I love learning, knowledge is power – Louise Hay
One of our children is very fond of learning and making electronics with her dad. She is a very quick learner, 11 years old now. A friend of ours gave her this job – describe and connect all the wires and I’ll pay you a wage.
It is reverse engineering of a printed circuit board. The pieces has been reused from old electronics he already had at home or from dumpster diving.
Our oldest child was researching to find a map of Copenhagen from the 16th Century, and found that it was possible to look at one in real life, in the Copenhagen Town Hall public library. She asked for help to find out how to visit that library and it resulted in us all going there on a tour of the whole town hall and the tower. It was a good way to learn about the democratic process in Denmark, and to understand the way the councils work. The Copenhagen town hall is open to the public, which in itself is quite unique, and you can pay to get a tour of many of the areas not open to the public. You can also pay to get a tour of the tower, which has a unique view over the city. Copenhagen has many towers and we want to climb all of them. We have gone through quite a few of them by now, but this was our first time in the Town Hall Tower. The Town Hall is full of wall paintings, many by famous artists. It also has a room full with unique woven tapestry, with motives from Danish history. As our oldest daughter said:”We just didn’t have enough time there” 🙂
It wasn’t long after I started Homeschooling, that I experienced my first Homeschool Burnout episode. My husband reads a lot and sent me a link to this phenomenon. It actually helped me quite a lot to read and see some videoes on this subject. Then I didn’t feel so alone with this feeling anymore.
I think most Homeschoolers set out with so many ideas about how they want their Homeschool to be. They have great enthusiasm and just really want to do a really great job, bringing up their children.
I have always had larger expectation to live than good is, and it already before having children, some times exhausted myself to the extreme. Having children and 2 children close to each other in age, gave me a wake up call. I had to rethink my gratitude towards what was humanly possible for me to achieve, with all the daily chores on top of teaching the kids.
If you never feel like you get enough done, you have to sit down and think about the way you think. Not just keep on working away until you drop.
My husband said a few magical things to help me. He said:”Does the children look happy? Do they thrive? Do they sing and dance all day? Yes they do! So what do you worry about?” He also said:”When you feel in doubt about whether you are doing a good enough job, always think about the alternative. Then you will never doubt yourself anymore”.
Well, what is Homeschool Burnout? To me it occurs, when all the children ask me stuff, or ask for help at the same time. Meanwhile, the bread is burning in the oven, I did not get enough sleep during the night, because I also had a baby to look after and I also have a job to go to and maintain. When I wake up looking forward to just get all those basic things done, so that we can get to the fun stuff, like painting, going for a walk, sit down quietly and read, or just finish a chapter in history, but the whole day just vanishes between my fingers and I don’t really know what we actually did that day. I am just knackered and feel like I am inside the washing machine on high spin.
So I sat down and thought about how I could look better after myself. Everybody around me said that they loved me, and that I was doing a great job of our children’s schooling. So why was I not satisfied with myself? First reason – I needed more sleep. Second – I needed to look at self love. Third – I had to manage my stress level.
My oldest daughter did a great thing for me. She made this bottle with “I love you because …………….” and allowed me to take a dosis of three notes every time I ended up in this situation. I cried, because it was just the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. To receive so much love from your children was magic.
What I have done to manage Homeschool Burnout, is this: