Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E121: Why This Mom of 6 Says Homeschooling is Practical

Transcript

E121: Why This Mom of 6 Says Homeschooling is Practical · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  I want to get into for somebody considering homeschooling like
• 0:03
  where they should even start. How does homeschooling work for
• 0:05
  families that have a lot of work?
• 0:07
  How many hours per day as a homeschool parent should I be
• 0:10
  homeschooling? I'm so glad you asked this.
• 0:12
  Would you say homeschooling is actually the best option?
• 0:14
  Homeschooling just doesn't look like traditional school if this
• 0:17
  doesn't need to. When my oldest were 12:10 and
• 0:20
  8:00 we had a one year old and twin newborns.
• 0:24
  Wow. And there was not a lot of
• 0:25
  formal education going on. How does that work?
• 0:28
  I think we have this expectation that if if we don't do these
• 0:30
  things exactly how the school system prescribes that they
• 0:33
  should be done, they won't be ready.
• 0:35
  And we sort of discount the fact that a lot of things are learned
• 0:38
  in the course of normal everyday life.
• 0:44
  Welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
• 0:46
  Today we're going to be talking with Sarah Mackenzie about
• 0:49
  homeschooling. Consider this episode your
• 0:51
  primer on homeschooling. If you consider doing it, Maybe
• 0:54
  you have kids and you're thinking about pulling your kids
• 0:56
  out of school. You're going to be having kids
• 0:58
  and you're wondering how to educate them or you're even have
• 1:00
  kids. You're not even married yet, but
• 1:01
  you're interested in one day maybe exploring homeschooling.
• 1:05
  As you guys know, I was homeschooled.
• 1:06
  My husband was homeschooled for part of his education, and I had
• 1:09
  an amazing experience with it. Sarah is going to break down how
• 1:12
  to get started, how to discern if it's for you, how to overcome
• 1:15
  roadblocks, how to get in the same page with your spouse, and
• 1:17
  so much more. Homeschooling has been making a
• 1:19
  huge resurgence, especially post pandemic and during the
• 1:22
  pandemic, and so many more people are considering it as a
• 1:25
  viable option for their family. Is it?
• 1:27
  We get into so much of the details of whether or not it
• 1:30
  will work for you and how you can make homeschooling work for
• 1:32
  you in this episode. There's tons of good stuff in
• 1:34
  this episode and tons of resources in this episode.
• 1:37
  So I actually recommend, yes, you can listen to it while
• 1:39
  you're driving, but write down some of the resources that she
• 1:41
  says while she's saying them, and then you'll be able to go
• 1:44
  back to those and use them in the future.
• 1:46
  I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did.
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  That's weheartnutrition.com. Use the code LILAC Check out for
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  20% off your order. Sarah, thanks so much for
• 3:46
  joining the podcast. I am delighted to be here.
• 3:48
  Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to have you on
• 3:50
  because we have not deep dived homeschooling yet on the show.
• 3:54
  Awesome. And I didn't.
• 3:55
  Realize that you were homeschooled.
• 3:57
  Yes, awesome. I was, yes.
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  And also my husband was homeschooled for part of his
• 4:01
  education. OK, So we're very familiar with
• 4:04
  our experiences there, right? And then different networks, but
• 4:07
  you are the perfect person to talk about this.
• 4:10
  So give folks a little bit of your background and also tell us
• 4:13
  about your podcast, which I understand has over 14,000,000
• 4:17
  downloads and it's all things homeschooling.
• 4:19
  Yes. So my husband and I have been
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  married for 23 years and we have six kids who've all been
• 4:24
  homeschooled all the way through.
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  Our oldest three are all in college now, so they're 2220 and
• 4:31
  18 and our youngest ones are 12. And then we have 10 year old
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  identical twin boys. And what brought me to
• 4:38
  homeschooling was actually, and it's interesting, I, I feel like
• 4:43
  there is a resurgence, like you said, to homeschooling right
• 4:46
  now, maybe largely fed by what the alternatives offer, Probably
• 4:51
  fed by that. For me, homeschooling, I was
• 4:54
  really drawn to it because I enjoyed my kids so much.
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  I, I was really inspired by a picture of like spending time
• 5:00
  with my kids and getting to learn alongside them.
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  And then as the years progressed, we just loved it so
• 5:07
  much. We loved the way our, our
• 5:08
  families, our family had like its own culture.
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  We had the ability to connect and have these great
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  conversations, tons of time for reading.
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  And so we just kept homeschooling all the way
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  through. And my husband wasn't super
• 5:20
  excited about it at the beginning, mostly because
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  neither he or I knew a lot of homeschooling families who in
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  real life there was like my husband would say he knew one
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  homeschooling family growing up and they were super weird.
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  And he was like, I don't want to do that.
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  But I don't know. I think the resources and the
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  communities that are available for homeschoolers now make it a
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  really not just something we can do because there are problems
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  with alternatives, with public education and even in many cases
• 5:53
  private education, but because there's so much joy to be had in
• 5:56
  homeschooling. So anyway, yes, Read Aloud
• 5:57
  Revival is my podcast where we talk about especially about how
• 6:02
  reading with our kids of all ages, even well past time when
• 6:05
  they can read on their own, really can nurture
• 6:09
  relationships, help our kids encounter God, help them
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  encounter big ideas and grow closer together.
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  So we talk about reading aloud in the context of homeschooling
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  and just in the context of family life.
• 6:20
  All right, there's so much to get into and I'm excited to deep
• 6:22
  dive it all. But first, what you just said
• 6:24
  makes me wonder, when you were starting your family with your
• 6:28
  husband, were there other schools locally that were like
• 6:31
  really solid? And you considered when you were
• 6:34
  making the decision whether or not to homeschool?
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  Or was part of the decision to homeschool the concern about the
• 6:38
  lack of quality schools close to you 'cause I know that for a lot
• 6:42
  of people listening, it's a concern about the schools around
• 6:45
  them? That was primarily it.
• 6:46
  So where we lived, there was a lot of crime in the schools at
• 6:49
  the time. I mean, this was, again, you
• 6:51
  know, 17 years ago when my oldest was 5.
• 6:54
  And there were, there were, yeah, issues with crime, I would
• 6:59
  say was the biggest concern at the time.
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  Now, I would probably have other other things that I would be
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  concerned about. We actually, though, by the time
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  my oldest was eight, we had moved into a really nice school
• 7:09
  district. And I remember we had moved
• 7:11
  across the state into Eastern Washington.
• 7:13
  And when we moved there, a lot of people around us were like,
• 7:17
  why would you homeschool when you have such great schools
• 7:19
  nearby? At that point, we had gotten a
• 7:21
  Taste of Home education. And so again, it was less about,
• 7:25
  well, I don't want my kids to go to this school, so I guess we'll
• 7:27
  homeschool. We don't have the resource.
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  We didn't have the resources at the time to put them into a
• 7:31
  private school. So we'll just do it because we
• 7:33
  kind of have to. Then we discovered all of this
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  joy and connection, and we just kept going.
• 7:38
  So even though at the time there were sounds like there were
• 7:40
  great schools, at least people said there were great schools
• 7:43
  and you didn't have a concern once you moved about the
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  necessarily the quality of the school.
• 7:47
  You were just loving homeschooling so much and found
• 7:50
  it so rewarding. Yeah, and I think because I
• 7:53
  realized that homeschooling gave us so much opportunity to help
• 7:58
  our kids navigate challenges, talk about tricky issues, but
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  also there's just so much time. That's really the thing when I
• 8:09
  look back to on my oldest three, who are now all at college.
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  Well, one just graduated from college.
• 8:14
  She's heading off to grad school.
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  But when when I look back, I think the thing I'm the most
• 8:18
  grateful for is the time, which does feel when you're in it with
• 8:22
  the little kids, feels like time is eternal.
• 8:26
  I will be here forever. I will.
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  This child will never learn to read.
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  There's a lot of that feeling like it's going to go on
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  forever. But in retrospect, at the risk
• 8:34
  of sounding like one of those moms who's like enjoy it while
• 8:37
  you can, It really it is the time.
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  I think the time that you get to spend with your kids when you're
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  home schooling and you're not having to follow someone else's
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  schedule or agenda for what they're wanting to teach.
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  It just affords a lot of opportunity for connection and
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  relationship building. Which in hindsight with my older
• 8:57
  kids and something I'm really attentive to now with my younger
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  ones is that those relationships that we built are the foundation
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  of our relationship with them as a young adults are my husband
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  and my relationship with our kids as young adults.
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  That's matters more than just about anything else.
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  So I want to get into just like the primer for then for somebody
• 9:18
  considering homeschooling, like where they should even start
• 9:21
  before that. I want to get into the mindset
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  though, because I found a lot of women that I've talked to and
• 9:27
  dads, but you know, usually it's the mom who's making these
• 9:29
  decisions and she's primarily doing the homeschooling.
• 9:32
  Dad's often assisting. But I found it's a mindset thing
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  of like, I don't think I can do this.
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  Yes, both for two reasons. Number one, I don't think I can
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  do this because I've got other responsibilities.
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  Maybe they're working full or part time.
• 9:44
  Maybe they have, you know, a lot of kids and they feel like it's
• 9:47
  just overwhelming. Like there's just practical
• 9:49
  considerations. And then I can't do this because
• 9:51
  of like personal considerations. Like I don't have what it takes.
• 9:54
  You know, I'm not detail oriented.
• 9:56
  I'm not good at focusing. I get frustrated.
• 9:58
  He's like whatever it is. So I'd love to explore those two
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  categories of concerns around kind of roadblocks to
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  homeschooling in the mindset of someone even considering it.
• 10:08
  Yeah, if I can start with the second one first, because I feel
• 10:11
  like a lot of times what I would hear early on was I could never
• 10:14
  homeschool my kids because I'm not patient enough.
• 10:17
  But The funny thing about virtues like patience is that
• 10:21
  you only acquire them when they're required of you.
• 10:23
  You know, that's the only way that you grow in patience is to
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  be tried. So I have found that
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  homeschooling is an excellent ground for a mother especially
• 10:32
  and and a dad too. My husband does quite a bit of
• 10:34
  homeschooling these days with the kids, science and math and
• 10:36
  all those things that he really excels at.
• 10:38
  But it's a primate. It's a wonderful ground for
• 10:43
  yourself as in growing in those virtues as well.
• 10:46
  So I, I would always say like I was never patient enough to
• 10:49
  homeschool until I grew in patients by homeschooling, which
• 10:52
  I'm still not patient enough. You know, there's like we have
• 10:55
  this idea that we need to well, two things.
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  I think if you were traditionally schooled like I
• 11:03
  was, a lot of times we come into homeschooling bringing a lot of
• 11:08
  the expectations and ideas of what it takes, what it means to
• 11:11
  teach 1/4 grader or a 6th grader.
• 11:14
  Then we have like I have six children when my oldest were
• 11:18
  12:10 and 8:00, we had a one year old and twin newborns and
• 11:23
  there was not a lot of like formal education going on
• 11:26
  because I was tired and I taking care of three babies is so you
• 11:29
  had three, three. Toddler, newborns, toddler and
• 11:32
  two newborns. Yes, and then you were
• 11:34
  homeschooling an 8A10 and a 12 year old.
• 11:36
  Yes, how does that? Work.
• 11:39
  Were you doing that alone? I mean, did you have like a
• 11:41
  tutor come to the house or I did?
• 11:43
  Occasionally, so we had, I had a few friends that we, I used to
• 11:46
  go to a homeschool club. They started coming to my house
• 11:48
  to meet because it was like trying to get out of the house
• 11:50
  with three babies was impossible.
• 11:52
  So, you know, I had a friend come and she would do like logic
• 11:55
  with all of the older kids or another one that did Latin, that
• 11:58
  was a few years we did Latin. She she would come over and like
• 12:02
  teach all of the kids. So I could just be in the next
• 12:04
  room with the with the babies. For the most part, we just
• 12:08
  didn't do a lot of formal education those years.
• 12:10
  And it's really interesting because now looking back, I
• 12:13
  remember being so worried that I wasn't doing enough.
• 12:17
  And again, I think this goes back to the expectation that we
• 12:20
  think that then we need to be teaching each of these kids at
• 12:23
  their own level from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM every day.
• 12:28
  Homeschooling just doesn't look like traditional school if it
• 12:31
  doesn't need to. So for those years, there was
• 12:35
  very little formal education going on.
• 12:37
  I would read aloud to the kids every day, or we'd listen to
• 12:39
  audiobooks. That was more often audiobooks
• 12:42
  during that time than me reading aloud.
• 12:44
  Because if you have three babies, the chances you can sit
• 12:47
  for 20 minutes and read aloud with your kids is very slim.
• 12:50
  They did an online math program and we had tons of family living
• 12:54
  like tons of life that I think sometimes we disqualify is
• 13:00
  counting. You mean like outings when you
• 13:03
  say family life, you mean just like, like, yeah, I was excited.
• 13:07
  You know, more like family systems where like, you have a
• 13:10
  meal together. This is doing.
• 13:12
  Chores, chores. They're helping you with the
• 13:14
  babies. There is a podcast episode on
• 13:17
  Read a lot of revival. It's episode 209.
• 13:20
  I interviewed my oldest daughter, who's now 22, about
• 13:22
  what she remembers, like what what worked and what didn't in
• 13:25
  those days and what struck me when I interviewed her, when I
• 13:28
  asked her some of these questions I didn't know the
• 13:30
  answers to where, you know, what do you remember about?
• 13:33
  There was a couple years in there that were real dicey.
• 13:36
  You know, babies, all these babies all at once.
• 13:40
  We didn't do what anyone would consider to be enough, Even
• 13:43
  myself, what I would consider to be enough.
• 13:45
  Now, was there standardization in Washington?
• 13:48
  I know some states have different programs where they
• 13:51
  require certain check ins with homeschool families.
• 13:54
  Yes, it depends. It varies state to state.
• 13:56
  In Washington state at the time, you were required with kids who
• 14:00
  were I think it was 3rd or 4th grade and up to take an annual
• 14:03
  standardized test there. You didn't have to do anything
• 14:07
  with it. You didn't have to turn it in.
• 14:08
  You just had to have them take it and have it on file.
• 14:11
  And we had to specifically register as a homeschooling
• 14:14
  family. But outside of that, there's a
• 14:15
  lot of freedom. And I know Washington is one of
• 14:18
  the states that has more stringent requirements.
• 14:20
  And that's about, there are a few that are, I think New York,
• 14:23
  Massachusetts may have some more requirements, but there are a
• 14:27
  lot of ways around them. A lot of, let's say, there's a
• 14:32
  lot of Gray area in the interpretation of those
• 14:35
  requirements. What's interesting to me is that
• 14:39
  we have this expectation that a child needs to do a certain
• 14:42
  amount of school each year. And I really did worry for many
• 14:45
  years that we weren't doing enough, especially in those
• 14:48
  really intense baby years. Now I can look back and see
• 14:53
  that, well, in that interview with my daughter, she says the
• 14:57
  things that she learned those years are probably more helpful
• 15:00
  than all the things she could have learned from books.
• 15:02
  Now, she did go to college and now she's going to get a
• 15:05
  graduate degree. She's actually going to Scotland
• 15:06
  next year for a graduate degree. All the kids have done just fine
• 15:10
  in university, doing really well.
• 15:12
  And I think we have this expectation that if we don't do
• 15:15
  these things exactly how the culture prescribes or the the
• 15:18
  school systems prescribes that they should be done.
• 15:20
  They won't be ready. And we sort of discount the fact
• 15:23
  that a lot of things are learned in the course of normal everyday
• 15:27
  life, that there's a lot of ground that can be made-up.
• 15:31
  For example, I don't usually teach my kids a lot of writing
• 15:34
  or grammar until they're about 12.
• 15:36
  And then they learn it really, really quickly because they've,
• 15:39
  if they've been read to for a while and you've got this warm
• 15:42
  relationship, then you can make up a lot of ground later on.
• 15:46
  So I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves,
• 15:48
  especially if we have a lot of babies, which probably a lot of
• 15:52
  people listening to this have a lot of little ones.
• 15:54
  And we think, well, I can't do right by the older ones.
• 15:57
  There's just something there that's hard to quantify.
• 15:59
  It's hard to pin down, and it requires a lot of trust and a
• 16:03
  lot of faith that I guess the underlying question is, how do I
• 16:11
  know if I'm going to be able to do enough, how I know I'm doing
• 16:13
  enough for my kids? And I feel like there's no pat
• 16:17
  answer to that. Except you probably aren't, but
• 16:19
  that was never what God asked you to do in the first place.
• 16:24
  I love, I just love this image I of Jesus feeding the 5000 on the
• 16:28
  hillside and all these hungry, the throng of hungry people.
• 16:32
  And what he didn't do, he could have.
• 16:34
  What he didn't do is just instantly feed everybody or
• 16:37
  instantly make everyone feel full so they wouldn't need to
• 16:40
  eat. What he did is he asked, he told
• 16:42
  the disciples, well, bring me what you have.
• 16:44
  Bring me what do we have? And they brought him what he
• 16:46
  had. They had and then he made it
• 16:48
  enough. And that to me is a very
• 16:50
  beautiful picture of homeschooling when we think, I
• 16:53
  don't know if I can do it because I don't know if I have
• 16:55
  the right temperament. I don't know if I'm patient
• 16:57
  enough. I think I have too many
• 16:59
  responsibilities, whether that's work or all these other babies
• 17:02
  or both. I don't think I have enough.
• 17:05
  Well, he never asked you to do that.
• 17:06
  He asked you to bring him what you have.
• 17:09
  And he makes it enough. And I just have talked to
• 17:12
  homeschool family, after homeschool family after
• 17:14
  homeschool family where none of these women go.
• 17:18
  Yeah, we did it all. We did all the right curriculum.
• 17:21
  We read all the books I wanted to read.
• 17:23
  We had outings like I wanted us to have, like field trips.
• 17:26
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  Heartbeat Club and being a monthly subscriber to get Seven
• 18:31
  Weeks coffee right your doorstep using the code Lila.
• 18:34
  So I think people listening, they might be thinking, OK, that
• 18:38
  sounds really beautiful. Again, I'm playing like, not
• 18:41
  devil's advocate, but it's more, you know, hearing the concerns I
• 18:44
  have from other moms who are really interested or or want to
• 18:47
  be moms, like younger women who are thinking seriously about
• 18:50
  their future and like hoping to have a family one day.
• 18:51
  And that's a lot of our audience too, and young men too.
• 18:55
  And they're thinking about, OK, can what I give my kids be
• 18:59
  superior? Then let's say that classical
• 19:01
  private school down the road, you know, that Catholic or that
• 19:05
  Christian private school down the road that's doing like a
• 19:07
  classical education. If that's the option, like good
• 19:10
  old me versus this private classical school, should I pick
• 19:13
  me, right? So we're talking about like an
• 19:16
  an ideal situation and a lot of people pick homeschooling
• 19:19
  because they don't have that option down the road, right?
• 19:21
  Or if they do, it's way too expensive.
• 19:23
  You know, there's other considerations, but I'm kind of
• 19:25
  boiling it down to the essence of, would you say homeschooling
• 19:28
  is actually the best option? I really think it varies family
• 19:32
  to family. I really feel like God gives us
• 19:34
  the grace to know our own kids and to feel peace with whatever
• 19:37
  decision that is the right for our family.
• 19:39
  I wouldn't go so far as to say that I think home education is
• 19:42
  always the very best I have. I just have too many people I
• 19:46
  know whose kids are in great, let's say classical Christian
• 19:49
  Catholic schools or, or classical Christian schools or,
• 19:51
  or something where it feels like a really great fit for their
• 19:55
  family and they're getting a great education.
• 19:58
  I think though, that there are benefits and there are drawbacks
• 20:02
  and there are benefits to anywhere you go.
• 20:04
  So whether you're you have that ideal private education option
• 20:09
  or homeschooling, either way, there's going to be something
• 20:12
  you gain and something you lose. So it's sort of about weighing
• 20:17
  where we're at in our family right now and the dynamics we
• 20:19
  have and how we're feeling called the one we prayerfully
• 20:21
  consider. Where do we feel the most peace?
• 20:25
  There is something, I think, to relationships between parents
• 20:30
  and kids and then siblings and siblings.
• 20:33
  I'll say, you know, my husband and I have six, right, And are
• 20:36
  three oldest, and there's a gap. And then there's three more.
• 20:39
  And the relationship the older kids have with the younger kids
• 20:43
  is so beautiful. And it's something I don't know
• 20:46
  they would have had if they were at a really great private school
• 20:50
  for most of because they spent so much time helping me take
• 20:53
  care of the younger ones. They've just got this bond.
• 20:57
  A little example of this is that a couple of months ago, one of
• 21:01
  my 10 year olds finished reading the Wing Feather Saga by Andrew
• 21:05
  Peterson, fabulous fantasy novel series.
• 21:10
  And he brought it to me the last book and said I'm a changed
• 21:14
  human. So I mean, homeschool kids can
• 21:16
  be a little weird. That's true.
• 21:17
  That's great. It's weird in about the last
• 21:19
  way. So he says I'm a changed human.
• 21:21
  And I said, oh, you know who's favorite this series was the
• 21:25
  favorite of this? Allison.
• 21:26
  So I text Allison, our one of our older kids and said, you
• 21:30
  know, Emerson just finished reading the Wing Feather Saga
• 21:33
  and she is off at art school other side of the country, 20
• 21:37
  years old, probably has a million things she'd rather be
• 21:39
  thinking about. But instead she says, tell him,
• 21:41
  I'll call him at 10:00 AM on Saturday.
• 21:43
  We'll talk about it. They spent an hour on Saturday
• 21:47
  morning on a FaceTime video talking about this book.
• 21:50
  And I just think that those kind of connections are, I don't
• 21:52
  know, maybe they would still have them if they had gone to
• 21:55
  private school, but I have a hunch that it was the time that
• 21:59
  we spent together that fuelled that.
• 22:01
  It's really hard to quantify, though.
• 22:03
  And when you're in the middle of it and you've got like crying
• 22:06
  baby and a talker who's like having accidents all over the
• 22:10
  house or an ear infection and then a kid that's like throwing,
• 22:13
  you know, shooting Nerf darts at your head and another one who
• 22:15
  can't find her math book. It is 100% normal to go, am I
• 22:20
  doing this right? Am I?
• 22:21
  Maybe I'm not cut out for this. I think that's just all normal,
• 22:24
  though. I think that's like normal
• 22:25
  motherhood, normal parenting. You know, we say homeschooling
• 22:30
  and I think mothering, it's an act of faith and we can say
• 22:34
  that, but I feel like we have a hard time really understanding
• 22:38
  what that means. You know, we're planting seeds
• 22:40
  in this little garden plot that we have and you can't plant a
• 22:43
  seed and then dig it up to see if it's growing or not.
• 22:47
  That's what we want to do. Like, I just want to make sure.
• 22:49
  I just want to double check that this is working.
• 22:51
  I just want to make sure that I'm making the right decisions.
• 22:53
  But that is what faith is for, for us to go.
• 22:56
  I'm going to do this work that I feel called to and let God make
• 22:59
  it enough. That's.
• 23:00
  Beautiful, I love the balance of what you're saying because I
• 23:03
  think it's so healthy that yes, there could be a few good
• 23:08
  options for a family and then the family through prayer,
• 23:11
  discernment, you know, just making that personal decision
• 23:14
  can make that decision of what is best for the family.
• 23:17
  Are there the guidelines you would recommend, you know, as
• 23:20
  someone is thinking about is homeschooling for me that maybe
• 23:25
  were useful for you or you recommend to other people for
• 23:28
  them to make that decision about homeschooling?
• 23:31
  And I know we were talking about the ideal situation of, you
• 23:33
  know, they have this other fantastic option.
• 23:36
  I do want to get into when you don't have other options and
• 23:39
  you're making best what with what you, you know, inferior
• 23:43
  options. But what would be some of the
• 23:44
  discernment tools you would recommend?
• 23:47
  One of the things that I think is just a really practical way
• 23:53
  to think about this is to imagine, just pick any one of
• 23:56
  your kids who's little, maybe they're four and you imagine
• 23:59
  them 20 years down the road and they're having dinner with
• 24:02
  friends and one of their friends or colleagues says, so you were
• 24:07
  homeschooled. So just trying, trying it on.
• 24:08
  You were homeschooled. What was that like?
• 24:10
  Like describe that to me. And like, what would you want
• 24:13
  them to say? Well, how would you want them to
• 24:15
  describe that? Or you can even say, so you were
• 24:17
  raised in a big family. What was that like?
• 24:19
  Or you were, what was your mom like?
• 24:21
  It's interesting because I think as soon as we do that, we can,
• 24:24
  we kind of instantly paint this ideal vision of what we want
• 24:27
  them to say. But if we were to just step
• 24:31
  back, do that, step back for a second and go, what's the,
• 24:35
  what's the most likely way we'll get there?
• 24:37
  So when I do this exercise with a, a young child, like when my
• 24:42
  kids were younger and I would do this, I would think, I want them
• 24:45
  to say my family was so close. We had, we read together all the
• 24:48
  time. We had great conversations about
• 24:50
  books. I had lots of time to learn
• 24:53
  about things I was really interested in and lots of time
• 24:56
  to learn at my own pace. So I never felt pressured to
• 24:58
  learn at someone else's pace. So when I answer it that way, it
• 25:01
  becomes pretty clear to me. I think homeschooling is
• 25:04
  probably going to get me there faster than these other or more
• 25:08
  likely is going to get me there than these other options.
• 25:10
  So getting really clear on what matters the matters most to us.
• 25:15
  And that might not be the answer for everybody else, right?
• 25:17
  They might have a different I think God puts different visions
• 25:19
  in our hearts and gives us the ability to make those that grace
• 25:22
  to make those decisions so that it feels a little bit like woo
• 25:26
  woo. But I actually think it's pretty
• 25:27
  practical to go where do we want to go?
• 25:29
  Where do we want to end up? Can we at least use that as a a
• 25:33
  compass to help us point in the right direction?
• 25:35
  I mean, it sounds like you're talking about calling.
• 25:37
  It's a sense of calling a vision that you feel God is planted in
• 25:40
  your heart and you, it's like, how do we get to that vision?
• 25:43
  Yes. And for many it might be
• 25:45
  homeschooling and for others it might not.
• 25:48
  I my goal with this interview is to kind of breakdown the
• 25:51
  objections for people maybe who may be called to homeschooling
• 25:54
  or help people who are feeling the call discern that and also
• 25:57
  give them the practical tools. So I think that's a really good
• 26:01
  piece of advice that you just gave to kind of imagine.
• 26:03
  I love that. Like what we, what would you
• 26:05
  want your child to say, you know, when they're asked that 22
• 26:08
  years old and how do you get them there?
• 26:10
  What are the things you can do? So in the category then of
• 26:13
  people that maybe they feel this like interest in homeschooling,
• 26:17
  especially maybe because they don't have a great option, OK,
• 26:21
  you know, they don't have another grade.
• 26:22
  There's not that private classical affordable homeschool
• 26:24
  like right down the street. And they just don't feel
• 26:27
  comfortable just handing their child off necessarily to the
• 26:31
  local, even maybe Christian School or certainly public
• 26:34
  school. But they also maybe are working
• 26:37
  part time or even full time or they're just, you know, there's,
• 26:40
  you know, maybe they've got a lot of kids, there's just
• 26:41
  complications. What would be some of your
• 26:44
  starting place advice for them? OK, so one of the things I think
• 26:49
  one of the mistakes I think I made really early on when we
• 26:52
  just dove into homeschooling is I read way too much, which it
• 26:56
  seems like a funny thing to say, like don't do that.
• 27:00
  But I do think, and I think it's actually probably more of a
• 27:03
  temptation now than it was when I started homeschooling because
• 27:06
  there's so many different ways to homeschool.
• 27:08
  And a lot of people are very passionate about the way that
• 27:12
  they homeschool. And so they tend to, this is
• 27:14
  goes for curriculum companies, it goes for influencers, it goes
• 27:18
  for every homeschooling mom who's on social media sort of
• 27:21
  defends their way of homeschooling to where you can
• 27:24
  really feel like, I think you could open up Instagram and you
• 27:28
  could scroll on there for 60 seconds and you would see one
• 27:32
  mom who is like homesteading and they're, she's like growing a
• 27:35
  garden. They have chicken.
• 27:37
  Sourdough. Yes, like exactly sourdough all
• 27:40
  the things and then you keep going and you'll see somebody
• 27:43
  else who's got like stacks of books as tall as each of her
• 27:45
  kids. Like these are the books my kids
• 27:46
  read this year. And then someone else who's Rd.
• 27:48
  schooling and they're taking their kids all over the country.
• 27:51
  And another one who's doing these amazing nature studies and
• 27:54
  somebody else whose kids are like taking the national Latin
• 27:57
  exam. Very easy to like 60 seconds.
• 27:59
  You pop that thing off and you look up at your children who are
• 28:02
  again, Nerf darts at your head or throwing up on the carpet
• 28:06
  like whatever is going on and going, I'm not cut out for this
• 28:09
  clearly. And what happens is we combine
• 28:11
  like this, all of these different little snippets, not
• 28:15
  even different people, but just different snippets from these
• 28:17
  people, usually the highlights, right?
• 28:20
  And we combine them into this like one fictional composite
• 28:23
  woman. So one thing I think I did, I
• 28:25
  wasn't, we didn't, I didn't have social media at the time when my
• 28:28
  oldest. Yeah, I was actually, but I did
• 28:31
  read about a ton of different methods of education instead of
• 28:36
  looking at the children God had put right in front of me.
• 28:39
  And I think the best thing to study when you're if you're
• 28:43
  thinking about homeschooling is the kids right in front of you.
• 28:46
  Are they struggling to learn how to read?
• 28:48
  OK, now we can go look for like, what can I do if my kid is
• 28:51
  struggling to learn how to read or if my kid is not and they're
• 28:54
  reading really fast? I never had one of these, but
• 28:57
  they're reading really young. That's a whole nother set of
• 28:59
  challenges because then they get into how do I keep my kid in
• 29:02
  appropriate books that are good for them, You know?
• 29:04
  So like there's always a challenge.
• 29:05
  But if you're looking at your child and then looking for
• 29:10
  seeking help to troubleshoot, whatever is coming to mind,
• 29:13
  that's different than coming in and going, OK, I'm going to be a
• 29:16
  homeschool mom. I want to make sure I use the
• 29:18
  right curriculum. I want to make sure I use the
• 29:20
  right method. There isn't one.
• 29:22
  So that's just kind of a crazy making endeavor, I think.
• 29:26
  It would be like your. It would be like your top three,
• 29:29
  would you say? I know you're saying there isn't
• 29:31
  one, but if some mom wants to try it out, you know, her
• 29:34
  child's four or five, She's not going to do preschool or
• 29:36
  kindergarten, maybe six. She feels like I got to start
• 29:39
  teaching him to read then, like, what would be a starting place
• 29:41
  or a few resources that you would say these?
• 29:43
  Yeah, there's not. One is necessarily better than
• 29:45
  the other. It depends on the kid, but these
• 29:46
  are some starting places. OK, a couple is.
• 29:49
  One of them that I love to recommend is called Five in a
• 29:51
  row. And the principle of five in a
• 29:54
  row is that you read aloud a picture book with your child
• 29:57
  every day for five days in a row.
• 29:59
  And each day there's like another activity that you do.
• 30:01
  So there's something that's like a geography.
• 30:03
  Maybe you find that where that story is on the map.
• 30:06
  And like on another day, there's a math activity that kind of
• 30:08
  correlates. It's it's gentle, but it's also
• 30:12
  school enough that it makes you feel like we're doing something
• 30:15
  here and kind of lets you test the waters.
• 30:17
  So that's a recommendation that I give a lot is five in a row.
• 30:20
  Is that for like a? Five year old or a four year?
• 30:22
  Old yeah. So there there is like a wide
• 30:25
  age range there. They have something called
• 30:26
  before five in a row you can use with like your I think it's
• 30:29
  three to five year olds and then five in a row, which if I'm
• 30:32
  remembering correctly is like 5 to 8 year olds.
• 30:34
  So there's like several different volumes you could use
• 30:36
  with kids of all those, which is kind of brings us to an
• 30:40
  interesting thing. You'll see immediately when you
• 30:42
  start looking at home school resources, which is there are
• 30:45
  very few resources that are like, this is first grade, this
• 30:48
  is second grade. That's a very industrial
• 30:51
  government school way of thinking about education.
• 30:54
  It's actually not how we thought about education for almost
• 30:57
  always it's a, it's a, we tend to think, well, what is my child
• 31:00
  supposed to learn when they're in first grade?
• 31:02
  But those are moving targets. They're usually set by people
• 31:06
  whose values don't align with yours, very likely.
• 31:10
  And what you'll find in the homeschooling world is that
• 31:12
  there's a lot more wiggle room. You know, when your kids learn
• 31:14
  about ancient Egypt or when they learn how to read?
• 31:18
  Actually, there's a really wide range of normal time from the
• 31:22
  time your child's four until they're eight.
• 31:24
  That's super normal for them to learn to read in that pocket of
• 31:27
  time. And do you tell readiness to
• 31:29
  read just based on interest and like whether it's coming easily
• 31:33
  to them when you give it a try? I think so.
• 31:35
  In general, there are a lot more kids that are dyslexic than
• 31:39
  we've ever known before. And we kind of understood
• 31:41
  dyslexia incorrectly for a really long time.
• 31:46
  So if you are trying to teach a six or seven-year old, let's
• 31:49
  say, how to read and they're really struggling, the
• 31:50
  likelihood that they're they have a dyslexic brain is really
• 31:54
  high. And I did an episode with
• 31:57
  Marianne Sunderland on Read Aloud revival about dyslexia and
• 32:00
  she really describes how we understand dyslexia is so
• 32:03
  different than maybe what we've thought for all of this time.
• 32:07
  Basically I here's like a sort of short version is that a
• 32:10
  dyslexic brain is not broken. It's not, there's no deficiency
• 32:15
  there. Really what it means to have a
• 32:17
  dyslexic brain is that you process language differently and
• 32:20
  you learn language differently. And most of the resources
• 32:23
  traditionally that we've used to teach kids how to read are
• 32:26
  geared toward non dyslexic brains, which is why these
• 32:29
  dyslexic kids have a hard time learning how to read.
• 32:32
  So usually I love to recommend homeschoolingwithdyslexia.com
• 32:38
  for anybody who's thinks maybe my child.
• 32:41
  I don't know why my child's struggling to read.
• 32:44
  What is some of the signs just for people listening who aren't
• 32:46
  familiar of this my child they're struggling generally
• 32:50
  sure, but what would be some of the signs like hey that might be
• 32:53
  it might be benefited by dyslexic specific materials to
• 32:56
  help them in their. Process.
• 32:57
  The one that really got me, that got my attention for the first
• 33:01
  time, is difficulty remembering sequences of ideas.
• 33:06
  So like days of the week, months of the year.
• 33:09
  One of my kids could not get this.
• 33:11
  I mean, 1314 years old and I don't think you could have asked
• 33:15
  that kid, you know, what is tomorrow and they'd be able to
• 33:19
  tell you. We would sing the days of the
• 33:20
  week and the months of the year and it was still that whole
• 33:22
  sequencing of information. A difficulty with that, of
• 33:26
  course, like backwards letters is what we usually think of
• 33:30
  past, I think, I think it's about past age 8 that when if
• 33:32
  they're still writing their letters backwards, that's kind
• 33:35
  of a clue difficulty learning how to read.
• 33:39
  What are some of the other ones? There's a whole list I know at
• 33:42
  homeschoolingwithdyslexia.com that would be helpful there.
• 33:46
  They may surprise people like, oh, I didn't actually, because
• 33:50
  some kids who are dyslexic actually learn how to read just
• 33:52
  fine, especially if they have a strong desire to please their
• 33:56
  teachers or parents. So if they've got that
• 33:58
  personality that's leaning toward wanting to please their
• 34:03
  parent or teacher, they may overcome some of their struggles
• 34:06
  in order to do that. So it's really helpful though,
• 34:11
  to identify dyslexia because then you can help your child
• 34:15
  learn in the way that God made their brain instead of fighting
• 34:18
  against it. And dyslexia is not something we
• 34:21
  ever solve. If you have a dyslexic brain,
• 34:23
  you have it even when you're 50. So it's really useful
• 34:26
  information to know. It's also hereditary.
• 34:28
  So if if you or your husband had a hard time learning how to read
• 34:32
  or think I think I was dyslexic, the likelihood you have a
• 34:35
  dyslexic child is very high. I think that's the biggest
• 34:39
  stress is learning how to read because we know that that's so
• 34:42
  critical and so important for success.
• 34:45
  What's another resource for that because you mentioned that the
• 34:47
  what were the first one you mentioned?
• 34:49
  The five in a row. Five in a row.
• 34:50
  You mentioned what would be a great resource.
• 34:52
  For All About Reading, because I think probably the most widely
• 34:56
  recommended curriculum for kids who are, it's a great learning
• 35:00
  to read program even for non dyslexic brains.
• 35:03
  But if your child happens to be dyslexic, it's exactly the way.
• 35:06
  It's based on what's called the Orton Gillingham method, which
• 35:09
  is a method that just works really well for dyslexic brains.
• 35:13
  So there's another one called Logic of English that's also
• 35:15
  really useful. In general though, I think you
• 35:22
  don't really need to try to teach your children how to read
• 35:24
  till they're at least five. So if they really want to learn
• 35:28
  how to read and they're showing eagerness, there's no harm in
• 35:30
  doing it younger, but there is harm in doing it younger with a
• 35:33
  four or five year old if they're not asking for, if they're not
• 35:36
  ready for it. Something interesting that we
• 35:38
  know is that kids who learn how to read when they're five and
• 35:41
  kids who learn how to read when they're seven or eight, and one
• 35:44
  of mine was nine when he finally learned how to read.
• 35:47
  They're by the time they're about 12 or 13, they all read at
• 35:50
  about the same level. So we tend to think they're
• 35:53
  getting more by learning how to read young.
• 35:56
  But they're that's not true. And usually we can read aloud to
• 36:01
  them to fill in a lot of those gaps that we're worried about.
• 36:05
  And reading aloud has its own sort of superpower qualities.
• 36:11
  One of those is that it puts grammatically correct,
• 36:14
  sophisticated language patterns into your child's ear.
• 36:18
  And when they come in through the ear, they are they are
• 36:21
  processed in sequence, which is differently than they would if
• 36:25
  they were reading them off a page.
• 36:26
  Usually when we read off of with our eyes off of a page, we skip
• 36:29
  little words, right? We really good readers will read
• 36:34
  fast. That's why most of us can read
• 36:35
  silently to ourselves faster than if we were reading aloud.
• 36:39
  When you're reading aloud, every word is said in sequence, so
• 36:42
  it's stored in their brain in sequence.
• 36:44
  And those language patterns will come out again and again later
• 36:47
  on, when they're writing, when they're speaking, but they have
• 36:51
  to be stored in there first. So it's so interesting and makes
• 36:55
  so much sense that to read aloud, like the special quality
• 36:58
  of reading aloud to one's kids, because I think most parents
• 37:00
  know it's good to read to your children.
• 37:01
  Yes, but we also then kind of think as soon as they can read
• 37:05
  to themselves that is superior to being read to.
• 37:08
  But that's not actually the case.
• 37:09
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 37:10
  So you encourage reading to your kids even when they're 89101112?
• 37:14
  Yes 131418 So I read a lot with my kids all the way till they're
• 37:17
  gone to off to college. Then they come home from college
• 37:20
  and ask me to read to them. It's amazing.
• 37:22
  I do think I growing up, because we were homeschooled, we did do
• 37:25
  a lot of reading aloud and my dad especially every night
• 37:28
  bedtime, we would read sometimes for over an hour and that would
• 37:31
  be too late. You'd read past bedtime and that
• 37:33
  would be a source of controversy in the home, but he'd be reading
• 37:35
  these long, beautiful fiction. I mean, just wonderful, like
• 37:39
  Lord of the Rings type stuff. And it would be so beautiful to
• 37:43
  share that time together. And it was a way to bond.
• 37:45
  But then also you're, you're ingesting all this wonderful
• 37:48
  literature and it would be multi ages.
• 37:50
  I mean, it'd be like the five year olds there, the seven, the
• 37:52
  8 year old were there together. So actually, I mean, if I can
• 37:56
  kind of rewind just a little bit and say even more important
• 38:00
  than, you know, particular resources like five in a row are
• 38:04
  all about reading. If someone was to say like, what
• 38:07
  are the three, what are three things that we should do reading
• 38:10
  aloud? And it can be anything really
• 38:13
  anything that you really enjoy reading.
• 38:14
  So these. Are the top three things you're
• 38:16
  you're saying these are the top three things that you recommend
• 38:19
  families who are starting to homeschool do with their kids?
• 38:21
  Yes. OK.
• 38:22
  We have a tendency to go, oh, I need a curriculum or a program.
• 38:25
  The curriculum or program is going to be far less effective
• 38:29
  than doing these three things. And it would be reading aloud
• 38:32
  and going outside and having conversations with your kids.
• 38:35
  Now, you can do all of that in the context of normal family
• 38:38
  life. You read aloud and then you can,
• 38:40
  you know, take a a hike or play outside with your kids for a
• 38:42
  little bit and then you're having a conversation while
• 38:44
  you're having dinner. This all sounds much too simple.
• 38:47
  So we usually want to grab something that feels a little
• 38:49
  more like official schoolie, and that's totally fine.
• 38:52
  That's why I think something like five in a row, it's useful
• 38:55
  because it it makes us feel. Like it's more for the parent as
• 38:58
  a child. It's about reducing our anxiety
• 39:01
  and more than for the parent than it is necessary for the
• 39:04
  kids. But all the good stuff happens
• 39:06
  in reading aloud and practicing your faith life together where
• 39:10
  they're, you know, going to church together, having
• 39:12
  conversations, praying before a meal together, making a meal,
• 39:15
  cleaning up the meal together. All of those things are so much
• 39:19
  more foundational. I should mention I I kind of
• 39:21
  forgot about this. I recently did a survey where I
• 39:25
  asked moms who've been homeschooling for at least 10
• 39:28
  years what they wish they had done more of and less of.
• 39:33
  And you know, what is their advice to younger homeschooling
• 39:36
  moms at 726 moms who've been homeschooling more than 10 years
• 39:39
  answer, I think it was about 20% of them have been homeschooling
• 39:43
  more than 20 years. Almost unanimously.
• 39:46
  It was astounding. They all said I wish we had read
• 39:49
  aloud more and done less formal. School like even as homeschool
• 39:54
  families. Yes, yes, Who are probably, I
• 39:56
  mean, these were people too, who are on my read aloud revival
• 39:58
  e-mail list. They're already reading aloud,
• 40:00
  right? They were already reading aloud.
• 40:02
  They still said, I wish we had read aloud more.
• 40:05
  And then the thing that they often times said they wish they
• 40:08
  had done less is worry less or try to stick to a curriculum
• 40:11
  because we sort of it's a way for us to feel like this is a
• 40:14
  measure that says I'm doing enough.
• 40:16
  But again, it's all goes back to that whole.
• 40:20
  Faith and what would be? Some for for a parent or a
• 40:24
  aspiring parent, What would be some signs you should look for
• 40:27
  in your kids to give you confidence that I'm doing this
• 40:31
  right? Like they're, they're thriving
• 40:33
  versus they're struggling. Oh, that's a.
• 40:35
  Really good question. I think as soon as we have kids
• 40:39
  who don't like to be read to or don't like to read on their own,
• 40:42
  like they they think of reading as something that they do for
• 40:45
  school, that's a sign that we maybe want to rethink the way
• 40:50
  that we're interacting with books.
• 40:52
  Reading is the like that is how we encounter most of the best
• 40:55
  ideas from our culture's past and present, and it's also how
• 41:00
  we communicate in the into the future.
• 41:02
  So if our kids start having a relationship with reading that
• 41:08
  feels like it's utilitarian or being done for school, I think
• 41:11
  that's like a red flag. Maybe let's rethink this.
• 41:14
  How are we interacting with books?
• 41:17
  If your kids are having discussions with you and talking
• 41:20
  to you about things doesn't have to be everything.
• 41:21
  They don't even have to all be deep conversations.
• 41:24
  They won't all be deep conversations.
• 41:25
  Sometimes they'll be Minecraft. But if your kids are still
• 41:28
  talking with you and, and having these conversations, that is a
• 41:32
  great indication that the relationships are warm and
• 41:36
  thriving. And a, a family life where
• 41:39
  you've got relationships that are warm and thriving are going
• 41:42
  to lend to more learning. It's going to set up the stage
• 41:45
  for really good learning to happen.
• 41:47
  And then I think also it's really easy for us to go, well,
• 41:54
  I want my 10 year old to be able to achieve like be able to do
• 41:58
  these things, whether it's like found in a curriculum or in a
• 42:01
  what you're, you know, second or third grader needs to know what
• 42:05
  their 4th grade or whatever it is needs to know.
• 42:09
  But if we were to measure backwards instead of to some
• 42:12
  fictional idea, I always think it's funny that we do tend to
• 42:15
  go, I want my child, let's say, to be able to read at this
• 42:19
  level, 4th grade level and they're in 4th grade.
• 42:23
  We're basically comparing our actual child that God made right
• 42:26
  in front of us to an imaginary child that does not exist.
• 42:31
  When in fact, if we were to measure like, well, are they
• 42:34
  reading better? Are they learning more?
• 42:36
  Do they know more? Are they more interested?
• 42:38
  Are they further along in their math than they were two months
• 42:40
  ago? Then we're measuring against
• 42:42
  where they've been and it it's just easier for us to celebrate
• 42:46
  what they know if we feel good as parents about our
• 42:51
  relationship with them and the fact that they're making
• 42:53
  progress. I think, again, it sets this
• 42:55
  stage for us to keep learning, to keep making progress, to
• 42:59
  continue learning math and get further along than if we're
• 43:02
  ruled by this anxiety that my child's not at this particular
• 43:05
  level. And it's really interesting
• 43:07
  because those levels change. Again, if we go back to what a,
• 43:11
  let's say, the expectations for a kindergartner today are often
• 43:17
  times that they know how to read by the time they're at the end
• 43:19
  of kindergarten. 20 years ago, that was not the case. 40 years
• 43:23
  ago was definitely not the case and they were not even starting
• 43:27
  to teach children how to read in kindergarten.
• 43:29
  Because I think there's this, there's a narrative that, oh,
• 43:32
  the school system has watered down education and the standards
• 43:34
  are too low. But it sounds like you're saying
• 43:36
  actually the standard is way too high for a little.
• 43:39
  I think they've been flipped. So here's what I think.
• 43:41
  I don't know, we're just like this is kind of off the cuff,
• 43:44
  but like I really feel like we are expecting kids at 5:00 and
• 43:48
  6:00 and 7:00 to be able to read fluently and write full
• 43:51
  paragraphs by the time they're in second grade, which is not at
• 43:56
  all what they were expecting. Kids weren't even going to
• 43:58
  school at 5-6 and 750 years ago and when they were almost all
• 44:02
  their school was done orally think that's like Laurie Ingalls
• 44:05
  Wilder. Her school was mostly recitation
• 44:07
  was reciting things, was memorizing.
• 44:10
  Instead it's been flipped. So we've like narrowed what we
• 44:14
  want them to be able to do, like heightened up the the academic
• 44:18
  requirements when they're younger and by the time they're
• 44:20
  in high school, I think it's true that our high schoolers
• 44:23
  that is it is really watered down or it's very.
• 44:27
  Top heavy, you're saying when they're little it's the
• 44:29
  standards are too high and the standards maybe are too low and
• 44:32
  they're older. But do you think part of it too
• 44:34
  is like the kind of the social and the moral learning, the kind
• 44:38
  of formative learning for their psychology and their emotions?
• 44:42
  That's kind of not. They don't really do that in the
• 44:45
  classroom anyways, and maybe we're neglecting that as a
• 44:48
  society. So I think what's happened is
• 44:50
  culturally we have outsourced the like moral and social and
• 44:54
  emotional education of our children to schools that are run
• 44:57
  by the government and we're shocked at what's going on when
• 45:01
  really this responsibility was never going back to like Laura
• 45:05
  Ingalls Wilder idea. There was no social, political
• 45:10
  or emotional type education that was happening in those teen
• 45:14
  years. That was the responsibility of
• 45:15
  the family. You know, what's interesting is
• 45:17
  I think we're all homeschoolers in some sense, that we are
• 45:22
  responsible as the 1st and primary educators of our
• 45:25
  children. So whether they go to your local
• 45:28
  public school or whether they go to a private school or whether
• 45:31
  you homeschool them, it doesn't matter.
• 45:34
  Oh, it does matter. But I what I mean is you're
• 45:36
  still responsible as the parent for their education.
• 45:39
  So it's about, I want to use the word outsourcing.
• 45:44
  I'm not sure it's the right word, but it's sort of like, I
• 45:47
  don't grow. I mean, I don't raise my own
• 45:49
  livestock. I outsource that and we buy our
• 45:51
  meat, right? Outsourcing is not necessarily a
• 45:54
  bad thing, but I'm still responsible for the food that I
• 45:56
  put into my children. In the same way, whether or not
• 45:59
  or not I'm teaching them at home or I'm sending them to school,
• 46:02
  I'm responsible for the education of my kids.
• 46:05
  That still falls on the parent. And so it feels to me like what
• 46:08
  we've done societally is we put these academic requirements on
• 46:13
  very young children as a way to make ourselves feel like we're
• 46:17
  doing something. And then as they get older,
• 46:19
  these same schools are expected to do the social moral formation
• 46:29
  of children that used to reside with families.
• 46:31
  And it's like we've shifted the responsibility away from the
• 46:35
  family into schools and were surprised at the results that
• 46:40
  we're getting. That's so well said.
• 46:42
  That's such a good point. I mean, I think about even the
• 46:44
  idea of sex education in a classroom, like you learn about
• 46:47
  sex in a classroom from some teacher and said about the
• 46:51
  morality around relationships and sex because sex is meant for
• 46:55
  relationship in relationship of marriage.
• 46:57
  And there's a whole world of, you know, psych, psychological,
• 47:00
  emotional learning around what that even means and why that
• 47:02
  matters. You can't do that and you
• 47:04
  shouldn't do that. You know, at 11 years old in a
• 47:06
  classroom with some random teacher.
• 47:07
  With a random teacher, with a whole bunch of other children
• 47:09
  who are the same age and at the same level.
• 47:12
  I mean, this idea that we expect our kids to be well socialized
• 47:16
  by spending most of the time with kids who are at the same
• 47:18
  emotional maturity as they are is kind of ludicrous, right?
• 47:23
  It never happens again in. Like why?
• 47:26
  Why is it? Why is it ludicrous?
• 47:27
  Because they're the only time that we are ever in the in a
• 47:31
  capacity where we are in the same environment as a whole
• 47:34
  bunch of other people are exact age learning the same thing is
• 47:37
  in a fabricated school experience.
• 47:40
  So that never happens again. You never in your life out after
• 47:43
  you graduate from high school, work in an environment where
• 47:46
  everyone else is your exact same age doing the exact same thing
• 47:50
  and supposed to be meeting the exact same standards.
• 47:53
  It's just in school. And then we sort of go, well,
• 47:57
  when we talk about homeschooling, we'll say, well,
• 48:00
  are they socially? Are they socialized enough as
• 48:05
  homeschoolers? Yes, but they're actually
• 48:07
  socializing with a family number one, that's a variety of
• 48:10
  different ages and personalities.
• 48:12
  We all know this, right? And then in our home school I
• 48:15
  would find is we'd go to a homeschool coop.
• 48:17
  We always have been a part of a coop and there's families with
• 48:21
  all different ages and types of families and like just different
• 48:26
  people who live different, you know, like they're encountering
• 48:28
  people who are not just all their own age.
• 48:31
  And then you go to the grocery store and you're encountering
• 48:33
  people and then you go to the farmers market and you're
• 48:35
  encountering different people. And then you take, it's just the
• 48:37
  world is much more diverse than a classroom.
• 48:40
  Why is that so? Important for kids to be spend a
• 48:43
  lot of their time I would say maybe inter generally,
• 48:46
  generationally or with different age kids and adults and have you
• 48:50
  know be doing kind of normal life things with them.
• 48:53
  Why is that so important? I mean, part of me is like,
• 48:55
  because it's it's life, it's community, it's how the world
• 49:00
  works. The only time that they're not
• 49:01
  doing it is if if we simulate a school experience, right?
• 49:05
  But even if we just kind of go back and go, well, how did they
• 49:08
  used to do school again? I'm keep going back to Laura
• 49:11
  Ingalls Wilder, but it could be a whole different range of
• 49:14
  educational experiences. But the one room schoolhouses
• 49:17
  had a wide range of students, maybe 40-50 students who were
• 49:22
  from kindergarten. I don't think they did
• 49:23
  kindergarten back then, but like six years old to maybe 14 all in
• 49:28
  the same room with a teacher. So they're all interacting with
• 49:32
  kids of different ages. Again, this is so much better
• 49:34
  preparation for life after school when you're going to be
• 49:38
  interacting with different ages. And I wonder how much of our
• 49:46
  cultures inability to value elders and take care of like how
• 49:52
  uncomfortable so many of us are sitting in the presence or
• 49:56
  having a long conversation with somebody who's a lot older than
• 49:59
  us is because our culture says socially you should be
• 50:02
  interacting with mostly people the same age as you and.
• 50:04
  Almost teach us some sort of ageism, like age discrimination,
• 50:07
  Like I can't really hang out with you or learn from you or do
• 50:11
  life with you because you're too old or too young.
• 50:13
  Yes. And that's one of the things
• 50:14
  I've noticed in our homeschool groups is that there isn't that
• 50:18
  same kind of, I can't play with you because you're 2 grades
• 50:21
  younger than me, But that is something that I remember from
• 50:24
  school myself. You know, you were, you didn't
• 50:27
  hang out with people who weren't in your grade because they
• 50:29
  weren't in your grade. It's it's kind of weird.
• 50:32
  And when we think about it, we all think about it as it's the
• 50:35
  normal default. I think I shouldn't say we all.
• 50:37
  I think the tendency, though, is for us to think of traditional
• 50:44
  public school experience as the normal way of education, and
• 50:47
  anything we do differently than that is a deviation from normal.
• 50:51
  But I wonder why we do that, because culturally,
• 50:55
  historically, people have lived in community
• 50:58
  intergenerationally, we still do as soon as we finish school.
• 51:02
  So maybe that should be the norm and maybe it should be the
• 51:05
  deviation from the norm to say, I'm going to put my kid in a
• 51:08
  classroom where they're all the same age and there's benefits to
• 51:10
  that too. It's just, I just think it's
• 51:13
  interesting that we kind of think of it as the default.
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  your order. So I think some people
• 51:59
  listening, and I know I've heard this and talking with people
• 52:02
  over the years about homeschooling, there's this
• 52:04
  concern that if I homeschool, and we kind of touched on this,
• 52:08
  but I want to deep dive it more. If I homeschool, I might miss
• 52:11
  the boat on something really crucial.
• 52:13
  Like I won't give that child the opportunity for this sort of
• 52:16
  music or I won't give the child enough of an opportunity to
• 52:20
  learn science because that's not my strong student.
• 52:22
  We're doing a lot of reading, but you know, the like hard,
• 52:25
  some of these hard sciences like STEM and maybe my child, if they
• 52:28
  had had those opportunities, would have had a very different
• 52:31
  life trajectory because they're living the life, living out
• 52:34
  their their God-given talents and aptitudes.
• 52:37
  And I think about, you know, these prodigies, right?
• 52:39
  And they were like Beethoven as an example, right?
• 52:42
  But he was exposed to music at a very young age and given the
• 52:45
  opportunity to learn music and be trained by a classical
• 52:49
  pianist at a very young age. And that was essential to his
• 52:52
  development as a musician. Right?
• 52:54
  And so you think about something like that and you're like, oh,
• 52:56
  shoot, it's a lot of burden on the parent.
• 52:57
  Like, I don't want to miss the boat on my child's talents and
• 53:00
  aptitudes that are God-given. And my hope is that if they're
• 53:03
  in a really great school, then they'll have enough exposure to
• 53:06
  these different ways of learning, you know, different
• 53:10
  expertises from different teachers that there's the best
• 53:14
  option of them getting what they need.
• 53:17
  Yeah, I think that's a valid argument.
• 53:19
  But I also think it could be said exactly the opposite, that
• 53:23
  what might your child be missing by having that experience
• 53:26
  instead of this close family relationship that is available
• 53:29
  there or the time. One of my daughter's is in art
• 53:33
  school now and she she didn't have any formal art training.
• 53:41
  She didn't go to a school where they had a lot of art teachers
• 53:43
  or anything. She did a lot of like we would
• 53:46
  look up YouTube tutorials on art and she would do a lot of
• 53:49
  self-taught astounds us with her art now.
• 53:53
  I was just sharing with a friend.
• 53:56
  I was just sharing a picture she did the other day.
• 53:58
  My husband and I went for a walk after dinner and we came.
• 54:00
  She asked if we had sidewalk chalk laying around, and we did.
• 54:04
  And so we said, yeah, it's in the garage.
• 54:05
  And then we went on our walk. Come back like 35 minutes later,
• 54:08
  and there is this gorgeous portrait.
• 54:09
  I'll have to show it to you when we're off here.
• 54:11
  This gorgeous portrait of Van Gogh that she did on the
• 54:14
  sidewalk that doesn't actually look like it's possible to make
• 54:16
  with chalk. It's a little bit astounding.
• 54:18
  She didn't have any formal training in all of this type,
• 54:20
  but what she did have is time. And that's one of the things
• 54:24
  that I think homeschooling affords that school day often
• 54:27
  doesn't. I know Laura Berquist from
• 54:30
  Mother of Divine Grace curriculum talks about how her
• 54:34
  kids suddenly had a lot more time for reading when they left
• 54:37
  school and were homeschooled. So I think there's like the flip
• 54:40
  side again, there's positives and negatives to any way that
• 54:44
  you decide to home educate or I mean, decide to educate your
• 54:47
  children, whether it be at home or somewhere else.
• 54:49
  The other thing though that I think trips up a lot of a lot of
• 54:54
  moms, especially early on, is they think like me.
• 54:57
  I am not super mathematical and so the idea of teaching my kids
• 55:02
  like algebra, let alone calculus or something that's not, I guess
• 55:06
  I can't homeschool. Well, actually there are a lot
• 55:08
  of resources available that. Was going to be my next
• 55:11
  question. What about math and science?
• 55:13
  Yeah, and what about like science experiments?
• 55:15
  Yes, OK. So.
• 55:16
  We like dissecting the baby pig like that.
• 55:19
  Totally. Right.
• 55:20
  And I was homeschooled and we had, you know, somehow through
• 55:23
  the coop, they managed to do some of those things.
• 55:25
  But we ended up doing junior college classes as like young
• 55:29
  teens. I was like 12 years old in my
• 55:31
  first junior college class. So we kind of did what we, my
• 55:34
  parents did what they did. That was kind of like this, put
• 55:36
  it together and it was awesome. I, I loved my education, but
• 55:40
  maybe someone listening is like, OK, I want them to have that.
• 55:43
  Yes, but how do we do that? Well, so the way we've always
• 55:45
  done it in our family is we're, we are a part of a homeschool
• 55:49
  Co-op. It's not like a formal group or
• 55:52
  anything. It's just our own local like
• 55:53
  there's about 40 families in it. They always do their high school
• 55:58
  science classes there because you can form a group with What
• 56:03
  you'll find when you form a group with other homeschoolers
• 56:06
  is there are some of you who are really into literature and like
• 56:09
  I always teach the Shakespeare class at our hoop, but somebody
• 56:12
  else is going to teach science. And I want someone else to teach
• 56:14
  them science because I want their mind and imagination to be
• 56:19
  enlivened. And I just don't bring that to
• 56:21
  science or math. Definitely so, but somebody else
• 56:23
  could. So there's usually resources
• 56:25
  like that. There are online classes they
• 56:27
  could take. My high schoolers, my three
• 56:29
  oldest, all did dual enrollment, which is like a running start
• 56:32
  kind of program. I know it's called different
• 56:34
  things, different places where we're at.
• 56:37
  We could do it through for free through our Community College,
• 56:40
  junior college. This the program that we did was
• 56:43
  actually through a local Christian university and credit
• 56:47
  tuition was a fraction like a 10th of what it is for a regular
• 56:52
  undergrad student. And what that did in their
• 56:54
  junior and senior year is gave them a chance to try out
• 56:57
  college, see how it went. Every time I was like, I hope I
• 57:01
  prepared them well for this. Every time they were did
• 57:04
  amazingly well. Even the kids who just weren't
• 57:08
  super academically inclined and I wasn't sure how that would go
• 57:11
  did great because in a homeschool environment there is
• 57:15
  more. This kind of goes back to like
• 57:18
  feeling like you're not enough. Is that what I realized?
• 57:22
  My 20 year old told me she was surprised when she went to
• 57:25
  college how much better she is at managing her time and
• 57:28
  workload than most of her peers. And she's like, I just don't,
• 57:31
  you know, I don't know why that is.
• 57:33
  And I thought I know why it is because I was so busy with
• 57:36
  babies, I didn't have time to do it for you.
• 57:39
  So you kind of learned a lot of those skills.
• 57:42
  One of the things that I would have said was a deficit is that
• 57:44
  I didn't really help you or wasn't as hands on of the of the
• 57:48
  home schooler as I would have liked in those early years
• 57:51
  because of the demands on my time and attention.
• 57:54
  And that ended up being something that helped her in the
• 57:57
  end. And that's, those are the kinds
• 57:59
  of things we can't really see when we're in it.
• 58:03
  There was like going with that dual enrollment I think is a
• 58:06
  really great option, or doing junior college classes because
• 58:11
  it does give kids a chance to meet other professors or
• 58:16
  instructors, getting used to different teaching style.
• 58:19
  Get a feel for what it's like to take college classes before
• 58:22
  while they're still in your home, so they can still run
• 58:24
  things by you and ask you for help editing that paper or
• 58:28
  manage their workload. How does homeschooling work for
• 58:32
  families that have a lot of work?
• 58:34
  So the maybe the dad's job is really demanding, the mom is
• 58:37
  working part time or even full time.
• 58:39
  Is it possible? What does it even look like?
• 58:42
  It's possible. I know families who do it.
• 58:43
  I think it takes a little bit of reimagining what school needs to
• 58:48
  look like. So for some of these families
• 58:50
  that I know, they'll do some of their school in the evenings
• 58:53
  instead of during the daytime. If their parents are working day
• 58:56
  jobs. For some of them, they bring in.
• 58:58
  What do they? Do they have their child with a
• 59:00
  nanny or they're working for them and trading off?
• 59:02
  Yes. So like with a nanny or child
• 59:04
  care during the day and then in the evening they'll still do
• 59:06
  some school work. That's one family I know,
• 59:09
  another family that I know there, she works remote from
• 59:13
  home but has arranged with her employer to work off hours.
• 59:16
  So it's like they do a lot of toggling in my home.
• 59:19
  I work and my husband. So I work in the morning.
• 59:22
  I will do like language arts with our kids.
• 59:24
  So we're just homeschooling 3 left now right at two 10s and at
• 59:27
  12. And we combine them for as many
• 59:29
  things as possible. So that's a really good tip if
• 59:32
  you have a bunch of kids too, is to combine whenever you can,
• 59:35
  which is usually for everything except for like reading and
• 59:38
  math, science and history. Those are things that are really
• 59:41
  easy to combine them for. So I'll do language arts with
• 59:44
  all three of them for the first hour and a half of the day and
• 59:48
  then I pass them over my husband and he does like math and
• 59:50
  science, helps them with their coop homework.
• 59:52
  And I go to work and then in the evenings we kind of do come back
• 59:56
  and we do another read aloud and it just doesn't fit into like a
• 1:00:00
  little tidy school day. I think if you're juggling,
• 1:00:03
  especially if mom is working, I think it won't look like a nine
• 1:00:07
  to three school day. It won't maybe look traditional.
• 1:00:10
  Does it need to be six hours of school?
• 1:00:12
  I think that's another question a lot of people have, like how
• 1:00:14
  many hours per day? As a homeschool parent, should I
• 1:00:17
  be homeschooling my 6 year old? My 7 year old?
• 1:00:20
  My 8 year old. I'm so glad you asked this.
• 1:00:22
  This is one of the questions I get most often when I speak at
• 1:00:24
  home school conferences. And I always like to say if you
• 1:00:27
  have an 8 or under, you can do all of your school in about an
• 1:00:31
  hour to an hour and a half a day.
• 1:00:32
  Now, can you do it all at once? Probably not if you have
• 1:00:35
  toddlers and babies because they'll interrupt 40 times.
• 1:00:38
  But when it comes to like you could do 20 minutes of reading
• 1:00:42
  aloud, 20 minutes of reading instruction, 20 minutes of math
• 1:00:48
  space those out however you need to based on your own life
• 1:00:50
  circumstances and the baby's nap and your work schedule and all
• 1:00:53
  the different things. But for the most part, the going
• 1:01:00
  back to that survey where I'd asked experienced homeschooling
• 1:01:02
  moms what they wish they had done more of and less of.
• 1:01:05
  So often what I heard is I wish I just focused more on this
• 1:01:09
  basic skills of like reading, writing, math, like just those
• 1:01:12
  three are kind of like, and then lots of time to enjoy each other
• 1:01:17
  and just live life and less time trying to do all this other
• 1:01:20
  formal stuff. So if you think about that, when
• 1:01:23
  I homeschool my kids in general, up till the time they're eight
• 1:01:28
  or so, we're doing homeschool for about an hour, hour and a
• 1:01:32
  half a day. At this point with my 10s and 12
• 1:01:35
  year old, I would say we do school for two to three hours a
• 1:01:40
  day formal school. Like if you're like sitting at
• 1:01:42
  a. That's crazy because in the the
• 1:01:44
  school system that's like 678 hours, right?
• 1:01:47
  So much of that time is wasted. So much of that time is standing
• 1:01:49
  in lines group, making this group go to that group.
• 1:01:52
  Classroom expectations, discipline or your child sitting
• 1:01:56
  there learning something that they already know because
• 1:01:58
  there's they're trying. The teachers have, you know,
• 1:02:00
  20-30 students that they're trying to teach, and all these
• 1:02:03
  kids are at different levels. So one thing to keep in mind is
• 1:02:06
  that if you're teaching your child one-on-one, you just teach
• 1:02:09
  them exactly what they need to know.
• 1:02:10
  They don't have to sit through anything they either don't know
• 1:02:12
  or things that they're not ready for yet, but they're completely
• 1:02:15
  lost and bored during. Because a lot of times in
• 1:02:18
  classrooms, that's where behavior issues come up, right,
• 1:02:20
  is when kids are bored because either they already know it or
• 1:02:23
  they're lost because they didn't learn the four things before
• 1:02:26
  that and the teacher had to keep moving on.
• 1:02:28
  So if you're just teaching your child one-on-one, it just
• 1:02:30
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• 1:02:34
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  10% off your order. So what you mentioned reading,
• 1:03:12
  writing and math and they said maybe when they're, you know,
• 1:03:16
  5678, you can do an hour to an hour and a half depending on how
• 1:03:20
  they're interested and how what their aptitude is.
• 1:03:22
  I think I've got good tips so far on the reading.
• 1:03:25
  OK, what about writing resources for writing?
• 1:03:29
  And then what about resources for math?
• 1:03:31
  Like you, I'm not like a math person.
• 1:03:33
  I mean, I can do it. I actually enjoyed it at certain
• 1:03:35
  points in high school and but it's not something I do choose
• 1:03:39
  to do any given day. Right, So what would be a good?
• 1:03:41
  Resource for people listening who want to explore resources or
• 1:03:44
  need them now for specifically writing and for math.
• 1:03:48
  OK, let's start with math. That one is there are lots of
• 1:03:52
  great homeschool math programs. My, what I always say is what I
• 1:03:56
  wish I had done and what I hear from a lot of other experienced
• 1:04:00
  homeschool moms is just to pick one and just stick with it.
• 1:04:03
  Go at the pace that your child's ready for.
• 1:04:05
  So don't feel like you have to get through a math book a year,
• 1:04:08
  but if you jump from 1 curriculum to the other, that's
• 1:04:11
  where we get into weird gaps and like, oh, we missed this
• 1:04:14
  entirely or we're there can be a little bit of that.
• 1:04:16
  If your child's crying over their math everyday, you know,
• 1:04:18
  maybe find a different program. It doesn't need to be like that.
• 1:04:22
  A lot of the time though, it's not actually the program, it's
• 1:04:24
  the pace. It's that that we want them to
• 1:04:27
  go at a certain pace and learning doesn't ever happen in
• 1:04:30
  a straight line. It's like you, it's just wiggly,
• 1:04:34
  you know, 2 steps forward, one step back, 2 steps forward, 1/2
• 1:04:37
  step back. And then we all know this.
• 1:04:39
  This is how humans have always learned.
• 1:04:41
  It's never like I know 10% more today than yesterday.
• 1:04:44
  And that keeps going at an equal pace.
• 1:04:47
  So I think watching your child, I usually like to do time rather
• 1:04:51
  than an amount of content. So we'll spend 20 minutes on
• 1:04:54
  math and we'll get as far as we can and then I'll put a post it
• 1:04:57
  in there. We stop, we're done for the day.
• 1:05:00
  And what you'll find is some days you can cover a lot of
• 1:05:02
  material in those 20 minutes or they just get it.
• 1:05:05
  I mean, they're having a better day.
• 1:05:07
  And then other days it's like they knew this yesterday and
• 1:05:09
  there's and that's all just completely normal.
• 1:05:11
  It's how we all learn, right? So I think scheduling an amount
• 1:05:15
  of time is helpful. A lot of homeschoolers use
• 1:05:18
  Saxon. That's what my kids use.
• 1:05:20
  There is a great resource called, I think it's Nicole the
• 1:05:23
  math lady, I think is the she will do video lessons using the
• 1:05:28
  Saxon books, which are sort of the old classic standby for a
• 1:05:31
  lot of homeschool families doing math.
• 1:05:33
  There's also a resource called Mr. D Math and he has online
• 1:05:40
  classes and my oldest daughter did one through him and just
• 1:05:43
  loved it. His teachers are very dynamic,
• 1:05:46
  explains things in several different ways if they get
• 1:05:49
  stuck, especially for older kids like middle school and high
• 1:05:51
  school. That's a great resource.
• 1:05:55
  And then another one, I'll name one other one that a lot of
• 1:05:58
  homeschool families really like is called Matthew C Matthew like
• 1:06:01
  the letter U and then C. And again, if you were to swap
• 1:06:06
  between like Saxon and math, you see you're going to lose stuff
• 1:06:09
  because they approach math very, each of them approach it very
• 1:06:12
  differently. One is a spiral approach, the
• 1:06:15
  other one's a mastery approach. It's just a little bit.
• 1:06:16
  They just do it differently. But I think any of them that you
• 1:06:20
  choose, if you were just to stick with the same math program
• 1:06:24
  and do it at a reasonable pace for your child, you're going to
• 1:06:26
  be in good shape for writing. I have.
• 1:06:33
  I could talk about this all day because writing is so it's my
• 1:06:36
  thing and it's my favorite thing to teach.
• 1:06:39
  I don't teach any original writing until my kids are at
• 1:06:43
  least 10, probably 12. So if we go back to like how
• 1:06:47
  Thomas Jefferson learned to write, for example, he learned
• 1:06:51
  to write by copying masters, like copying people who were
• 1:06:57
  writing before him. And when you say that, you mean
• 1:06:59
  in the physical writing or you mean in the content of the
• 1:07:03
  writing? Both.
• 1:07:04
  OK, so there is something in the homeschool land that we call
• 1:07:09
  copy work and it really is just copying a sentence exactly how
• 1:07:12
  it's written. So you could open up, let's say
• 1:07:14
  Charlotte's Web, and you take the first sentence and on your
• 1:07:17
  notebook paper you write down exactly the first sentence,
• 1:07:22
  exactly as it is, with the punctuation Marks and the proper
• 1:07:26
  capitalization and spelling, and that's it.
• 1:07:28
  And then the next day they open it again and they make the next
• 1:07:30
  sentence. Doing that for a couple of years
• 1:07:34
  is an astounding writing practice.
• 1:07:37
  They learn all kinds of grammar and usage rules just by copying
• 1:07:41
  what's accurate. What they're doing is they're
• 1:07:43
  getting those language patterns like this is what good writing
• 1:07:46
  looks like, sounds like, feels like, and this is how these
• 1:07:50
  punctuation marks work and without having to do a workbook.
• 1:07:53
  So a copy work is extremely powerful.
• 1:07:57
  I, I skipped a step though, because before they're ready for
• 1:07:59
  copy work, they just need to learn how to form letters.
• 1:08:02
  The, the act of writing, the physical act of writing is a
• 1:08:06
  very different skill and process than writing, let's say a report
• 1:08:12
  on the Nile River. Like with there's so many
• 1:08:16
  different pieces there, you're thinking about what you can say
• 1:08:19
  and organizing what you're going to say and then saying it well.
• 1:08:22
  But even before you can do any of that, you have to learn how
• 1:08:24
  you have to make the actual physical act of writing easy.
• 1:08:27
  So generally in my home school, I would start with handwriting
• 1:08:32
  and maybe when once they were about 5 and they would just, I
• 1:08:35
  just get a handwriting book, any handwriting book is fine.
• 1:08:38
  And they would just learn, do practice handwriting and tell
• 1:08:42
  handwriting is easy. Once handwriting forming letters
• 1:08:45
  is easy. Then I would move them into copy
• 1:08:47
  work and have them just copying a sentence out of a good book.
• 1:08:50
  How much does it matter the actual way that they write?
• 1:08:54
  Actually, I think I wish that's something I I think it kind of
• 1:08:56
  matters a lot. Meaning like there's a certain
• 1:08:59
  form yes, that everyone should follow for how to form the.
• 1:09:03
  Letter G you know you know whether you start at the top or
• 1:09:06
  the bottom of the letter. The reason it matters is because
• 1:09:09
  one way is far more efficient than the other.
• 1:09:11
  And even though you hold your pencil, yeah, it's all muscle
• 1:09:13
  memory. And it's really hard to fix that
• 1:09:16
  if they're, I know this because my oldest three, I didn't take
• 1:09:19
  very good care with this. And getting them to write
• 1:09:22
  legibly and easily and quickly when they were older was much
• 1:09:27
  harder. There is a very, pretty strong
• 1:09:29
  case for starting with cursive instead of starting with
• 1:09:32
  printing. And the mindset behind it is
• 1:09:35
  basically that it's hard to form letters incorrectly in cursive
• 1:09:38
  because you always start at the right place because they're all
• 1:09:41
  connected. There's a few other arguments to
• 1:09:44
  it, that's just one of them. But I will say I prioritized how
• 1:09:47
  they wrote their letters more with my next three kids and I'm
• 1:09:52
  very glad I so should. Parents, you know, I, I think
• 1:09:55
  about, we have like a 2 1/2 year old, right?
• 1:09:56
  And he's sometimes just scribbling alongside his Big
• 1:09:58
  Brother, right? Should parents actually
• 1:10:00
  discourage their children to try to mimic writing words unless
• 1:10:05
  they are training them exactly how to do them in the correct
• 1:10:07
  way? Or just so it's OK, I think it's
• 1:10:09
  totally OK. And then once they're five or
• 1:10:11
  six, once they're about 5 and then and they're doing like a
• 1:10:15
  workbook, the workbook's going to take them through like this
• 1:10:18
  is how you should do your letter A.
• 1:10:19
  And that's when I think I would go, let's make sure we always
• 1:10:22
  start at the top if it's a capital letter A that kind of
• 1:10:24
  thing. But I wouldn't worry about it
• 1:10:27
  before then at all. What would be your advice to
• 1:10:30
  especially single people listening who are really
• 1:10:33
  interested in homeschooling and feel a call to it?
• 1:10:35
  Maybe they'll make their final decision once they actually have
• 1:10:37
  kids, right? And like get to know their kids
• 1:10:39
  and figure out where they're living and all these things.
• 1:10:41
  But and they're wanting to prepare for that both and how
• 1:10:45
  they date and try to select A spouse and also in just the way
• 1:10:49
  they're setting up their own careers in work life, that would
• 1:10:53
  be your recommendation. Such a good question.
• 1:10:55
  I've never been asked that before.
• 1:10:59
  I think my first thought then I'm like, that's not true.
• 1:11:07
  That wouldn't have been true for my husband.
• 1:11:09
  So I'm like trying to think because, you know, my first
• 1:11:11
  thought was like when you're dating, when you're having those
• 1:11:14
  conversations, you know, marry somebody who's ignited by like
• 1:11:19
  ideas and thoughts and reading. But I don't know, my husband and
• 1:11:22
  my dating relationship wasn't formed by that kind of
• 1:11:25
  intellectual like that, that kind of intellectual, that kind
• 1:11:28
  of came later. So what is it?
• 1:11:32
  I don't know. I guess part of what I think I
• 1:11:35
  really feel so strongly that the key to a successful homeschool
• 1:11:39
  is peaceful content homeschooling mother.
• 1:11:42
  If the mother's doing most of the homeschooling, I should say,
• 1:11:44
  then I think her just being relaxed and enjoyable and being
• 1:11:47
  excited about things like, oh, let's learn about this.
• 1:11:50
  That goes so much further than any particular curriculum or
• 1:11:53
  any, any particular skill set. So I guess I would feel like
• 1:11:58
  prioritizing your own intellectual life.
• 1:12:00
  Like what am I? What do I want to learn about
• 1:12:02
  that? I don't know anything about that
• 1:12:04
  kind of curiosity. There's a that's such.
• 1:12:08
  AI just want to pause that for a moment and hold that thought for
• 1:12:11
  a minute because it's such a great, But what you just said,
• 1:12:14
  it's so great because I think there's maybe a misunderstanding
• 1:12:16
  about homeschooling that it's boring.
• 1:12:18
  Oh, OK. Yeah.
• 1:12:21
  And you're saying, actually the recommendation you're giving to
• 1:12:23
  like people who are even like, not married yet and not even
• 1:12:26
  able to homeschool, they don't have the kids yet, is develop
• 1:12:29
  your own intellectual life. Yeah, I'm trying to remember who
• 1:12:32
  said this. It's like a it's a poet and I
• 1:12:35
  can't remember who it was. Now Keats maybe said something
• 1:12:39
  like education is not the filling of a pail, but the
• 1:12:41
  lighting of a fire. And it feels like if we were to
• 1:12:45
  approach homeschooling in a way that was like, there is this
• 1:12:48
  content that I need to get into my child's brain that's super
• 1:12:51
  boring. It's not an exciting, I don't
• 1:12:53
  think. But if we were to approach it
• 1:12:55
  more like if you imagine going to a beach and like combing and
• 1:12:58
  looking for seashells or something and you pick one up
• 1:13:00
  and go, Oh my goodness, look what I see.
• 1:13:02
  Look what I look what I found. Like if we were to approach
• 1:13:06
  learning in that way, whether it's reading a book with our
• 1:13:09
  kids or it's a new math concept or it's something in history or
• 1:13:13
  science, and we could approach it in a way that's like, let's
• 1:13:16
  find out about this together, or look what I just found out.
• 1:13:20
  It's like it opens up a completely different way of
• 1:13:23
  learning. There's a book that ignited my
• 1:13:26
  initial love of homeschooling. It's called For the Children's
• 1:13:30
  Sake. It's an old book by Susan
• 1:13:33
  Shaffer McCauley and it is a book that to me really ignited
• 1:13:37
  that sense of wonder and excitement.
• 1:13:40
  I think it gave me a new idea of education that I didn't have
• 1:13:44
  with my own public schooled education like it.
• 1:13:47
  To me it was always about what it was what does this teacher
• 1:13:50
  want me to know? How can I get a good grade?
• 1:13:53
  What is, how do I fulfil their requirements?
• 1:13:56
  And it kind of opened up this idea of learning as exploring up
• 1:14:03
  to me at that point, unexplored territory, not to the world, but
• 1:14:06
  to me, because I hadn't learnt any of those things.
• 1:14:09
  That kind of invitation to wonder feels to me a lot more
• 1:14:12
  exciting. I love that.
• 1:14:14
  And it also, you know, I think there's sort of this narrative,
• 1:14:17
  I would say about women in particular, who are younger
• 1:14:22
  women who are like going to college, they're getting their
• 1:14:24
  masters, they're like getting very highly educated.
• 1:14:26
  I know there's also a distinction between formal
• 1:14:28
  education and then just like exploration, you know, learning
• 1:14:31
  and you can, you can become, I think as educated as a PhD on
• 1:14:36
  your own, yes, and maybe better depending on, you know, what the
• 1:14:39
  school is and everything else. So not to say formal education
• 1:14:41
  is the only way to do this, but it is one way.
• 1:14:44
  And I think sometimes it's like, well, and then you go, then you,
• 1:14:46
  you know, get married, you have kids and you become a stay at
• 1:14:48
  home mom and you, oh, you get home school and it was all for
• 1:14:50
  nothing like you, you, you, you could have used this in some
• 1:14:53
  career basically as opposed to. As though anything you could do
• 1:14:57
  in your career would be more valuable than informing this
• 1:15:00
  next generation, right? Pouring into these souls.
• 1:15:03
  To me it always felt that seems such an interesting dichotomy.
• 1:15:06
  Because I have six children. I have the opportunity to ignite
• 1:15:09
  6 humans to go out into the world and to be salt and light
• 1:15:12
  and to. That's amazing.
• 1:15:14
  No, no teacher has the ability to do that to the same degree as
• 1:15:18
  a parent does with their own children.
• 1:15:20
  Because anybody could be my kids teacher, but only I can be their
• 1:15:23
  mother. And so to me, it feels like
• 1:15:25
  whenever we pour into the mother, whether she's
• 1:15:29
  homeschooling or not, and ignite her about something that's
• 1:15:32
  interesting. I mean, I know that when I'm
• 1:15:34
  really interested and excited about something and I'm reading
• 1:15:37
  a bunch of books about it or what, looking up YouTube videos
• 1:15:39
  about it or I, you know, whatever it is that I'm trying
• 1:15:42
  to learn, my kids are really curious about that thing because
• 1:15:46
  it's like what captured the attention of my mom.
• 1:15:48
  This is so interesting. We have that opportunity.
• 1:15:52
  Not that, not that we do it every day, not that it feels
• 1:15:55
  like that every day. There's a lot of days in
• 1:15:57
  homeschooling that just feel like punching the clock, kind of
• 1:16:01
  just doing what needs to be done.
• 1:16:03
  The next step, especially when you're sleep deprived and taking
• 1:16:06
  care of a lot of babies, it can feel that way.
• 1:16:08
  But I also think you don't really know the impact those
• 1:16:13
  daily. That was like potidian dailiness
• 1:16:17
  is having on your kids until later when you can look back and
• 1:16:19
  go, oh, you know what we did there?
• 1:16:21
  It was kind of magical. And it's so countercultural.
• 1:16:24
  It's so different than the way the world operates.
• 1:16:26
  And I think more and more people though are interested in it and
• 1:16:29
  waking up to it. What are some good associations
• 1:16:32
  or community groups that you recommend people join?
• 1:16:35
  Or maybe even they can start if there isn't something local to
• 1:16:38
  them. One is if you are wondering what
• 1:16:41
  are the legal requirements for my state, which is good to start
• 1:16:45
  with and understand. HSLDAS website will definitely
• 1:16:50
  direct you toward like what do you have to do?
• 1:16:54
  I should point this out too. They're a great resource to go
• 1:16:57
  to as far as helping you understand what the requirements
• 1:17:00
  are in your state, which may look a little different than if
• 1:17:02
  you were just to go to your state's website.
• 1:17:05
  Sometimes the wording on like let's say the public schools
• 1:17:09
  systems website on what you're you have to do as a homeschooler
• 1:17:13
  isn't, is a little misleading. So I always like to start with
• 1:17:16
  HSLDA, like what do I have to do in the state of Washington, the
• 1:17:18
  state of Texas, the. State of the Homeschool Legal
• 1:17:20
  Defense Association. Exactly.
• 1:17:22
  Yes. Locally, I love being a part of
• 1:17:26
  a homeschool Co-op. I think there's nothing quite
• 1:17:28
  like real and especially today's day and age that's so online
• 1:17:32
  that we're all so plugged in having like real flesh and blood
• 1:17:35
  homeschoolers around you, real people that you can call your
• 1:17:40
  community. So there are probably, there's
• 1:17:43
  probably are homeschool groups wherever you are in the world
• 1:17:47
  because they they exist just about everywhere.
• 1:17:50
  Finding them can be a little tricky.
• 1:17:52
  So you want to start asking a lot of times if you ask at your
• 1:17:54
  local church, like do you know of any homeschoolers that will
• 1:17:58
  start sort of the domino effect of being able to find somebody?
• 1:18:01
  And if there isn't one or if there isn't one that feels like
• 1:18:03
  a good fit for you, I have noticed I've never been one that
• 1:18:07
  has started a lot of groups. I've usually joined one that's
• 1:18:10
  already in going, but I have several friends who will just
• 1:18:15
  start locally with like another one other family that's not
• 1:18:19
  going to put their kids in kindergarten.
• 1:18:20
  Let's just get together once a week and do something together.
• 1:18:23
  Doesn't have to be super formal, doesn't have to be an official
• 1:18:27
  Co-op, but something where you're just connected.
• 1:18:30
  It was really important to my kids, still is, for them to have
• 1:18:34
  friends who are also homeschooling.
• 1:18:37
  I remember we switched co-ops when my oldest went into high
• 1:18:40
  school grade years because at our first Co-op, most of those
• 1:18:43
  kids were going into public school for high school.
• 1:18:45
  Totally fine. That's just not what we are
• 1:18:47
  doing. And I wanted her to have
• 1:18:49
  homeschooled friends and it was worth.
• 1:18:51
  We started driving about 40 minutes to a homeschool group
• 1:18:53
  because I which is not that far depending on where you live, but
• 1:18:56
  for us I was like 40 minutes. It was worth it.
• 1:19:00
  It was worth connecting, giving her those friendships that have
• 1:19:05
  lasted. Did did you guys do homeschool
• 1:19:09
  debate we ever? Did.
• 1:19:11
  I just have to do a shout out for homeschool debate because
• 1:19:14
  that was hugely influential and fun and and they had speech too.
• 1:19:19
  So you did like speech competitions.
• 1:19:20
  Did you do it? I did it.
• 1:19:21
  Of course you did. Yeah.
• 1:19:22
  I was like I. Loved it and a lot of kids like
• 1:19:25
  would be scared at first and then get into it and just love
• 1:19:27
  it. Obviously if your kids hates it,
• 1:19:28
  don't make them. I wouldn't say make necessarily
• 1:19:29
  make them do it. But what it afforded us was just
• 1:19:32
  community and competition in a fun way.
• 1:19:34
  But learning rhetoric, research, writing, critical thinking.
• 1:19:38
  You know your cross examination, you're learning logic, you're
• 1:19:41
  learning so many things. Do you feel like?
• 1:19:43
  Presentation skills. Confidence.
• 1:19:45
  How much of that do you think has helped you with live action?
• 1:19:48
  1000% more than my UCLA degree, more than most anything else I
• 1:19:53
  learned besides reading. OK and just the school of virtue
• 1:19:56
  of living in a in a big family. I would say homeschool debate
• 1:20:00
  was hugely helpful and I love. That even that phrasing of
• 1:20:04
  school virtue in the big family or school virtue in a, in a
• 1:20:07
  homeschooling family, even if you don't have a big family, I
• 1:20:09
  think it's a, that's something that they, that's, I love that
• 1:20:14
  phrasing. It feels like there's so much we
• 1:20:16
  can dig into there. Well, that was going to be.
• 1:20:18
  There's so much more I'm sure we could talk about.
• 1:20:20
  So we have to do this again. But with the time we have left,
• 1:20:22
  I wanted to ask you just about family culture because I feel
• 1:20:26
  like so much of what you're saying comes back to the mom and
• 1:20:29
  the dad and the marriage, quite frankly.
• 1:20:32
  And you said something really interesting earlier about really
• 1:20:34
  so much of this depends on the peace and the joy of the mom.
• 1:20:39
  Yeah. And yeah.
• 1:20:41
  And you would want the dad to to have that as well.
• 1:20:43
  So what would be some tips for you that you would give those
• 1:20:47
  listening to cultivate that? Because maybe they're feeling
• 1:20:52
  like I would like to do this, but I don't feel like I can do
• 1:20:54
  this because on an emotional kind of psychological bandwidth,
• 1:20:58
  I don't feel up to the task. And so putting them in school so
• 1:21:02
  that I can at least do some self-care, even maybe they're
• 1:21:04
  thinking that. Yeah, well.
• 1:21:08
  One big question, I know. Yeah.
• 1:21:09
  One of the things that comes to mind for me right away is that
• 1:21:12
  early on I said I read like way too much.
• 1:21:14
  Really. I read too much philosophy of
• 1:21:16
  education kind of stuff 'cause it's just my personality type to
• 1:21:19
  like read everything I can get my hands on when I get excited
• 1:21:21
  about something. And to the point where I was
• 1:21:24
  sort of ignoring the children that were in front of me and
• 1:21:26
  idealizing this, like this Charlotte Mason kind of
• 1:21:29
  education or classical education or whatever it was.
• 1:21:32
  And it changed what one of the things that that did,
• 1:21:38
  unfortunately, is it gave me sort of this prideful, like, I
• 1:21:42
  know what I'm doing here because I'm the one who's reading all
• 1:21:45
  the books. So when my husband would make a
• 1:21:47
  suggestion for our home school, I would think, you don't know,
• 1:21:51
  I'm the one who's doing the reading.
• 1:21:53
  I'm the one. And I often times in those early
• 1:21:55
  years sort of discounted what he would suggest or say.
• 1:22:00
  That is probably my number one advice.
• 1:22:03
  I would say like better more than anything else I've said,
• 1:22:07
  what I should have done in those early days is ask my husband, 20
• 1:22:11
  years from now, what do you want our kids to say?
• 1:22:13
  Because he loves these children. Yeah.
• 1:22:15
  Shared vision. Exactly.
• 1:22:17
  And then is there a way that I can, when I'm homeschooling, the
• 1:22:20
  kids can modify the way I was going to do it to also make sure
• 1:22:23
  that we're encompass, encompassing the way that really
• 1:22:26
  when I made that shift is when he got excited about
• 1:22:30
  homeschooling. And really.
• 1:22:31
  And that changes everything. So if you have like a, a spouse,
• 1:22:36
  whether it's your husband or it's the whoever's doing most of
• 1:22:41
  the homeschooling, right, mom or dad, if you can get a shared
• 1:22:47
  vision so that you both are really excited about it, that
• 1:22:51
  changes the whole tone and tenor of your homeschool.
• 1:22:55
  And then I think it also makes it easier for the one who's not
• 1:22:58
  doing most of the homeschooling to support.
• 1:23:02
  And, you know, a lot of times in those days, I would say like I
• 1:23:04
  just need two hours in a coffee shop with nobody touching me.
• 1:23:08
  I guess, you know, when you've got the little kids, they're
• 1:23:10
  always touching you. I just need to go.
• 1:23:12
  He would, you know, send me off to the coffee shop for a couple
• 1:23:15
  hours on a Saturday morning so that I could have a minute.
• 1:23:17
  And a lot of times I was just planning homeschooling.
• 1:23:19
  So it's not even, I didn't need a break from that necessarily.
• 1:23:22
  I just needed a minute. And I think it's easier to get
• 1:23:26
  that kind of support and shared vision if you can get on the
• 1:23:30
  same if if he feels like you are honoring his own vision for your
• 1:23:36
  family life too. OK, But I don't feel like that
• 1:23:38
  was really answering your question.
• 1:23:39
  I. Think that is a big, big good
• 1:23:41
  answer because I mean the the unity thing about between
• 1:23:44
  spouses because at the end of the day, your family project is
• 1:23:47
  your family project and has to be in union with your spouse if
• 1:23:50
  it's creating division in your marriage, is it really going to
• 1:23:53
  help the. Kids.
• 1:23:54
  And then when you're having family dinner and you're having
• 1:23:56
  a conversation, I mean, that would be a huge thing right
• 1:24:00
  there. That's pretty countercultural to
• 1:24:02
  the way most families operate these days.
• 1:24:04
  Those conversations are part of this education.
• 1:24:07
  So if you can scale it out in your mind from feeling like
• 1:24:10
  whatever we do from 9:00 to 3:00 or whatever it is, that school
• 1:24:13
  and everything else is just normal family life.
• 1:24:16
  But all of this counts. All of this forms kids.
• 1:24:18
  So sometimes I will say, can you guys tell dad one thing that you
• 1:24:22
  learned today that feels sometimes a little contrived?
• 1:24:25
  So I might go, OK, today in our read a lot about ancient Egypt,
• 1:24:30
  we read this super disgusting thing about mummies.
• 1:24:33
  Have you ever heard this? And I would say that at dinner,
• 1:24:35
  it would just get the conversation going.
• 1:24:37
  That is like more education. That's the discussion that we
• 1:24:40
  were talking about earlier. Reading aloud in discussion
• 1:24:43
  being two primary super tools in your in your home schooling
• 1:24:48
  toolbox or your parenting toolbox.
• 1:24:50
  And I feel like that should count just as much as your math
• 1:24:54
  worksheet you were doing earlier in the day.
• 1:24:56
  So bringing dad in through read alouds, either evening read
• 1:25:01
  alouds or conversations about stories, even if he wasn't there
• 1:25:04
  for the read aloud can be really useful.
• 1:25:06
  Sharing a vision is really, really useful.
• 1:25:09
  But it feels to me like even if you don't have exactly the same
• 1:25:15
  idea of what education looks like or should look like, even
• 1:25:20
  if you don't have this and my husband, my personalities are so
• 1:25:22
  different from each other. So whether or not you're aligned
• 1:25:26
  in exactly your vision of what a good homeschool education or
• 1:25:28
  what a good education looks like, I think even just me, for
• 1:25:32
  example, saying to my husband, what's most important to you at
• 1:25:35
  the end of the day for the kids to have done.
• 1:25:37
  When I would ask that he would always come back with less than
• 1:25:40
  I feared he would. I was always afraid he would
• 1:25:42
  come back with some impossible, I don't know, list of
• 1:25:47
  requirements. I will say he used to tell me,
• 1:25:52
  Sarah, I would say, Oh my goodness, that we had the worst
• 1:25:54
  day. We didn't get anything done,
• 1:25:55
  especially when I had all these babies, right?
• 1:25:57
  And he would say the worst day in home school with you is
• 1:26:01
  better than the best day they would have in school.
• 1:26:04
  What a supportive husband. I mean, I really thought he does
• 1:26:07
  not know how badly things are going.
• 1:26:10
  But yeah, I mean, really, I think what he was saying was
• 1:26:13
  there. You're able to give these kids
• 1:26:15
  more than anybody else can 'cause you love them so much.
• 1:26:17
  And I think that's to any dads who are listening to this,
• 1:26:22
  that's all she needs. She just needs your vote of
• 1:26:24
  confidence. Like you know what, I totally
• 1:26:26
  because she's already doubting whether she can do it or not.
• 1:26:30
  My husband, like I said, does a fair amount of homeschooling now
• 1:26:33
  and I see it. I see that the tables turn in,
• 1:26:37
  you know, when I can say to him, you're giving them such a good
• 1:26:40
  education, That's all they need. That's all because we doubt
• 1:26:43
  ourselves so much. The culture feeds that doubt.
• 1:26:46
  And then but mom or dad who loves their kids so much, who
• 1:26:52
  feel like their spouse is their, believes in them and is their
• 1:26:59
  primary support that. I mean, I feel like we could
• 1:27:03
  change the world that way. Oh yeah, 100%.
• 1:27:05
  And that family that is learning together, loving together,
• 1:27:10
  praying together, stays together.
• 1:27:12
  Yes, more than just praise together, they do those other
• 1:27:15
  things. It's it is world changing.
• 1:27:17
  Thank you for your ministry, Sarah.
• 1:27:19
  It's so beautiful. And I know lots of people
• 1:27:21
  listening are going to check out your stuff.
• 1:27:23
  So where can people find your stuff?
• 1:27:25
  Read Aloud Revival is my podcast.
• 1:27:27
  That's probably the best place to start.
• 1:27:29
  We just celebrated 10 years of podcasting.
• 1:27:32
  Amazing. Wild.
• 1:27:33
  Yeah. So I just did a top ten in the
• 1:27:36
  first ten years and it's like a very. 14,000,000 downloads.
• 1:27:40
  I have to brag on you. That's awesome.
• 1:27:41
  It's. Been really fun.
• 1:27:43
  Do you know? I think why the podcast has
• 1:27:47
  taken off the way it has is because we all really want to
• 1:27:50
  connect with our kids. We all feel very overwhelmed by
• 1:27:53
  so much to do pulled in so many directions, right.
• 1:27:55
  And when parents get a taste of what reading aloud can do in
• 1:28:00
  their families for their kids development of virtue, for their
• 1:28:03
  academic growth, for their connections, for their emotional
• 1:28:06
  for their emotional growth. We know kids who are read to a
• 1:28:10
  lot grow up and have more empathy and compassion that we
• 1:28:15
  know that they they've they're borne witness again and again to
• 1:28:19
  characters overcoming odds. So they're witnessing fortitude
• 1:28:23
  again and again and again. So when we do this, we sit down
• 1:28:26
  for 10 or 15 minutes, we read aloud.
• 1:28:28
  It doesn't feel like anything changed, doesn't feel like
• 1:28:30
  anything shifted. The kids are still fighting, the
• 1:28:32
  laundry's still piled up, We still have to make dinner, and
• 1:28:35
  nobody seems like suddenly more virtuous.
• 1:28:38
  But these, there's something about it that we and then we
• 1:28:41
  realize what there's nothing else we can do in 10 or 15
• 1:28:45
  minutes for free that gets us the same impact that reading
• 1:28:50
  aloud does. So then I think we just get
• 1:28:52
  really excited about it. And that's why I think it has
• 1:28:54
  over 14,000,000 downloads is because it's because I think we
• 1:28:58
  get really excited about what what we're able to do with very
• 1:29:03
  little. It's it feels like a daily
• 1:29:05
  feeding of the 5000 when you get to read aloud with your kids.
• 1:29:09
  Anyway, that was a little side note, but read aloud revival the
• 1:29:11
  podcast is the best place to start.
• 1:29:12
  And that that podcast, the top ten, the 1st 10 years might be a
• 1:29:16
  good place to start because it I pulled, you know, from our most
• 1:29:18
  popular top ten episodes for that one.
• 1:29:20
  So it kind of gives listeners a good feel.
• 1:29:22
  And you can find that in your podcast app wherever you watch
• 1:29:25
  or listen to that podcast, or at readaloudrevival.com.
• 1:29:28
  Amazing. Thank you so much, Sarah, for
• 1:29:30
  coming on the podcast. Thank you, Lila, it's been
• 1:29:32
  awesome. Thanks so much for joining this
• 1:29:34
  episode of the Lila Rose Podcast.
• 1:29:36
  Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your
• 1:29:38
  podcast on Apple or on Spotify or wherever else.
• 1:29:41
  And also on YouTube. You can watch us on YouTube,
• 1:29:43
  make sure you're subscribed to the channel.
• 1:29:44
  And we have our locals page. We're doing special behind the
• 1:29:47
  scenes access for our subscribers, including special
• 1:29:51
  segments of our lives, our YouTube lives just for our
• 1:29:53
  locals followers. So check that out at the link in
• 1:29:56
  the bio and we will see you next time.