Lisa Chimento: 00:00:00.045
You will make mistakes and mistakes are not bad. They’re opportunities for better learning for you and for your children. And here’s a really neat thing is that you as an adult, as the parent teaching your children, have an opportunity to model for them how you respond to your own mistakes and how you respond to their mistakes. And then they’ll be able to pick up on that and learn how to respond to their own mistakes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:31.557
[music]. Good afternoon, everyone.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:32.748
This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show, and I am so delighted to host three of my esteemed colleagues to talk about the things we wish we’d known before we began homeschooling. I think you’ll find lots of merit in what we have to talk about today. And I’m going to let these ladies introduce themselves, and we’re going to play alphabet here. So we’ll start with Amanda. Will you begin for us?

Amanda Capps: 00:00:55.670
So I am thrilled to be joining you from Northwest Arkansas. I have been in customer service, customer support with Demme Learning for the last 14 years. I tell people I have an unfair advantage because I’m a second-generation homeschooler. So I was homeschooled all the way. I am a mom of eight. I have graduated two. I am currently homeschooling five and our caboose just turned four this summer. And so our life is crazy and busy and wonderful.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:25.927
And Lisa?

Lisa Chimento: 00:01:28.321
Yeah, J comes before L, but I’ll go. That’s fine.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:31.445
No, I’m sorry. Okay, so I’m being the homeschool marm and I’m calling by last name. [laughter]

Lisa Chimento: 00:01:41.334
Good for you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:43.133
Practice your alphabet, ladies.

Lisa Chimento: 00:01:46.402
I’m Lisa Chimento. I am a placement and support specialist here at Demme Learning. I’ve been working with the company for a little over seven years. And before then, I used to just contract with Demme Learning in Math-U-See for the homeschool conventions. I am a veteran homeschool mom of four children. They are all grown and flown. My husband and I live in central Florida, and I work remotely from my home here. And it is a pleasure to be here today.

Johna Lawrence: 00:02:16.223
And I’m Johna Lawrence. I am the newbie of the group here. I’ve been with Demme for seven months. I am the homeschool group contact. I am a veteran homeschool mom of four as well, just like Lisa and mine. I love the saying have grown and flown. So I just celebrated the last one graduating from boot camp last week and we were very excited, so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:38.664
Okay. That’s pretty exciting. I always tell moms that to capture the moments with your children because the moments go so quickly. And Amanda is still, as my German father said, in the “mittendrin” of home education. But the three of us, my husband and I have six children. They are all graduated, and not all of them have flown. But it’s wonderful to be able to host these ladies today. And I want you all to know that collectively, we have more than 100 years of homeschool experience here. So there’s a lot of time in grade. So we have lots of things to share with you all. And we think that you will find merit in what we’re going to talk about today. So ladies, let’s begin. Jonah, the very first question that I had was that relationships trump academics. So can you talk a little bit about what that means and why it would be important for us as we either begin our first homeschool year or begin another homeschool year to keep that in mind?

Johna Lawrence: 00:03:46.048
I would say relationships trump academics because we are raising up our children to be functioning adults and we want them to learn to put value in relationships over an academic goal or a trophy in the sky or whatever because building a relationship focused person is going to get them farther in life than anything else that they will do. And another part– and I think we’ll touch– in other ways is building those relationships with their friends, teaching them how to have valuable relationships by demonstrating it with them– one on one with mom and dad as well as with siblings and then their friends teaching them how to have that valuable relationship and not just somebody you text or whatever. And–

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:40.527
Right. I think I just had a conversation with my 19 year old three days ago about the fact that conversation is impeded by devices. And if you have something important that you want to say to someone, teach your kids that that conversation is eyeballs to eyeballs or ear to ear, not through text. Amanda, can you talk to us about the fact that your kids are going to have gaps? You’ve got the experience here. You were the homeschool kid. Now you get to do it again with your own. Talk about that a little bit, please.

Amanda Capps: 00:05:17.113
Yeah, I think parents get really anxious around this particular thing, but it doesn’t matter what your educational background is if you are a public school, private school, charter school, homeschool family. It doesn’t matter what curriculum you choose. There is no uniform curriculum. There is no curriculum that the person who creates it is going to think of everything and every nuance and every angle. And that’s kind of a blessing in a way because it gives you so much opportunity to be really intentional about why you choose your curriculum. And if you can kind of go ahead and dispel that worry, because it’s just going to be what it is, you can really kind of approach the process. And the other thing too that’s beautiful about homeschooling and a lot of the curriculums is they’re cyclical. So I was stressing just recently about something that my 10 year old was just really kind of struggling with, and my friend very chivalrously reminded me, “Hey, she’s 10. We’re going to cover this again. It’s going to come back around. It’s going to be fine.” Maybe being a little bit more aware about where your child is at in their stages of development, where they’re at– puberty makes the brain go bye-bye. I mean, let’s be real. We’ve all had those days with our teenagers where we’re like, “What is the point? Why am I even functioning today? They’re not with me. What are we even doing?” And so I think if we can remember that those are the exception and not the rule and it’s not going to happen every day, we can be really intentional and positive and we can keep our focus on the long term versus in the moment.

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:12.886
Right. Absolutely. I think that makes a difference. Lisa, I wonder if you’d talk about making mistakes. I know you and I have talked about this several times over the years in different webinars, but I think we were kind of shocked a little bit that we had this in common, that you’re going to make them, so.

Lisa Chimento: 00:07:33.687
Yeah. Just be ready. You need to convince yourself this right from the get go. If you go in with this mindset that “I can’t make any mistakes,” you’re going to be completely anxious and stressed out. Your kids are going to pick up on that anxiety. It’s not going to work for you. You will make mistakes. And mistakes are not bad. They’re opportunities for better learning for you and for your children. And here’s a really neat thing is that you as a an adult, as the parent teaching your children, have an opportunity to model for them how you respond to your own mistakes and how you respond to their mistakes. And then they’ll be able to pick up on that and learn how to respond to their own mistakes. Don’t run away from them. Don’t deny them. Don’t push them off and blame somebody else. But you make a mistake, learn how to acknowledge it and own it. If it was something that hurt somebody, then you apologize for it and ask for forgiveness. If it was a school error, something in your books or whatever, you go, “Okay, I made a mistake here. Let me see what that mistake was. And let me see what I can do. How can I fix it? How can I learn from it? What did I do wrong? Where did it go wrong?” And you learn from that mistake and hopefully don’t make it again. But the more you do that, the better you’re learning. And the better you are at being able to deal with the things that are going to inevitably come up in life anyway. So this is your opportunity, moms and dads. You’re going to be spending much more time with your children than if they were at school all day. So this is your opportunity to hone that character quality for yourself and it will be much more easily embraced by them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:20.588
I think it’s also important here in talking about making mistakes – and I know for a fact I’m about to step on some toes – to recognize the fact that perfectionists are not born. They are made. And I can make that statement because I did this with a couple of my children. And it took me a number of years as a homeschool mom to recognize that that desire to reach for perfectionism was driven from the fact that they were afraid that it would change how I felt about them if they made mistakes. So I had to become more mistake prone in front of them to give them the latitude to make mistakes and feel better about that. And as a matter of fact, two of my adult kids were talking about this on a hike a couple of weeks ago. And my youngest kid was looking at them like, “What are you talking about? Mom screws up all the time.” And that’s what he said. But see, by the time you get to the sixth kid, you’re not as concerned as you are when you’re with the first kid. So that does make a difference, I think.

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:32.866
Jonah, can you talk a little bit about progress as a everyday occurrence and don’t try and jam it all home?

Johna Lawrence: 00:10:41.244
Well, you kind of hit home with my biggest mistake in my life. So I tried to be like the checkbox. I need to get everything done in one day. I felt like I was answering to people that were just on the outside watching and I wanted to be that perfect family. And I learned amongst lots of mistakes that it is better to have those little increases, the little bit of progress because you actually gain ground when you’re doing little steps, then having this huge image to uphold. Because that’s just like smoke and mirrors and it’s gone in a in a puff of smoke. Easily falls. But just think of it as– I use this example a lot, when you are educating your kids, whether you’re in 12th grade or in your kindergarten, what you’re doing is building their foundation for their life. And everyone’s foundation is going to cure in different ways. I live in Alabama and my concrete of my foundation will cure at a different rate than somebody who lives in Pennsylvania because the humidity level, the temperature, whatever. Our homeschool kids education are all the same way. They might be wired different than the other kid that you have. You cannot put them together just long as you are putting that foundation together and you’re allowing it to cure at its rate is the best way to go forward. And you’re building that solid foundation. But progress is only made one inch at a time. It is not made by a checklist being done every day.

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:18.755
I think one of the things that happened to me early on in my home education experience is my mother-in-law, when I told her that– because we began homeschooling in the middle of a year. And so when I said we were going to intentionally homeschool the next year, her response was, “Oh, dear, I hope you don’t raise morons.” Funny, really funny. But I didn’t realize how I embraced that in the fact that I was really going to prove her wrong. And I probably did a lot more academically than I really needed to do just because I was trying to prove something. So I think it’s always important as moms particularly and dads who are on this journey as well, we need to check our own motivations. What is our goal here? And that goes back to that very first statement about your relationship trumps the academics. I think that makes a difference.

Johna Lawrence: 00:13:18.422
And, remember, it’s their school, not your school.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:23.262
No one ever said that to me, that it’s their school, not my school. It was definitely my school. “I’m a good German. I’m an only child. I was born a tiny adult. You will do it because I said so, yeah? Right now.” [laughter] I’m going to skip out of order here just a little bit. And, Amanda, can you talk about the three pillars? I know this is one of your favorite topics. So can you speak a little bit about that?

Amanda Capps: 00:13:54.752
Absolutely. So, I think, interestingly enough, so being a second-generation homeschooler, my grandmother dumpster-dove for my first curriculum. Early eighties when homeschooling was not exactly legal or accepted, there were a lot more limitations. And now we have the blessings of freedom and the hard work that that generation put into preserving good homeschool laws for a lot of the states now. But with that comes all these choices. And how do you make the choices? And so, I think, sometimes we can get carried away. And like you said, we can try to do too much, cram too much into a day. And so I really like to just start with– again, we’re talking about foundations. And so what are the really key, really minimalistic things that a kid needs? They need to be able to read fluently. They need to be able to do math well. They need to be able to calculate and figure. And they need to be able to write and express themselves well in the written word. Because those are all skills that really, foundationally, everything else kind of falls into. I mean, your history, your geography, your sciences, all of those things can really fall very nicely into that reading category. So getting a really solid, fluent grade-level or above grade-level reader is really key. So everything kind of builds around those. And I talk about that illustration as being like a three-legged stool. If you don’t have one of those legs in there, you’re going to wobble and it’s going to be a lot more challenging. But if you’ve got those really solidly in place, everything else just kind of works out and falls into place. And then I would say the advantage of being a second-generation homeschooler is I didn’t come in with preconceived notions of what education was supposed to look like as far as from a classroom perspective. Like hour blocks and these subjects and all of those things. So I feel like I am much more creative in how I approach, how I count what, and what we’re doing for school. And then when you have children who have learning differences, sometimes you adjust what that looks like on an annual basis. We school year round because I know if we take a break for too long, we’re going to lose ground. And so being really aware of what your specific students need in order to be successful and to make those incremental progressions and really accomplish things, that’s going to be really huge to your success.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:45.233
We’re going to include in the show notes a webinar that Amanda and I did at the end of last year on evaluating your progress through the year thus far. And Amanda does a great exegesis in that webinar about how you can find a variety of things that you do as a family that can be counted for school. So I’m going to reference that now and let you all anticipate that as a little bit of homework because I think that you’ll find that to be really helpful. Lisa, this subject that I want to talk about now, you speak of so eloquently. And that is, finding support. And I know that you had to engage in this process yourself as your family moved. So can you help families understand why support was so critical and how collaboration and mentorship will make a difference for them?

Lisa Chimento: 00:17:37.656
Oh. It was everything to me. It’s very dear to my heart because it did make a huge difference. When my oldest was six, my middle guy was four, and I had a brand new baby, we moved to a new state for my husband’s job and we knew no one. I had just done one year of homeschooling my eldest in kindergarten and I was on my own. And I think I probably knew of two curricula companies that were out there and that was it. I had very little knowledge or experience. And I was so thankful because I kind of fell into a group. And it was a large group, and what a wonderful support group. These moms were so, so supportive. And I want to encourage all of you out there to find that kind of support if you can. Reach out. If you can’t find it locally, then find it online. But my experience has been that homeschooling mothers are very generous with their wisdom and their experience. And go and ask those questions and be willing to absorb and learn. And not everything that everyone else is doing will be right for you, but the more that you find out and the more that you learn, then you can start to tailor that for your own family. You might have to try some things and find out, “Hmm. That doesn’t work for us.” But that support is so, so valuable. I know that someone– one of the registrants asked a question, what to do if maybe you’re not getting that support from your own family. And that sometimes does happen. Especially if you have educators in your family, they are sometimes wary of the thought of you homeschooling. And I would just encourage you to ask for their indulgence. “Give me a little bit of time and see what you think when we’re done with a school year or two. Give us a chance and see if I can change your mind.” Actually, when I went to my parents, the one parent that I thought was going to support me was blown away and was just like, “No. That’s not a good idea.” And the other one who I thought would not be supported was completely on board. I couldn’t get over it. But by the end of, I think, maybe two years, both of them were sold. And then I was hearing them kind of bragging to their friends that we were homeschooling. So ask for that help. Ask for that support from people that will support you but from people who are maybe reluctant at first. Ask for their indulgence, for a little bit of time and give– ask them to give you a chance and give the kids a chance to see what they think.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:17.806
And I think that is that is such wise words. I was four years into the journey before my husband was part of the journey. When I told him that I felt like I wanted to continue to the homeschooling journey for another year, he said, “Well, better– okay, good for you, but I can’t be involved.” And there are some folks in our audience who have heard this from. They will become involved as they see the joy that you create in your household. And this is probably one of the longest journeys you’ll ever take before you really see the fruit at the destination.

Amanda Capps: 00:20:57.808
Being that kid, do not let those people corner your children and drill them with questions because it’s anxiety-producing and it puts you on the spot. And it’s not that you don’t have certain children who might thrive in that environment and really rise to the occasion, but it’s a lot for a kid to be put under a microscope and to feel like they’re being drilled on what they know, so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:24.234
And I think that’s a really terrific statement, Amanda. It’s up to us as their parents to protect them. And sometimes that protection extends to, “You’re not going to give the kids the third degree,” to tell grandma, “You may ask them about the things they’ve had fun with, but you may not make observations like, ‘Well, my kids were all reading by second grade.'” So you might need to find some boundaries there and draw them pretty carefully. Johna, can you talk a little bit more about that? I know it’s not on our list, but I think I kind of inadvertently landed on making those boundaries can be helpful.

Johna Lawrence: 00:22:07.042
They can be. They can be. I had when we first started– I will go back. So I was the reluctant one of my husband and I starting. He, when my oldest was maybe two and a half, took me to a parenting workshop and said, “This is what we’re going to do.” That parenting workshop was a homeschool conference. I never had homeschooling in my radar. I was going to be a career woman and never look back. So I came along every year, proved that I couldn’t do it. My kids showed that I could do it and it stuck. And my mindset went into, “I’m not going to do this long-term” changed. But my support from my extended, my parents, and my in-laws, they judged every year. “So are you putting them in real school or are you keeping them home?” And it changed about middle school when the oldest one hit. But every year, that was part of the I want to show I can do it mentality to not worrying about making those slow steps. But I joined a group. You were talking, Lisa. I joined a co-op, not for my kids but for me, because I needed somebody who was all in homeschooling that could be my cheerleaders. And that ended up being my biggest resource going forward, which is why if you ask me, I’m a very big advocate of being groups. And I understand some are like, “We don’t need it. We don’t need to be part of that group. We don’t need to be part of stuff.” You might not. Your kids might not need it for their academics or for what they’re doing, but you might need it to have that friendship. So if you can join a co-op, I think you need to join a group of ladies or other parents that are in that same boat for you, to be your cheerleaders. My best one, the lady I met the first day of that co-op, she still calls me 25, 26 years later. “How are you doing? What’s going on?” We are still in each other’s corners for life.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:04.763
You know what? That’s so interesting that you say that because when I was in Florida this year, Lisa has talked for years about this lady who was influential with her. And I got to meet her this year. And it was a humbling experience to see how this lady had so profoundly influenced Lisa. And Lisa, I would like you to talk just a little bit about that because I think if you’re a young homeschool mom, you don’t understand how finding someone who’s already been on the journey is going to change your journey.

Lisa Chimento: 00:24:37.868
Oh, it was amazing to me. She came right alongside me. I mean, really, and that’s the true definition of mentorship. Somebody who will come alongside you and say, “I’ll walk with you on this journey.” And she did. I had questions about curriculum. I didn’t even know where to begin looking. The internet was a new thing at the time, but that particular town had a Baptist church in the town had sectioned off a part of their library just for homeschooling materials. And this mom knew about that. And so when I started to panic about some curriculum that I had already purchased and wasn’t working very well, she said, “Go to the library, get a bunch of books, and go home and read to the kids. I’m going to go do some research for you.” And she came back with a VHS [laughter] demo tape of Math-U-See. But that sold us on Math-U-See. But it was that kind of a relationship where she was willing to go the extra mile for me. And she guided me into friendships with some of the other moms. She said, “I think you two would really hit it off. You have some similar interests.” So it was just a lovely thing, but she has remained one of my dearest friends. And so seeing her [laughter] at FPEA last year, I really made a kind of a fool of myself and blubbered because I hadn’t seen her in almost a year. But it was a lovely thing. And she does to this day still have an influence on certain things that I think about as I communicate with other homeschooling parents who are coming to us for placement help or support. And her words are in my head. And her heart is in my heart and it has made a difference in my life.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:26.445
Absolutely. And it was such a precious moment for me to see Lisa get so excited about meet– and to finally meet this woman that I’ve heard about via webinar and conversation for years. That was kind of really fun. Amanda, can you talk about comparison being the thief of joy?

Amanda Capps: 00:26:46.029
In a family and in the world right now, especially with the just bombardment of social media, you’re scrolling through someone’s highlight reel. Let’s keep this in mind. They’re not going to post the dog puking on the carpet or the child who colored all over the wall or the art supplies that no one was supposed to get into that are now strewn all over your house. No one’s going to post or very few people post the real nitty-gritty, hard moments that are happening behind the scenes. We’re seeing the five-year-old who’s learning three languages and this amazing thing happening and this child who taught themselves to read. We’re seeing all of these things that, in a lot of ways, if we try to take them to heart and we compare and we start comparing those children with our children or that family or that marriage with ours, we can start getting really depressed, really sour, and it’s really not going to benefit our lives in any way. Everyone is unique. Everyone is inherently and divinely created by God.

Amanda Capps: 00:28:05.761
And if we were all the same, it would be such a boring landscape of daily life. And sometimes it’s our differences and our quirks and even our rough edges that make living and educating together such a rewarding experience. So yes, my children have heard me say a million plus times comparison is the thief of joy.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:31.526
Absolutely. Ladies, I’d like each of you to speak to this because I think it’s really important and each of you has a different perspective. And we’ll start with Donna, and that is have a plan, but recognize that you need to give yourself grace because sometimes that plan is going to go straight out the window. [laughter]

Johna Lawrence: 00:28:50.735
I feel like that’s the story of my life. What are you talking about?

Johna Lawrence: 00:28:55.680
I think it is wise to skeletonly map out your your year. My goal would be X. But understand my trip to X may not be what I think of in August. So each day, each week, reevaluate where how you’re going to get to X and know that sometimes X might be moved out. That’s when you slow down your pace for your kids or you bring it closer because there are going to be days where everything’s going to go sideways and we’re going to go back to the little steps, is going to get you going forward and just embrace. We got through 10 minutes of math before we melted down and the second grader is refusing. And I had one that wanted to be duct taped to a wall. You just send them outside, go outside, take a nature walk, change your perspective. But your plan is not going to be the plan that you end up with. And if you do, maybe stop and think about that. Are you educating? Is it your child’s education or if it’s is it yours? Because you want to be with your child.

Lisa Chimento: 00:30:12.544
Yeah, I agree with it completely because life happens and we experienced one thing where my husband’s job kept changing. So it kept inserting moves into our lives. And so I had to, kind of, work around that. But life happens, babies are born, people die, jobs change, different emergencies come up, health issues, things like that. So have that general framework. I love that idea. But you have to learn flexibility. I love your statement, Gretchen. Go ahead, say it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:46.188
Flexibility is a sign of intelligence.

Lisa Chimento: 00:30:48.454
There you go. I love that. And it really is, it’s going to make such a difference. If you have rigidly planned every day of your school year and you find it difficult to depart from that, you are going to be under more stress than anything else. And you’re going to put your kids under stress. So this is the time if you are not a flexible person, get ready. You’re going to learn flexibility. Why else are we homeschooling our kids? To learn how to be better people ourselves. You’re going to learn patience and you’re going to learn flexibility and all of that other stuff. And I’m going to share something that my precious friend, Barb, who you met at FPEA taught me, was one of the things that stuck in my head. And it was on a day-to-day basis, plan your meals, set the time for your meals, and then plan your schoolwork around the meals. And before that, I couldn’t understand why things were, kind of, going haywire in my home. It was because we got started on school, kept on going. I lost track of time and they were getting hungry. I got four Italian kids. You don’t want to see them when they’re hungry. It’s not pretty. So yeah, and then everything went downhill from there. So plan your meals. And then that way you can tailor your school subjects around those meals and everybody’s happier.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:08.861
Absolutely. And, Amanda, I know that you have to practice this with an extra degree of grace and measure because you have so many kids who learn differently. So I know you have a terrific plan. But talk a little bit about recognizing when that plan is not going to be accomplished the way you intended.

Amanda Capps: 00:32:27.167
Absolutely. And it’s funny because I think when we have these conversations, a lot of times we put the onus of things going awry on the children, which sometimes it can. I mean, the children can definitely derail and they can melt down. But, okay, what about when mom wakes up on the wrong side of the bed or mom isn’t fully caffeinated or mom has been up three times in the night with the nursing infant who decided to cluster feed and have a sleep regression, and you feel all of the weight and the pressure of everything needing to go smoothly, and it’s just not? [laughter] The day has become a dumpster fire in the first five minutes of everyone being up way too early. The other thing too is keep in mind, weigh out what your children need. I mean, I have children who are up early and they are doing their work independently and they’re doing it when it’s quiet, when there are not three toddlers running around making mayhem.

Amanda Capps: 00:33:30.771
And then I have children who will not function or put together a complete sentence before 10:00 AM. It’s not going to happen. It’s not worth it. I don’t even try because it would just frustrate them and me. So never underestimate the power of a reset. 10-minute break. Mom is going to go to her room. Mommy is putting herself in time-out. Take a hot cup of coffee with you, hide some chocolate in your closet, whatever it needs to be to just get you back on track and get in the right frame of mind, say a little prayer, sing a little worship song. You can blast worship music real loud. Nobody can fight over extremely loud worship music, just going to throw that out there. I may have googled straightjackets on Amazon once or twice, [laughter] never followed through, never, never clicked purchase. But if everyone is dysregulating, it is up to you as the parent to reregulate everyone, yourself included. And so don’t underestimate the power of that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:34.532
Ladies, we have so many more things that I want to get to, but I really want to hear each of you give an example of what this next statement means, and that is to become a student of your child. And so I’ll start with Janah. Can you help our audience understand what that really means because it took me a long time to understand?

Johna Lawrence: 00:34:58.940
Becoming a student of my child, for me, it means to step back, observe your child, understand their learning process. I had four children. They all learned in different ways, and that was not how I learned. And to understand where they’re coming from. I had one that got very frustrated when he did not obtain the concept immediately. He felt he should be able to open the book. And by opening the book, he should know the subject, not by reading about it, not by doing the practice problems, not by being taught, he should just open the book. And so that was a different– and so I had to learn to teach to him that he felt accomplished from the moment he opened the book. But I had one child that could learn immediately. So I had to learn to stay behind her and keep her going. I was the wind in her sails and she took off and I could just be giving her all the support she needed. But the others, sometimes you had to drag. But it was know your student, not you. Know your student and what they can do.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:13.786
Lisa, can you talk a little bit about the assumptions that our children learn the same way we do?

Lisa Chimento: 00:36:21.091
Spending that time with your children gives you that opportunity that you normally wouldn’t have in shorter periods. And that observation is absolutely necessary but also asking questions. And it took me a long time to find out that what I was saying to my daughter was not the same thing as what she was hearing. And eventually, I had to go, “What did you hear me just say?” And then she repeated what she thought she heard me say, which was completely different. I had a joke with her. “I’m talking peas. And you’re answering potatoes.” So I had to make that a habit with her that I ask that question, what did you hear me say or what did you understand from what I said and how to work through that. Otherwise, it was just constant headbanging and miscommunication and misunderstanding, which is not good for relationships. So it took us a long time to get through that. It took me a long time to recognize that not everything that I was speaking was being heard and understood according to my intention. And that can be hard and feelings can get hurt and relationships can be damaged if you don’t take that time to recognize that and explore it and dig into it. I mean, the other two ladies, especially Amanda, has much more to say in terms of how that affects the way children learn. I didn’t experience quite as much as that. With me, it was more of a communication thing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:38:00.761
And Amanda, I want you to talk about– you are what Gretchen Rubin describes as an upholder. That’s someone who’s going to do the right thing, whether anybody’s watching or not. And you’re always going to do the right thing, and you’re always going to take the right path. So what’s it like in being the student of your child when you don’t have kids who act that way?

Amanda Capps: 00:38:26.741
Oh, my goodness. Let me see. [laughter] I mean, I literally felt like I was set up with just a little bit because, of course, my eldest daughter was wired very much like me. And I mean, and to someone who is an upholder that idea of not understanding personal space and boundaries and having that child who will just walk into someone’s room and help themselves to whatever they want and not think twice about it, you’re like, “What?” Short-circuiting, your eyes twitching, you’re like, “What is happening? What is wrong? How have I failed as a parent?” And of course, you always internalize that. One of the biggest things I think I have discovered in being an ardent observer of my own children is the difference in processing and speeds, also being an internal or an external processor. So when you are interacting with a person, my husband is a Maserati when it comes to his brain. It is race car fast. He is just going a million miles an hour. And he’ll ask a question. And then if you’re not instantly giving him an answer, he’s like, “What’s wrong with you? Come on. Okay. You’re just not going to– you’re just not going to tell me what you want.” And I’m like, “Hold up. Hold up. Hold up.” My brain is still trying to process what you said internally and think, “Okay. How do I feel about this? And then what do I want my response to be? That’s how I process. I have children that process that way, and I have children that process the way that he does, and it can cause some fireworks, let me tell you. And so being able to articulate, because I am an internal processor, I am not an external processor at all. I’m an internal processor. So for me to be able to say, “I heard you, I believe that this is an issue or something that we need to address. I need some time to think about it. I will get back with you.” The power, the instant diffusion of tension, anxiety goes away. I’m not feeling like I’m not having that anxiety feeling start to wind up because I’m feeling like I’m put on the spot. My kids have also learned if you put me on the spot, the answer is always no. Always, automatically. If you ask me if you can spend the night with your friend in front of your friend, no. It’s not going to happen because I don’t enjoy that feeling. And so then it opens up the opportunity for some really great conversations and really appreciating like, “Hey, it’s okay for somebody to take their time and process this at their speed.” But that happens with academic stuff too. I mean, there are kids who, if you ask them math fact, they’re going to just blurt it out and not even think about it. And to them, that is mastery. That child has mastered that skill. But the child that looks at you, looks down at the ground, digs their toe for a minute, and then looks back up at you and gives you the answer. That isn’t any less mastery. They’re not any less smart. They just needed a little more time to think about it and come up with the answer, which they’ll do. So if you don’t bring that awareness into the educational arena when you’re sitting down to do a subject or you’re sitting down to have those conversations, it can really be detrimental to not have that awareness. And so anytime we can equip ourselves with that knowledge before we go into the situation, it can just really help everything go a lot more smoothly.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:14.493
Thank you for that. I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference for our families, particularly if you are the parent that you make the assumption that your subsequent children learn like your first child. And I was that parent. So don’t make that assumption. Observe them enough so that you know how each one learns. Ladies, we have a couple more things to get through. So I’m going to throw individual questions at each of you. Jonah, can you talk about not underestimating your own strengths and weaknesses?

Johna Lawrence: 00:42:47.185
Part of goes back– I mean, this might be what you were thinking about. I was told at a very young age I would not do very well in life. I had not a learning issue at all, but I had a vision issue, but I had schools that put me in remedial reading, remedial math. I was told I would not function very well in the adult life. I had a teacher that was passionate back in fifth grade that heard a talk about vision issues. Called my mom in the middle of the night, said, “I know her problem,” and they corrected my vision with prism glasses. And it did. I went from remedial to advanced, almost overnight. My mom knew I was not ignorant. She was trying to prove it to the schools. So then for my husband to say you’re going to homeschool, I was like, “Holy cow, no, I can’t do that. This is not where my gift is.” And so being passionate to be sure that you’re going to educate your kid, I think is all you need to have. I need to be like Amanda said, “I could read very fluently. I could do math very well. I actually have a college degree. Part of it’s in math and engineering; part of it’s computer science. So I logically could figure things out.

Johna Lawrence: 00:44:11.829
And I went through and I was able to go through, but I underestimated my ability. Sometimes I overestimated my thoughts that I could do this. I don’t need help. I learned very quickly to come back and read the instructor book and be a day ahead of my kids because that’s really all you need is one day. I loved. We had a talk earlier and I might be jumping the gun, but one of the things that Amanda said, “You can’t screw up kindergarten.” Guess what? You cannot screw up kindergarten. That has been rolling in my head ever since we had that talk a few weeks ago or last week.

Johna Lawrence: 00:44:49.172
I was like, I think all of us need to know you cannot screw it up, not at kindergarten level. Play with them, read with them. Be a student, be a student of your student. Study your student and you will go forward.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:04.194
Absolutely. Lisa, can you talk about how home education is not school at home?

Lisa Chimento: 00:45:13.165
Yeah. And I know a lot of people, they’re excited. They want to set up a classroom, and they want to make it look like the classroom they grew up in and has things on the wall. There’s nothing wrong with that. I have a friend who went out and scoured around and found school desks, like those little desks you used to sit at in school. And her kids were going to sit at those desks all day, every day. And I mean, once you get started, it’s a little astonishing. You find yourself finishing school in an hour and you’re going, “Wait a minute, what’s wrong?”

Lisa Chimento: 00:45:48.133
It’s not going to be like what a classroom is. In a classroom, a teacher is dealing with so many children. I’m going to say roughly half of her time is spent on crowd control. They’re passing out papers. They’re handing in papers. She’s shushing this one. She’s organizing that one. Who’s got to go to the bathroom? Who needs a drink? And so I don’t really know. I’ve never been a classroom teacher, but I don’t really know how much actual education time is going on, instructional time is going on. But it’s not going to take as much time at home as it does in the classroom.

Lisa Chimento: 00:46:21.385
You are in a one-to-one tutorial setting, and it is a very different experience. So don’t be blown away when you cover things in far less time than what you thought. And don’t make your child sit for hours and hours and hours. Little bottoms don’t want to sit in hard chairs. There’s no wonder that all the boys in the class got in trouble because they’re squirming in their chair. It’s not a great idea. Get up and move. Let the kids move if they need to. Different children need to get movement into their learning experience.

Lisa Chimento: 00:46:55.366
Someone once told me, you could put a whiteboard on the wall and let your child walk while they’re writing, and there’s value in that. Engaging multiple senses in what you’re learning is marvelous. It helps with better understanding and long-term retention. So start to explore. And I think this is where that aspect of support comes in that you can go and glean from veteran homeschooling parents and ask, “What did you do, and how did you do this, and what has worked for your children?” and get ideas that might be out of your box but might work for you and your family.

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:34.839
Right. Toward that end, Amanda, talking about ideas out of the box. I know you homeschool year-round, and for some parents, that’s like, “Wait, what?” Can you talk about– just about you have the whole calendar at your disposal?

Amanda Capps: 00:47:52.438
Yeah, so I figured out pretty early on that because I am a working mom, obviously, our schedule was going to look really different. The other thing that came into play and added to that and the way that we decided to do things is having children with some really significant learning challenges. So in order to mitigate the loss of learning, because that’s a thing, I’m sure all of you have experienced that, we stopped in the spring, early spring. We’ve had this great summer. It’s been fantastic. And then we pick back up and we’re like, “Wait a minute, what? You don’t remember what?” It can be a little bit astonishing.

Amanda Capps: 00:48:39.754
And you’re like, “Wait a minute.” And so then you’re spending maybe that next first four to six weeks reviewing previous years material to kind of get back in the groove and get back in the swing of things and get moving forward again. What I find for my kids and our situation is if we don’t take more than a week to two weeks at a time, we completely mitigate that even being an issue. I’m not ever worried about it because we just keep consistently making progress forward.

Amanda Capps: 00:49:08.349
And it gives us the grace and the time to visit the museums when everybody else is still in school or take a vacation when everybody else isn’t crowding the space, which can be really, really lovely. The other thing that I want to bring up right now in here is if you notice something is off with your child and the way they approach academics, you’re probably not wrong. Jonah said something very important. Her mom was trying to convince the school that Jonah was capable and bright and brilliant and that these things were happening to her. Okay, well, that happens in the homeschool arena too. If you notice that your child’s handwriting looks off, it’s not getting better with practice. They squint, they put their heads down, they fatigue quickly, they’re missing the beginnings or the endings of words, or there are just things going [crosstalk].

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:02.735
They have a hair-trigger temper.

Amanda Capps: 00:50:05.149
Have a hair-trigger, yeah, meltdown very easily. Don’t don’t want to look down at the page. I mean, there are lots of clues that if we’re paying attention to our children, will clue us into what is going on. I have a son. Okay, so my oldest daughter had some vision therapy for tracking issues. No dyslexia, nothing diagnosed, and she was good to go. Second daughter, never had any issues. Third daughter, significantly dyslexic, son, significantly dyslexic, two rounds of vision therapy a piece. You would think by the time my Christopher, who is child number six, came along, that I would be an old hand at picking up these problems, right?

Amanda Capps: 00:50:51.600
Except one day he goes, “Mom, you told me I only had to eat one carrot.” And I’m looking at his plate and there is one carrot on the plate. And I’m said, “Son, you only have one carrot on your plate.” “Mom, there are two carrots on my plate.” The child has double vision. First kid in the sequence to ever have that issue. Then my mother-in-law mentions, “Oh yeah, Justin’s brother had that when he was seven in school.” Talk to your families. Ask them about the fun things that they noticed were going on because so many of these things are highly genetic and they’re showing up later on down the track.

Amanda Capps: 00:51:31.779
Having those conversations with grandparents of like, “Hey, did you notice anything? Did they struggle in school? Was anything going on?” They might have some really good information and feedback for you as to what to be looking out for for your kiddos. But again, curating your classroom to what your children need. I have a rebounder. I have an exercise ball. I have straps that are on the bottoms of the chairs that let my kids swing their feet. I have read to children who are hanging upside down, swinging on the swing set outside, jumping rope.

Gretchen Roe: 00:52:07.913
All of that falls also under the category of homeschool is not school. I can’t believe we’re almost to the top of the hour here. We have about seven minutes left and we have several things to go through. So I’m just going to make an observation. One of them that’s on our list is actually one that I put on the list. And so I’m going to say this because I think it’s pretty straightforward. And that is don’t recruit your older children so wholeheartedly to be responsible for your younger children that you forget that they have childhoods too.

Gretchen Roe: 00:52:39.770
Particularly in a large family, I mean, we had six kids. We spread them over 18 years, but there were a lot of things that I expected of my older children that in some ways robbed them of their childhoods. I expected them to be more mature, more ready for responsibility than perhaps they were. And so only as a cautionary tale, I want you to make sure that you are checking in frequently enough with your children and observing them ardently enough that if you’ve asked more of them than they can deliver. Ladies, we’re almost to the top of the hour, but we have two of our bullet points left. And I think I’m going to take this one first, and that is don’t be afraid to ask for help. Can each of you think of a brief instance where asking for help changed the outcome for you? And Jonah, I’ll start with you.

Johna Lawrence: 00:53:39.180
I think asking for help, mine, ultimately, when we first started homeschooling and I had a curriculum that a friend of mine had said, “Oh, you’re going to homeschool, go order this curriculum.” And it ended up being an excellent curriculum for my family. But I did not understand how to make it work. And I was very prideful to not ask that same friend or anybody else. I was thinking earlier, we talked about asking for help. Nowadays we have YouTube, we have like the Demme Learning Show, we have all these different resources. These moms would be my go-to now, a session like this. So don’t be afraid to ask Google or YouTube to find that help, to find out how to maybe use the curriculum and the tools that you have on hand. Just because I bought it doesn’t mean I knew how to use it. And that would be a big weakness of mine. I bought it. I bought great manipulatives. I don’t understand how to use them. And so yeah, that would be my first to you. Don’t be afraid to Google. Don’t be afraid to go to somebody and admit, “I have no idea. Help me out.” Because they’ll be the ones that will be your biggest champions then to make sure you learned it.

Lisa Chimento: 00:55:02.955
Yeah, when my kids got into high school and I started to panic a little bit because they had requirements that they had to fulfill like foreign language and some higher sciences– and higher sciences are just like Miss Othmar in my ears. I don’t understand it. I don’t know why I don’t understand it, but I don’t. And I knew that I wasn’t going to be a great teacher for my kids. So I went around and asked for other people’s– “What are you doing? How are you doing this?” And there were some that we could do through curriculum and some that I signed them up for co-op classes for. And I was so thankful for those people who were able to teach those things to my kids, but it gave me the oversight to say, “Who is it that’s going to teach my kids?” I had the veto power to say, “Yes, you,” and, “No, not you.” And so it doesn’t have to be all you that teaches them everything. You can ask for help of other people. You can create co-op classes or small homeschool groups and solicit the expertise and enthusiasm of other parents who would like to teach certain things.

Amanda Capps: 00:56:14.690
So I actually didn’t ask for help, but help came to me. So help came to me in the form of my mother, who thankfully we live close enough for her to drive over and she gives a day a week to my children. And then we have dear friends that we actually met when I was homeschooling in Wisconsin and I babysat for– she had five under five, her youngest being a set of twins. And they retired to Arkansas. And so they live not very far from me. And she was actually speaking with her eldest daughter and was saying, “I want to get involved. I want to volunteer somewhere. I want to do something.” And that oldest daughter said, “Amanda has eight children and she works full time. Call that woman and give her help.” So God prompted that conversation. Sharon reached out to me. And so Sharon comes. And so we actually have basically what I would effectively call two excellent tutors that come and help because there is not enough of me to go around. I mean, ideally, I could do it all, but the reality is I can’t. And so those team players have come alongside, they are supportive, they take on certain subjects, and then I fill in the gaps and do all the other things. And it works beautifully.

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:37.106
Right. And I love that you tell that story, but I think the flip side to that is you have to be willing to ask for help as well. Sometimes you’re just in the right serendipitous place where someone says, “Hey, can I help you? And I have a beloved homeschool friend who was that friend for me.” But sometimes we have to just be willing to humble ourselves and say, as Jonah said, “I don’t understand. Help me understand.” Those are powerful words. And I want to thank you all. We are at the top of the hour. I cannot believe how quickly this hour has gone. I hope you found merit. The whole list of our conversation and the 15 points that we thought were worth telling will be in the show notes for you all. We also are going to include three or four other webinars that dive a little bit deeper into some of the specific questions that you all ask because we found several of you asking some of those questions. So we would encourage you to check the show notes so you can catch that information. Ladies, I can’t even begin to say how valuable this hour has been to me to spend this time with you all. You are such a wealth of wisdom, and I thank you all so much for joining us.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:58.397
This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thank you all for being here today. You can access the show notes I’ve spoken of and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. Take care, everyone, and we’ll look forward to joining you again soon. Bye-bye.

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