Want to know how to homeschool with success? How about managing your children’s online learning? Trying to figure out how to be both of those while you run your business? Today’s episode is the answer to all of those questions.

This can be a very joyful time in your life and your children’s life. You can be prepared and ready for the change that is happening to all of our work from home moms right now. This doesn’t have to be a major struggle for you.

This episode dives into the 5 pillars you will need to be successful at managing the new responsibility of managing your child’s education while you work from home. If you are struggling to make it all work, then listen up.

Listen below for the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast

You will notice a pattern in the way things are structured as you read through this blog. I am going to offer some sort of sub sequential order for you to create steps to apply to your everyday life. I am also going to offer you tips not just about how to succeed. In addition to those tips, I will be sharing how you can also fail.

This topic is a hot topic for me; which is why I believe you should know what the consequences are for your actions. Consequences are just the result of doing something. This does not mean that all consequences are bad. A consequence is when I do A, B happens as a result. B is the consequence. There are both, positive and negative consequences to every choice we make. I think it is very important that I line up vividly what the consequences are for making and not making certain decisions regarding running your business or working from home while homeschooling.

I am about to share 5 Pillars that must be in place in any homeschool for work from home moms. As you approach this, do so as if you are preparing to walk into a work week with your set schedule for the week, planned meetings, projects, etc. ready to go while also preparing to execute your plan for your children’s homeschool schedule. Your children may be learning 100% from you by way of a curriculum. They may be attending school virtually or even hybrid. Regardless of the circumstances, you must make sure your children’s learning is actually happening. As you read through these 5 Pillars, apply each one to both areas in order to produce the best possible outcomes for you and your children.

5 Pillars You Must Have As a Homeschooling Work From Home Mom

1. Your Spiritual Pillar

Make Sure You Are Addressing Your Spiritual Foundation 100% Of The Time Before Making Any Decisions!

Due to the new circumstances, we are all affected by as a result of the pandemic, many of us are making more emotional decisions instead of allowing our spiritual foundation to guide our decision-making. I know you may think you are just completing a set of steps for work and your children’s learning but are you praying about each step every step of the way? How are your emotions or fears or anything else interfering with the decisions that God wants you to make concerning your business and especially your children?

The consequences, when you are not making all of your decisions based on your spiritual footing, will be you leading your children and yourself to a space where everything is operating out of a place of emotion. This will also teach your children to do the same thing. This will lead you further and further away from the experiences and the life that God is asking you to live. This is super important for you to understand.

The positive consequences, when you do make your decisions based on your spiritual footing will lead you to a place of ultimate peace about the decisions that you are making. No matter what the circumstances are, if you are rooting your decisions in your spiritual foundation, you will have peace and if you don’t have peace, that’s a really good indicator that you are not quite there yet. So wait until you have peace before you make a decision. If you are up against some hard decisions, do some hard praying in order to gain complete and utter peace in order to manage your children’s education from home and run your business or work from home.

Now that we have discussed your children and school, let’s discuss your business. One of the greatest pieces of advice I got from my mentor/business coach was “to keep my head down”. Literally, focus on what you are called to do and keep your head down. Don’t look up. Do the work that you are called to do and don’t look up. Keep your face out of everyone else’s social posts, political posts, fear-based posts. Stop listening. Stop looking. Stop searching for answers on other people’s social media posts. That is not where you hear spiritual answers and you need to be guided spiritually.

2. Emotional Pillar

What holds you up emotionally when you are running your business and homeschooling? This is something you absolutely must have in order to succeed. In order to make this work -managing your home, managing your children’s education, and managing your business- you have to get your head and heart (your mindset) in place.

First of all, you have to know what your emotions are. If you are one who likes to ignore or stuff your emotions because you don’t like the way it makes you feel, you better get a journal. Get a journal and put it on your nightstand and remove your phone from your nightstand. This is one of the number 1 things I teach loud and proud to anyone that is getting coached by me or going through my course. At night begin asking yourself these questions and writing the responses in your journal. What went well today? What didn’t go well today? How do I feel right now? Do I feel heavy? Do I feel excited? Do I feel relieved? Do I feel happy? Do I feel confident? Do I feel dismayed? Do I feel depressed? Do I feel disappointed?

What I call mindset is your head and your heart or your feelings, thoughts, and emotions coming altogether. In order to be successful, you have to be able to handle everything that is being thrown at you. You have to get a successful mindset set up, not just a positive one because not every day is going to be a good day. What we really want is a successful mindset. I go very, very, very in-depth in my Systemize Your Life Productivity Course in The Systemize Your Life Academy. I teach you how to have a successful mindset and not just a positive one. Things like handling change, teaching your children how to handle change and all of the stress and frustrations that you feel every single day, you need to figure out how to make that successful. You need to figure out, how you are going to flip the script, especially when your children begin to mirror your entire attitude. What you show up with and the emotions that you carry, that’s where your children will pick up how they should behave and the emotions they should carry. It is unbelievably vital that you figure this out.

What happens if you don’t?

What happens if you don’t have your emotions under control? What happens if you are operating under whatever you feel like in the moment and you are not being slow to speak and you haven’t taken the time to figure out how you feel in the moment and you are responding on a whim?

When you don’t “get a grip” on this emotional pillar, your children will take the hardest hit. You can’t make proper decisions concerning their home learning if you show up a mess, or frustrated, or disappointed and you are not following the first pillar. Your children will experience less joy and frustration while mimicking what it is that you are putting out. They won’t be able to handle stress well and they won’t be able to handle what life throws at them with grace, joy, patience or confidence if they watch you handle it in a negative way. Your children need to see you handle things with confidence and joy and go through hard things happily and be ok with things being different. They need to see your attitude and hear you express verbally the silver lining when things are tough and different and know that it is ok. There is nothing more important you can teach your children when dealing with their emotions other than DIFFERENT IS OK. Things can go one way and go another the next moment and that is ok.

I literally made my course in The Systemize Your Life Academy so that you can understand how to tackle all of these pillars and learn systems in depth and know them like the back of your hand.

What about the good consequences?

What happens when you actually do this? Your children begin to have confidence. They have peace. They’re less anxious. They’re happy about the changes. Why? Because they know what to look forward to after hearing you confidently embrace changes positively, they will do the same.

“When you do communicate with your children clearly, you will be able to understand them better, you will be able to meet their needs better, and they will know what is expected of them.”

3. Get Organized

The organization is simply just knowing where things are. Get rid of the clutter. Get rid of the things you don’t need. Put very specific things in a very specific place that you know you are going to need and put it back once you are using it. If you have any kind of learning environment at home, whatever that looks like, organize it. You need to be organized and your children need to be organized. They need to know where everything goes and you need to be sure to have a space for everything. Have your bins, folder, buckets, and bag all in a place where they will stay all the time so that there will be no confusion when it is time to pick those things up and use them. If you are doing online school, make sure you organize passwords, and online links, you have the computer in a specific location, the charger has a specific home, and the schedules are uploaded and printed for you and your children to see.

If you are 100% homeschooling, the organization is absolutely nonnegotiable. Organize everything that you are going to be using on a regular basis. If this is your first time and you have no idea what you are going to need, start somewhere. What do you think you are going to need? Get those things and organize them. Label it. Everything needs a label. Your children need to know where to put things so label everything in order to keep everything organized and tidy. You can use white duct tape and a marker and label all the things. Target, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels all have organization tools that will make your life easier.

What happens if you don’t get organized?

You are a mess! Your children are a mess. Things will be everywhere. You will not show up on time. You will not succeed. Your children will not succeed in school. You will not succeed in business. You will literally lose your mind. There is no way you will meet your children’s goals. There is no way you will meet your monetary expectations. There is no way you will meet the goals of your business, if you are not organized. It is just not possible to manage your home, homeschool, and your business if you are not organized. If you do not know how to get organized, please join my free Facebook Community for more tips and assistance on how to get creative and get organized.

4. Preparedness

Yes, preparedness is different than getting organized. You are not ready to homeschool just because you bought a curriculum. You have got to break that curriculum down from a year’s worth of content all the way down to a day to day system. It may tell you exactly how, when, what, and where. It may not. You must break it down by benchmarks for your children so that you can be prepared and make sure your children are successfully learning according to what they need to know. There should be weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual goal for your children’s homeschool system. You should also have this same system for your business. Have trackable goals and make sure they are all being met but the end of the week. This is simple goal planning and goal mapping. Every single weekend for your business and homeschool, you have to sit down and plan what you are doing every single day to meet your goals for the end of the week.

What are the consequences if you are not prepared?

You fail! There will be a riff between you and someone either in your home or in your business. This tension will cause you to not want to show up and breed failure. The bitterness, anger, lack of confidence, and just grey cloud do not have to follow you and cause or lead to a negative outcome for your children or your business. You just have to get prepared. So sit down. One day, every single week. Have your time and your tasks mapped out so you can get all the things done in your business and your children’s homeschool so that you both will know exactly what you are doing every single day.

5. Communication

Are you communicating with your children about their needs? Are you communicating with your children about the decisions that are being made by whoever is making them; parents, school district, government, etc. There are a lot of decisions being made and our children have less say in the decisions and yet are largely impacted by the decisions. It is super important that you are communicating to them what the expectations are for them throughout the week by their teacher (you or the online teacher). It is also important that you ask them how they are feeling about all the decisions and any changes that are being made. Take the time to ask them, “How was school for you today?” Don’t just ask them to ask but be sure to listen to their responses even if you don’t like what they have to say. You need to listen to them. Even if you see them all day, still ask them this question at the end of the day or ask your spouse to ask them. Let them know that their feelings are equally as important as yours are. When they respond, you follow up with the emotional pillar and talk to them and validate them and their feelings.

When it comes to your business throughout the week, you have to communicate with your children what you need. If you have a set schedule and time when you get things done, communicate with your children so that they will know and be prepared to let you work during that timeframe. The honest truth is that if you don’t show up for work, you don’t get paid. You can prioritize your children’s homeschooling and your business however you want but do not neglect your business and not neglect your children’s homeschooling. Do not sabotage what you are doing to always meet your children’s needs. If you are struggling with this, go back and listen to my podcast, Episode 41 on boundaries. It is absolutely incredible. I also did a live presentation that you can find in the Facebook Community as well. Remember it is completely free and has a lot of information for you.

When you do communicate with your children, clearly you will be able to understand them better, you will be able to meet their needs better, and they will know what is expected of them. You will reduce the amount of fear and frustration they have because they will be able to talk about what they need. You need to communicate with them and allow them to communicate so they do not internalize everything. If this is hard for you, get over it. They need to know what communication looks like face-to-face every single day. Turn off technology at the end of the day so that they can have your attention as they attempt to communicate.

When you don’t communicate with your children, what are the bad outcomes of this?

Major disconnect. Little ones will act this out in negative behaviors and older ones can shut down and shut you out. They can begin resenting you, being angry, and just a general withdrawal. This would be a detriment to you and your children. However, this would also teach them that this is what you do in relationships in general, that is what you do with your feelings in general, and it will lead them into some very unhealthy situations with others.

Another amazing way to communicate is to have a communication board in the main area of your home for your family to see. Find something that fits your pretty decor and put it up and communicate as a family what is going on and when. Make sure it is out in the open for everyone to see so that you, your children, and your spouse can all know what is going on, when, where, and how.

That is all 5 of the pillars that are an absolute must for a busy work from home mom who wants to have a successful business from home while homeschooling her amazing children.

Please come and say hi in the Free Facebook Group and let me know how we can help you concerning any of these 5 pillars.

Until next time, talk soon mamas.

Frequently Asked Questions

Help! I love homeschooling, but sometimes I feel like I just need a break!

First of all, please know that it is completely fine! You actually need time by yourself to be a good Mom. I highly suggest starting with my fundamental needs workbook to identify what your core needs are – time alone might just be one of them!