[00:00:00] Kathleen Calabrese: I would try to make it fun for the kids, have a pizza day, make ice cream sundaes. Make it a fun thing so that it’s not just, “Oh, we’ve got to go to the table, and mom’s going to pull out all the books, and I’ve got to see all that stuff I’ve got to learn. I don’t feel like doing any of that. I want to go over here and play with my Christmas toys.”

[00:00:25] Gretchen Roe: Hello, everyone. Welcome to 2025. This is Gretchen Roe, the host of The Demme Learning Show, and I am so delighted to host my colleague Kathleen Calabrese here today to talk to you about battle stations. This conversation goes so many directions. Hopefully, you caught my Star Trek illusion that it’s time to ready this ship to sail again. The truth of the matter is, you are journeying into territory that you don’t know because you haven’t been there yet, and it may feel a little trepidatious.

We want to talk to you about that today, and we’re going to flip the script a little bit and answer some questions first because some of the questions you all post really rang a bell with both Kathleen and I. Then, Kathleen, would you be so kind as to introduce yourself today?

[00:01:18] Kathleen: Sure. My name is Kathleen Calabrese. I work in customer service at Demme Learning. I homeschooled my own children for 21 years. I have two boys, and I homeschooled them all the way through. They did use Math-U-See. all the way through, and then we used various other curriculums. I had a great homeschool experience, and honestly, I still miss it. [chuckles]

[00:01:42] Gretchen: I agree with you. My husband and I homeschooled 6 children 21 years. We did a little bit of everything. We did homeschool, public school, private school, charter school, just a little bit of parochial school. We’ve had a lot of experiences. I wouldn’t have traded those 21 years for anything. We also recognized that there were times when our children needed something different, and we may talk a little bit about that today. Kathleen, as we begin, will you address the question that was forefront in our minds as far as just being burnt out? Just, here you are, it’s the first full week of January, and you may feel like a crispy critter. Can we talk about that?

[00:02:35] Kathleen: We’re trying to get our kids motivated to jump back into school and to be excited about what they’re learning. It’s hard when you, the mom, is not excited, when you’re not feeling that, “Oh, I’m ready to jump back in,” and you’re just feeling the winter blues or the drudgery of it, and you’re not excited about it. I would say the very first thing is self-care, is to make sure that can you get a little more sleep if that’s something you need?

How about getting up earlier in the morning before the kids get up? If that’s an option, 20 minutes, just even 20 minutes alone, just to have that peace to start your day, that makes such a big difference. That’s one of the things. Some other things are delegate, if you can. If there’s something that a certain– Even if it’s just one subject, if there’s one subject that maybe dad could do for a little bit just to lighten your load, or if you have a connection with another homeschool mom, and you say to her, “Hey, can we switch things up a little bit? How about you teach science to the kids, and I’ll teach language arts to them,” or anything, whatever, so that you’re just switching it up a little bit and getting a little bit of excitement back into it.

If there’s an option to join a co-op mid-year, that might be something that’s helpful because, again, that’s taking some off of you, and it’s adding some excitement back into the homeschooling, where the kids are going to be learning some different subjects. It gets you around other homeschool moms, which was going to be my next thing. If you’re isolated, try to find other moms to connect with. Sometimes that’s the trick. It’s just so nice to talk to other moms.

Number one, they understand what you’re going through. They’re there, or they’ve been there other times. It’s so nice just to have other moms to talk to. If you don’t have anybody local, even try on social media, just to reach out and say, “Hey, I’m burnt out, anyone have any tips, any suggestions?” There’s a lot of people who have been there, and they’ll be able to give you some tricks or things to help you to refocus on going forward. Again, it’s just that hug that you might need to say you’re not alone in this.

[00:05:03] Gretchen: One of my caveats there is to whom you reach out will vary depending on your family and your circumstances. In my particular situation, I needed to reach out to my other friends who homeschooled because I had family members who objected to our homeschooling journey. They thought that we were doing something that might not be the best for the children. They’re not the people you want when you’re at a low ebb to be speaking into your life.

They may be the ones who say, “See, I knew you couldn’t do this.” We all know that you can do this, but it’s important to have support in the journey. Kathleen, one of the things about self-care that I think is really important, and you mentioned this in a webinar we did last year, so I’m going to see if you can remember it, is you talked about setting boundaries around your time so that you weren’t just pouring yourself into everyone else without any time for you. Tell me a little bit, give me some insight, recall that conversation a little bit. How did you find time for Kathleen?

[00:06:20] Kathleen: I made sure that I purposely allotted that time. There was times that I set the alarm and I got up before the kids when I knew that they were getting up early just to make sure that I had that time by myself. There was times at lunchtime or even before lunchtime, prepping lunch, that I would purposely have them on certain schoolwork that I knew I could step away and I could go do something else so that I could go into the kitchen and I could prepare lunch, and have that time where they weren’t right on top of me, right next to me.

It also wasn’t that, “Okay, we’re done with schoolwork, now it’s time for lunch,” and I had nothing prepped yet. My kids are not sandwich eaters, they’re hot food eaters so I always needed to have that little bit of prep time to get that food ready.

[00:07:10] Gretchen: Now, is that nature or nurture? [laughs]

[00:07:12] Kathleen: Then, also at the end of the day, I think it’s just about being intentional. I know it’s hard when you have littles. When you have babies or even toddlers, you are controlled by their schedule more than you trying to set the schedule. Unfortunately, that’s just the way it is. I know it’s hard when you’re going through it, but it’s so quick and it’s a blip. When you look back, you can hardly remember those years. When you’re in the middle of it, that’s when you need to just give yourself a little bit of grace.

Maybe if you do have littles, maybe you need to tweak your intentions with homeschooling at that particular time. Even though you wanted to be able to spend six, seven hours a day on homeschooling because you all had all these things you wanted to do with the kids, maybe when you have a baby who you’re nursing and trying to get sleep, or a toddler who’s underfoot, and constantly needs your attention, maybe that’s not the time to focus that much on a lengthy school day. That’s the time that you need to scale back a little bit and have a shorter school day. There’ll be years, so many years, that you’re going to have plenty of time.

[00:08:29] Gretchen: I have a sweet friend who talks about her third child didn’t sleep for the first four years. She would catnap, she would sleep 30 to 40 minutes at a time, and then she would be awake again. Alice said by the time she was six months old, she was so exhausted, she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. She just closed the books and put them on a shelf. She said, much to her delight and surprise, when she pulled those books out again in September, her kids were ready for the next level of school because she said, “I still read to them, we still did math things, we cooked together, we did those kinds of things.”

It didn’t feel like school, but it was educational in that process. Sometimes a good documentary is the best use of your time.

[00:09:27] Kathleen: Agreed.

[00:09:29] Gretchen: Kathleen, one of the things that we talked about is sitting down with your kids and maybe having a bit of a powwow. We came up with a list of questions that we’re actually going to include in the show notes. I wonder if you could set the stage for how that would be a beneficial thing to do and how you would set it up so it’s not what my children remember it to be as, “Oh, no, it’s the dreaded rehash of the last semester.” [laughs]

[00:09:59] Kathleen: I typically did it twice a year. I would do it in August before we were starting the school year, and then I did it now. I always had intentions of doing it in December, so that we were ready in January, but no, Christmas came and too much busyness. It was more like, “This week I was doing it.” I allowed myself that where I said, “It’s okay if on Monday at 9:00 AM, I wasn’t completely, had everything lined up and ready to go.” I knew that that was okay.

I would try to make it fun for the kids, have a pizza day, make ice cream sundaes, make it a fun thing so that it’s not just, “Argh, we got to go to the table and mom’s going to pull out all the books and I got to go see all that stuff I got to go learn. I don’t feel like doing any of that. I want to go over here and play with my Christmas toys.” Well, make it a fun, almost like a party. Make it like a party. What I like to do is really help my– I would help my kids to see that I want your input.

That is something even from when they were little, I always said to them, “This is your education. I want your input. I want you to tell me what worked, what didn’t work, what you liked, what you’d like to learn about going forward.” I always made them feel like I want to hear from you. I don’t want to just make these decisions alone. I think that I help them to feel like, “Hey, we’re going to sit down and have this fun time and we’re going to figure this out together.”

[00:11:30] Gretchen: I had a conversation over the Christmas break with a mom who said, “I’m afraid to sit down with my kids and have that conversation, because what they’re going to say to me is, ‘I don’t like anything that we do school-wise. I don’t want to do anything’.” I said to her, well, one of the hats you get to wear when you’re a parent is you become the marketer. The truth of the matter is there’s things I don’t like doing.

I would never fold clothes again, except for the fact that I’m too cold-natured to live in a nudist colony, so somebody has to do laundry. I think that’s a valuable life lesson. You’re not going to enjoy everything you have to do. One of the things that’s the flip side of that though is teaching your children if there’s something you don’t enjoy, avoiding it makes it grow. I think that that is really important. There is plenty of clinical research.

I know that there’s families who registered for this webinar. There’s some that I see who are here with us today who have children who have an attention diagnosis. One of the things that I think is wildly important is for us to understand that just because you have an attention deficit diagnosis, doesn’t mean I’m going to give you a pass on doing life. You’re going to have to figure out what that is.

I have attention deficit disorder, as does my husband, and I vividly remember two years ago when my eldest daughter called me at the age of 36 and said, “I cannot believe I was just diagnosed with ADD.” I started to giggle because I’m like, “How did you think you were going to get out of this without a diagnosis?” She said, “It explains a lot, but it frustrates me a lot.” If you’re the parent with attention deficit, it means you need to be more intentionally focused than your children, and that is hard. It’s hard to get back to it. I think there’s a huge difference between I have to and I got to. If you can change one thing that you say to your children, say to them, “Look what we get to do today.”

[00:13:59] Kathleen: My boys were on the opposite sides of what you’re just talking about. My oldest was the compliant one. He did anything I put in front of him. I was actually glad with him for this mid-year discussion because even though he’d do anything I put in front of him, mid-year, I would say to him, “How is this going? How do you like this?” There was times that he said to me, “I’m not getting anything out of that. I’m not learning from that.” I would say, “Oh, okay, but you were reading the books.” He’s like, “I don’t like this.”

Now, he didn’t speak up and tell me so I was glad that I would have that discussion with him and say, “Okay, well, maybe we need to switch this up or maybe we need to look at it differently,” things like that. Through his 13 years of education, he would literally do anything I handed him. I always wanted to have that conversation with him to see what he was interested in. My youngest was the one who told me every single day I homeschooled him that he hated school and that he didn’t want to do school.

Actually it was more, not that I hated school, but his why, he was my why child. Why do I need to learn this? Why? I learned last year. Why do I need to learn this again? Why? He questioned everything. Why, why, why. I really had to be mindful of what I was giving him to do. I had to really put a lot of thought into it and figure out what were my goals. In other words, in the beginning of the year, and then I even went mid-year, “What was it that I was trying to teach him and did this particular curriculum or method I was using, was that working? Was that going to get us to the goal at the end of the year?”

There were times mid-year that I realized, no, this isn’t working. I’m not going to get to my goal at the end of the year with him. We had to switch it up a little bit, maybe do it differently. Quite honestly, there was times that I had to say, “Suck it up, buttercup. Michael, this is school. This is what you’re using. This is what we’re going to do. Yes, you need to do this.” Probably up until he got to high school, I did have to have that a lot with him where, “Well, this is what we’re doing. This is your schoolwork and you need to learn. You’re going to learn every year and you’re going to keep doing it.”

By the time he got to high school, it was a little different. For one, he told me he was never going to college, didn’t want to go to college. I told him for high school, you’re prepping for college anyway, just in case you change your mind because thankfully, seasoned homeschoolers told me to do that. I listened, don’t listen when they say they don’t want to go. What if they change their mind? He did all the sciences and the maths and everything he had to do. He’s now in college with straight A’s.

[00:16:57] Gretchen: Kids don’t have the long-term vision that we as parents have. They have the right here, right now. This is painful, I don’t want to do this. Sometimes we have that same feeling. I have to admit, all the 21 years that I homeschooled, that was my feeling every time I sat down to do math. Thank heavens, Math-U-See came into my life the eighth year of our homeschool journey. It made life a great deal easier because I was hesitant to approach a subject that I didn’t feel confident with. Being able to switch that up made a huge difference.

I also want to talk about, I have six children, you have two. Parents who may be sitting in the audience or who are watching this video later, what if you have an only child? You see the analogies that they talk about, “Okay, this is what you can expect of your oldest child. This is what you can expect of your middle child. This is what you can expect of your youngest child.” I am an only child and I’m here to tell you all of those expectations are bound up in every only child. They are all those things.

It’s up to us to tease out what motivates them, what gives them joy, what demotivates them. Sometimes that can be the same subject on any given day. It’s up to us as parents to be the most careful observers of our children. I also made the mistake once of assuming that all my kids learned the same way. Actually one of my children that I would have, I don’t bet, but I would have placed money on the table for this one saying, “This is how that child learns.” He was in high school when he told me, “I don’t learn that way.”

I would have bet money that he was a visual learner. He was an auditory learner. He said but he had strong visual skills so he would default to visual learning. That was an important thing for me to learn. I didn’t learn it just by observing. I needed to ask and I didn’t ask. The reason I say this in this conversation is because as parents, it’s important for us to ask. Some of the questions you said, Kathleen, how’s it going for you? What can you– In fact, in our show notes, which are up here on my left computer, we’re going to give you a list of questions to ask your kids.

If you want to sit down and have the party that Kathleen has talked about, we’re going to recommend that you sit down and ask them some of these questions and see what kind of answers you get. Maybe you need to change some things and maybe you need to stay the course where you are. Kathleen, can you talk about a time- -where one of your kids said, “Ooh, I don’t like these materials,” and you took that to heart and changed what you were doing with them?

[00:20:12] Kathleen: Sure. My kids are almost eight years apart. For my oldest, I use a literature based curriculum, which I spent a lot of money on, but I told my husband, well, we have other kids who’ll be able to use this. We’ll just keep it on the bookshelf. When we have more kids, we’ll be able to use this. Eventually we had a second child. By the time he was ready for kindergarten, I was all set up with it. I thought, “Here we go. He’s just going to jump in and use this.”

I would read to him and he would look at me and say, “I have no idea what you just said.” He just kept saying that to me and I’d think, “Hey, I just read to you for 20 minutes. What do you mean you have no idea.” I would try to ask him questions and pull it out of him. No, he just kept saying, I have no idea what you just said. I was in shock because I didn’t know that– I thought, “Well, this worked for my oldest and he’s thriving with it. How does it not work with this child? It can’t be the curriculum. The curriculum is wonderful.”|

I had to realize that not every curriculum or every way of learning works for each child. For my youngest child, I literally had to put a worksheet in front of him at a time. He needed one piece of paper in front of him at a time, not books and books, not even a big thick workbook. I had to rip the pages out. He needed one page at a time because he needed to just focus on this at a time. I also learned I could read to him and he could absorb it, but his body had to be moving.

My husband put a swing up in our homeschool room, so he would swing back and forth. There were times he hurled his body over the couch back and forth as I was reading. Then when I would ask him, he was able to tell me what I was reading about. I learned not only did he need to learn differently, not sitting at the table, but he needed some different materials. There had to be a different way of teaching him.

Thankfully, when I went to my husband and explained, “Oh, you know all that money we spent on the curriculum, I need to spend a little bit more because I need some other things.” He said, “Okay, whatever you need.” I had that benefit, but I did learn quickly that what worked with one child did not work the same with the next. It was not the curriculum. It was just different child, different way of learning.

[00:22:44] Gretchen: My eldest son, when he was 12, I changed curricula because his sister was in high school. I thought, “Oh, I’ll just move everybody over to this other curriculum,” really for my own ease. That was the longest school year because he fought me at every single turn. It wasn’t until April that I finally had the wit to sit down and say, “What is happening here? Why are you giving me pushback at every juncture?” He said, “I want to go back to the curriculum we used to use.”

I said, “Well, that’s all well and good, except that I already spent the money for what’s sitting in front of you. I don’t have the money for that curriculum.” He said, “I’ll buy it myself.” He raked leaves. He mowed lawns. He threw newspapers. He bought his own sixth grade curriculum, started sixth grade in April, and was ready to start seventh grade in September because he believed in what he was doing and liked what he was doing. I didn’t pick up on this for a very long time.

Thankfully, he’s now in his mid-30s. It was the impetus to create a child who became a self-starter. Now, was he a self-starter at 12? No. As a matter of fact, I remember saying to his father, if he ever goes to college, I’ll have to go with him because he’s never going to find his way back from the bathroom. He was that kind of a distracted child. By the time he turned 18 and his prefrontal cortex was fully developed, he was ready for the pursuits of college.

He did a year in AmeriCorps and then actually completed a college degree in three years and he paid his own way through college. If you’d have told me that 12-year-old who was on a camp cot in my dining room because I took everything out of his life trying to force him into doing his school, would be able to pay his own way through college, I wouldn’t have believed you. I just didn’t think that that was possible. I guess I didn’t have enough faith in him.

I think I didn’t have enough faith in myself to recognize that I could make a different decision. If you’re listening to us today, I want you to know that you should have that faith because making a different decision makes all the difference in the world. It starts with having that one good conversation, however you have it, whether you have it over pizza, whether you have it over ice cream sundaes, whether you play some family games together and in the process of the family games, they’re loose enough that you can ask these questions that we’ve referenced. How you do it is not really as important as doing it.

Kathleen, you said something while we were getting ready to have this conversation, while we were doing mic checks about, is it a season or is it really a struggle? Tell me a little bit where you get the clarity and the insight to determine which one it is, because after 21 years, you learned in the process.

[00:26:13] Kathleen: It’s hard as a new homeschooler. Everything is just so unexpected and you’re not sure how your year’s supposed to go. I think even as a new homeschooler, sometimes we can get caught up in, “Well, it’s January. I should be up to week 18 in the curriculum. Why aren’t I up to week 18? We need to hurry up and do six weeks. We’re behind. We’re behind.” I think that’s where as you get more seasons as a homeschooler, you start thinking about your goals for the year more than the actual book and what page you’re on in the book and where your child is there.

It’s why it’s important at the beginning of the year to figure out what your goals are for each child and in each subject. In math, I want them to be able to do this by the end of the year. In science, I’d like them to be able to understand this particular topic. In language arts, this is what I’m looking for. In writing, this is where I’d like them to be. Then, we get curriculum. We come up with things to try to get to that goal. I think when it gets to the midyear time, how to determine, is this something I need to switch up? Is this something I need to do differently? Or is this just we’re a little bit behind, but it’s okay because my child’s still learning and working towards their goal?

The more season you get as a homeschooler, the more that you’re in tune with that. Definitely, as I got more into it, I was able to recognize and say, “Okay, it’s fine. He’s taken a little bit longer.” I remember one of my kids took a year and a half to go through a Math-U-See level because that’s how long he needed. That he was learning and I wasn’t worried about, “Oh, it’s week four. He should be on lesson four.” I really, by that time, trusted the process that it was stay in a lesson as long as you need to and then move to the next lesson. He needed longer.

There was just a lot of concepts and it could have been the age, other things that were going on. I don’t remember specifically, but it took him a good year and a half, maybe even a little bit longer to get through that level. I just kept telling myself it’s fine because I knew what my goal was, was to have him learn that material. If it took a little longer than I expected or then other people may have gone through it, I didn’t worry about it.

There was another Math-U-See level that that same child got through in seven months. It all balanced out. Again, by that time, this was my second child so I was a little more laid back in understanding of it’s okay. It all works out in the end. As a new homeschooler, sometimes that’s hard because sometimes it gets to January and you’re just thinking about what week it is and what week you should be on and what page you should be on in your lesson plans. That’s the kind of stuff that, again, try not to focus on that, but focus on what your goals are. That’s going to help you to better figure out how do we move forward from here.

[00:29:21] Gretchen: One of the things that is a theme in the questions that were asked today is burnout. While we were doing our mic check, I mentioned that burnout can be real and it can be legitimate. In my own case, in my sixth year of homeschooling, I miscarried a baby. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and my mother died in the space of 11 weeks. My husband fired my children. That was what he said. He said to me one night- -I was crying and he said, “I want you to know I have fired the children and we are sending them back to school.” My first thought was, “Oh my goodness, what is going to happen? How am I going to be judged by that?” I also knew that physically I needed a break. My kids were like a Staples commercial, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. They were so excited to go back to school. I had this conversation with my eldest son a couple of weeks ago and I said, “Do you remember that?” He goes, “I just remember going back to school, being really excited to get a new backpack. Then I don’t think I was in school a week, Mom, before I realized how much time was wasted in school.”

He said, “Then it took Kaylee–” That’s his older sister, “It took Kaylee and I nine weeks to convince you to let us come back home.” I will tell you that nothing bad happened to those children in those nine weeks. What happened for me was the ability to rest and renew and regroup. If that’s something as a parent that you need to do, no one who is in the homeschool trenches alongside you will judge you. The ones who will judge you, you don’t need to listen to anyway.

Kathleen, we had notes, we had all sorts of things to talk about, but it’s 10 minutes to 2:00. If there were three things you wanted parents to take away so that they could tuck in their pocket to think about, what might those three things be?

[00:31:41] Kathleen: I would say the number one thing is to stay flexible, to remember the plan that you had in August, September. If it’s not going 100%, that’s okay. That’s homeschooling, and the truth is that’s education. My guess is if you talk to school teachers, they would tell you the same thing, that what they thought in September and that they had to switch things up just as well. That’s just the way education goes. That’s the way life goes, is that we have to switch things up sometimes.

Be flexible, have that conversation with your kids. Honestly, even littles, even kindergartners, first grades, have that conversation with them. What do they like? What don’t they like? What are they learning? What are they interested in learning? If they have a new hobby, all of a sudden your child wants to learn how to play a guitar, great. Is there a way that you can fit that into homeschooling? There probably is, whether it’s online, in person, you’re getting a local tutor, whatever it is, you can probably fit that into homeschooling. To keep having those open conversations with them so that you can figure that out.

Then the last thing I would say is remember what your goals are. Remember what your goals were in September at the beginning of the year and keep working towards those goals. Don’t worry about, again, which lesson you’re on, which page you’re on. Try not to get hung up on that. It’s easy to, especially when you start comparing yourself to other moms. It’s so easy to get hung up on that. You just have to try not to. Remember what your goals were and say, “Okay, these are still my goals, or some of these are still my goals. I’ve tweaked them a little bit. How can I go from now, January, and get there at the end of my school year? How can I do that?”

[00:33:38] Gretchen: I think my three align with yours in the fact that I’m going to make a simple statement. Don’t should on yourself. Don’t say, “We should be here. I should be doing this. I should have accomplished so-and-so.” All that does is it creates an opportunity for guilt to come in. The last thing we want is for you to feel guilty.

The second thing is start small. You don’t have to eat an elephant in a single sitting. Start just with the four basics and then figure out where you’re going to go. The third thing is that self-care piece. You cannot give out of an empty cup. If you’re not filling your own heart, it’s very hard to fill your children’s hearts. Children are interesting. They observe us very carefully. If you’re unhappy, they think they are the source of your unhappiness. If you can refill your cup, then it will be easier for you to keep theirs full as well.

Everybody, thank you all for joining us today. Thank you for trusting us to come into your living room. This I think was a really valuable discussion in the fact that everybody feels this way. Somehow we have gotten the misapprehension, particularly since COVID, that we’re the only ones who feel this way. That’s not true. It’s important to acknowledge where you’ve come, how far you’ve come, and how you want the rest of the year to go.

If you have more questions, let me just give a brief shout out to our customer service team. Kathleen is the chief amongst all as far as our customer service. She’s our team lead. You have the ability– If you don’t have someone like Kathleen said, to sit down and have a conversation with you and talk you back off that ledge, you have the customer service team at Demme Learning. Pick up the phone and give us a call and let us help you make this a successful year.

Let us help you say, “Here are my goals. What’s too much?” Every woman who sits on the phone here either homeschools their children, has homeschooled their children and graduated them, or is still in the process of homeschooling them. All of us understand what it means to be where you sit. We are more than willing to sit with you and help you make this a better experience because those of us who are finished with our journey, like Kathleen and I, know how very worthwhile that journey really was. Thank you all for joining us today. We wish you the best and we hope you join us again soon. Take care, everyone.

[00:36:39] Voice-Over: Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing, and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.

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