Homeschooling an Only Child Successfully | My Top 3 Sanity Saving Tips for Homeschooling One Child

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Wild Akway. I'm Jessica. And today's video is going to be my top three tips for homeschooling and only saving your sanity and doing it successfully. But before we get to the tips, I just have to tell you, I'm so excited because this video is actually a collaboration. I reached out to every other YouTuber that I know that homeschool is an only child and ask them to do this video with me. That way I can share hopefully some new moms that are homeschooling only for you to follow and get some inspiration from, but also so that you can get tips from so many people so that you will feel like you can totally do this whole homeschooling and only thing. In my opinion, the hardest part, the most challenging part or the hurdle that I feel like I have to overcome when it comes to homeschooling and only is the fact that I'm her everything. It's just me. I'm her teacher. I'm her mom. I'm her sibling. I'm her playmate. I'm her teammate. It is just me. And that means that I have to be on and available 24 hours a day. I can never say, why don't you just go play a game with your sibling? Or why don't you just go read to so-and-so? It's me. I'm the one playing the games and reading the books. And sometimes that can be exhausting mentally, physically and emotionally. Sometimes all three at once. So I am going to be sharing my top three tips for how to save your sanity and buy yourself a little bit of time when you need it. My first tip is one that we have been doing for years and years and years, and it is strewing. In the early years, I would leave things out like Plato, um, maybe some kinetic sand puzzles, books, especially the interactive books, like the lift, the flat ones, things that she could really get engrossed in. I would leave them on the coffee table and I would eat my breakfast mostly in peace. Um, it takes some time. It is definitely a skill or kind of a habit that you have to kind of cultivate, but I promise it is worth it. After about a year, she was kind of like, okay, this isn't necessarily something I have to talk to mom about. Um, and it would buy me enough time to at least drink my caffeine and maybe have my breakfast in peace. So if you're looking for a way to drink your caffeine, so if you're looking for a way to drink your coffee and not be peppered with questions, this might be something that will work for you. Find something that you think will interest your child. Sometimes if they're a little bit older, it could literally be like a subscription box. Like here's a subscription box that came in. You're going to leave it on the coffee table or the dining room table or your school table, and then you're just going to walk away. Hopefully whatever you leave out is something that they can do independently because the whole point in strewing is that you want that time to yourself. Um, it also typically means that you're not going to give any direction. So if I leave this subscription box out and she decides to do something with it that does not build what's in the, in here and she builds something completely different, that's okay. She got creative. We're going to roll with it. I'm not going to step in and say, no, no, you need to do this. That's kind of not the whole point in strewing. Um, if you want to know more about strewing, what it is, how it works, my top tips for it, I will leave an ebook that I actually wrote with all about strewing in the description for you to check out. Currently my favorite thing to strew with for Emily now that she's older is single player logic games. I can get about 20 minutes of peace and quiet out of those as well as our discovery cards. Um, they basically ask a question. I have a QR code to a YouTube video that answers that question. I will leave one or two of these out in the morning to, um, buy myself a quiet breakfast. Uh, it means that she'll eat her breakfast and watch the videos and I can even sit across from her and still be there, but not be peppered with questions and talk to until my ears fall off. My second tip for homeschooling and only child successfully while saving your sanity is what we called when we did them learning lunches. We did learning lunches from the time Emily was in preschool until actually this year. So until up until a few months ago, my second tip for homeschooling and only child successfully while saving your sanity is what we call learning lunches. We have done or did learning lunches from the time Emily was in preschool up until this past year, which we had to change them because now we have to school through lunch because she sleeps later. Um, and so now instead of a learning lunch, it's a learning breakfast, but nonetheless it is using screens to my advantage to buy myself a meal in peace and quiet. Um, when she was younger, that meant like watching an wild crowds episode, listening to brains on, which was one of her favorites. I'm listening to a story podcast, listening to an audio book. It basically means I'm going to make your lunch. I'm going to sit you down with your food. I'm going to let you pick something that is going to distract you, but also be educational and you were not going to talk to me for the remainder of this meal, at least 15 to 20 minutes. And I felt guilty when I first started this, but it was out of necessity that it was born. Kevin was working really long hours and even by the time we had our lunchtime, most days I was still looking at another eight hours before he came home, which meant that in order for me to make it until he got home without pulling my hair out or losing it on Emily, I needed to recharge my batteries and that 15 to 20 minutes of quiet did that. Sometimes I would call Kevin on the phone for adult interaction. Sometimes I would eat my lunch alone, quiet. Sometimes I would go scream into a pillow. It kind of depended on the day, but I learned to feel zero guilt over it because that 15 to 20 minutes recharging really did make me a better mom, a better homeschool teacher, and later a better wife when Kevin got home because I had recharged my batteries and I was able to devote more to Emily after lunch. I was able to play a whole bunch of games or dive into a project without feeling stressed and anxious and losing it on her. So if that is you, zero guilt, zero, don't do it. A sane mom is way more important. Um, like I said, now our lunchtime is moved to breakfast. So we do learning breakfast and we homeschool through lunch because Emily's older and it's just switched around. But the principle is still the same. Find a way to use technology and things like that to your benefit so that you can recharge your batteries wherever that needs to happen. If that's at breakfast, if it's at lunch, maybe it's while you're making dinner because I know that that's sometimes if your spouse isn't home yet can be a really stressful time and it's like the witching hour. So wherever you need that utilize strewing and or technology to make it happen. My third and last tip for homeschooling and only while saving your sanity is outsourcing. There is going to come a time when you and your only child are probably going to buttheads over a specific subject or maybe you are really, really busy or really stressed out and you honestly just need your child to be entertained and you need that entertainment to not come from you. Outsourcing a subject or outsourcing a fun class with something like maybe out school is a great way for you guys to not butt heads and or for you to be able to get something done while they're entertained by somebody else. So for example, math is a subject that Emily and I can just not seem to do together. We've struggled for years. We butt heads really bad. And I think it's because she doesn't want to get the answer wrong. She's afraid of letting me down, which is so not even an issue, but she thinks it is. And because there's only her and I, we're sitting there staring at each other, almost kind of like locked in this who's going to break competition unfortunately. So we have outsourced math for as long as I can remember. When she was really, really young, we just played games for math because curriculums didn't work for us. Then when she got old enough, we did teaching textbooks and now we're doing Denison math, all of which means that I check in with her, but I'm not the one teaching it to her and that works for us. And it saves my sanity as well as hers in this case. Um, and then also when I need time for maybe it was college classes at one point, now it may be work. It could also be life. Like maybe I'm just like, for example, we're getting ready to go on a road trip and I need time to pack or make a list or shop or whatever. Um, I will log on to out school and I love them because this is such a great option and I will look for classes that happen to fit the timeframe that I need her to have extra entertainment. Um, so over the years, she's always done out school classes. She's on a Lego class. She still does a book club now to this day. But if I know that, for example, next week I'm going to need an extra hour to get something done, whatever that something is, or maybe I'm just overwhelmed and I need an extra hour to do nothing. I will log in out school and I will just search like, what can I find that she will find interesting or that will entertain her? Um, and I feel zero guilt over it because one year it was crazy for college for me and she took this amazing like veterinary science out school class for six months. She did it twice a week, um, for three to six months I think, but she absolutely loved it. And the really cool thing about it is she learned stuff that I couldn't have taught her anyway because the class was taught by an actual veterinarian. So she learned like so much information. So not only did I feel zero guilt about it, but I felt zero guilt. I was able to do what I needed to do with a lot less stress and anxiety. And she had a blast learning something that she was super interested in. Then in the end, our relationship was safe because of it. And as a bonus tip, I just want to remind you guys that connection matters over curriculum, hands down all the time, but especially when you're homeschooling and only, it's just you and them. You have to prioritize your connection. So sometimes you have to get creative and you have to do things like shrew and use technology and outsource. And all of that is absolutely okay as long as you are putting that connection in their relationship with them first. And now I would absolutely love it if you would tell me your tips for homeschooling only down in the comments because our journey is far from over and I'm sure I'm going to need all the help I can get.