Mamas Need Love

Homeschooling Sucks Sometimes

June 11, 2021 Shannon Earley Season 2 Episode 10
Mamas Need Love
Homeschooling Sucks Sometimes
Show Notes Transcript

Guys,
Homeschooling can really be so difficult sometimes!  Hear me rant about a typically tough day of homeschooling - even though I still love it too dang much. 

Music: Happy Ukulele : Scott Holmes

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Shannon Earley:

motherhood. It doesn't look the same for any of us. But you know what all of us are carrying around our own baggage. Whether it's helping your children with autism or anxiety, living with chronic illnesses, surviving from abuse,

Unknown:

or feeling depressed.

Shannon Earley:

We're gonna talk about all those things to know what else we are also going to talk about super fun and nerdy things like

Unknown:

minimalism. DIY project, motherhood, word in homeschooling. But mostly

Shannon Earley:

we weren't going to send the mundane, in the ordinary, you are going to realize that you are an important, beautiful creation. So let's get to it. And thank you for coming to Neptune with the early bird. Hey, guys, this is Shannon Earley, your hostess of nesting with the early birds. I'm a homeschooling mom of four, which means things are really crazy all of the time. I really wish I could podcast on a super regular basis. It's honestly one of my most favorite relaxing things to do. And as you can see, I've been Mia for quite some time. For those that of you that have followed me for a while, you'll know that not only do I have two children with autism, I have one with a rare genetic disorder and a hole in his heart. And I also have two with ADHD. So it sounds like five kids really, it's more like 24 kids in my house at all times. But besides that, I also have a mother who ended up having a severe left basal ganglia hemorrhagic stroke in November of 2020. And I'm the oldest of four kids. So I've been spending a lot of time taking care of my mom and my dad, and my siblings, and then also my own children. So things have been really bananas. Not just that, honestly, I had a talk with my husband a couple weeks, maybe a couple months ago. And we were having kind of a tough day, you know, one of those days where it's like, you're transferring your kids to 72 activities, you've already done schoolwork. Your house is disgusting. So you're trying really hard to like, make it livable. And I was like, Hey, can I podcast? And he was like, Don't you think it's taking enough time from the family already? Man that cut me to the core, I was so hurt. And honestly, for a while I was like, I don't even want a podcast. It was kind of a sore subject for me, because I felt so I guess, you know, I thought he supported me all the way, right. And so when he said that, it just hurts so much. But later on, we talked about it a couple days later. And I even brought it up again last week, because I still wasn't podcasting. And I told him, you know, it's something I really enjoyed doing. And he explained that that night just kind of sucked. And he knew the minute he said it that he was like looks as soon as it was coming out. And not just that, you know, there was all these other activities that I was involved in, because I do a lot of stuff with my church. I do a lot of stuff with my mops group. And not just that I try to be a friend to people. So as you can see, my time is stretched thin. Like, what is that saying? And there's a Lord of the Rings saying all I can think about is the veggietales version, the Lord of the beams, or he says I feel stretched like too much jelly over a ham. That's basically how I feel. But right now I'm sitting in the car and I'm waiting for my kids to finish their advanced practice. They actually are doing their dance dress rehearsal tonight and they're in the heart of Ireland School of Dance off a whole street road in Midlothian, Virginia. And this all is so great, you guys, I'm actually going to do a whole podcast episode with the owner. Hopefully pretty soon. It's probably one of the best things that have ever happened to my family is attending this school. So what I wanted to talk about today, though, ladies and gents is homeschooling, I wanted to tell you guys how much it sucks. Not just that I wanted to share that it sucks so bad, but I also really, really love it. It's one of those things when people are like you have no idea how much your life changes when you have kids and then they'll be you know, kind of grumpy and say something like, it is way more stressful than you can ever imagine. And you know what guys the right, it is so much more stressful than you could ever imagine. But it's also so much more full of love and joy and just this bond than you could ever imagine to so honestly the love over ways the stress because otherwise there's no way I would have fought Kids and also want to adopt 72. So I wanted to share with you guys my son Finn is seven and a half. Finn is learning how to write. And he's doing the kind of writing where he sounds out letters put some together, he's learning to use his finger to space between the words. And he wrote me a beautiful letter this morning. The letter says this, dear Shannon, that's my name is Shannon, by the way. And he spelled it s a n n i n that is not high school name. Dear Shannon, I love you so much. But you are also a loser. And I hate school. guy was my beautiful letter from my son this morning. And I was like, well, Ben, thank you very much. I'm so glad that you now know how to write letters. And the way that I homeschool is, and I'm sure a lot of you guys maybe disagree. But you know what I've had a lot of you do agree. Basically, when I homeschool, and I'm teaching, writing and reading and that kind of thing. I try not to correct their punctuation or their spelling too frequently, because I don't want to discourage them from actually writing. So as they get older, and they start reading more books, they start seeing Oh, wait a minute, that's how this word is spelled, you know. So like my daughter, Evangelion who's nine, I did the same thing with her. And she's now writing just fine, just so you know. So for now, my name is Shannon pronounced the Irish way, I guess where there's a silent h when you see the letter S, so maybe he's just more gangster than I realized, actually. So I really love homeschooling I knew from back in the day, I wanted to homeschool, I had a lot of friends at church that did it. And they just made it look so great. A lot of people have, you know, use different methods, we've got people that do co Ops, which are when you cooperate with other homeschool families to provide some kind of school service, you know, and then with that, there's so many different levels of Co Op, some people go like super intense, and it's like, we're gonna only do these amazing, classical literature, whatever I don't know. And like super important math stuff. They're really smart. Okay. And then there's the CO ops that are like, really fun. And it's all elective like, Oh, this teacher teaches dance, this person teaches art. This one teaches science, those are my favorite. And there was one around us for a while, but they had to close down because of stupid COVID. But anyways, and then there's people that do it on their own, but they also use a curriculum. So a curriculum is basically where they already have all the materials that you need to homeschool. You know, they've got the book, they've got the teachers manual that tells you exactly what to do each day. They've got the worksheets, everything. And then from that you can pick do I want Christian? Do I want secular secular just means anything that Christian, what kind of, you know, curriculum do I want to use at home, I end up using my Father's world curriculum, which I love. It's Christian. But also it gives me a lot of fun ideas to do with the schoolwork. As opposed to you know, just reading about Daniel Boone, it might be like, also create your own wilderness trail, or whatever it is. I really like that. But I also kind of just go off on my own all the time, like I'm constantly improving. Like it never told me one day to turn off all the electricity and lights and make Johnny cakes and cast iron skillet while I made my kids dressed in colonial period costumes. That was never part of the curriculum. But I was like, Yo, this would be so tight. And then there's moms that are kind of, they're the ladies, you really should talk to you. If you're new into the homeschooling game. They're the ones that pick and choose out of 75 bajillion different curriculums. And the best part is, it's because they've already tried stuff. And they start picking different things based on their kids abilities, skill levels, their desires, their homeschool styling, less learning, you know, styles, whatever. And I love that because they're like, Well, I do Saxon math, and I do Christian like, you know, such and such, and I do this kind of grammar, and I love it. Um, so there's all these different kinds of curriculums that you can do. And generally, it's pretty awesome. And right now we're learning about the United States, and basically learning from when the United States was founded, like right before that, the 14 hundos You know, when people started exploring this jam, I know Native Americans already lived here, not discounting that. I'm just saying, we're learning about how the America that we know was formed. Okay. And, you know, next year I'm really pumped because we get to learn about the Medieval Ages. Yeah. brah. So anywho. This year, we're learning a lot about colonial stuff and it's generally pretty cool, but then you know, They recommend books where it's like, oh my goodness, I Love Little House on the Prairie right? My daughter evangelii loves it loves it can't get enough of it. We ended up buying her books, so she can read them on our own. But part of the curriculum is that I'm supposed to have all these kids sit together. They're nine, seven, just turned six, and three. And I'm supposed to have them all sit in a circle and listen to me read a book called farmer boy, which, if any of you know is about a little boy living on a farm, and basically every chapter is just what he did that day on the farm. And it's it's an interesting story, but it's not the story that you know, a three year olds gonna be like, yeah, or a six year old, even my nine year olds, okay into it. But literally when I pull out the book, they moan. And you want to know something three days ago, two of my children sort of crying and left the room. And I wanted to throw the flipping book I was because I'm like, just sit down. Not just that guy's like as a homeschool mom. I'm also the cleaner. You know, like a teacher. In a classroom. She does her schoolwork. And guess what? The bell rings by kids. They go home. She has a janitor. The janitor comes in and piece of trash. It's the floor. What else? No, I'm the janitor. I'm the sweeper. I'm also the person that says the bell. I'm also the person that there has to be like, this is what dinner is guys and also get dressed for your Irish dance dress recital. It's insane. Today, I went to the doctor's for just a checkup for myself. I had to bring four kids with me. four kids guys. And again, their ages are 367 and nine. And it's awful. Those are the parts of homeschooling where I'm like, I just need a freakin break. I cannot get a break. And I love my kids so much. But again, one of them has autism. Well the two of them do. But the one that I'm talking about has separation anxiety. So they are constantly on my booty like a little baby barnacle. Like they they can't leave me alone, guys, I'm telling you, like, you know, people make jokes about when they move. They can't be alone. When I poop. I have this person's fingers under the door. Okay, or phone calls can't make a phone call can't do it. I can't tell anything private about my life or my marriage or my private thoughts that are you know, not kid accessible at any point in the day when they are awake. Unless they're in dance class, which they are now. And then one of my kids is the messiest like a pig pen person. And I'm talking leaves applesauce packets anywhere chocolate milk anywhere. Do I allow it? No, I don't allow it. Because I mean, it doesn't stop. Like this kid guys. How many times can you get in trouble for this thing? How many things can you have taken away from this friggin thing that you keep on doing? That's what I want to know, guys. That's what I want to know. And then, you know, I gotta feed these good breakfast in the morning. So My day starts with, I wake up, take my medicine, drink my coffee. But as I'm drinking coffee, I'm having kids saying Can I play Minecraft? Hey, Mom, can you check my room to see if it's actually clean enough for me to play games? Hey, I know I can't do screens before school. But can I do screens before school? And then I don't want cereal Mom, I wanted oatmeal, blah, blah, blah. And I know like all moms and dads you deal with this every morning, right? A lot of you though, let's be real. You send your kids away. Good for you. Good for you. Because I am like dying over here. And again. The wonderful things about homeschooling are so wonderful. They are so wonderful. But there is so much difficulty guys. Like I'm thankful my husband supports me. Because if I had a marriage where he was an engineer homeschooling, I just can't imagine the difficulty like have a level of just increase exponentially. So any of you that are homeschooling without spouse, you know, support or any of you that are single parents homeschooling guys, you are a beast. Good job. But then it's like okay, we got to start school. Well, I go on to the school room and it's already so messy. Because somebody opened up the lock. Yes, the lock on a school room, bro. What are you talking about? Yeah, we have a cast iron. Like hook lock that we made so tall I can hardly reach it on the top of a sliding barn door that my husband made. Because I was so sick of the kids going in there and destroying the school room when we weren't in school. They now will either get a chair and stand on each other or they have found out you can get a broom and simply use that broom handle the pop that sucker open. And in the school room is things like playdough paint, watercolor papers, scissors, glue glue So much fun, right? And they go bananas in his mom's on a meeting. Mom has a phone call, whatever they are in there, tearing it up. literally no joke. If you have suggestions on how to fix that, please email me at nesting with the early birds@gmail.com. And by the way, I'm so serious about it and early is EA r L. E, why? Tell me what you would do. We lock the door, we take away privileges. We have these things called red flags where it takes money out of their allowance, not their allowance, I'm sorry, their earnings from tours for the week. They get one quarter per chore. And the chores are things like emptying dishes, whatever. These red flags take off. $1 guys, that's for chores. It still does that to tear that deter the tear, whatever doesn't do it. It's not a deterrent. So yeah, homeschooling is being a real trickster right now. Not just that, you know, you hear when moms are like, Oh my goodness, do you want to meet for lunch? No, Josephine. I can't unless you want all my children with you. And by the way, when you say meet for lunch, are you going to pay? Because I'd have to pay for five people can't do it. Sorry. Or hey, playdates Do you remember playdates in the past? when you'd have your baby at a friend's house? Well, now playdates are I have a friend with a baby, who doesn't homeschool. And then all my children. And so that friend is like, let's talk about real stuff, because I got to get out of this house. And I'm like, ABC, 123. Look at all my children all around me. Yo, I just made a beautiful song. And then today, okay. Today, I was like, we're gonna learn about the Owl and the Pussycat poem. For those of you that may not remember, there's this owl and a cat, and they're super in love. And they sail on a sea on a pea green boat. And the owl plays the guitar sings to the moon loves the cat, they want to get married, they end up taking a ring out of a pig's nose. And they use that ring as their wedding ring, once they get to the woods with the Bongo tree. And I was like, I'm going to read this poem, I'm going to have them tell me what is the plot? What are the names of the characters? What's the climax, what's the conclusion, and then we're going to make puppets of all the different characters. And we're going to make little items that go along with it. And we are going to make a play all our the fighting that happened when it was time to pick characters. It like hurt my soul. I had two girls scream crying at each other over who wanted to be the cat. And guess what? I kept being like, Guys, you know, Jesus gave you to each other as a gift. You know, you guys are sisters. It is so important to love each other. Well, one of you should really understand. If one of you wants that pussycat as the character, then you should relinquish your desire for it. And Hey, kid, number two, if you know how much your sister wants it, then please don't ask for it. You see what I'm saying? I try guys. They did not care. And then I have a little boy, that's like, I don't want to make the characters. I just want to make the CE o fan. You want to make the sea into a puppet? Yeah, I want to make the ocean mom as a puppet Finn. Yes, as a puppet. Great. So then when we try to in the play, it is a big giant blue piece of construction paper covering all the other characters. And then they're fighting over that. And guess what? The three year old rips the ocean in half. At this point, I no joke left the room. Even those moments when it's like you're just so mad or upset, it's like you There's nothing good that's gonna come out of your mouth, like your kids have nothing they need to hear from you. At that moment I left the room. I don't even know what the school room looks like anymore. And you know what, guys, we didn't know math today. We did no math today, because it took so long to do these little puppets and poems that I thought would be so awesome that I was like school is over. I can't handle it. And that's when we then went to the doctors. For Kids, doctors, it was amazing. So thank you for listening to my rant today. I hope that you come back again, if you have any rants, I'd love to talk about it with you. Maybe we should do like a zoom rant phone call. Let me know what you think you can either get to me at messing with the early birds@gmail.com. Or you can go to HTTPS slash slash www dot nesting with the early birds comm check out my website. You can submit stuff on there. Contact me that way. That's cool. I'm here on my Facebook page, whatever you want to do. But let me know for real if you guys actually want to talk about it live. We could record it as a podcast. That'd be super cool. All right. I'll talk to you later. Thanks for coming in. Remember, God totally loves you all the time.