Avoiding Burnout and the Importance of True Self Care, part 1

This post contains affiliate links in the form of recommended books.

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“Put on your own oxygen mask first.” 

“If mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy.”

“You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

We have so many phrases in our lexicon that remind us as care providers to take care of our own needs first so that we can adequately care for others. Part of me wonders why that is, but there’s another part of me that actually really gets it. I understand on a deep level that sometimes, it can take more than pass at a concept to actually learn something. 

Being a parent is a demanding job. And being a homeschooling parent can add a layer of complexity to that job that can, at times, make it feel as though your entire existence is wrapped up in your identity as a homeschooler. Of course this isn’t a guarantee, but there may eventually come a time when the all consuming nature of being a homeschooling parent can lead to exhaustion, burnout, and some unhealthy dynamics that lead to throwing in the towel. 

A common refrain from well intentioned loved ones when this sort of dynamic crops up is that the parent needs some self care. That’s a popular buzzword, and a lot of people think it might mean scheduling a spa day or ignoring the laundry or insisting on take out for dinner. And certainly, those sorts of things can absolutely be aspects of a healthy self care practice, but if pursued out of balance, they may lead to a lopsided lifestyle in which the day to day functioning is constantly being sacrificed in the name of short term fixes, almost as though the long term goal of having a calm and peaceful life is replaced by immediate placation. Self care is not just about bubble baths and chocolate and an extra glass of wine. True self care looks like something entirely different from what can be represented on instagram. You don’t have to let yourself get so run down by the demands of homeschooling that you’re looking for ways to escape all the time. 

What if you could create a life that you didn’t feel like you needed to take a vacation from? What if, instead, your vacations were an augmentation to an already wonderful life? Wouldn’t that be something worth building?

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A lot of us got into homeschooling in the first place after realizing that a traditional school model wasn’t going to be a good fit for our families. So how do we cultivate a practice or genuine self care and find the support we need in order to ensure the long term success of this lifestyle choice? How do we put on our oxygen mask if we can’t find it in the first place?

For many parents, the answer may be multifaceted but will likely include the following aspects:

• Build a Community
• Maintain Good Boundaries
• Continue to Cultivate Your Own Passions

But kids are messy and demanding and vivacious and all consuming. How do we do all of these things while taking care of these incredible, spunky, beautiful creatures? Let’s take a look at some tried and true strategies that could help. 

Today, I’m going to share the first installment of a four part series on avoiding burnout as a homeschool parent. The focus of this series will be to help identify burnout before it starts, and then we will dig in on those three aspects I mentioned above that can really help to address it.

Identifying Burnout

So when we talk about burnout in the homeschool parent, what are we actually talking about? What does burnout look like? I’m going to bet that at some point in your life, you have been bogged down with your responsibilities and have decided to throw in the towel on something that you’d previously committed to. Maybe it was even something that had previously brought you joy and purpose but that you eventually saw as more of a drag than the thrill that it had once been. Maybe there was a job that you loved but eventually became drudgery. Or maybe you took piano lessons or a pottery class or joined an exercise community and threw your all into this new passion only to discover that you were suddenly feeling completely bogged down by the demands involved in keeping up a practice schedule or what have you. 

When the activities that were once engaging and exciting start to feel like a slog, that can be a sign that something isn’t serving you anymore. In homeschooling, we may bump into stumbling blocks at various points in which, say, a particular curriculum just isn’t working with our learners or family dynamic, no matter how wonderful it seemed when we bought it. Or perhaps we will find that an external commitment like a social group or enrichment club has become a point of contention or a drain on our energies for some reason or another. I am suggesting that it’s ok to look closely at the things in our lives that are bogging us down and see what needs to be tweaked in order to help things move more smoothly again.

…it’s ok to look closely at the things in our lives that are bogging us down and see what needs to be tweaked ignorer to help things move more smoothly again.

I remember when homeschool burnout hit for me in a very real and significant way. My eldest was finishing up his third grade year, and I had a toddler as well. That alone should tell you a lot: trying to split your focus on the demands of two children at two very different developmental stages is incredibly difficult. Doing so while maintaining educational standards and some semblance of sanity can be even trickier. What had once been a cozy and warm home environment full of read aloud time, nature study, and kitchen science had spiraled somewhat into feeling pulled in too many directions and daily squabbles over handwriting practice. 

I felt like it wasn’t worth sacrificing the relationship I had worked so hard to cultivate with my son for the sake of finishing his handwriting worksheets, so I decided it was time to tour the local public elementary school. There were some things that sending him to school may have solved. It would have given me ample, dedicated one on one time with my daughter, it would have provided him with an environment where he suddenly had outside accountability for his writing practice rather than simply having to do it because I said so, and it could have helped us find even more neighborhood friends and community members, helping us to feel yet more connected to our immediate area. 

But here’s the thing. For every problem that I felt like sending him to school would help to solve, there was another one that I could see it potentially actively creating.

Our district only allows for one 15 minute recess time per day and PE only twice a week. While I was on this tour, I saw students standing in line for the swings; how much actual physical movement would they get if they spent most of their recess time waiting for an open swing? My son was extremely active, was enrolled in a gymnastics program, was an avid hiker and cyclist, and spent hours outside each day. How as I going to provide for his very basic physical need to move? Especially since they also expected 15 minutes of homework time per grade level each day in addition to the 8 hours they would be spending in the building. That meant that my 4th grade child would be expected to complete an hour of homework each evening. When, exactly, would he move his body? And when would he eat dinner and go to sleep, not to mention just play? 

Our local school was very proud of their 1:1 technology practice. Everything he learned would suddenly be happening on a computer. He had an extremely hard time regulating his emotions after screen time at that age; how was he supposed to be able to learn a healthy balance of screen use for his overall wellbeing if so much of his day would automatically be spent in front of a screen? 

This school used a rewards system for behavior. When I asked about intrinsic motivation or how their school felt about the work of people like Alfie Kohn or how children at their school felt about being singled out, I got a blank stare in response. 

He would only be allowed five absences for the entire school year before being seen as truant. Our family had just come back from a ten day road trip across the American Southeast that encompassed the Space Center in Huntsville, stunning nature outside of Birmingham where my husband and I had run a trail race together, swamp and cultural explorations in New Orleans, natural and US history study in museums in Dallas, a stop at the country’s first National Recreation Area in Hot Springs, and an in depth exploration of civil rights in Memphis. We explored food, culture, geography, history, science…  I asked the principal if any of that would have been something he could have signed off on for an excused, learning specific absence, and he said no. I asked him how he would replicate learning about things like what we’d explored without those sorts of hands-on experiences, and he didn’t have an answer for me, just that he would be allowed 5 absences per school year. 

We didn’t enroll my son in public school. 

What I realized in this process, however, was that I was looking for childcare. I needed a way to be able to occupy my toddler-aged daughter so that I could focus on my son’s educational needs, and I needed a way to fill my son’s buckets so that I could devote time to playing with my daughter. I hired a parent’s helper to come to my house for a couple of hours twice a week, and for just that small financial investment (that neighborhood homeschooled teen charged just $10 an hour to play with my child while I was still in the house), I found the breath that I needed to be able to focus on some one on one time with my son.

I ultimately took this one step further and asked my local community center to plan programming that would serve homeschoolers and parents at the same time. They started a homeschool PE program and scheduled a workout class for adults that would happen concurrently. So I even hired that parents’s helper to help supervise both of my kids while I took that strength training class, solving yet another problem of just how to fit in my own exercise in an otherwise demanding schedule while also offering a social outlet for both of my kids. 

Maybe your burnout will present differently. Maybe you’ll notice that your household chores aren’t being completed the way they used to be and you’ll find you either recruit your family members to pitch in more effectively, or you’ll hire a service. Or perhaps you’ll find that your resolve to get everyone in your house a solid math education will dry up when they start revolting at the particular curriculum you’ve selected, and rather than finding a new one, you’ll just stop. And listen – it’s ok to take a break. Sometimes you need to regroup after a tricky experience. But it’s also ok to follow the advice of Julie Bogart and do just one thing to try to get your homeschool habits back in order.

Maybe, for instance, by thinking about math education, you’ll come up with an array of choices the kids could try each day of the week for math practice so that you can be more hands off while they can feel more empowered in their educational choices. This could be an assortment of online apps or workbooks or educational toys. One friend used to write those choices down on popsicle sticks and let the kids pick them out of a jar each day, moving them to a second jar so that they knew what they’d already done for math that week. Whatever it is, it’s ok to get creative about how you go about solving your particular “one thing.”

If you’re looking for a great, short, incredibly digestible read that can help jump start some creativity around making do when dealing with burnout whether it’s due to a particular life stage or an external event, I can heartily recommend the book, How To Keep House While Drowning.

I especially appreciated some of the ideas like asking a friend to come over and help with larger projects (and have absolutely done that, like when I repainted the kids’ bedrooms last summer), or hiring a college student to help out with things like errands or chores. It is okay to ask for help, and it is also ok to lower your standards and leave the clean laundry in the dryer for a day or two or have your kids do their own laundry, whether or not they’re doing it to your specifications.  

And if you’re looking for something even shorter that you can use to set up a sort of daily mindfulness practice that is secular and can help you set your intention for the day as a homeschooling parent, I can heartily recommend the series, A Gracious Space, by Julie Bogart.

You can find each of those books at the library, or you can follow these affiliate links to buy them on Amazon.

<a href=”http://<a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.amazon.com/How-Keep-House-While-Drowning/dp/1668002841/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1686257074&sr=8-1&_encoding=UTF8&tag=nshomeschoole-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=ff2d3f17afd62f08b74e080a7d01d5b7&camp=1789&creative=9325″>How To Keep House While DrowningHow To Keep House While Drowning

<a href=”http://<a target=”_blank” href=”https://www.amazon.com/Gracious-Space-Reflections-Homeschooling-Commitment/dp/0990513327/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XKMP2VFQHWLX&keywords=a+gracious+space&qid=1686257143&sprefix=%252Caps%252C182&sr=8-1&_encoding=UTF8&tag=nshomeschoole-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=5472a3da7d6ad779f46cd5dddf9c6572&camp=1789&creative=9325″>A Gracious SpaceA Gracious Space

Next week, I’ll share more about avoiding burnout as a homeschool parent and dig in on the importance of building a community. 

Happy Homeschooling!

diverse. inclusive. community.

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