Today's tea with Julie is specifically for homeschooling parents. If that's you, stay tuned.

Hello friend. In our attempts to find a philosophy of education that works for our families, we can feel batted around by the strong gusts of the latest curricula,

the current trends in home education, the program that solved whatever

schooling bugaboo over which we agonized. Usually no family has just one principle by which it functions.

And most of the time, we operate by a collection of tidbits,

math books recommended by a friend, a writing program discovered by a Google search,

philosophy expressed in that homeschooling book we happened upon in the library,

personal hunches, comments made by our partners and spouses, anxieties

fostered by relatives, and so on. And somewhere in that mix are the feelings of our children a messy house and a need for a long hot shower.

What happens when we go to a conference or attend a webinar that gives input to home educators living their eclectic,

demanding homeschool lifestyles. Two things. Inspiration and guilt.

We attend homeschool support meetings, conferences,

and webinars to be inspired to try again,

to find a way to connect to our original vision, to reconnect to our kids, to internalize some ideal

we like but don't know how to apply.

On the flip side though, it's easy to believe that what is presented is perfectly true

works all the time, should be easy, and is preferred to what we're already doing. That little dance, it leads to guilt. Why haven't I done it right yet?

Why can't I figure out how to do what looks like it should be easy to do?

Let's pause here to breathe. Ready? I've got a couple of strategies to help you integrate all your aspirations.

First principle, one thing at a time.

I'm reminded again of the one-thing principle.

Take the new ideas that come to you one at a time.

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