How To Overcome Homeschool Burnout

We have all had the bad homeschool day. The children don’t listen, the house is messy and you feel frazzled.

However sometimes it’s not just one day. It goes on and on, and you begin to experience classic signs of homeschool burnout.

Now, in case you don’t know what those signs are, they look something like this.

1. You start looking at a boxed curriculum that you can just hand to your child. You are really tired of stressing over pulling curriculum together and trying to teach it all.

2. Then you start thinking of doing strictly online school. Someone else can teach and grade but the child is still home!

3. Finally, the difficult homeschooling days continue and before you know it, thoughts of private school enter your head. You even start researching different schools in your area.

Have you been there before? I was shocked to find myself having these moments at the end of our school year. After all, I was homeschooled from K-12th myself; homeschooling should be easy for me, right?

I’ve discovered that coming from a homeschooled background helps you be more familiar with curriculum and confident in the fact that homeschooling works. It does not help you get through those heart wrenching, “can mama disappear in the bathroom for an hour” type of days. Being the student versus being the homeschooling mama is totally different!

For our family private or public school is just not an option. Yes, I actually thought about it for just a brief minute, but we feel like the best place for their character and spiritual well being is at home.

Notice I didn’t say academic. That’s because we are not homeschooling for academic reasons, even though that is important to us. I’m sure there are private schools that could give them an amazing education, but we want to be in charge of what goes into their heads.

So what can a homeschooling mom do when she experiences burn out? For me it’s been helpful to take an early summer break. We are taking May and June off school and will start back up again in July. I had a friend tell me she always does this so her children can enjoy the weather before it turns really hot. Since we are not big summer people (as in, we don’t live near a beach or swim all summer long), I knew this would be a good decision for our family. We did this last year and enjoyed it.

Look back over your year and see what made it so difficult. Did you have a new baby, move, go through a difficult church or family experience, suffer through an illness? Or did you possibly choose the wrong curriculum for your children and you struggled through it all year long?

I have realized our year was difficult because of my long and exhausting pregnancy, some of my expectations of how our year should go, and some attitudes that need changed in my children.

The pregnancy is over and I’m feeling better (not perfect but better!). After every pregnancy I struggle getting my hormones all back to normal (thanks to adrenal and thyroid problems) and struggle with being dizzy and overwhelmed when I’m out and about. The solution to that is we stay home a lot, and I work on trying to feel better.

My expectations need to change and I’m working on that. I really do want my children to excel academically. However I’m coming to accept that some of my children will be strong in certain subjects, but math is not one of them. As long as I accept that and plan our math curriculum accordingly, the year will go much better. We use Teaching Textbooks and will continue that, and eventually will get back up to grade level with the child that is behind.

Attitude adjustments…that’s always a work in progress. 🙂 We took a month off of using Character Badges when I had the baby and it was a rough month! The children were all ready to get back to their charts. It really is a blessing in our home and Sean is really involved in using it as well. We continue to press forward, pray for our children and have family meetings once in a while. 🙂 It’s not just the children that need attitude adjustments. There are plenty of days that mama needs one as well!

I’m getting all our curriculum lined out for next year (I’ll share in a different post), and I’m excited over some things we choose. It seems the financial cost of homeschooling goes up every year, but it’s still far less than private school. A friend reminded me that sometimes it is worth it to purchase curriculum that will be a huge blessing to a busy mama. 

I like the curriculum kits from Timberdoodle, but I still love to pick and choose my own things and I can’t afford $800 per child. I’m using their kits as a suggestion guide, especially the hands on items they have included.

For our sixth grader we just found the Sphero robot on Zulily yesterday and got it for him! It was cheaper there, plus I had some credit to put towards it. That will be a fun, end of the school day item he will love, but will only be used on days he cooperated and got his school done! You can learn some basic programing skills with the two apps that go along with this. Timberoodle includes this in their 6th grade curriculum kit and I know we will all enjoy it.

Our fourth grader loves history, and wants to read a lot. After looking at practically every history curriculum out there, I picked Beautiful Feet History that involved a lot of fun reading in his favorite time periods.

While I can’t make every subject fun for them, I’m trying to get more input from my older boys on what they like and buy according to their strengths and weaknesses, keeping in mind what I can handle teaching.

I’m also excited to choose some curriculum from the Build Your Bundle Curriculum sale that starts next week! You can enter to win 3 bundles here and receive a 10% off coupon to be used when the sale goes live! I can’t tell you what is in the bundles yet, but you might recognize some of these companies.

Make sure you enter the giveaway!

Finally, I’m reminding myself to pray more about our homeschooling days. Instead of getting upset during a difficult day, give that anger over to God and pray more. My flesh can be so weak and I long to be a good example to my children of patience and long suffering. Starting the day out in God’s word is crucial, yet so many times we sleep in late and I tell the children just to start their regular school lessons and let that time with God go by. I want to do better!

I know I’m not the only mom that experiences burn out! What gets you through those difficult days (or years) of homeschooling?