Why Perfectionism is Sabotaging Your Homeschool

Homeschool Better Together with Pam Barnhill

Pam Barnhill

Kids & Family, Christianity, Education, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the Homeschool Better Together podcast, I’m giving you a bit of a pep talk. I’ve been there—staring at the clock, realizing the day is slipping away and thinking, “If I can’t follow my perfect plan, I might as well do nothing.” Sound familiar? Well, I discovered that my problem wasn’t laziness—it was perfectionism. And that perfectionism was sabotaging my ability to be consistent with homeschooling.

I talk about how embracing imperfection helped me break through the inconsistency in our homeschool. I realized that half-hearted school days and not following the plan exactly were still valuable. The key is to show up and do something, even if it’s not perfect. I also share how creating a “minimum viable day” helped me focus on the most important subjects and stay consistent, even on the craziest days.

If you’re feeling stuck because things aren’t going perfectly, I encourage you to give yourself some grace. Consistency over perfection is what will make a huge difference in your homeschool.

Key Takeaways:

Perfectionism can sabotage your homeschool consistency.
Even imperfect school days can be effective.
The “minimum viable day” approach helps focus on essential subjects.
Consistency, not perfection, builds long-term homeschool success.

Links and Resources:

To join our free homeschool community, you can create an account right here.

For full show notes and a transcript of today’s episode, head to pambarnhill.com/hsbt21

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again?
0:05.4	Do you long for support as you learn alongside your kids?
0:10.3	Welcome to Home School Better Together, a podcast about building a homeschool experience that works for your family.
0:18.2	I'm Pam Barnhill, and it's time to step out of the overwhelm and
0:22.0	into the wonder. Let's do this. Okay, I have to say that this episode might come across a little
0:33.6	more like pep talk than practical tips, but that's okay. Sometimes we just need to have a little
0:42.3	pep talk. This happened to me a lot back in the day when I had first started homeschooling along
0:49.3	about 2012, 2013, 2014, and I would get to the end of my morning. So maybe it was 11 o'clock or something like that.
1:00.1	And all of a sudden, I looked around and I had not started my homeschool day. And my thought was,
1:06.6	oh my goodness, there's no way I'm going to get in a full homeschool day now. There's no way that I'm
1:13.0	going to be able to do this plan that I set up for myself. And if I can't do the plan that I set up
1:18.8	for myself, if it can't be perfect, then I'm just not going to do anything. I'll start again
1:25.7	tomorrow. So what I realized after this started happening
1:29.4	over and over again was that I had a problem. Well, let me be honest. I realized they had a problem
1:37.3	before I realized that this was the problem because I knew that I was being inconsistent in my homeschool. I knew that I did not
1:47.3	have a good record of consistency that we were doing school in fits and starts, that we would do
1:52.6	school for a couple days and then we would not do school for a couple days and then maybe we would do
1:57.9	one more and we wouldn't do school for a day and then maybe we'd do three days of school and then I was just doing school in fits and starts and we really weren't
2:05.4	getting any momentum. And what I was doing at that point was I was beating myself up for being lazy.
2:12.5	I was calling myself lazy, oh, you don't care enough about your kids and their education.
2:19.4	And it didn't feel that way.
2:25.3	I mean, it didn't feel like I didn't care about my kids and their education. In fact, I knew I cared a whole lot. So why was I so lazy about getting school done? except I wasn't lazy.
	...

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