How to Be a Gentle Homeschool Mom

Do you ever find yourself being unkind to your children when homeschooling? Are you stressed out more than you’d care to admit during your homeschool day? Have you tinkered with the idea of quitting home education because you just can’t get a hold of your emotions? Or perhaps you feel like a failure?

I’ve been there.

As a homeschooling mom who just recently completed her 12th year of homeschooling, I want to share with you how God transformed me from a stressed out, harsh homeschooling mom into the gentle homeschooling mom I am today.

When I first started homeschooling our oldest child, I was not that gentle. I was harsh and demanded the highest level of excellence from our daughter in every area of her life. And as you can imagine, our relationship quickly began to become strained. I knew in my heart that if I didn’t fix this while she was still young, it could lead to devastation.

I cried out to the Lord for help to calm my anxious heart and he answered me. He gave me three things to consider that quickly led me to a place of peace in our homeschool. Because I obeyed God in pursuing the three things I am about to share, I have been a gentle homeschool mom now for more than a decade. And it feels so good.

3 Steps to Becoming a Gentle Homeschool Mom

1. Remember that real learning is not forced. 

While this may seem like common sense, it is something that I see many homeschool moms doing: forcing their children to learn in ways that are not suitable to their learning styles. By taking the time to learn our children’s learning styles and passions, we take a lot of the stress out of our homeschool days. Even when we are homeschooling multiple children, this approach helps us create a relaxed homeschool environment that produces a love of learning.

2. Remember that without a plan in place you won’t get anywhere.

God has made it clear in His Word that we need a strategy to succeed. I am a planner by nature and God has taught me how to approach our homeschooling year with a flexible plan that He leads. I approach each new school year with a loose planning overview and then narrow it down with weekly planning to coincide with where each child is at.

This goes along with what God tells is in Proverbs 29:18:

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

This planning approach has worked so well for our homeschool that I created The Organized Homeschool Planner™ to help other homeschool families create the vision for their homeschool. And because they are taking the time to create and execute their vision, they are finding more success in their homeschooling journey!

3. Remember to give grace to your children and yourself.

As Christian moms we are fully aware of the grace we have received by Jesus’ death on the cross. In that grace not only have we found salvation through Christ, but we also have the perfect example of how to die to our sin. And this was a huge revelation for me all those years ago.

Each day in my morning prayer and Bible time, I always ask the Lord to give me the grace to love and nurture our children. I ask Him to show me ways to practice grace in our homeschool day (and beyond). And you know what? He does!

If I am being real, I don’t always take advantage of every opportunity to show grace (hello, can you imperfect mom?) but I have to be honest that I do most of the time. And it feels so good to see the look of love in my children’s eyes when their mom takes the time to notice them, love them, and lead them. And it feels good not to condemn myself when I mess up (every single day). Thank you Jesus for your grace!

The End Result

In the end, these three simple (yet profound) steps have lead me into running a low-stress, positive, and fun homeschool. All three of our children have different personalities and learning styles and all three of them are thriving because I am not running around stressed out. I am thankful to God for giving me this understanding and so glad that I made the choice to obey!

xoxo,
Carlie Kercheval
todaysfrugalfamily.com