How Do I Deal With Homeschool Planning Burnout?

How did you deal with burnout while planning homeschool high school?

I feel like the planning and researching never ends.  We chose not to do a canned homeschool program like Abeka or Bob Jones so that we could tailor the programs to our two boys.  After 6 years of homeschooling, I’m feeling burned out. How did you find  balance?  How do we teach, plan, grade, buy, read, yahoo groups, go to conventions, visit colleges, do transcripts, apply to colleges, research high school, research college, help children decide majors and everything else?  And still be civil to our kids and husband.

~ Deb in New York

Dear Deb,

That’s a great question – although a HUGE question.

In the meantime, I want to point out that it’s summer.  It’s time to kick back and relax.  If you are feeling burned out, my advice is two things

1. stop homeschooling for summer
2. play a lot

You know how when kids are doing math, and they are working for hours and hours on the same assignment?  You know, after about an hour on one math lesson, they become COMPLETELY incapable and overwhelmed.  It’s much more efficient to stop math after one hour and then restart it later in the day.

And think about baseball players?  Professional athletes get MONTHS off each year.  They stop being athletes so they can recover.  So I guess in that sense, homeschoolers are like professional athletes, right?  We need a major break.  That’s why God created summer

You may have a complicating factor, and in that case, it would help if we can talk this Wednesday about what you feel is the critical issue.  But in general, you should try to take the summer off.  Maybe just watch some of my videos and listen to audios on the Gold Care Club so you feel stronger and refreshed, but DO NOT take notes, just listen and absorb.

One other issue.  If you are in the beginning part of high school then the tendency is to do too much.  You may want to assess how much work you are requiring from the kids and yourself, and see if it is just too much.  High school is a time when kids should become more self-taught.  It’s also a time when they start to specialize (that is, start to follow their passionate interests,) so you can do fewer subjects but do some of them more deeply.  I would love to talk with you about that more if you have other concerns.

Hang in there,  Deb!  And I hope I can talk to you this week!  I’ll try to work on an article on avoiding homeschool planning burnout.

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