 minutes, I am changing up for him at eight years old. Every 10 minutes, we were doing a different, if not less, 8 to 10 minutes, a different activity under the heading of math.

Does that make sense? One of the things we would do is drill math facts. I found these really cool paints that you could paint on the window or your storm door. When I saw him just waning, I’d say, “Let’s go paint our sixes all over the door.” We would do something physical. We would do something physical. We would do something different, and it just kept things trucking right along.

[00:20:05] Gretchen: I’m envisioning Buck coming home, and there’s math facts all over this dorm door, and he’s like, “Oh, I know what happened today.”

[00:20:11] Laurie: What happened. [laughter]

[00:20:15] Gretchen: That requires some forethought on your part. Tell me a little bit about how you managed. Would you look at lessons? I realize I’m diverting from our conversation. I really want moms to understand the good news is they’re in charge as far as determining how much they do. Would you decide a day in advance, “Okay, tomorrow we’re going to accomplish these four things,” or how would you decide that?

[00:20:45] Laurie: Yes. I’m a big believer in lesson planning because I’m highly organized, loosely structured. I can swim around in the organization if I know where I’m going so I can pivot. We’ll talk about that later on as a strategy of what pivoting means, because I think it’s a really great tool to have in your toolbox. I always broke lessons up into shorter sections. If they’re not exhibiting being tired, we kept going. I didn’t do the break that I had planned.

We just kept going. If I needed to, it was in my brain scheduled, so, “Okay, here’s a great place that we can take a break,” or “Here’s a great place.” One of the things I noticed about him is he had some really massive proprioception. All that means is if you’ve got a hall that’s eight feet wide and you’re passing each other, he’s going to bump into you because he has no ability to know, “I need to move.” We did a lot of movement proprioception. If you high march and pass a ball under each one of your legs, we did jump roping, we did pogo sticks.

We did a lot of those types of movement. It doesn’t have to be long. I had to teach him how to jump rope because he couldn’t do it. By the end of the year, he’s doing tricks and doing all kinds of fun things and had some success with that. It’s a great break. In my lesson plans, I would just write “jump rope” or “high march” or just something like that, where I knew I could do a quick break and I wasn’t having to look it up on the internet or pull it from my brain in the moment. It was written down for me.

[00:22:41] Gretchen: I used to do that with my children that I would say two laps, and they knew that meant out the back door, run around the house twice, and then come back. You think, “Oh, I’m not going to get as much done because I’m breaking up the day with all these other things,” but what you’re doing is you’re resetting the brain’s focus.

[00:23:00] Laurie: Absolutely. By doing that, that little boy got so much done. Plus, it was one-on-one, so I just had one student. I wasn’t being split-brained myself. Man, oh, man, did he take off in his math? He went through two levels of Math-U-See in one year. Just crazy. It was crazy how much that kid got done.

[00:23:25] Gretchen: Talk to me then about managing my own expectations, particularly if you’re like me, if you’re a good type-A German. I’ve got a list. I’ve got an agenda. Don’t mess with my agenda. Now I’ve got a kid whose brain’s gone offline. How do I manage that frustration?

[00:23:46] Laurie: It’s what I said earlier. We don’t enter teaching as neutral observers. We bring ourselves into it as a whole person with our own history, our own expectations, our own internal weather, and often the emotional tone we bring to a lesson, our own stress, particularly our own urgency, and the way we vocalize that, our own calm, just all of it, it quietly shapes our kiddo’s emotional experience in that moment. I want to read to you– I wrote this down because I love this guy. His name is Peter Scazzero.

I wrote it down because I quote this all the time, and I always have to have it somewhere and read it. I just never get it right at the first go. He has written a lot on being emotionally healthy in relationships, emotionally healthy discipleships. He writes, “Emotional fullness is manifested primarily by a high level of awareness of our own feelings, of our weaknesses, our limits,” this is really important, “how our past impacts our present, and how others experience us.” Because remember, this is happening in a relationship, so your kiddos are experiencing you. There is a capacity with an emotional fullness to enter into the feelings and the perspective of others. I love that. I just love that.

[00:25:22] Gretchen: It was a great quote, but it also shifts the focus.

[00:25:26] Laurie: It does.

[00:25:27] Gretchen: This is not something your kids are doing to you. This is something that’s occurring between the two of you in the midst of the relationship, which I think is really important. Can you talk a little bit about changing the phrasing, how to be able to speak more, maybe to call it out in an affirmative way, of what you’re observing?

[00:25:51] Laurie: Absolutely. I remember being so frustrated with my son one time and going, “I just don’t understand how you can get this today and don’t get it tomorrow.” I knew how to do this stuff, and I just was just absolutely frustrated in the moment. Make sure you’re cutting yourself some slack and can repair afterwards. In those moments, I have learned to pause and I do a cleansing breath or I’ll do a four-square breathing.

I sit beside my child instead of standing over, because that standing over can be intimidating, and then I lower my voice. If I feel myself getting really, really up, I purposefully just bring my voice down lower. Some of the things you can say is, “This looks like what you’re doing is really frustrating right now,” or I do say, “Let’s pause and reset.” Sometimes I’ll say “Your brain,” but more often than not, I say, “Our brain,” because typically when these kind of interactions happen, it’s both of you. It’s not just

[00:27:03] Gretchen: It doesn’t happen in isolation. It affects you both.

[00:27:05] Laurie: Exactly. Then I have been known to say, “Let’s come back to this when it feels a little easier,” like when we’re both not quite so upset. Those are my go-to tools that I do.

[00:27:19] Gretchen: I love the fact that you are setting up an environment where you’re reading the child in front of you. I think that’s really important. In that reading, then that sets up the next thing, which is what we hear from moms all the time when they call and they’re frustrated, and they’re like, “But now I’m behind because I did all these wonderful things that Gretchen and Laurie suggested.” How do you address that?

[00:27:45] Laurie: Boy, I hear that all the time. I hear it all the time. I definitely believe in mastering. I’m going to ask you a question, Gretchen. Can you cook an egg?

[00:27:57] Gretchen: I can cook an egg, yes. Depends on what kind and when and what do you want. [laughs]

[00:28:02] Laurie: When did you learn it? When were you developmentally ready to learn it? How did you learn it? We don’t answer that. We just know we’ve mastered it and we can do it. I look at learning that way and our subjects that way. I don’t like the behind being behind. You’ve either mastered it, or you haven’t mastered it. That is the goal. Learning isn’t just about the time spent on your subjects. It really does depend on whether the brain is actually able to process and retain information.

That happens at different– I keep going back to what I know. My oldest daughter is incredibly academic. She writes for a living now. She’s classically trained. At two years old, she had five sight words. By four, she was reading fluently. My middle child didn’t start learning to read until she was in second grade, not two. Every child is different. I’ll let you know, she is a trauma nurse now and is doing really great. Had I looked at the two of the– [crosstalk]

[00:29:14] Gretchen: I was wondering if you were going to say that or not. I’m like, “Do I say this? She’s fine.”

[00:29:20] Laurie: We discovered she’s an auditory learner. One of the things I did for all my kids was to teach them how they learned. Because she didn’t have an IEP, she got into nursing school really, really, reaply scared about the job she was going to do. On her own, she formed a study group that read the texts out loud, turned them into NCLEX questions, and those four kids just aced the NCLEX. She knew how she needed to get that information into her. I think it was a gift that you teach your kids how they need the information. It also made her cortisol levels go down because she knows, “Okay, I’ve got to hear this thing. I’ve got to hear it.” Sometimes the most productive choice, honestly, is to protect the relationship, and you can return the next day when everything is a little bit calmer.

[00:30:17] Gretchen: I love that you’re saying that protecting the relationship is the most productive thing to do because you know what? Your kids aren’t going to remember. You and I in Ohio last week had parents say to us that they were upset about their children’s end-of-grade test scores. I think at different times, both of us were like, “Nobody’s ever asked us as adults about test scores.”

[00:30:42] Laurie: My older grandkids had state testing, and one of them was really wigged out about it. I just said, “You know what? Even in high school, from the time I was in third or fourth grade, nobody asked me what my state scores were. Look at them as, ‘Oh, I need to do a little bit more work in this area,’ and let it go as informing you, but not as defining you,” and that’s huge.

[00:31:08] Gretchen: I want you to talk a little bit about the conversation you had with your grandson because you said he was a little bit weirded out about, “We got this test, and they’re going to make us do it all day,” and you reframed that for him. In that reframing was a marvelous lesson in, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Can you talk about that?

[00:31:29] Laurie: Yes. I just told him that, “Okay, the day is really great, it’s going to be great. You’re going to test for maybe an hour and a half, and then you’re going to get to go outside and play and have a really, really, really good time, and it’ll be just a different day.” What he was sweating, I found out later, was the writing portion of it, and the kid is actually a good writer. I had him verbally, I said, “Okay, what if you get a subject about this, how would you tell me about it?” He told me and he went, “Oh, that’s all that is?” I’m like, “That’s all that is. Just go in and have a great day,” and it was. He said they tested for an hour and a half, and he played on the playground the rest of the day, and it turned out really great. That’s great.

[00:32:15] Gretchen: Sometimes I think it’s the anticipation of not knowing.

[00:32:19] Laurie: Absolutely.

[00:32:20] Gretchen: Everything from you’re setting me in front of a new curriculum, I don’t know, now I’m anxious. You have to walk through it a little bit before you realize that you don’t have to be anxious. What permission do homeschooling parents need? I loved the way that you said this.

[00:32:41] Laurie: We’ve all had this. You’ve ever ended a school day feeling like, oh, things just didn’t go the way you’d hoped. We’re not alone. I’m going to say this one more time. There’s no perfect parent or perfect homeschooling despite the beautiful pictures that we sometimes see in magazines or have in our heads. Parents quietly wonder, should I have pushed harder, finished the lesson, or handled it differently? Again, learning is not just about how many pages were completed.

It grows best in an environment where a child’s brain is safe, supported, and connected. Here are your takeaways. You’re allowed to have shorter lessons. You’re allowed to take more breaks. You’re allowed to teach fewer things at one time. The biggest thing is to protect your relationship first. The reason I put, we’ve said that a lot, but I actually had one of my very best friends tell me that she wished she had not homeschooled her son because it hurt their relationship.

That’s very heartbreaking. You want above all to protect that relationship. I have three grown children who were all homeschooled. When they sit around, they do not talk about the worksheets that they completed perfectly. It’s usually an experience that they had where they either felt emotionally safe or a particular dysregulated emotional memory. Those are the two things that they’ll talk about, not what they completed.

The takeaway is when we shift the goal from a perfect product to a safe process, and I’m going to say that again, we’re shifting the goal from a perfect product to a safe process. We give children something that they’re going to keep forever. They carry the belief that learning is safe, that hard things can be approached one step at a time, and that the person that’s teaching them is actually on their side, not against them.

[00:34:56] Gretchen: I think the other thing you’re doing is you’re creating resilience.

[00:35:00] Laurie: Absolutely.

[00:35:00] Gretchen: Because not everything is going to go right the first time. I took a knitting class once, and my knitting instructor said at the end of that class that perhaps I was best to find another hobby because I couldn’t keep my left hand straight from my right. I was with one of my children taking that class. She knits to this day, but I couldn’t sort that. It’s okay. We don’t all have to be adept at the same things.

[00:35:36] Laurie: Just remember, you’re building a brain. You’re building a relationship. In that arena, they can learn for a lifetime. I think you’re not behind. Take a breath. Take a breath.

[00:35:53] Gretchen: Laurie, the flip side of that. Talk to me about this for a little bit. In that relationship, what I don’t want to see is saying, “Oh,” and I know you’ve had these conversations as well, “Math is stressful for my child. I haven’t done math in three years.

[00:36:14] Laurie: Oh, yes.

[00:36:16] Gretchen: We’ve had those conversations as well. Can you address that side of it, too?

[00:36:20] Laurie: Sure. The work has to be done, but the work can happen in smaller, more manageable bites. I think that whole conversation about we do hard things– my daughter uses their last name— we do hard things. There is a point where you know when to push through and when to pull back by sheer observation of your kiddo. To just drop the subject altogether, that’s not what we’re saying. We’re just saying, use these tools to get through the harder things.

[00:37:03] Gretchen: Laurie, in these last couple of minutes, what are the words you would like our parents to take away from our conversation today?

[00:37:10] Laurie: I think I would say, breathe, breathe, just breathe. You’re doing great. Just remember, look to the inside of yourself and pay attention to your kids, and tomorrow is another day. [laughs]

[00:37:24] Gretchen: Yes. Some of those days are very long, but you’re going to be extraordinarily shocked at how quickly the years pass.

[00:37:34] Laurie: Absolutely. I will say, you know what? With all this, my kids did grow up, and they became contributing members of society in spite of me. [laughter]

[00:37:44] Gretchen: I feel the same way. I’m like, “Oh, look at that. It worked. It really did work.” It’s the longest journey you ever take before you see the fruits of that journey when you homeschool your children.

[00:37:57] Laurie: That’s true.

[00:37:58] Gretchen: We can’t grow weary in the well-doing.

[00:38:02] Laurie: Absolutely.

[00:38:03] Gretchen: I want to thank everybody for joining us today. I think you can see why this was such a valuable conversation. I could just sit and listen to Laurie talk all day long because she’s just so full of wisdom. I hope this has blessed you all today. It certainly has blessed me. I just want to thank you all for trusting us to come into your living rooms.