.png)
The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
Celebrating 100 Episodes: What Has Changed Since Episode One?
Reflecting on the past 100 episodes reveals a profound shift in understanding homeschooling and its implications on parenting. The episode delves into concerns over school safety, parental rights, outdoor learning, and the importance of nurturing authentic connections, while also overcoming fears and uncertainties that arise throughout the homeschooling journey.
• Recognizing safety concerns in schools and questioning the effectiveness of active shooter drills
• Discussing the implications of medical mandates and parental rights regarding children's healthcare
• Highlighting the value of outdoor experiences for fostering creativity and engagement in learning
• Exploring fears surrounding self-discipline and the need for critical thinking in education
• Emphasizing the importance of authentic friendships fostered through shared interests
• Acknowledging the perspectives of teachers who have shifted to homeschooling due to educational system shortcomings
• Celebrating the evolution of knowledge and experience over the course of 100 episodes
If you appreciated this episode, please share it with a friend, or consider leaving a review here!
Kypper's Slippers- A Comfy Footwear Brand Driven With A Purpose: to give back to homeschooling families! These slippers are affordable, give back to the homeschooling community, and help our little ones from slipping and sliding on those slick surfaces! They've helped my two year old so much!!
Step ONE in Homeschooling: Help a child you know navigate how to handle an emergency! Right from Amazon:
Let's Talk, Emergencies! -and don't forget The Activity Book!
The Tuttle Twins - use code Cheryl40 for 40% off ages 5-11 book series
Instagram: TheHomeschoolHowToPodcast
Facebook: The Homeschool How To Podcast
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out. Why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome to the 100th episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and this is episode 100.
Speaker 1:Don't have a guest today, because I really wanted to look back at the last 100 episodes that we've done and see where I came from episode one to today, after talking to 99, well, I guess 98 homeschooling families and then some All right. So I just went back and listened to episode one, where I went over my reasons for wanting to homeschool and my fears around homeschooling, so I could kind of see exactly the journey I've been on and you'll have to forgive me, I have two sick kids here. I wish I was recording this with the video so I could share that to YouTube and Rumble, but, as most of you parents can probably relate, it was a late night and early morning and I don't know when my last shower was. So we're not turning on the cameras right now, all right. So the first thing that I talked about for wanting to homeschool was the school shootings, and I think maybe it's just because we had one more recently in Wisconsin. This is still a valid concern of mine, I feel.
Speaker 1:If we have to have active shooter drills in school, then it's not a safe space, so why are we sending our kids there? However, shootings can happen anywhere. They can happen at grocery stores and malls and theme parks, airports, and we don't have active shooter drills there. So it leads to the question of how many people are active shooter drills actually saving and are they doing more damage by having the drill itself? When you look at how many kids are in school across America, how many kids are actually being traumatized by this act of staying silent and I mean we're talking kindergarten first graders here too, not just high schoolers this fear that anyone, even Lucy that sits on the bus next to you, could come in and want to shoot the place up. Not only that, is it making it so that you don't trust your neighbors, but that guns are the problem. There have been other things. I think I saw something recently this morning that a cyber truck drove into something. I didn't look into the article, but there are other means of injuring a mass amount of people. So I don't like the idea of sending my six-year-old into a place where they need to have active shooter drills.
Speaker 1:If it's not safe enough as it is, then why am I sending them there, right, okay, number two that I mentioned in episode one that I did not like and I wanted to send my kid to, wanted to homeschool for was the mask mandates and what else could they mandate. Well, this in the state of New York has only grown, because now it's not so much as a mandate, but we have had laws passed that you can actually give a medical product to a child without the parent knowing. So not so much that that's a mandate, but you know it's on those same lines. What can they mandate that I don't approve of? The masks. They were telling us two, four years ago that I guess four years ago that our kids had to wear cloth over their face all day long, which was crazy. So it's like where else are they going to go with this?
Speaker 1:Number three the vaccines. Yeah, my stance on vaccines, or being against vaccines, has only grown and I can put together some resources for anybody that would like more information on that. I vaccinated my son. Everything that was required. I never thought about questioning it, never knew I had to. You just kind of think you're told you're a good parent if you go to the pediatrician on all your visits and you do everything that they tell you and they tell you this is what you're going to do. They send you home with the pamphlet on what they did, which is completely against the law. The law is that you have to have informed consent for any medical product given to your child, and informed consent means that you are informed about what the product is, what it does, the ingredients, the safety testing around it, and you consent to that. None of which.
Speaker 1:When I look back at any of my son's pediatrician appointments, that was never done For my daughter. I said to them I don't want any shots in the first year and I was kicked out of the pediatrician's office. I said to them I don't want any shots in the first year and I was kicked out of the pediatrician's office. So that was an experience. I went to a different pediatrician that someone had told me. This guy doesn't require them, though he does urge you to give them to your kid.
Speaker 1:I went there with my daughter and he had me pretty much in tears telling me that she could get what was it she could get? She could get polio from his floor just by crawling around on it and I'm thinking well, she could get polio from his floor just by crawling around on it and I'm thinking well, one, I'm not going to have a crawl around on your floor and to clean your floor. And three, is that even where polio comes from? Because when you really research it, or maybe it wasn't polio, it was the one that they talk about with the rusty nail which, again, when you look into it, that is not how you get the disease. I'm sorry, I am blanking on that. Anyway, I stand more firmly today than I ever have in my stance against the medical products that they inject into our children.
Speaker 1:I think everybody has to make that comfort level decision on their own, and anybody that does want more resources, please feel free to reach out to me either by email or at my Instagram page through the messenger there, because there are a few different resources that are quite wonderful. Candace Owens has a really good docu-series that she did on each specific vaccine, called A Shot in the Dark. It's a little hard to find but it's Candace Owens' A Shot in the Dark. There's also the High Wire with Del Bigtree. It is the most fabulous show. It's a news show every Thursday and I can't promote that show enough. It is where you should be getting all your news. They send you an email a few days after each episode with all of the resources that they used to come to what they present to you that week, and you can find that at thehighwirecom or anywhere you listen to podcasts or on Rumble if you want the video version. But the show is just amazing and they have a nonprofit. They sue the government all the time and win.
Speaker 1:They brought back the religious exemption to Mississippi this past year. So basically there were six states that said you cannot send your child to school unless they have every shot on the recommended CDC schedule. The other states you can just say you know, for religious purposes we are not injecting aborted fetal cells into our children and you can go to school with just that letter, pretty much. So there were six states that said we don't care about your feelings, you need all of them anyway. And then Mississippi they just lost in court basically, and they had to turn it back to allowing the religious exemption in Mississippi. So hopefully we will see that across the remaining five states, which are New York, california, west Virginia, connecticut and oh, there's one more, I don't know. I want to say Maine, but I don't know if that's true, but anyway, something to look into. We can't just trust pediatricians who trust the CDC or their medical communities or their university because they are all bought and paid for, all right.
Speaker 1:The next thing, the next reason I had wanted for homeschooling was I felt that the schools were removing parents' rights and being part of the breakdown of the family unit. I still feel that this is true, just like I was explaining earlier on, in New York we just passed a law that they can teachers and school nurses can give medical products to children. So this could also mean transgender gender affirming medications to a minor without the parent's knowledge or consent, and it's extremely illegal. It is that shouldn't basically federally. That is not appropriate. There's a law against that federally, but New York has a different law within the state. That also goes along with kind of the vaccine laws, because federally like where you're supposed to have informed consent, especially since you can't sue the manufacturer, but some states five of them don't recognize the federal laws. So I still really feel that there is a strong initiative to break down the family unit within the school system.
Speaker 1:I saw just a couple months back. I took a picture of it and made a whole reel about it for my Instagram page. I was in the local school down the road from me. We live in a rural town in upstate New York and there was a poster there that said make trans dreams a reality and I was like that's really weird. I thought a student drew it as part of their art class and I'm like, well, they're just putting that right on the walls, okay, cool. And then when you look at the bottom of the poster, it's actually from an organization forwardtogetherorg, no-transcript. Like that's a weird thing to have as an organization and then to be putting that in a school. It doesn't belong in a school. It's these kids are. They don't need to be worrying about that stuff right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, the next item I had in episode one that was a reason that I wanted to homeschool was the time at the desk. Not enough time out in nature, a whole lot of time just sitting. That is so true. I don't think a lot more needs to be said about that. Kids in school spend way too much time indoors sitting at a desk. That is not where real life happens. It is just pretty much criminal. They look like prisons, these schools, and I just I don't even think my office was when I worked was appropriate to be for someone to be requiring me to sit in there all day. It's disgusting Really. There's this whole beautiful world with fresh air and nature around us and they're like closing us in these disgusting rooms full of like cement rooms. I don't know, it's just terrible. You don't really see it when you're in it, when you step out of it. It actually makes you really mad that anybody is required to sit in these rooms that long, and the teachers that I've had on the podcast in the last two years will tell you that the amount of time the kids are like allowed to go outside for recess keeps getting shorter and shorter. So that's still a huge one for me. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the podcast.
Speaker 1:I would love to introduce to you the sponsors of this week's show, kippers Slippers. This is a family owned company that gives a portion of their proceeds to homeschooling families that are struggling financially. Their whole mission is to give back to the homeschooling community. My daughter and I both have their products. I have their slippers. She has a pair of their slippers and two pairs of their gripper socks, which I am loving because we have hardwood floors, and she is just constantly chasing my six-year-old around. She's only two, so generally I'm just hearing a thud on the floor and her crying, but since having these gripper socks, I just hear the two of them screaming at each other, which is how every mother wants to spend their day, right? She loves the slippers too. They have a little animal face on them. She just loves them. They also make these super cool sock runners which you can wear indoor or outdoor. Everything is affordable. Check out their page. There's 20% off coupons on there Kipperslipperscom. That's K-Y-P-P-E-R-S and the link is in the show's description, so I hope you will check them out.
Speaker 1:All right, number six you're taught to listen to authority and not to question authority in school. Yeah, I think that is still very true. Sure, you have to respect police officers and the law, but when a law is unjust, we need our kids to think critically about it and then go along the right channels to get that law changed, just like our vaccine laws. There is in 10 days here in New York, there's going to be a rally in Albany protesting these a couple of the laws that we have here, and you know I think that it's important for your kids to be part of a rally like that than to go to school and listen to authority, especially when authority doesn't make sense, like wearing a mask.
Speaker 1:Okay, number seven was the transgender agenda. Kind of talked about that a little bit earlier. Up with the breakdown of the family unit. It's definitely an agenda going on, and not to say that there aren't some people that are transgender or aren't transgender, but the fact is it shouldn't be pushed on children this young, they can make decisions as adults, just like they can make as an adult, make the decision to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes or join the army. You know these are not things that we really need to be worrying about for children If we provide them with enough, you know, a good, strong family bond, reading to them, playing games with them, actually talking to them, doing projects where they have a purpose, a reason to get up to think creatively and then feel accomplished once it's done. Purpose, a reason to get up to think creatively and then feel accomplished once it's done. These are all things that our children should be thinking about.
Speaker 1:Versus what gender am I and should I change it? It's just not appropriate for kids. I don't I even know gay people that agree with that. So, yeah, that's where I stand with that, and I don't think the schools are. I don't think they have the best interest for children at all, especially in that respect. And the other reason is I felt that schools were dumbing us down and not teaching us to be self-sufficient, and I've only come to be more solid in that understanding that that was always the true intention of schools. It was always intended to dumb us down and to make us good little worker bees that were smart enough to do the job but not smart enough to question it. And that's just the truth. I mean, there's so much evidence to that. Yes, you can.
Speaker 1:You can hear something about Horace Mann or John Dewey and it would make them sound like they are these amazing men that really wanted to help children all across the new world here you know America to have the opportunity to be whatever they want to be. But you can take the same person that they're talking Horace Mann, John Dewey who kind of started our traditional school system and look at a different aspect to it and see, oh, they were really trying to form opinions in the youth and get them used to basically working the eight to 10 hour day and make sure that they're smart enough to do that, but not smart enough to maybe create their own business that would be competitors to the Rockefeller you know industry. It's very interesting when you learn about it. A great book on this would be Indoctrinating Our Children to Death by Alex Newman. He was on the podcast, one of my guests, and I listened to that book on audio. That was super eye-opening. I would definitely highly recommend that book, and there are others as well.
Speaker 1:John Taylor Gatto has made a few amazing books. He was a New York school teacher, one teacher of the year. The same year he won that award. He quit and basically went on a campaign to reimagine the education system or even just pull your kids out. That was pretty much more his intention. His initiative was to pull the kids out and then, when something else is rebuilt, maybe revisit it, and there are. There are other things that have been rebuilt. I've had many people on the podcast with schools that they've created. I'll talk about that in a little bit.
Speaker 1:Okay, now I'd like to discuss with you the reasons that I was fearful to homeschool in episode one and how I feel about those today. Number one was will my kids be weird? Well, I remember one of my early episodes. I was asking parents, homeschooling parents, this are your kids weird? And one of the parents said to me you know, your kids are only as weird as the parents are. So if your parents are weird, the kids are going to be weird, and if the parents are not weird or whatever you consider not weird, the kids are not weird or whatever you consider not weird.
Speaker 1:The kids are. They're kind of follow suit with their parents. Do they socialize? Are they bookworms, are they into mechanics or are they into poetry? You know they're going to just do whatever the parent doesn't. You know you really look around at the kids in school.
Speaker 1:Today. Everybody's on their phone, face in the phone, doing Snapchat, whatever is popular. Today. Nobody's really read a book. Nobody does anything creative anymore unless it's online, like making a reel, and I'm guilty of that as well. But it's just like where did we come up with the fact that it's weird to be well read or into. You know remote control cars and building little tracks for your remote control car and repairing the remote control car when it breaks. You know things like that. It's like it's in the eye of the beholder, right? So your kids? They will only be weird if you're weird. And then who decides what's weird? So that's that, the fear of not being your child, not being socialized as a homeschooler. That is such a fear tactic. Maybe that was true back in the 80s or 90s when there wasn't as many homeschoolers as there are today. But there are. Let me I just posted this recently let's see how many homeschoolers do we have today? How many are there in the US today? I am asking chat GPT he's my AI, is super helpful, but he is also trying to take over the world. Oh, no, he can't do any more than browse right now. Okay, well, he's not working. He must know he's on the spot. That's so weird. Okay, there's, I think the last I checked over 4 million homeschoolers in the US today. That's insane. That's a lot. So um, and the fact that you can just go onto Facebook and find groups in your area that are doing homeschooling meetups makes it so easy, and there's a ton of online communities as well. So I would definitely say I know from my own experience.
Speaker 1:I was very nervous about this. We have joined. We joined one group. It didn't really work out. We did a co-op. I wasn't into the co-op thing. I didn't really like having to teach what they were telling me I had to do like a gym class. It was torture for me because I only teach Zumba. So like these kids did not want to do Zumba and I didn't know any of like the little group activities like church groups do, so I did have a helper and they were super cool and there were a lot of great group activities that we did with them. However, I didn't like the pressure on me for that, so we didn't do the co-op again.
Speaker 1:But there's a forest school that we did for a few weeks. There was a church group that met over the summer that was involved all kids, public and homeschool, private school. But there is, you know, the t-ball, the soccer, the wrestling. We're doing Boy Scouts. Right now we have another homeschool group that meets at least once a week, if not more, always doing a hike or doing a rec soccer or rec kickball. There is another homeschool group that we meet up with. They go every week to either a park or some sort of field trip somewhere, inexpensive stuff, so there are. And then and then there's just friends. You know this family. They've got five kids so they don't really meet up with the homeschool groups because it's just so many kids to get out of the house. But we can meet them for a play date here and there or at the park. There's, and there's, so many families like that in my area.
Speaker 1:I don't know if New York is just so highly concentrated with homeschoolers because the vaccine laws are so strict and these people would otherwise go to school, but I don't think so. They seem pretty, pretty content homeschooling. So all that to say. If you look, they will be there. I can't speak for every area, but out of the hundred homeschooling families that I've talked to, nobody has complained that there are no homeschoolers in their area. You just don't know that they exist until you look. But Facebook groups are a great way to do that. You just search homeschool groups in. If you live in I don't know Manhattan, search them in Manhattan or whatever. I can't think of a city right now. I went to public school oh no, it's just been a late night and early morning, but okay.
Speaker 1:My third fear around homeschooling, back on episode one was not being equipped to teach. I no longer really feel that way. I think that there are so many resources today that you have guides and you can do all of these subjects for the ninth grade. Then you can pick and choose what you want to do, go along with what is required for your state to report. But there are so many ways to teach so many different things and if your kid isn't interested in, say, like trigonometry, you don't have to teach trigonometry, you just don't have to do it. And if they do want to know trigonometry and you don't know how to do it, there are places like out school where they can take the online course, or you can pay a tutor locally. They could even just read the book. At that age they can read the book about it like themselves, about trigonometry, and will probably learn it on their own. Watch a couple of YouTube videos. So there are so many ways a child can learn. We just have to give them the tools to find out all of the different subjects and explore with them a little bit and chances are they'll be fine, better than at school, all right.
Speaker 1:My fourth fear around homeschooling was if they are adjusted to like going outside in nature and not sitting at a desk all day, will they be able to sit at a desk all day when they're older? The conclusion I've come to is that why do we want them sitting at a desk when we're older? We are trained to think that that is normal. I don't think it is so. For instance, my husband goes to all different places to fix their commercial HVAC equipment. All right, that's a great job. If you want to sit at a desk all day, you can, but it doesn't mean that you have to. And then there are also jobs that haven't even been created yet. There wasn't a podcaster, you know job when I was in college, so you know there's. There's so many things. Your kids just you want to urge them into creating what would make them happy and what is a need out there. You know, I guess school just really puts us in that mindset that you have to do this so that you can do this when you're older. And there's so much more out there. There. I've talked to so many people that make money in so so many different ways and creative ways. All right.
Speaker 1:Number five was I talked about the fear about quitting my job. Should I quit my job and would it be better for them If I work from home? Would it be better for my kid to just be at school if they were going to be sitting in front of a screen at home anyway? Okay, well, I did quit my job at the time of the recording episode. One I hadn't actually earlier this year is when I actually put in the papers to leave, because before that I was on maternity leave. I have never felt better about it. I did walk away. I had just started making $100,000 a year, which was my goal, and I walked away from it. I actually never even received the paycheck for that amount because I was always doing like a part-time thing to save up for my maternity leave, but it would still have been a lot of money had I gone back working full-time and the kids were in daycare and school.
Speaker 1:It really took a mindset shift to be okay with this, especially because, like there are some days, you know, of course I never enjoyed going, but it was like you're there, I got to listen to podcasts, I got to take my three breaks a day, go for walks at lunch, which were in disgusting Albany, but I'd walk along the Hudson river nonetheless and there was probably a lot of cool stuff that I wasn't even paying attention to because I never was taught to look around at things like that. But there was definitely a lack of my existence, I would say a lack of purpose in my existence, when I lived that life. Now, some days here at home, I'm like pulling my hair out and screaming at the kids and the house is a mess and I'm like, oh my God, life was just so much easier when I could just sit at a cubicle, but it wasn't fulfilling and no amount of money. You can't put an amount of money on that. And when you just think about the Federal Reserve printing more and more and more money and it becoming less and less, maybe I made $100,000, but that equates to like $5,000 a year if you just zoom it back a couple decades. So what is this money worth?
Speaker 1:When I'm dead, I'm never going to say I wish I spent less time with the kids. I don't think there will be a time that I'm poor and can't put food on the table God forbid. Even something happened to my husband. You know we've talked about okay, well, how would we make this work and that work? And I think that's really the goal. You just make sure you guys are taken care of as far as always having food and shelter. But beyond that, what do you really need? You need family and time to enjoy this earth, this planet that we're given. So I have not regretted quitting my job. I don't really make anything with the podcast and maybe someday I will, maybe someday I won't, but I think that that freed up time has allowed me to explore different things, like making reels for an Instagram page, different technology things. It's cool to have a place that you can just kind of discuss your thoughts and put it out into the world, and it's cool to really meet all these people with these different perspectives, I guess. So the mindset shift has been huge for me.
Speaker 1:I would say it's all one mindset shift, like what do you really want to do with your life while you're here on earth? But that leaks into so many different areas, like what are you doing with your day to day? What foods are you putting into your body and your children's bodies? What injections, what medicines you know are you paying attention to, like the birds outside, and really being a part of the world around us and that stuff. It always seems so cheesy to me, but I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think it comes naturally as you start to make friends with the homeschooling families and you see, oh, look at this one is like growing their own food, and that one has a beehive and they get honey from it. And look at this one taps a maple tree and you know my husband, he can weld and do stuff like that. So it's like learning all these different like trades. Almost you can gain so much education just from working with your community of homeschoolers around you. And I don't know that just life before when I was in the cubicle, always seemed so separate from everybody else. And now it's kind of just like oh yeah, we do kind of all work together in a community. I don't know. It's kind of just a more beautiful way to live.
Speaker 1:The hustle and bustle of the mornings and the nights is just gone, which just does so much for your psyche and your blood pressure and your stress levels. And rushing your kids out of the door in the morning to get them to school or to get them to daycare, it's just no way to live. That seems criminal to me now too. I wake up early to work on the podcast, but that's because I wake up because I want to, and my kids get to sleep in until their body is ready, like my son is still asleep right now. It's 8.30 in the morning and he's fighting a fever, so he just gets to sleep and his body will wake up when he's ready. My daughter woke up at 530 and now she's back to sleep on the couch, so it's really cool to just like let our bodies lead us in how we're supposed to live our day.
Speaker 1:I could go on probably forever about actually leaving a job to homeschool your kids and saying goodbye to that money and the pension that you thought you were going to have. I just I yeah, I'll explore that more for anybody that really is on that cusp of. Should I do it or should I not? I think you should always do what's best for nurturing your relationship with your kids and your husband or wife, but you know they're in there too, all right.
Speaker 1:Another fear of mine around homeschooling in episode one was being annoyed with my kids. Would I really be able to be with my kids all day? Any homeschooling parent that puts on Instagram that I just love my kids. I day Any homeschooling parent that puts on Instagram that I just love my kids. I cannot believe anybody would say that their kids annoy them. They are full of it. Oh my gosh, my kids annoy me all the time, but that's okay, because it's my job to make them less annoying people so that when they go out into society they're liked.
Speaker 1:And not to say that we have to change ourselves to be liked by others, but it is our job as parents to make people that understand empathy and basically like how to communicate. So when my son is like hitting someone in the face or like right in their face talking, you know, one centimeter away from their face, and I say to him listen, this is going to push that person away. I'm there to say that to him. That's kind of cool too. That's. Another really cool bonus of homeschooling is that you get to see their relationships unfold with their peers and with the kids around them and adults around them and kind of correct it along the way and not just hear about it from like a school principal or from you know a Snapchat.
Speaker 1:So and so is annoying, but you know it's and it is a fine line. You don't want to change them, but you do want to guide them in a way of helping them understand. When I do this to someone else, it makes them not want to hang out with me. So is that what you're trying to do, or not? Okay, yeah, so to go along with just when you're annoyed with your kids. I think it's important for you to, for parents to take time to themselves. I mean, yeah, I will throw on the TV and go do something else, work on the podcast or the Instagram page or do the dishes, and yeah, I don't think screens are a good alternative, but it's what I'm comfortable doing, right, somebody else could be comfortable vaccinating, but not comfortable with screens. It's just what your comfort level is. Nothing is right or wrong, but that's what I've done before. And, you know, hopefully, as the kids get older, we can work on making other things to occupy their time versus a screen. But for right now, that is what works for me.
Speaker 1:And when I, when I do get real annoyed, like if I'm trying to teach my son a lesson on, like you know, say, a reading lesson, and he's fighting with me, it's important to step back as the parent and the homeschooling teacher, to say am I teaching this right now because it's something that they really need to know, or is it because it's something that the school system says they need to know at this age? Or is it because other kids in school know it? And I don't want people to think I'm failing as the homeschool parent by my kid not knowing it at this age, because that's generally what it's going to be. It's going to be your insecurities as the parent and other people recognizing that your kid can't read by this age or do this level of math at that age, and them thinking what do you do all day with your kid? Are you just sitting in front of the TV? So our insecurities are huge around that.
Speaker 1:I have to go take my sourdough out. Hold on one moment, okay, and at that, having the time to make sourdough bread, to learn how to make bread I didn't even think that was possible. I thought it just happened in a factory. So having time to make a loaf of sourdough every week, it's so awesome. Okay, and being annoyed with our kids that's what I was talking about, okay, yes, so when I have those moments and they started I had them a lot.
Speaker 1:I think every homeschooling parent that's just starting out has those where you're yelling at each other and it's not going the way you want it in the beginning. But I think the reason for that is that we're trying to replicate school and there's a reason we're doing it differently. So we need to make our home education look different than school and I think a lot of that is waiting till your kid is of an appropriate age and interest level to teach what you're going to teach them. And yes, that might make other people think you're not doing anything with them all day long. But you know what, screw them. Because I say to my son lately I'm like if someone says to him you don't know how to read yet and he's six, I say, well, ask them if they know how to change a tire or change the oil in a car or how to weld, because he's been present for all of these things multiple times throughout the years and I guarantee he knows more about mechanics than most grown men. So you know it's really taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture.
Speaker 1:We schools teach reading so young and math so young, and shapes and all that stuff so young, because they need something to do with these kids all day long while both parents are at work. Okay, the studies do not show that the earlier they know how to read, the more successful they are in life. That is absolutely not true at all. There is many studies that show that kids that wait until they're I think like I think in Finland they wait till they're seven to even start learning letters and the sounds and the reading and they have like the happiest people in the world. So you know, you really have to look at the bigger picture here. So I don't push my son to learn how to read, but now that he's six and other kids his age are reading or people are making comments, it gives him more of the drive to want to learn how to read.
Speaker 1:So we use right now the teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons, which aren't that easy. But but we're on the 50 lesson mark and we already did up through 50 last year and then it was getting frustrating so we took a break and then we went back and started at lesson one again and now we're up to about 40, 45. And we've already done the pre-reading, with All About Reading, and we've already done a big portion of the phonics Hagerty's phonics that they actually use in the schools and it's so dry and terrible. But good info, I guess, in it, really breaking down syllables and the phony Mick awareness and that sort of thing. However, all that to say is I did all that and he's still not reading on his own, and I think that's just because there are synapses in his brain that have not connected yet. So therefore, forcing something to happen that isn't naturally happening for him is just going to make him hate reading, and I don't want that.
Speaker 1:So we do the lessons every few days or so and then I just read to him and I think that that's the most important thing. It's just reading to him. They learn story and they learn new words and they learn to sit and actually think and quiet the mind. I'd like to read to him more. I need to be better at that Definitely lacking. But you know we still do it. We take out books from the library all the time. We read books here. I'll ask him every now and then oh, can you read that word? So I think it's more just.
Speaker 1:You're going to have these like arguments with your kids if you're forcing them to do something that their brain isn't ready to learn yet. Now. All that to say, your kid might be 12 and fully capable of learning to read, and they just don't want to. They'd rather be at the video games. That is going to be the bridge that you need to. Like you know, cross if you get there. Like you know, cross if you get there.
Speaker 1:Because we can't just raise a generation of lazy people either. Okay, they've got to learn things. I don't care what anybody says. They have to learn things or else life is wasted. But we have to get them to want to learn things. That's the hurdle.
Speaker 1:Hey everyone, this is Cheryl. I want to thank you so much for checking out the podcast. I'm going to keep this short and sweet because I know your time is valuable. I want to ask you a serious question Do your kids know what to do to actually save their life in an emergency? The most important thing we can talk to our kids about is knowing their first and last name, knowing mom and dad's first and last name, mom's phone number, dad's phone number, their address, what to do if they get lost, what to do if someone who's watching them has a heart attack, a stroke, an accident where they fall and your child needs to get help.
Speaker 1:We live in a world where there's no landline phones anymore, basically, and cell phones lock. Does your child know how to call 911 from a locked cell phone? It is absolutely possible, and my book demonstrates how to do that, whether it's an Android, whether it's an iPhone and, most importantly, it starts the conversation, because I was going through homeschooling curriculum with my kids, realizing that, gee, maybe they skim over this stuff, but they don't get into depth, so my child's not gonna remember this should an accident occur, right? I asked a couple of teachers what they do in school and they said they really don't do anything either, other than talk about what to do in a fire during the month of October fire prevention month. So I wrote a book because this is near and dear to my heart. I have had multiple friends that have lost kids in tragedies and I don't want to see it happen again if it doesn't have to. We were at the fair over the summer and the first thing I said to my son when we walked through that gate was what's my first and last name? What is your first and last name and what is my phone number? And if you get lost, what are you going to do? You can get my book on Amazon and I will put the link in my show's description. Again, it's called let's Talk Emergencies and I really hope you'll check it out because there's just no need to be scared when you can choose prepared. So need to be scared when you can choose prepared.
Speaker 1:So I don't even know if I actually talked about like kids being annoying in that segment, but I guess you know what I've come down to it People at work are annoying. So what's the difference? I'm either at work with really annoying people or I'm home with my annoying kids. No, I love my kids. There are way more moments throughout the day that I say, my God, I would have missed this if I were sitting in that cubicle just like the two of them. It wouldn't have even happened because they'd be in separate places, but the two of them working together on a project or making snow angels, or running around the dining room table while the music blares and laughing playing tag, like those moments would not be happening if I were in the cubicle, if he was at school and if she was in daycare. So the fact that I not only get to bring these two siblings together for their childhood and create these bonds and memories that nobody else in the world is ever going to understand but their sibling. And then I get to watch it happen. I feel bad for my husband. Sometimes I'm like that's sexy, he's at work and missed this. But I'm like, thank God I'm not at work and I get to see this Like or just your baby, your daughter, coming up to you and like mommy, I love you and gives you a hug, like so many hugs in a day that I would be missing if I were at the cubicle and if they were at daycare and school. Like I mean, that's got to do something for your psyche too. Like getting getting 50 hugs a day versus four. You know, it's just so. Yes, kids can be annoying, but there's way more good times than bad way, more fulfillment and being home with them. All right, I'm probably gonna be in trouble for something I said in that, but I know you know what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1:Another fear I had in episode one for homeschooling was the school sports. Well, now that I'm two years into homeschooling, sports has not been a problem at all. We can do. We've done wrestling, we've done soccer, we've done t-ball, we've done Boy Scouts, we've done a church camp. There has been so many things and I guess I kind of realized that I don't like organized sports. I get that it has its benefits, but there's some cons too, like sometimes he just doesn't want to go, and at six years old, why are we making them? I understand that there's a lot of good things that develop from an organized sport, but I'm talking about a six-year-old, so it's like really does he have to go to three practices a week or have you know, two games a week? It's a little excessive.
Speaker 1:So when I had, I think, talked about this in episode one, I was thinking more on like the, the proms, the football games, like are they going to miss out on that stuff? And I think that's a whole mindset shift as well. We're taught in America that these things are important. And why Is it? Because you went to a prom or a football game and you were like this is what life's about? Probably not. Sure, planning as a girl, planning for the prom is fun. So is planning your wedding. It's literally the same thing, just a little bit smaller scale, a little less expensive. But you're planning this day where you look pretty, your hair is done, your makeup's done, your dress is pretty, your shoes, planning this day where you look pretty, your hair is done, your makeup's done, your dress is pretty, your shoes, you maybe go somewhere fun afterwards, but the event itself is not really anything Like. Most people probably leave there thinking like that was it, that was kind of corny cheesy, or this didn't go the way I planned.
Speaker 1:So when I I guess, when I think about it, we have this perception that football games and prom and homecoming and whatever, or even the even the Halloween parade, are like so wonderful. But is that put in our head from media? Because I think that's what I've come down to the conclusion of. It's put in our head by what we watch and it's put there on purpose. Trust me, everything you see on TV is, or even social media is put there to make you think a certain way. Very, very little of it is authentic.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I've come to that mindset shift and just as the world schooling family is not going to be able to give their child the life that, say, the home homesteading family can give their child, right, one is bouncing around the world, going to, you know, uruguay and Tahiti or wherever, cambodia, and having all these experiences around the world, meeting new people, new languages, new customs, new foods, new languages I think I already said that. But the homesteading family? They are learning about how cows eat, the birthing process of a cow or a chicken, and how to feed themselves, how to butcher an animal and prepare it as food for the family. These are both wonderful experiences for a child, but yet the world schooling family is never going to give their child the life of the homesteading family and the homesteading family isn't going to be able to give their child the life of the world schooling family, because when you got animals, you don't get to travel a whole lot. All that to say is that none of us are going to be able to give our child every experience in the world. There are people in Cambodia that probably don't have I'm totally saying this like like I have no, I have no backing, like I don't know, but I'm assuming a place like a Cambodia or third world, whatever they are. I'm showing my public school right now. They are not having the football games and the proms and they are perfectly fine in life without them. Okay, that's what I'm trying to get across. So these experience, these carrots that the public education system dangles for us like Valentine's Day parties, halloween parades, homecoming, football games all that stuff is to steal something else, something way bigger. If you want your child to go to a prom, or if they want to go to a prom one, they can be invited as a date or two. You can create the prom in the homeschooling environment. You can get all the homeschoolers together in your area, or even a one hour radius, and have a prom, and it'll be beautiful and that's that. You don't need the government's permission to have a dance for your kids. You rent a hall. Everybody can do their own limo thing, like whatever they want to do, drive a fancy car, drive on a tractor and have a prom. You don't need the government's permission. So that's where I am with that. Okay, number eight.
Speaker 1:Another fear I had in episode one was making lifetime friends. I see friendships all around my child. This one's been a struggle. I've touched on it earlier because, because I'm there to see all of these relationships unfold and blossom, I can help guide them along the way, make corrections as I see fit. But it's also, like you're seeing, like oh, my son got left out here, and I think that that more is something from me. I felt left out a lot as a child.
Speaker 1:So therefore I'm putting that on my son when I see the situation arise where he's just he's kind of taking himself out and doing something else or going to play with the younger kids and I'm like, oh my God, I brought you here to play with the children that are your exact age. Why aren't you playing with them? Because that's what the school system tells us they should be doing. But that's not how real life works. You don't go to a job and everybody there is your own age. So my son has reasons that you know he's more comfortable sometimes being the big kids, so he gravitates towards the younger ones. He wants them to model after him and look up to him, to model after him and look up to him. I also see him gravitate towards older kids. Sometimes if they're doing something that he wants to learn, like fishing, you know, he does gravitate towards them.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting and a privilege to witness this unfold. I really I enjoy it. It's. It's something really cool that I never thought about until I started homeschooling. It's really I'm honored that I get to be there to kind of watch him grow, find these interests, and I always wondered too, like what would we do all day as homeschoolers. What the hell do these people do all day? Are they milking cows and sewing their clothes and whittling? Like? I just don't see ourselves doing that. Well, two years later, if I could sew, whittle and milk a cow, I would be so happy with myself. But maybe someday maybe that's for the 200th episode, but anyway, there's so much going on in a day I blink and it is already 7 PM. So there's no. There's things I have to decline and say no to.
Speaker 1:It's cool just to be bored as well. Like, creative things happen when you're bored. You know, let's just take out a board game and play. Let's do dress up, let's take out some art stuff. You know, let's read a book. There is just never a never a moment where I'm like wow, we have nothing to do. I mean, I think the TV is on way too much here, but I have to get better at that. That's what I'm really going to strive for.
Speaker 1:But yeah, between fishing and meetups with friends and hikes, you know, if we don't have anything to do, we just go on it where we like, live on the kind of we have a mountain in our backyard, just go for a walk in the mountain, and there's always something cool that happens along the way or something we see. So it's like just taking these walks Like I don't know, there's just a lot. Where was I even going with this? Making lifetime friends, okay, so I have seen these relationships. Now there's I do different homeschool groups for the reason that my son, I think I like him to have other, you know, not just be dependent on one group or one friend. I like him to have an array so that he can gain different experiences, different personalities you know that he can deal with. But yeah, I can see that you know he's had a best friend here and then maybe they get closer with someone else and then another best friend rolls in and it's kind of like okay, if it's fishing season, his best friend is the one that he fishes with. If it's, you know, a season where, like it's summertime, it might be somebody that is just can go swimming all the time. So I guess it changes, but the same. It's the same.
Speaker 1:With school, you know they, you don't have one best friend. Your entire school career, even though I had a best friend from second grade, there were years that maybe she had a different best friend, or she had a boyfriend, or I had a boyfriend, or she went away to college and had a college best friend. So, like it's just, that's life. You know that's gonna happen with your homeschool, or send your kid to mainstream school, all right. And I think the connections that they make with homeschooling friends is going to be more authentic and fulfilling because they're they find people like. They're not just like. I'm friends with Sally because her last name starts with a T and mine starts with an S, so we're next to each other in our desk row, so that's why we're best friends. You know it's like oh well, so-and-so, likes to fish, and I know they're free on Thursdays. Let's go fishing on Thursdays. You know these friendships are growing out of a similar interest, so I think that's really cool, all right.
Speaker 1:My last fear was are my kids going to learn better from other people than me? I already pretty much touched on this. I think that your kids are going to learn when they're ready to learn and we need to take the pressure off of ourselves and just tell other people to go take a walk, and I think that, yeah, kids, if your kid gets to a point where they're like, well, all my friends are reading and I'm not. They're going to want to learn, so they're going to give you an easier time as you teach them the phonics and the phonemic awareness and you know how blending works and the breakdown of words. You know they're the fights come when it doesn't make sense to them and they have no interest in it.
Speaker 1:So, um, and there will be things like I mentioned earlier. There are resources like out school or plenty of other local tutors. You know something if your kid is into learning piano like I don't know piano, I would, what would? What would you do? You sign them up for piano lessons. Nobody would expect you as a parent to know how to teach your kid piano, but you would pay for the piano lessons. It's no different. If I mean something like geography and history, I can learn right along with him, but if it's something like like piano, I mean I guess I could learn with them, but I could just send them to a piano teacher. So it's, and with online stuff and everything in the digital world now, it's so easy to make sure your kids can learn whatever they want to learn.
Speaker 1:All right, those were the lists of the reasons I wanted to homeschool and the reasons I was fearful to homeschool and from episode one to where I am today at episode 100. And I guess I just want to thank everybody that has joined me along the way, anyone who's listened to the podcast, who's reached out, who has supported me, either with a kind word or a financial donation. I really just are sharing the episode. That is so important too. If you guys could leave a review and share the episode with a friend. That means the world to me, because it is so hard to just compete against other homeschooling podcasts. I'd like to think that mine is a little bit different, because I didn't know if I wanted to homeschool and I'm trying it out and you're learning right along with me. Most of the homeschooling podcasts I've listened to and I haven't listened to them all, but they are from the standpoint of somebody that is a seasoned homeschooler and they're kind of teaching us their best practices, which is great, but I'm coming from a from the standpoint of I don't know what I'm doing, so you're learning it along with me, um, and I appreciate you being on this journey with me Some of the big, shocking surprise I've had that I've learned over the last two years almost next month will be two years Um, the amount of teachers that have put their jobs to homeschool their kids.
Speaker 1:That shocks me. Every time a teacher reaches out to me, I used to be in the school system and I left to homeschool my kid. Oh my goodness, nothing is more of a testament to how broken the system is than a teacher leaving it to homeschool their kids. Those episodes are always gems, so if you can find any of them, I do have a Instagram post where I listed them all. But, yeah, they keep growing. More and more teachers keep reaching out to me. It's amazing Community schools that are popping up.
Speaker 1:I think this is where the future of our education system is going. I have a post coming out I think tomorrow. I scheduled it for me saying that, yeah, the public school system is going to be looked at as the welfare of education in the years to come, and that's the way it is. It's a sad truth. I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of teachers. I think teachers do what they can with what they're given, but they're not given enough, not given enough resources. All the money goes to administration high, high, high up administration people we probably don't even see in the buildings, and it's a terrible thing and they're taking our tax dollars and we don't know if I could add one of my reasons to homeschool that I've gained since I started this podcast is the fact that we give free, or pretty much free, breakfast and lunch in most schools in America, so you can pack all the organic food you want for your child and they can go to school, throw out the food you sent them with and have the free bagels with the wheat, with the glyphosate in it and the high fructose corn syrup and the syrup that they're giving for the pancakes, and the peanut butter with all the sugar in it and high fructose corn syrup and red dye forties everywhere.
Speaker 1:This is all chemicals. It causes cancer, it causes the dementia as we're older, I mean, and that's just the long-term stuff. It does immediate stuff for their behavior as well, and it's just not the blood sugar. It's just not good for them. It's not good for the way. When you think about the food we give them helps their body function and we want it to function properly. But yeah, so the community schools is what I was started this conversation about was.
Speaker 1:I've had many people on my podcast talk about these pop up schools a forest school and nature school. This is amazing. I think this is the future of where education is going. Hopefully we don't have to pay into the school system anymore, or maybe hopefully a much smaller amount, so that we can pay for these little pop-up schools. You know co-ops, where there are teachers there and the parent just has to bring their child and maybe can work from a laptop in the lobby. That is something we have in our area. Of course, there's the co-ops that parents lead it, but I've seen so many other things pop up just from my guests and in my area that I really think this is the future of education. We're on the cusp of something amazing right now. I've seen let's see, we've had people talk about all different types of homeschooling, like, for instance, the classical conversations, the Charlotte Mason these are all really cool. You can look back into the episodes where I talk to parents about those and there's more styles as well.
Speaker 1:I just think it's funny that we send our kids to school. We're never taught. We're never even told like, what style of education are they getting this year? I mean, it's so silly. If I were to bring up another reason to not send my kid to school, it would be the testing. The testing is ridiculous. The funding the funding is tied to the testing. The testing is tied to the funding and none of it is tied to wanting a brighter future for your child. So take that for what it is. I think that's it. I'm going to round this out because it's almost an hour and I'm probably going to be having sick kids wake up any moment.
Speaker 1:I really just appreciate the listenership and the community that we have started to create. I wish you all the best, and that's that. Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.