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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
#179: You DON'T Need to Have It All Figured Out to Homeschool | Chad Hufford
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What if the biggest thing standing between you and homeschooling isn't your ability...it's your belief that you have to get everything right?
In this episode of The Homeschool How To Podcast, Cheryl sits down with Chad Hufford, homeschool graduate, father of six, biochemist, financial advisor, and speaker, to talk about what homeschooling looked like in the 1980s versus today—and why parents don't need to have all the answers before they begin.
Chad shares how his mom openly admitted she was figuring homeschooling out as she went, yet still raised children who became independent thinkers, lifelong learners, and successful adults. Together, Cheryl and Chad discuss why intentional parenting matters more than perfect curriculum, how homeschooling teaches children to think instead of memorize, and why comparing your family to others is one of the fastest ways to lose confidence.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why you don't have to be a certified teacher to homeschool.
- How to stop comparing your homeschool to everyone else's.
- The difference between teaching children what to think and how to learn.
- Why letting your child explore their interests builds confidence and independence.
- How homeschool communities, co-ops, tutors, and hybrid learning can support your family.
- The mindset shift that helps parents stop fearing they're "failing" their kids.
Whether you're thinking about homeschooling, brand new to homeschooling, or years into your journey, this conversation is packed with encouragement and practical wisdom that will leave you feeling far more confident about the path you're on.
Ready to homeschool but wondering where to start?
📘 Grab my book, So You Wanna Homeschool? Everything You Need to Know Before You Start
🎓 Need a step-by-step plan? Check out Cheryl's mini-course, How to Work and Homeschool
📚 Still wondering, "What do I actually teach?" My guide walks you through exactly what homeschool families focus on by age and subject.
If this episode encouraged you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who's considering homeschooling.
Connect with Chad, Financial Planner and SmartVestor Pro:
Instagram: TheHomeschoolHowToPodcast
Facebook: The Homeschool How To Podcast
Choosing Homeschooling The Hard Way
SPEAKER_01I didn't plan to homeschool. I started asking hard questions, realized how little control parents actually have, and made the hard decision to leave a government job to homeschool my kids. Now I interview other homeschooling parents to learn how this all works. I'm Cheryl, and this is the Homeschool How-To podcast. Let's learn this together.
Meet Chad And The 1980s Homeschool
SPEAKER_01This week's episode with Chad Hufford hit me differently. He was homeschooled back in the 1980s, long before there were co-ops, hundreds of curriculum choices, and homeschool communities everywhere you look. His mom admitted she was figuring it out as she went, and yet he still graduated college, built a successful business, and now he homeschools his own six children. One thing that he said that really stuck with me the only difference between failure and an experiment is your willingness to learn from the process. If you've been waiting to homeschool because you think that you need to have every single answer figured out before you begin, I think this conversation will take a huge weight off of your shoulders. And if your biggest question is, okay, but how do I actually make homeschooling work with my job, my schedule, and my finances? That is exactly why I created my course, How to Work and Homeschool. It's the roadmap that I wish I had before leaving my government job. Listen to this episode first. And then if you're ready to build a plan that works for your family, you can learn more about my course at the link in the show's description or on the homeschoolhowto.com. All right, let's hear what Chad has to say. Welcome. And with us today, I have Chad Hufford from Veritas, Alaska, right, Chad?
SPEAKER_00Veritas Wealth Management up in Alaska, yes.
SPEAKER_01In Alaska. So amazing. We were chatting a little bit before I hit record on your upcoming hunting trip and how even though you're still gonna be within the Alaskan border, you still have to take an airplane.
SPEAKER_00And it's like, and if you actually end up shooting harvesting, harvesting a caribou, there's there's a nice PC way to say it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You yeah, you have to fly it back with you. That's so crazy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it's even though it's still within Alaska, it's still several hundred miles away. And that's just that's just kind of the nature of of traveling within Alaska, is there's so many places. I mean, this is literally an island hundreds of miles off the coast of of Alaska. So it's not even not even not even close to me. It's not even close to mainland, mainland Alaska. There's so many places here they're not accessible by anything but boat or plane or maybe dog sled or sew machine. I mean, we have we have one major road system that goes up and down the middle of the state, and then a few things that branch off, but it's it's still pretty wild up here, Cheryl. It's it's the it's truly the last frontier.
SPEAKER_01All right, someday. I hope somebody with a podcast in Alaska invites me up. So all right, so Chad, I talked to your brother a couple weeks ago, and that episode when I kind of shared snippets from it, got a lot of reaction, I guess would be a good way. You know, because we kind of talked about his journey homeschooling. One off the bat, as you probably know, he he proclaims that he was not for homeschooling, he did not enjoy being homeschooled as your younger brother. I don't know if it had much to do with you, but he did not enjoy homeschooling, yet he still homeschools today. And then he kind of got into a little bit about like his addiction and stuff. So that was a super interesting episode. I can link that in the show's description for anybody that wants to check that out. But so his experience was so one stream. How was the experience for you growing up homeschooled, especially in the 80s? I think you said, in Alaska, where there's one road for a million miles.
SPEAKER_00So we do have very different experiences. Part of that is because we have different personalities, and in some ways, and I don't mean any disrespect by this, but we were raised by different parents. I was the firstborn, he was the lastborn. I probably wore them out. And by the time they got to him, it his experience of homeschooling was very, very different. Now, I will say that mine was not easy, and at the time, I probably hated it too. There were some very lonely times, and again, we were homeschooled in the 80s. So my mom was a pioneer. We were making this up as we went, and by the time I was like eight or nine, I realized she was making it up as she went. Um you know, when I was six, I was like, this is whatever, this is fine. Um, I'm sure mom knows what she's doing. A couple more years later, I'm like, no, nobody's got a blessed clue. And and I'm sure homeschooling, I don't know if it's cool right now, but it certainly wasn't cool back then. And the the joke is you know, only geeks and freaks were homeschooled. I'll leave it up to your audience to decide which one they think I am. But it was it was rough, and there were there weren't the communities, there there wasn't the support system there is in a lot of places. I mean, I don't know what it looks like in New York, here in Alaska, per capita, you know, we we have a fraction of the population size, but per capita, it is a pretty popular place to homeschool. I think the tendency for people who value independence and autonomy is probably a little higher here. So I think that lends itself to that. You also have a lot of people with jobs or careers or just lifestyles that do involve a lot of travel, like we already talked about. It's hard to get in and out of. Homeschool lends itself to that. So throughout the last 40 years, um, there's been a lot of support systems built up. I I do homeschool my kids. They're in something called classical conversations, which is once a week kind of a cooperative thing. Right now, and even this morning, I dropped them off at a my youngest two at a kind of a reading and vocabulary school. Cause, you know, that's how you ruin a summer in Alaska, is you have your kids do vocab in the middle of summer because we're just that cool. No, but it's but you know, just want to keep some of that momentum going. And one of we have a couple kids who struggle with dyslexia and and giving them extra support. So, and they're with some of their buddies, some of their other homeschool friends, and there's there's groups within our church, and none of that existed. So it was a lot, it was a lot lonelier experience back then. But by the time I was in college, even though my experience in homeschool wasn't always fun, and by the time I was 15 or 16, I probably thought there's no way I'm doing this to my kids. But by the time I was in college, it was already a complete shift because I saw, I saw what the rest of the world was doing with their education, at least the rest of Alaska. You know, I was I grew up very sheltered and went to a public college, a state school, and I was like, this is a dumpster fire. Um, I had a great experience there, don't get me wrong. But I saw what was coming out of our school system, and I made a determination right then and there that when I had my own family, the kids were going to be homeschooled.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so and I think you just unpacked a lot. So one, your mother did not know what she was doing, but you still turned out better, like like leaps and bounds and what was going into the colleges from the public education system.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so but even there, like I'll be on so I I I can't even call it graduated, because back then there really wasn't a system of formal graduation. I just I just quit doing homeschool
College Readiness After Self Study
SPEAKER_00when I was 17. I got a job, I was doing construction, I was making money. My mom's like, okay, you can be done now. And pretty much from the ages of nine to 17, most of it was self-study, for better or for worse, because there there were five of us, and my younger ones, my younger siblings got a lot more of the attention, which was difficult, but also taught I learned a lot in that as well. But so I I graduated, quit whatever at 17. And I was, I, if I'm really honest, Cheryl, I was very nervous and self-conscious about how prepared I was for higher education. So I actually went to college basically on a dare. It was a or a bet, essentially. And I lost, and anyway, somebody called my bluff on something, and so I had to take two classes, that was the deal. And I was very interested in human physiology, and I grew up in athletics, so I had a lot of interest in that. So I took anatomy and physiology, and that is it it kind of scared the tar out of me because I didn't know. Was I prepared for this? I hadn't taken science since I was 15, and I actually took a three-year gap between 17 and 20, and and a lot of that was just delaying stepping into the unknown. I was procrastinating against continuing my education because I didn't know if I was prepared or not. And I thought I was probably decently prepared, but I was afraid of showing up and realizing I was a moron and I didn't know what I thought I knew, and all these people are miles ahead of me, and I was scrambling to keep up. There were areas where I had to scramble to keep up, at least initially, things like math, where I just you're out of practice, you know, and at some point, you know, last time you do a cosign or work with logarithms, like it's not something you do every day. So I needed some brushing up, but it wasn't that I wasn't prepared, I was just super rusty because I had taken that gap. But no, I I was pleasantly not surprised, but I was relieved, I should say, with how well I was prepared academically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that and again, for her to just for well, for one, for there not to be all the curriculums that there are now, there was like probably a Becca and that's it.
SPEAKER_00Becca and Bob Jones, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah. And and then you're like, oh, she didn't even know what she was doing with me. I was doing a lot of it myself. And to go there and be like, wow, I'm not behind it. It's it's I think it just removes a lot of the pressure from the parents today that are like, I don't think I'm smart enough to homeschool my kids. And it's not really about that. You're smart enough to get them books, right? Or to get them an online program, or if you like piano, I can get you in a piano lesson, you know, it's it's more being a liaison and you know, there's a better word, like coordinating the education that might be actually useful to
Intentionality And The Experiment Mindset
SPEAKER_01you.
SPEAKER_00And and I would say too, it's first of all, you don't need to be as talented as a professional teacher. You just need to be a step ahead of your kid. And what it really comes down to is intentionality. When I say my mom didn't know what she was doing, I don't mean that as if she was willy-nilly. It was so forgive the analogy. I I have a biochemistry degree, so I'm gonna use this. It was an experiment, right? But in an experiment, you and that's what I took in college, is biochemistry. So figured, I don't know if I know what I'm doing, I might as well pick the hardest degree they have. Anyway, that's a whole other conversation. But you you don't just willy-nilly go into it, you plan, but you realize you don't control all the variables. So you you plan and you you come up with a strategy, you structure it as best you can, but then things don't always go the way that you anticipate. That's why they call them experiments. And then you you iterate, look back at what went the way we expected, what didn't, and what can we change next time. So by the time my little brother came along, he was experiment number five. So, you know, they tried some things, some things worked, some things didn't. But even with me, we changed curriculum a lot. To this day, I write like a physician. My penmanship is is deplorable because we changed writing curriculum about every other year. So it's a mishmash between printing and italics and cursive, and because we were my mom was changing. So the reason I say all that is she was always intentional. She always had a purpose in what she was doing, even if we didn't know how it was going to work out. And I think that's what so many families are lacking today, is kids aren't intentional because their teachers aren't intentional. They go into a classroom full of 47 kids. Doesn't matter how good the teacher is, they're not teaching, they're just managing chaos, and everything is reactive. So even if my mom didn't have a curriculum or coursework plan, like there was always an intentional plan. I think what it helped me, what it would show me, the model to me, Cheryl, was what intentionality looked like amidst uncertainty. So, no, we didn't have it all figured out. No, I still don't have it all figured out. I've got six of my own experiments that we're working on, but we show up with a plan, with intention, with purpose. And my goodness, that's what the world needs right now, is people who show up to life on purpose with intentionality. No, we don't have it all figured out. We shouldn't pretend, but we need to quit reacting to everyone else around us and start playing into our own purpose. And I think that's what my mom did. And for all the faults with our homeschooling journey, all five of us turned out pretty darn good. And a lot of that's just the grace of God, don't get me wrong. But my parents always had a lot of purpose behind what they did, even if we fought them tooth and claw to actually do what they wanted.
Why His Parents Chose Homeschooling
SPEAKER_01Now, what was their reason to homeschool in the first place? Did they ever talk to you about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was it was a wide variety of things. It started out, some of it was academics, some of it was convenience. My my dad had a small business that allowed him a lot of flexibility and freedom. We traveled a lot. Not like we were my family's from the my parents' families were from the Midwest. So travel was like to Iowa, which if any of your listeners in Iowa, I'm sorry. It's just not the most exciting place. So we were always like, oh, we're going to Iowa again. Looking back, I'm super grateful we got to do that, but it was like, really, Dad, another cornfield? But we get spoiled. We're coming from like, you know, Mount McKinley and and the Kenai River. Anyways, all that to say. We did a lot of really cool things, and my parents want they really valued freedom and autonomy. My dad had built a business that gave him that. They wanted our our schoolwork to be able to follow along that. In fact, every vacation was always tied to reports. We had uh uh cross, I'm getting this a little off topic, but we had this cross-country trip one year, and it was wasn't even a planned deal to follow the Oregon Trail, but we stumbled across it coming back through like Idaho, and my mom was like, this is cool, like let's change our route and follow it. You kids can take notes and write a report. I'm like, this is our summer vacation, like we're writing reports on Lewis and Clark, but again, that's that's how we grew up. So that was a big piece of it is just the flexibility to be able to, as you said, you know, teach and learn in a specific certain way. They wanted to tailor it to us as individuals, not as classrooms. But the biggest piece, I think, was the worldview. They wanted us to have a strong foundation for for a worldview, for truth, for morals before we became adults, rather than exposing us to the craziness, even was in the public school system back then, nothing even close to what it is now. But my dad, so my dad was to be perfectly honest, he was not super for it. I did not realize that at the time. My mom had to kind of talk him into it. After a few years, though, and as they got more involved, and we still were doing sports and and you know, things with with public school groups, because there weren't homeschool groups back then. After a few years that, my dad's like, I don't care if our kids know anything other than how to write their name. I just don't want them doing that. And so I I think that became really the driving force, the academics, the flexibility, the customization, all those other benefits, I think all played second tier to them building a strong world worldview and foundational or moral foundation for all of us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think what you said there about your father saying, I don't want that. I recently, you know, we were around a 14-year-old who goes to public school, and then I was around a couple other instances around girls the same age that are homeschooled. And the difference was night and day. And you know, the 14-year-old that goes to public school is all about the boys that like her, and well, I like this one because he's tall, but the other one rides a dirt bike, but blah blah blah. Like, literally, that's all she talked about. Like, I'm I was like, Okay, well, this is cute at first, but like really, like there's a lot more going on in the world, and then I think back to myself at 14, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I was probably the same way. And um talking to the girls that are homeschooled and were 14. It was like you could have a whole conversation, and the one was like, Yeah, I'm homeschooling because I want to zip through my classes. I know I want to be a nurse, so I don't want to spend you know aimless hours learning things that aren't gonna be relevant to nursing, and you know, like you could hold these elaborate conversations, and I was just like, wow, this solidified my decision to homeschool so much. And you it's like, of course, it's not even the fault of the girls that go to public school and that's all they're after, right? Because like that's all they hear all day from their friends and on the social media and you know, probably what they're talking about in class. And it's like, oh my gosh, there's just there's the world, there's just so much in it to learn and to know and to discover and to question that it's it really, I was like, Wow, okay, we're homeschooling, we're really sticking with this path. I don't care what my my daughter says to me one day. Do you have you experienced this as well?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and what you said without saying it is like, I think
Teaching Kids How To Learn
SPEAKER_00homeschool teaches kids how to learn. And that may seem like, okay, well, everybody learns how to learn. No, they don't. Not everybody learns how to learn. A lot of even even kids who do well academically, and I'm painting with a broad brush, there are some fantastic people that come out of the public school system. My parents are pretty decent people, but they both came out of the public school system. My kids have friends, but I think as a general rule, those people who escape the public school system with their morals intact and a good compass and a beacon for where their life is going, like, those are the exceptions that that prove the rule. And not to any fault of the kids' owner, even the even the teachers. Like again, the teachers can't teach, they're managing chaos and all the bureaucracy, all that junk. But painting with a very broad brush, like even the ones who do academically well in school, they become good test takers. Being able to regurgitate information on tests is very, very different than learning. And one of the things I think homeschooling taught me is learning how to learn. And and to be able to be in an environment that you've never been, like a state school and learning biochemistry, like, no, I had been in that environment, but I had learned enough to know how to learn. I learned enough how to teach myself, even. And that was so beneficial. And my kids now, and we are we are doing a little bit of a hybrid. We have a couple kids taking some college classes, and and some of the older kids are also taking a couple classes at the local private school, one of the Christian schools here in town. But one of them is out in Bristol Bay commercial fishing right now. He's 16. He's running a boat crew at 16. My oldest daughter, she is, she's in flight school right now. So talk about experiencing Alaska, she's experiencing it from an airplane. And um, you know, they've they are not they're not scared. Well, they're brave enough to step into new conditions and into uncertainty. They don't need a script, they don't need a multiple choice test. They they can look at a blank canvas and step into that. And it that alone is so beneficial because you and I both know life is not a multiple choice test. There, there isn't a right and wrong, I mean, sometimes it's a right and wrong answer, but it's usually not that clear. You're you're constantly wading through ambiguity. And I think homeschooling, if done intentionally and if done well, I think helps kids learn in the midst of uncertainty and actually learn how to learn. And I don't think our public school system is teaching any of that right now.
unknownNo, not at all.
SPEAKER_01And it even, you know, when someone said to me, How did you start a podcast? And I said, Well, I actually met somebody that had a podcast at my son's wrestling one night, like another dad. And I was like, Well, well, who hired you? He's like, I just started a podcast. And I was like, Well, what do you what do you mean? You have to work for somebody, right? Like that was I I was a government worker. I have the public school mentality. Like, you don't just start a business on your own. You don't start a thing or a hobby, even like you have to be told that you can do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, who gave you permission?
SPEAKER_01I was like, Oh, all right. Well, I guess I'll learn how to do a podcast. Oh, hey, I learned how to learn that, you know. But it was like learning to do that in my late 30s and into my 40s and the Instagram page and all that. It was like it was a lot, but it was also like the first time that I experienced that, right? That it wasn't just someone saying, This is the test, and you have to learn US history. Here's this to this for the test and have your essay questions prepared. It was like, no, I'm learning it because I want to, so I don't mind spending this time doing the research or doing the practice and the fail and all that. It's wild.
Community Hybrid Options And Getting Help
SPEAKER_01Now, what do you do differently with your kids than maybe kind of you experienced? You know, not to say that your parents did it wrong, but just you were like, Oh, I think I'm gonna do it a little bit differently. Like you kind of mentioned the hybrid classes, which are really cool. You might want to explain that too for parents who don't know what that is and you know, might want to look into that.
SPEAKER_00So, one of the big things that we're doing different, again, it wasn't even an option for my parents, are these homeschool learning communities, like classical conversations. They have a hiking group that they go with. And we did some of that, like, but it was there was no nothing formalized around, there wasn't an existing group. It was kind of just some homeschooling people, you know, getting on their igloo phones and saying, like, hey, you know, let's let's go on a dog sled ride together or whatever. A little bit of hyperbole there. But there's there's so much of that now. We're like, there's multiple churches in Anchorage, and even groups outside of churches too, that they have their own little homeschool communities and they do other things with homeschool communities. So there is we do a lot of that, which gets them not just interacting with other people, because we had sports for that, and I think that's something my parents did well because it gave us that social outlet, but it also I think allowed us to get a taste of how the rest of the world was doing it without being overwhelmed with it. So let me just give you a real simple metaphor, but it's kind of like an immune system, right? So if you were to, let's say they announce hypothetically a worldwide pandemic, you lock yourself in your home, you wear a mask, you basically have a giant bubble around you, your immune system doesn't have to work. And there's people, again, hypothetically, coming out of that situation with all these weird situations because for a year or two their immune system didn't have to do anything, and just like a muscle, it atrophies. Now, not quite in exactly the same way, and we won't get into the biochemistry of it, but the immune system weakens when it's not challenged. But on the other side, if somebody is overwhelmed, if somebody's immune system is overwhelmed with some sort of contagion, they it can't fight it off and they get infected. So there's a happy medium between how much the immune system is introduced to to strengthen it and how much collapses it. And I think with with influences, it's it's in a similar way. Like you can't you can't be completely in a sterile environment because the kid has no chance to really understand is this my value or is my parents' value? They they don't even have the freedom to fail, much less learn from a mistake, anything like that. But we also don't want them inundated where they don't. Have the infrastructure morally or psychologically to deal with eight or nine, ten hours a day of being exposed to the crap that's in the public school system. So I think sports was really good for us to to again get a glimpse of that and and and but still spend most of our time in a more protected environment. And so we we're doing that with some of the youth group stuff, with homeschool groups. One of the things we're doing differently, that we're just a lot less structured, which sounds maybe a little bit weird. We're a lot less structured than when my mom well, my parents, but my mom was was the the driving force behind it. Like everything was, you know, scheduled out and things like that, and we had a syllabus to follow and all that. My I I told you offline before we started recording. My wife cried when we first started talking about homeschooling, and she was not my wife at the time. In fact, we were not even officially dating. And in a very tactful, romantic way, because I was homeschooled and I grew up not knowing how to talk to girls. I told her, hey, this is gonna go anywhere, then I need you to be willing to homeschool my kids. And she did not come from a home like mine. In fact, she ended up dropping out of high school to take care of her her family, eventually got her GED, but her school experience was her life, her life experience was completely different than mine. And she came from a very broken home, from her parents were addicts, and that was incredibly terrifying for her to think about. Like, I you know, she's thinking, like, I didn't I didn't even have a decent education, and you want me to educate some future kids that we don't even have. So we and I'm much more structured and disciplined and and probably intense. So we found a a way to kind of make it work, and that means like we have we have people that come in and help. And that's another thing, too, is my mom was doing it alone. She wasn't sh if if we had a k if one of us was struggling in an area, having a tutor or having a friend coming in who maybe is a you know used to teach math or has a real strong penchant for art or English or literature or something like that. We kind of had to do on our own. And I hope people listening too don't feel bad that man, if your kid's struggling in an area, like I said, we have a couple of kids struggling with dyslexia. I'm not qualified to deal with that. But there's a lot of other people are, so you can bring people into your team. Homeschooling doesn't mean that you and your spouse need to figure it all out on your own. So that's a big thing that we're doing differently is we are we are bringing in experts from other fields to to help us and people and maybe they're not even experts, they're just they're a step ahead in one area than than we are, and and it really creating a community around it. One of the things my wife would say, maybe not so much anymore, but when our kids were younger, she felt very, very lonely. You know, she wasn't able to get out and have as much freedom and flexibility as she does now. And I don't I don't know if our kids felt lonely, but I know that that she did. And doing these things collectively with other families, it isn't just for our kids, it's for us as parents too. Because we all, if we're even a tiny bit self-aware, we will come into situations where we feel like, oh my gosh, I'm failing my kids. I can't believe I've screwed up again in this area, I'm gonna mess them up, and I I don't know how our kids are ever gonna recover from you know whatever that thing is. And it can be just really negative self-talk, and all parents go through it. We all feel like failures at some point. But to go to be around other people who are like, oh, I feel the same way, and and we're all looking at each other's lives, feeling like, oh man, you guys have it. Cheryl, you guys have it figured out. But you're still struggling with this, and it's it's not misery loves company, but I think it is it's people just being real with each other and realizing we're all in the same boat together. This is not easy. There isn't a script for this. So, again, a lot of what we're doing differently are options my parents didn't even have. And it makes it, I think, a more full experience for our kids to be able to do some of this stuff. But also, I think we as parents get a lot more encouragement because of being connected with some of these families.
SPEAKER_01That is such great advice,
Stop Comparing And Measure The Alternative
SPEAKER_01great insight. And it made me, you know, recall a lot of things. I I was just thinking about this today, actually, because my kids are, I could say for a few more days, seven and three. And I want to let that stretch as long as I can. He's still seven. But, you know, and I'm like, man, it's like hard to even find time to clean up outside or get the dishes done or this or that. You know, and I try to say to myself, it's not gonna be like this for that long, though. Because even when I look at, you know, two years ago when I had a five and a one-year-old, it was you really didn't have time to do much of anything else. But, you know, now there is they're a little bit more independent. And even tonight coming on the podcast, my husband was down at the garage and I said to the seven-year-old, all right, watch her for a little bit. If you really need something, you can interrupt, or daddy's down, you know, try a cell phone. You know, so it's like those hard times, like the hardness changes because they'll become more independent. And then, you know, you'll you'll miss the days where they were young and they needed you for, you know, they wanted to do all the fun arts and crafts and this and that, or they want you to hold the baby doll and all that good stuff. But another thing that you kind of touched on is, you know, we do have the communities here in New York, especially because we have like super strict vaccine laws. So anybody that doesn't want their kid to get all of the vaccines on the CDC schedule, you have to homeschool. We're like one of the five states that you cannot just say, you know, for a religious exemption, you know, let us in. You have to have them all. So we have, and that's only in the last um since 2018. So in the last eight years, homeschooling has blown up in New York because people that don't want to vaccinate have no other choice. So we actually have a ton of homeschoolers here. And, you know, I would find myself, sorry, I would find myself over the last, let's see, four years that we've kind of been into the homeschooling community. You know, I haven't been doing like academics with him for that long because he's so young, but in the community of it. And I'd have these expectations, like, okay, we're going to the creek. These homeschoolers meet every Monday. They're fishing, they're climbing hills, they're doing, you know, and and we're gonna just go and be homeschoolers, right? I'm gonna make connections, my kids are gonna make connections. And every single time I went in with these expectations, like my son would be off on his own, right? And I'd look and I'd be like, Why? There's a whole group of kids over there, and here he is, like in the creek catching minnows by himself, and my daughter's screaming because she just wants to be like, she's cold, she wants to be home, she wants to, you know. And it was like every time I left, they're like, my God, this is so awful. I you didn't play with kids, you didn't let me talk to the adults. Like, this is miserable. I hate this. But looking back on it now, I think I say, and I think my kids would say, like, we had fun going to the green. We had fun, like my son. I definitely learned more about him. He does not, he does not like groups of kids. And I guess when I look at it, I'm like, do I like groups of adults either? No, I like to sit and kind of have like a relaxed one-on-one conversation with somebody better than maybe being in a louder group or trying to fit in. But it's just interesting. And I guess the case in point is like having these expectations about what it's gonna look like. It probably won't look like that, but it doesn't mean that it won't end up wonderful in the end.
SPEAKER_00Well, and that's why I think looking at it in the framework, again, of a scientist, like it every day is a little bit of an experiment. It doesn't mean you don't plan, it doesn't mean you don't prepare, but I've told my kids, and this is something I've tell myself too, the only difference between failure and an experiment is your willingness to learn from the process. So what what most scientists so when I was again, when I was going through biochemistry, we were running experiments, sometimes thousands and thousands of tests. The reason we ran thousands is we because we knew most of them wouldn't go the way that we planned. And if we looked at our life that way, every day is a new experiment. You have thousands of experiments, some go better than others, but every day is an opportunity to learn from what went right, what went wrong, what are you gonna try to do differently? We didn't have time to beat ourselves up, like, oh, you know, that didn't titrate the way that we thought it would, and there's a weird reaction going on, and Johnny in the back is on fire because of acid or whatever, you know, it's no, don't worry, nobody burned in the lab. But but we just looked at it differently. We didn't look at, hey, we have a plan for how this experiment's gonna go, and if it doesn't go perfect, then we're gonna be embarrassed, and all the other people in our class are gonna laugh at us and judge us, and and that's what we think as parents. Like, if things, if our kid is the one, you know, on the baseball field facing the opposite direction, eating dandelions, everybody's gonna laugh and judge us, like, no, they're just their kid, and you know, their kids probably eat paint chips and glue. So it all works out, you know, we're we're all a bunch of broken people, but not to say you don't have expectations, but the expectations are tempered with what can I learn from this process? What can I learn from the experience? Because I think we're too quick to judge a day or a month or a semester as a failure rather than as a learning opportunity. We're telling our kids to learn and to do experiments, but then as parents, everything is cut and dry. It either worked or it didn't, and that's just not life.
SPEAKER_01And I kind of love what you said about, you know, it's all an experiment and there are many failed experiments within that, but you're you're learning what works and what doesn't, right? So parents are so afraid that if I homeschool, I'm going to fail my children. And what is what does that even mean? Does that mean your kid is 30 and lives in your basement still? Does it mean that they're a a serial murderer? Or does it mean that they're, you know, don't know what they want to do with it? I guess that would be, you know, 30 years, but you know, what does failure mean? If your kid is not enjoying anything in life as the homeschool parent, you would turn it around with trying to find the things that interest them, trying to find is there uh an issue with dyslexia or dysgraphia or you know, something that I can maybe be flip the superscript on and make things easier for them, where a lot of times in the public school it gets missed for a while. You know, maybe music is how they connect and music is how they learn best, and you can lean into that with the homeschooling. So as long as you are like you kind of mentioned before, a have a little bit of a clue about what's going on and able to look at, you know, yourself and all right, well, what can I do better as the homeschool parent? And you shift and and kind of get them into a way like I guess what I'm saying is they're not going to go into the public school system and come out, you know, a genius, but they do have that ability with with what you can provide at home.
SPEAKER_00I think people make the wrong comparisons. And I'll tell you what I mean. So we compare our I mean, social media just exaggerates this, but other people put their best foot forward and we compare the skeletons in our closet to that. So we go to the park, and you know, your your son was eating dirt off the garage floor, you know, before you guys left, and and your daughter was throwing a fit and says she wants to run away and all these different things. And then you go to the park and you try to put your best foot forward and you see the other moms and dads, and their kids are in matching outfits and their matches, their backpack, and they're taking notes, and you're like, oh my gosh, they have it all figured out. And what you don't know is that you know, Lucy on the way home tried to stab her brother to death with her pencil instead of taking notes with it. You don't see that, you just saw a glimpse of their life, and you didn't even notice the kid that was melting down back in the woods because you were focused on little Lucy writing her notes and looking like the perfect little homeschool kid. So we often compare our our our bad experiences with a glimpse of somebody else's best foot forward, and it's the wrong comparison. Even if, even if that family does have it all together, they probably don't. But you all, everybody listening has that family in mind that, you know, the Johnsons, like they're just perfect, and all their kids are brilliant, and they're all, you know, taking college classes in junior high, and you know, all whatever. It's probably not what it seems, but even if it is, it's the wrong comparison. And I'll give you an example of, you know, we've got, I'm afraid to even use this, but I'm just gonna bring it up. So you've already mentioned like medications and things like this. So you've got these like GLP one, these GLP drugs, right? And and and this is not the gender blocking, is that that? No, no, no, no. The the the diet, the diet drugs, GLP. So it's like, you know, they're they control appetite and all these different things. And there's there's a lot of risks with with those. And this is not, I'm not saying for or against, but when I hear people talk about them, they're like, yeah, you know, so and so they lost a hundred pounds on this thing, but they were they were taking a glyp one, they were taking GLP, and uh da-da-da. And okay, so ideally, if somebody's a hundred pounds overweight and they get on a diet regimen, they get an exercise regimen, and they do it without any medications, and they drop their weight, and all that, like that's ideal, that's optimal. But the problem is we compare somebody maybe using a medication to get down, and again, I'm not pro or against this. I'm just making this. Here's the comparison is we shouldn't be comparing what this person is doing to optimal. It's what this person is doing to the alternative. So we don't know the long-term effects of some of these GLP drugs. We do know the long-term effects of obesity and metabolic condition and insulin resistance, and they're terrible. So the comparison shouldn't be, well, if you lost 100 pounds the good old-fashioned way with diet and exercise, and some of your listeners are gonna be irritated by what I'm saying, but I hope they can get around this. Like, yes, that is optimal. But we can't hold everybody to that standard. If somebody has been dealing with heart conditions and been overweight for 10, 20 years, it's not changing and it's not working. So they need to be comparing themselves not to what if I lost 100 pounds in the gym and eating chicken and celery? That's not the comparison. The comparison is what if I live 10 more years, 100 pounds overweight. That's the comparison. So, circling this back to homeschooling, the comparison isn't what if how come my kids aren't perfect? How come our life isn't perfect like that one family? It's what is the alternative in the public school system? You may not be optimal, but can you be better than what average is? And average in this country sucks. And sorry to use that word on your podcast, but it average is is is in anxiety, it's in broken relationships. We are the most in-depth, overfed, over-medicated, and underconnected society to ever walk this planet. That's what average is. If you can do better than that, homeschooling, you may never be the Johnson family, but if you could be somewhere in between, that's the comparison. Not to ideal, not to optimal, and you don't have to do it all yourself. It's okay to get help from other people, but is is it can you be better than the norm? That's the comparison people need to make because nobody's perfect. Yes, our daughter, she's 17, she's flying planes. She's also crashed four cars in the last year.
SPEAKER_01So, like So she's not gonna fly you and your dead caribou back home.
SPEAKER_00She's not. Well, and what she said is, well, dad, there's you don't you don't have to worry about you know traffic and people crossing in the air, like there's no cars pulling out in front of you. I was like, Yeah, but there's other airplanes. But, anyways, we pray for her a lot. But again, point being, like somebody could be listening and like, oh, you know, he's got the 17-year-old, she's flying planes a lot. Yeah, but she can barely drive a car. So we've got stuff we're working on too. We're not perfect. So, like we it's not about trying to make this optimal and perfect. Perfect is a unicorn, I would not recommend chasing it. But we can always move towards that. We can always be more proactive and intentional, and that's what our kids are gonna respond to. I was super frustrated with my parents growing up for a lot of the things that that we were doing, so different. But it what it taught me, Cheryl is it taught me number one to be different. That I didn't need to fit in, I didn't need to do things exactly like everybody else. Because if I was, that I needed to be pretty okay with the results of ending up like everybody else. And I didn't want that. I didn't want those results. But what I what really resonated with me and what gave me a lot of grace for them was I knew that they were intentional, even if they were screwing up wildly, that they did it with my best interests at heart. And I truly believe that. And I think as parents, we need to be honest with our kids that I don't have this all figured out. I'm not pretending that I do, but this is the best choice that I know how to make given the information I have. And when I realized that choice was incorrect, to go back and humble myself in front of my kids and not pretend like it's my way or the highway. I mean, I'm still dad, and what I say goes because this is not a democracy, y'all don't get to vote on this. But I do want to be open and honest when my decisions have been poor, because there's been a lot of them. And I think with a lot of parents, because of their own insecurities, they have to pretend like even when they're wrong, that they weren't really wrong, or like we need we need to own the mistakes that we make as parents. I think kids will give us a lot more grace than that. Sorry, that got long-winded, but like I said, I get excited about this stuff.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, and it brings me back to the beginning when you said you thought your parents had it figured out until about age nine. And I it's funny because I remember in like, I don't know, maybe teenager in my 20s, and I was like, My God, my parents never had anything
Stillness Seasons And Finding What Fits
SPEAKER_01figured out. And I always thought that they did. Like, I was like, oh, that's my safety net, even though they were pretty crappy parents. And like, and like really, and in fact, when you said your wife went through a lot growing up, I was like, man, I'd kind of like to have her on the podcast sometime because what I deal with is like trying to uh, I guess, be a normal parent when you didn't have normal parents yourself, or like kind of that post-traumatic stress that I never thought I had until I had a son who is loud and slams things and has loud footsteps and is always running, and I'm constantly getting triggered from like my childhood, like you know, just freaking out on him too, like stop that and then later being like, I don't think he was actually doing anything wrong. I think he brought back other things. So I I in the back of my mind, I'm like, I really should have somebody on the show because it'd be such an interesting conversation about like parenting when you still have a lot of baggage. But what you know, I was kind of bringing up in the first place. I still thought they knew and like had it all figured out, even though I clearly looking back, I'm like, why would I ever think they knew what they were doing? But as a child, yeah, you look at your parents, you're like, Well, they they know their parents, and saying to your child, you know, I'm I'm I'm making the best decision I can make with the information I have for you. That is just so much. It it it puts trust in them for you, you know, that and to give you that grace. Like when I mess up, even if it's just yelling at you for something that you probably didn't even do anything wrong, but but my own stuff. That was my gut reaction. And I really do think it does a lot. And I and I butt heads with my son, and I think that has a lot to do with it, like my my upbringing and maybe maybe another expectations, you know. I'm a I'm a wonderful parent. You should just love me and never give me attitude. I'm way better than grandma and grandpa were. Like he doesn't see it that way. Can you believe it?
SPEAKER_00Well, let me ask you this what what is your putting you on the spot here, Cheryl? What is your biggest challenge right now, homeschooling?
SPEAKER_01Or just parenting in general? Yeah, I think getting that flow going. Like, I tried to keep it kind of up in the air the first few years. Like, let's try things, let's try different curriculums. Or after talking hearing your story though about the handwriting, now I'm thinking we shouldn't try other curriculums. You know, do we want to try ukulele? Do we want to try soccer? Do we want to try wrestling? Do we you know, seeing what's dick and then starting this business three and a half years ago, and it's like, well, it it does kind of take up time, but I think we're getting to a point where we we can have a little bit of a routine with it before the kids wake up. And so I think just getting that routine of like, and now my daughter is gonna be four, so she's gonna start getting into the you know, she's in gymnastics and they're they're both in Bible school this week, which I I have had to volunteer for because she won't leave my side, but it's actually been very cute. But it it's so it I guess it's like trying to give them the experiences without being so busy that we don't have any time to just relax or read that book for 15 minutes a day, you know, have that connection time, really finding that flow that works for us where we're like this is it. But I feel like maybe that's not possible either. Because like once you get there, seasons change and it goes to something else. So I think that is my biggest, but also he's a butthead, and we we do. We just like, yeah, we're he's such a good kid to other people. Like, people are always telling me how wonderful he is, and I'm like, yeah, but he resents me for like something in a past life.
SPEAKER_00So you you you are gonna need to talk to my wife because our oldest, uh sorry, our oldest boy, uh our oldest is a 17-year-old that that flies planes and crashes cars. Our our 16-year-old is out commercial fishing, and they have butted heads since they were like two. And I remember my wife and my my son, and I remember coming home one day. I could come home one day from work to spank him. And um, I get home and I don't remember what he did. And I get home and I take him to the bathroom and I said, Do you know why I'm here? And he said, Yes, dad, because I was disobedient and because you love me enough to discipline me. And my wife is like, What? That's what you get? Like he was doing this and this, and he's yelling, he's throwing things, and he just comes up to you and apologizes and says, I know you're spanking me because you love me, and then bends over. Like, what? Like, where was this kid five minutes ago when you weren't home? And you know, so it's just it's crazy how like we just have diff even with the same kid, such different experiences. And I just I hope that you give yourself grace.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and also take the time to find stillness too, because you're right. I mean, the the seasons of life are changing so much, and I think it's awesome that you guys are allowing the kids to experience a lot of different things because yeah, you don't know what you don't know, like you're giving your kids a chance to find out what they're passionate about. And I'm not one of those people that's like, oh, follow your passions or whatever, and you'll never work a day in your life. Like your passion might be Legos, you're probably not gonna be able to make a career out of that, but you might be able, that might be what makes your heart soar. And I think a lot of people in life, and I you know, I I do retirement planning for a business or for a career. I meet a lot of people who are 65 years old and they don't know what makes them tick anymore. Because they've been so focused on a career and making everything work that they don't know, they can't even remember what they enjoyed doing when they were five years old. Now, at 45, I can tell you the stuff that makes my heart soar is a lot of the same stuff that made my heart soar when I was five and six years old. And if we can help develop that in our kids, yes, it's chaos. Yes, it can be frustrating. Yes, when there's six of them, they all want different things, you're like, oh my goodness, you should be like a chauffeur. We have ways to manage that too. But, anyways, that's a whole other conversation. But to allow you and your family to experience some of those different things, Cheryl, is so priceless. But I think the challenge, this is where one of our biggest challenges right now is having the stillness to follow our heart, to actually know what our own soul is saying to us. Because it's so easy to get so busy chasing everything around, you don't know it was meaningful or impactful because you're always on to the next thing. You're picking up this kid, you're dropping that kid off, you've got the the all these things that are great. The groups, the support groups, the awanas, the the the youth group. Like, but we're our story right now is finding that stillness, the in-betweens, where we really have to schedule that out. So we're actually going fishing. We're taking off tomorrow afternoon. We're just taking the family fishing. And you're welcome to join us someday. It's the Kenai River, it's some of the best salmon fishing in the world.
SPEAKER_01That's like one of my dreams to watch salmon fishing. I've only seen it on Wildcratz, the cartoon, but I I would love to do that.
SPEAKER_00And and it doesn't have to, it could be whatever. You know, for some people it might be going to a baseball game, for other people, it might be listening to music, or but what is that thing that allows your soul to kind of catch up with your life? And but I also think that you guys experimenting with some of those different things, the different instruments, like that's also how you find those things. My sister is a amazing piano player, and and like that's one of the ways that her I think her soul is refreshed. But she got so busy performing and teaching and all that that she didn't have time just to play her own music. She used to compose, she started composing, she was like 12 years old, and and and really has a gifting and a talent for. But she was so busy utilizing it, this sounds weird, so busy utilizing that talent that she wasn't able to enjoy the talent. And that's just something that she's kind of come full full circle. But going back to you what you were saying, like she never would have known that had my parents not allowed us to experience a lot of different things. And all of us are so different. We are we have different talents, we have different giftings, and our our folks did a really good job of helping us explore some of those things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think any parent that wants to homeschool is capable of doing that. So to give any of you out there listening the urge, like you can do that, you know. My my child has an interest in riding bikes. Okay, well, is there trail bike riding in, you know, in the area or maybe a BMX thing or you know, just little things that they the kids that are in school, they are there from geez, there's before care and after care these days. So it's probably 7 a.m. till 5 p.m. Then there's sports afterwards and homework after that. They never have the time to really and they might be in a sport that they like, but if I were to guess, a lot of them are probably in the sports that most of their friends in their class are in, right? So it's like, yeah, I got basketball tonight. But like, did you do you have a passion for basketball? Or do your group of friends play basketball? So you all try it out together, and now this is what you do. You know, so I I think all of the parents, all of the parents are capable. If you want a homeschool, you're totally capable of at least finding something that they like doing. And it's gonna take a while. And that was frustrating for me too. I was like, oh my god, he doesn't like soccer, he doesn't like swimming, he doesn't like wrestling. What are we gonna do? And it's like, all right, chill out. It was like five. And it's okay that he was picking daisies on the soccer field. He likes BMX now, he loves fishing, which there actually isn't really well. I should look for like like actual right now, he just fishes to enjoy fishing. And you know what? I just learned a lesson right there. It does not need to be an organized sport, he can just do it to enjoy it and have that be his peace and his calm. And um maybe I shouldn't take him fishing, yoga something.
SPEAKER_00Or just bring him to Alaska. I mean, hey, you know.
SPEAKER_01My husband would. My husband would. He's like, not another trip to Florida, please. Take me to Alaska instead or Montana. Anything else that you wanted to make sure that you touched on today as we run up on the hour?
Missing Out Insecurities And Final Advice
SPEAKER_01Um we talked about so much, and you know, I I like that you have the whole like you went through it all. You have the 17-year-old, like you've seen the other side. So I think like advice to the parents that are worried about homeschooling, that their their kids are gonna miss out. What would what would be that advice?
SPEAKER_00First of all, you have to be okay with your kids missing out because they will, but a lot of what they miss out on will be the stuff you want them to miss out on. They will miss out on some good things too. You know, there are there's some things I missed out on, but a lot of that would have been negative stuff. So we just have to be okay that that when when we are protecting our kids and being intentional, yeah, that we we will miss some of those experiences that would have been really positive, but with that, we we keep them away from a lot of those very negative experiences too. And it just that that's the trade-off, you know, it's it's that's in so many areas of life. We have to be okay with the trade-off. The other thing is in my own life, my wife, um, a lot of the parents we know, there's so many insecurities. And I think, first of all, a lot of things that we think disqualify us are the very things that qualify us. If we are willing to lean into those things, like my wife's experiences and and even in my own failures and things like that, like those are the things that the the skeletons in our closets that we and I'm not saying you share everything with your kids, but humanize yourself. Don't pretend like you have it all together. There's something like I'm not a very I I can I can appear to be unapproachable. There, I've I I have a lot of intensity to me, and anything even with my own kids. I've made it harder for them to approach me. I've had to be much more vulnerable with them. We want our kids to be vulnerable with us, we need to be vulnerable with them, and it's the very things that we think disqualify us. The fact that you flunked out of, you know, seventh grade math, or that you know I got kicked off my my high school volleyball team, or whatever the thing, whatever the thing is that you think disqualifies you from from showing up in life for your kid, that might be the very thing that God has has placed in your life to allow you to make that connection with your kid. And and I just think that if if you weren't qualified to raise your kid in a purposeful manner, God would not have given them to you. So don't be afraid of your own past and don't let your past affect your kid's future. So that would be the the last thing that I would leave your audience with.
SPEAKER_01Had a lot of bangers tonight. Every time you say something, I'm like, oh man, that'd be a good reel for the Instagram. Oh, that'd be another good one. But that, hey, you should be a public speaker. Do you do that as well for your business?
SPEAKER_00I do, I do some. Yeah. Mostly, mostly on finance or finance or faith. We've got four pillars. They're all F's. Fitness, finance, faith, and family. Those I think are the four pillars to really living an abundant life. The ones I talk about most most are finances and faith. And then fitness and family would be uh would be close thirds and fourths.
SPEAKER_01So cool. All right. Well, Chad, I want to thank you for coming on the show today, giving us so much insight, inspiration, and encouragement to do this. And I thank you so much. I can't say it, I can't say it enough.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's a blessing to be here, and please keep up what you're doing. The people need to hear your message. And I know there's days where you you probably even second guess, but I listened to a few of your other shows, and I'm just all about your mission, and it was awesome to be a part of it, even just one small piece.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much.
Wrap Up And Where To Start
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening to the Homeschool How To Podcast. If today's episode helped you, please be sure to follow the show and leave a review. It's the best way to support the podcast. And if you're just getting started or need a reset, head to thehomeschoolhow2.com and grab my free 30-day homeschool quick start guide. Until next time, keep learning, keep questioning, and thank you for your love of the next generation.