Onegaishimasu Parents and students,
This challenging time has asked a lot of us as parents and providers. Many of us are now juggling the roles of husband or wife, parent, primary caregiver, working mom or dad, and now homeschooler.
Trying to cope with the challenges associated with all these, plus our and our daily lives can seem overwhelming. Mom and dad……Its not hard because you are doing it wrong…It's hard because it's impossible to do all these jobs at once.
Being homeschoolers and stay at home parents has really put us in the driver’s seat with regards to what we prioritize as important in our child’s education, what is possible and what can be put aside for later. By the way…..It’s OK to defer!!This time has also afforded us the unique opportunity to do something very powerful for our children and that is to help form the “soft” and essential success skills often marginalized in the craziness of our daily lives but so crucial to our children’s success.
The following is an email I received from one of our wonderful dojo moms regarding homeschooling. I had to share this with you!
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!
Dear Sensei,
As someone who got into homeschooling more than a decade ago, I have gone through a lot of refusal to co-operate from my kids over the years and that was in a condition where we chose to do this job. True, my 3 boys are on the spectrum, and that made homeschooling, shall we say, interesting for the first few years.
I would like to share a little of what I have learned to, hopefully, give some of you new, voluntold, homeschoolers a bit of encouragement and peace of mind.
Over the years I have experienced many periods of anxiety, wondering whether or not I was providing the best for my children. Now that my oldest is nearing adulthood, I have realized that sometimes it is okay to let go of some expectations. We have gone through periods when very little got done and other times when more was accomplished.
This period we are going through is, in the grand scheme, a blip. It may mean that our little ones are not going to track the same way they would have in school, but really, it will all come out in the wash. I had the advantage of doing a lot of research into different styles of homeschooling in the early years of this adventure and I still had to throw most of the advice out the window. Even for experienced homeschoolers the process continually evolves.
My biggest takeaway and what I hope to encourage is that we need to worry less about the timing of our Kids’ education and development.
More important than the curricula are the soft skills that we can transmit to our kids. Respect them and yourselves. Sometimes they need time to just be and boredom can actually produce some amazing creativity. If you are concerned about screen time, make it quality screen time.
If you’re worried about routine, make a reasonable checklist of expectations for your child and give them control over when they fulfill those expectations.
They may feel like a lot is out of their control right now and putting some back in their hands may help. That is a practical thing that has worked well in our home. Our kids have their lists and they can have two hours of non-educational screen time after their list is done and after 3:00 pm.
Maybe, that might help a few of you.
Parents.....How successful would your child be if they had the soft skills that enabled them to be highly efficient and effective learners no matter what the subject matter was?
Stay tuned....Next week Im going to share with you the three things you can do to help develop this in your child.
Have an amazing week!!
Sensei Chris
Keiko Karate – “Actually we do make Ninjas and Superheroes here………………we turn kids into Ninjas and we turn their parents into their superheroes!”
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