Welcome to the Wild and Free podcast, episode 62. I'm Ainsley Arment, and this week, our friend

Greta Eskridge talks about how we can fight for joy in the everyday struggles of life and motherhood.

I know what you're saying when you say it's hard to fight for joy. I understand. But we do have to keep fighting, don't we? Just like Jen,

she fought hard, and we have to fight hard too. You can do it and you should do it. But I want to

talk about how, because I recognize that at times it's really difficult.

Plus, we're putting the finishing touches on our next bundle coming out in May.

It's called Curious. We'll give you a sneak peek at what's inside in just a minute.

So grab a cup of coffee and join us on the front porch. Let's get started.

Okay. Join us on the front porch. Let's get started. I want to let you in on a little secret. There are no homeschooling experts.

Don't get me wrong.

There are people who possess a particular combination of knowledge, experience,

discernment, and clarity to guide others on this journey, but they can never replace you.

You are the expert on your own children. When we feel insecure about our homeschooling abilities,

we often reach out for the validation of a curriculum, a convention,

or a consultant. While all these things can be valuable at different points in our journey,

nothing beats a mother's intuition and her own natural abilities to love, nurture, and

create an environment of learning for her children. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell made famous the concept of spending 10,000 hours on any one thing in order to become an expert in that field.

According to Gladwell, hockey players, psychologists, artists, orators, and criminal investigators must hit this threshold to become experts.

Well, if you spend five hours a day with your child before they turn five, you will, in effect,

have spent 10,000 hours on becoming an expert on your child, just in time for their formal

education to begin.

The beautiful part about homeschooling is that it qualifies us for the task as we go. In other words,

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