Fantastic list! I just ordered books for our next year, and I’m definitely going to be easing into our school routine as we wait for them to be delivered. We usually start our school days with reading a middle grade novel aloud for half an hour or so, and while we took a break from that during the summer, my kids have started asking me to resume that habit. I think that will be a good place to start the easing in.
I am speaking from a retired point of view, but one of the best lessons I had to teach myself was how to get the unpopular tasks done. I wish I had had instruction in this decades ago. It would have moved me along with much less drama. TASKS: Do I like to chunk them? (Toys picked up 1 followed by 2 toys followed by 3 toys ...) Did I give myself a pep talk? Can someone else pep talk me into finishing? Did I pick a time of the day and "blitz work" the task? Mostly, I was teaching my brain that we were GOING to get the task done, no matter what my brain was saying, and I think this is a world-changing thing to teach your children: Your brain is not always your best friend. You may spend hours or days procrastinating, and that just pollutes those days or hours with hundreds of "I should..." Teach your kids to be aware of how they work best. Morning work? 10 minutes before a designated hour? List-driven? Things done right before a fun outing? Something out there will make it easier to do things. And, of course, teach them the dopamine-pleasure of a fist pumped in the air after one finishes the task and says, "Yesssssss!" And finally in a comment too long to read, I had the experience recently of sitting at a table staring at a wet plastic lid that needed drying. I was thinking, "I'll let it dry for awhile." A thought ran out at me: "Are you going to be defeated by PLASTIC, Sarah?" Well, no. So I got up and dried the lid. I WIN!!
What a great list. I love the first one about doing it slowly. We’ve learned that the hard way too. Our children range 11 down to infancy at this point. I remember being super ambitious that we’re going to study Aristotle and calculus and Chopin all by age five and then I realized that slow and steady really does win the race, especially when it comes to introducing changes in routine. Thanks for this. You might find out new Substack posts interesting as well
Thanks for this wonderful advice! I love how you focus on building routine slowly, getting small bits of work done on difficult days, and "ruthlessly prioritizing." This is extremely helpful to me as I just started homeschool kindergarten with my daughter.
Lots of wisdom here! I think there are a lot of points many of us adults could learn from, too. I often inflate the difficulty of cleaning my kitchen for example, but it usually takes less than 10 or 15 minutes and I’m better off just telling myself I can take a break once I’ve done it.
This line made me laugh: “It would feel more like compulsory purchase than a free exchange of goods!”
Fantastic list! I just ordered books for our next year, and I’m definitely going to be easing into our school routine as we wait for them to be delivered. We usually start our school days with reading a middle grade novel aloud for half an hour or so, and while we took a break from that during the summer, my kids have started asking me to resume that habit. I think that will be a good place to start the easing in.
I am speaking from a retired point of view, but one of the best lessons I had to teach myself was how to get the unpopular tasks done. I wish I had had instruction in this decades ago. It would have moved me along with much less drama. TASKS: Do I like to chunk them? (Toys picked up 1 followed by 2 toys followed by 3 toys ...) Did I give myself a pep talk? Can someone else pep talk me into finishing? Did I pick a time of the day and "blitz work" the task? Mostly, I was teaching my brain that we were GOING to get the task done, no matter what my brain was saying, and I think this is a world-changing thing to teach your children: Your brain is not always your best friend. You may spend hours or days procrastinating, and that just pollutes those days or hours with hundreds of "I should..." Teach your kids to be aware of how they work best. Morning work? 10 minutes before a designated hour? List-driven? Things done right before a fun outing? Something out there will make it easier to do things. And, of course, teach them the dopamine-pleasure of a fist pumped in the air after one finishes the task and says, "Yesssssss!" And finally in a comment too long to read, I had the experience recently of sitting at a table staring at a wet plastic lid that needed drying. I was thinking, "I'll let it dry for awhile." A thought ran out at me: "Are you going to be defeated by PLASTIC, Sarah?" Well, no. So I got up and dried the lid. I WIN!!
Practical and helpful!! Thank you so much 😊
What a great list. I love the first one about doing it slowly. We’ve learned that the hard way too. Our children range 11 down to infancy at this point. I remember being super ambitious that we’re going to study Aristotle and calculus and Chopin all by age five and then I realized that slow and steady really does win the race, especially when it comes to introducing changes in routine. Thanks for this. You might find out new Substack posts interesting as well
Thanks for this wonderful advice! I love how you focus on building routine slowly, getting small bits of work done on difficult days, and "ruthlessly prioritizing." This is extremely helpful to me as I just started homeschool kindergarten with my daughter.
Lots of wisdom here! I think there are a lot of points many of us adults could learn from, too. I often inflate the difficulty of cleaning my kitchen for example, but it usually takes less than 10 or 15 minutes and I’m better off just telling myself I can take a break once I’ve done it.
This line made me laugh: “It would feel more like compulsory purchase than a free exchange of goods!”