Listen here:

Resources and recommendations: 

Joyfully Homeschooling Podcast and Blog

Joyfully Homeschooling on Instagram

The Homeschool Garden Morning Time Curriculum Resources

Parenting Beyond the Rules by Connie Albers

Listen to Connie’s wisdom on Cultivating Grace by clicking the image below.

Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Messiner

Homeschooling Joyfully with Misty Bailey

Lara:
Welcome friends. Today, we get to talk about homeschooling joyfully with my friend, Misty, from Joyfully Homeschooling. Misty, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your family?

Misty:
Yes. First of all, I want to say thank you for having me on here. You are one of my favorite people in the whole wide world to talk to. So thank you, I’m excited to be here.

Lara:
Oh, thank you for joining us. It’s mutual.

Misty:
So I’m Misty, as Lara said, and I have three kiddos. They are currently 10th grade, 8th grade, and 3rd, two girls and a boy. We have pretty much always homeschooled. We started after my oldest didn’t quite fit into the public school mode. We had some issues with public school when she went, and she was in preschool. So my husband let me do a trial run of homeschooling, said if I could teach her to read, we could homeschool. And the rest is history. So we’ve now been homeschooling since… It’s our 11th year. It feels like forever.

Lara:
Oh, my goodness. That’s awesome. I think there’s a lot of people currently that are finding they can do a lot better one-on-one than maybe in the public school system with their children. So your podcast is Joyfully Homeschooling, and I know there’s a lot of moms that probably look at that and they’re like, “Oh, yeah. Today, it was not so joyful.” So have you always believed there’s a joy to be found in homeschooling?

Misty:
No, actually I didn’t. I really, honestly used to believe the lie I feel so many women, girls believe right now, and that is our days are mundane. And it’s completely normal to be wore out and burned out all the time, even a little grumpy, and that’s how we should live our days.

And then probably about five years ago, I was getting really frustrated with my son during school. And my middle wrote “choose joy” on a whiteboard, and she lifted it up and she showed it to me. She whispered, she was like, “Mom,” and then she lifted it up and showed it to me. And I tell you what, the guilt I immediately felt right in that moment… Because my blog at the time, I just had a blog and it was titled, Joy in the Journey. And so I always had this thing, “Well, be joyful,” but I really wasn’t living it out.

And so she really stopped me in my tracks right then and there. And it was a great reminder that there are little eyes watching us all the time and that each and every day, we have a choice to make.

And I don’t know about you, but I want to choose well. I want to choose joy. And I’m reminded that we, oftentimes, as moms, set the tone for our homes, and it’s up to us to choose joy. And if we don’t, our families will suffer. Our days will be long and discouraging. And honestly, we will just have a fairly crappy homeschool story for our kids to look back on.

Lara:
Yes. So that is something that I say all the time is that moms set the tone for the home. We really are responsible for directing the trajectory of how our day goes every single day. And so it’s important to get up with that attitude, even on the days when we’re just mom tired that, gosh, I’ve got to be happy. I’ve got to be joyful about this. It’s like teaching Shakespeare. If you’re excited about it, your kids will be.

Misty:
I’ve not taught Shakespeare, Lara.

Lara:
Well, I can help you with that. It’s one of my things.

Misty:
I love you. We’ll do it.

Lara:
I know. Okay, we will. We’ll teach some of the speeches so that your guys can have their swords out and fighting each other. It’s great for sibling conflict.

So I know there’s many moms out there that are thinking about the hard days, especially as new home educators or families who are dealing with trials like illness and loss. And they’re thinking their homeschool is less than joyful. So how can we, as moms, build and maintain an atmosphere of joy in our homes and our homeschool?

Misty:
Well, I think it goes back to choosing. Again, it’s a choice, and I know that I was a grumpy mom. And I still struggle with this. I’m not perfect by no means. But I remember in this particular season, I was dreading most mornings and felt like I was constantly on this hamster wheel of life instead of being fully present in my day. And I didn’t want to live like that anymore, and I made the choice to change.

So what I did, and what I recommend other moms maybe try out if you’re going through the motions and you feel you’re just really struggling with joy, especially those who are thrown into this homeschooling thing right now that didn’t really want to be there, I gave myself a little challenge each day. And I did it on Instagram.

I used #choosejoychallenge. This has been many years ago. And I made a note of what my triggers were, and I would stop, and I would remind myself to choose joy instead of airing my frustrations. So for example, one of my triggers was feeling rushed. And I would always feel rush, rush, rush to get out the door and to be somewhere 15 minutes early so I could play that perfect homeschool mom part. But in the meantime, what people didn’t see as I arrived there 15 minutes early with all my ducks in a row was the tears that my kids had and the yelling that I did to get us out the door to meet that expectation of the perfect homeschool mom part. And that’s not okay.

And so I instead told myself I could be a few minutes late or right on time and have a happy morning, or I could arrive those 15 minutes early but have frustrated and anxious kids with a mom yelling at them to get out the door.

And I really had to give up on that perfection on playing that part and to have a more joyful home. And then I would do other little things, like I make a list of my triggers and remind myself when those triggers would come that, again, I’d have a choice to make. And so it would be little things like put the phone down and play with the kids. That was a challenge for one day. Put the phone down for 15 minutes, set a timer, go outside, and play with the kids, because I would know one of my triggers would be my kids interrupting me while I was doing work email or while I was browsing social media mindlessly.

Another would be, look kids in the eye when talking to them. Choose to smile whenever the kids were frustrated instead of groaning or sighing, just different things that was little challenges that I did each day. And I can honestly say, years later, our home is different, our school days are different, my kids, my girls have told Daniel that they have a completely different mom now than whenever they were younger. Things have just really changed.

And I do things with my kids with a more joyful attitude, laugh, embrace moments and, remind myself that one day, this will all be over. I’m seeing that particularly as my girls are teenagers now. My oldest is getting ready to turn 16, and I don’t want to miss it. I don’t want to miss these moments, and I don’t want my kids to look back on their homeschool days remembering me yelling and being grumpy all the time.

So I think it’s just a matter, like I said, of choosing joy and making little choices each day, a little progress, imperfect progresses, each and every day to just change the overall tone in your home so you don’t look back and just regret these moments.

Lara:
I agree completely. And I’ll confess here, I actually have an alarm that still pops up on my phone. I think it’s been on there for five years now.

Misty:
I remember we were talking about this.

Lara:
Yes. Yes, at 9:00 AM and 2:00 PM, and it says no yelling. And so even though I don’t meet it nearly as much as I used to, every now and again, if mom gets stressed out… And I think people who work in homeschool, I think we’re probably a little bit more prone to… I don’t want to call it selfishness, but it is a little selfish to have these outbursts directed at our children because really they are the most important part of our job as a homemaker and a home educator.

But I think we have the extra stresses, and right now all these moms are thrown into homeschooling. And I think they’re probably also struggling with “how do I deal with these triggers”? I want this to be a positive experience for my kid.

I think it’s really awesome that you’re sharing these tips. I think identifying the triggers is huge. One of the things that we miss out on a lot of times, we just want to put a bandaid on whatever it is, or we put the kids in front of the TV, or we let them go play the video game instead of actually engaging because it’s easier.

And so, I think choosing joy is a hard choice sometimes. And I I think we should be prepared for that as moms. There’s this quote that I absolutely love by Goethe and it says, “Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.”

Misty:
Yes.

Lara:
And I think it’s so important for moms, especially. We have to remember that what we are doing, we should put love into, even if we’re not really feeling love in the moment. It’s that whole fake it until you make it thing.

Homeschooling with Special Needs

So moving on, since we are both moms of children with learning challenges, I would love to hear your top three tips for keeping learning joyful when you’re in the middle of remediation and sometimes the frustration that comes when you’re addressing those special needs.

Misty:
Yeah. So my Daniel, he’s my youngest. He has dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, ADHD. And I’ll be honest, the reason my frustrations when we first started homeschooling him was when my daughter was sent me that choose joy reminder. It was hard. It was really hard, and homeschooling kids with those learning struggles and challenges are very hard.

And I think had he been my first, I probably would’ve never started homeschooling. And it’s very, very difficult, and I don’t want to undermine that at all. I know I would have felt so ill-equipped. However, as far as giving some tips, I think there’s three things I would want to remember. And the first one is that your relationship matters more than academics. And I did not practice this when I first started homeschooling him before we got our diagnosis.

I didn’t practice it, but I do now because I want to focus on that relationship. And if I see him getting frustrated or overwhelmed, choose relationships, or at least try to remember to do that. And, again, I’m not perfect by no means. But if he’s sitting and crying or getting frustrated and I can see that, I can choose to continue pushing those academics or I can be like, “Okay. Hey, buddy, let’s take a break. Let’s go outside. Let’s do some jumping jacks or get moving,” or find something to help him get that frustration out because learning should be fun. It should be a joy, and it should not be something that he’s dreading or something that’s tearing his and mine relationship apart.

The next is to give lots of breaks, especially if you have a kiddo with ADHD that likes to move wiggles. Send them outside. Daniel has learned to vocalize when he needs to move, and I’ve taught him that it is okay to speak up and say that. And that has helped a lot. And I was afraid with giving him all of those breaks, that would make our days last longer. But they’ve actually been shorter since we have encouraged him to just vocalize like, “I just need five minutes.” He’ll go outside, run around the house three times, come back in, and we can get math done.

And it’s really important, I think, to teach the kids to be able to vocalize what they need so they can learn effectively. And the last thing I want to mention is that our kids are not typical. No child is the same as another child. They’re individuals, and I had to learn quickly not to compare him to the girls’ education and what they knew at XYZ time. And that was probably one of the hardest things because, again, when you struggle with perfection, and when you struggle with meeting this image of what a homeschool mom looks like, then you look at this kid who is six, seven, even eight, maybe, that’s not reading and can barely write their name.

And they don’t fit that mold of what you think that your homeschool kids should be. And I think we need to remember that they’re individuals, and we don’t need to put them up on this pedestal or have them meet somebody else’s goals and expectations. As long as we’re seeing progress in them each and every day or each and every year, that’s all that really matters, and not compare them to our kids that maybe don’t have those learning struggles.

Lara:
I absolutely agree. And I guess maybe it was just the fact that the Lord blessed me with an incredibly stubborn streak, because my child with the learning differences is older. He’s my oldest. And I think perhaps, I don’t know, maybe if there had been a bigger age gap or if he had been my second, I don’t know how that would have worked out. But I knew I was just determined we are not going to go through this.

And, too, I felt we’d be fighting the school system to get what he needed anyway. He also has dyslexia, and we knew early on that there were some issues because he also has apraxia and dyspraxia, and that makes it more likely.

But we had the testing done privately because our school system, even though he had all the signs and symptoms, said that they refused to test until they were third grade. And so that was a key as well that I couldn’t imagine the fighting we would have to have done to get him what he would need in the school system. So while it is certainly harder, I think it is not as hard, in my opinion, as having to fight the school system for the needed services.

Misty:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I 100% agree with that. And I did a whole podcast episode on that, if you end up wanting to link to it in the show notes, where I shared our ADHD and apraxia story. And in that, I shared that through the diagnosis… And we did have an IEP through school system. What he would have got in a school system, was actually less than what he was getting by being homeschooled.

And so, absolutely homeschool those kids with special needs. What I meant when I said, “I don’t think I would have been brave enough to start homeschooling him,” is I would have felt ill-equipped. Whereas, because I had some years under my belt, I felt like I can handle this. And there is no, no, no, no, no way that he can ever, ever, ever function in the public school system, nor would I ever say any parent… You could do it. Believe me, you could do it. And that’s where they should be. Their so much better equipped and getting that individualized education by being homeschooled.

Lara:
Absolutely. All right. So here we are at the end, and we are going to go over a couple of fun questions here. What are you reading currently for yourself? And what song do you have on repeat right now?

Misty:
So I am rereading Connie Albers, Parenting Beyond the Rules, and taking notes as I now have two very different teenagers. So when the book first came out, one’s driving, and we’re dealing with boys and dating and all those things now that we wasn’t two years ago when the book came out. So I’m rereading that and enjoying it.

And I’m also not currently reading it, but it is the best book I’ve read recently. I think I read it last month, and it’s Susan Meissner’s… I don’t know if I said her last name right or not… Secrets of a Charmed Life. So good. My friend Davon and I literally read that book…. She read it in three days on audio, and I’m like, I can beat that. And I read it in… She was right at three days, and I was two days and 18 hours, or something like that. I made sure I beat her. I did not sleep at all. It was so good-

Lara:
Oh, my goodness.

Misty:
… It is the book that I will now use as a measuring stick for every other book moving forward.

Lara:
Oh, that’s awesome. Is it fiction or…

Misty:
It is fiction. It was actually recommended. She told me about it through Sarah Mackenzie’s read aloud group for moms. I guess it was a book club pick, and so she told me about it. And so it is amazing, seriously, the best book that I have read in recent years.

Lara:
Awesome. I have been on a non-fiction kick lately.

Misty:
See, I normally have one nonfiction and one fiction book going at a time. But I’m telling you, it is really good, and it’s clean. It’s great. Excellent. Great. And then as far as the music goes, I am loving There is Jesus by Zach Williams, because I love when Dolly Parton’s voice comes in there. I’m like, oh, Dolly.

So that’s my good Christian mom pick. And then my bad mom pick is, I have a playlist on Amazon Music titled Throwback, and I’m known to jam out recently to Candy by Mandy Moore-

… and Love Shack. I’ve been going through this Love Shack phase. So that’s my not so good, I guess, music picks. I get three, right?

Lara:
Of course. Absolutely. You have four, if you want to. I feel like such a nerd right now because we’ve been jamming out to the Brandenburg Concertos.

Misty:
I don’t even know what that is.

Lara:
It’s Bach.

Misty:
I don’t know how we’re friends,

Lara:
It’s awesome. Opposites attract and that’s fantastic. Okay. And finally, here we go. What is the one piece of advice you would give to our friends who find themselves suddenly and unexpectedly homeschooling?

Misty:
Okay. So I actually have three, but they go hand in hand and it’s short. So the first is don’t stress yourself out, remember relationships over academics, and don’t make your homeschool look like public school. I think all three of those go hand in hand to make one really good piece of advice, I hope.

Lara:
Absolutely. And I want to go amen, especially about not making your homeschool look like public school.

Misty:
It is so hard, yes. And I have friends right now who are doing the public school. They’re doing the remote learning. And since school started here, I have had three people pull their kids out from the remote learning and start homeschooling. And every one of them loves it, so you can do this moms. You can absolutely do this.

Lara:
Yes. And not everybody has to be crazy like me and write their own curriculum.

Misty:
But you can be. You can be.

Lara:
You can. I tend not to recommend that for people who are just jumping in though.

Misty:
Just buy your stuff, and then they don’t have to make their own,

Lara:
They totally could. But no, I think the Pinterest homeschool rooms make you want that whole school-home experience too. And so I try to tell people, “Don’t look at those.”

Misty:
We don’t have a school room anymore, and I used to have a school room that was pinned on Pinterest thousands of times. And guess what? We never used it. We’re at our dining room table.

Lara:
That’s funny, because we had one, too.

Misty:
I know.

Lara:
Yeah. We had one too. I think it still gets pins, but we no longer have it. That room is my office and our guest bedroom, and we’re at the kitchen table or outside.

Misty:
Absolutely.

Lara:
Thank you so much for joining us today, Misty.

Misty:
Thank you. This has been wonderful. You were such a good friend of mine. Thanks for having me.

About Misty

Misty Bailey is the blogger behind Joy in the Journey and the podcaster behind Joyfully Homeschooling.  Her goal in this online space is to  encourage and inspire you on your homeschool journey by providing practical tips for real life homeschooling. Through real stories, real struggles, and real life, Misty encourages her blog readers and podcast listeners to embrace imperfection and strive for a more joyful homeschool.