I am not a hairstylist. I do, however, think I might have missed my dream job. Talking to women all day, making them feel pretty and confident, doing something creative? I really think I would have been good at it.

What I actually am is cheap, and getting cheaper, because groceries cost what a car payment used to and I would really, really like to go on a cruise, so something has got to give. There was a time I could get my eyelash extensions and full highlights, drop the kids by Cost Cutters for a trim, and still afford groceries that week. That ship has not just sailed but capsized.

So a few months back I decided to live the dream, sort of, and teach myself to cut and color hair off YouTube. Which, I’ll spare you the suspense, is a lot harder than those girls make it look sometimes, but also I did a pretty damn good job, until now.

Kiddo 2 has naturally curly hair. She did not get this from me. My hair is ridiculously straight, and the second there’s any humidity in the air the volume leaves my strands like some sort of exorcism, so it’s messy buns and claw clips for me from this point out. I’ve made my peace, moving on. But Kiddo 2 hit the actual jackpot in this move to Florida, her curls, OMG, I don’t think I’m supposed to be jealous of my own kid, right? Right?

She also likes her hair “just so.” She’s at that age where I wake up a little terrified about what a bad hair day is going to do to all of us, which is funny, because it’s the same terror I used to have over sleepless nights when she was a baby. Different decade, same racing heart. And honestly, her hair is long, she almost always wears it down, there’s not a lot of difference from one day to the next, so it’s less about how it looks and more about how she’s decided it looks. I get it, no judgment, I was once a teen girl too.

So back to the haircut I was attempting to give her at home after YouTube University. I sectioned her hair out, got everything ready for the first cut, and right as I’m about to snip-snip, she asks me a question. My attention split faster than her ends I was trying to get rid of, and my mouth and my brain both turned to answer her, and my hands, my hands did not get the memo. I cut above my fingers instead of below them, which is the exact opposite of everything the YouTubes taught me.

Shit, shit, shit.

That was way too short. She said just a trim Mom, promise me! I promised. Perhaps I would not have been good at carrying on witty conversations with my clients if I had been a professional in another life, I apparently need total silence to cut hair.

Now a smart woman might stop here, but I am not that woman. I kept going. I don’t fully know why. I was panicking, and some broken part of my brain went, well, maybe this works? I was committed at this point, right? Trust the process. So I did another piece.

Then I stepped back to look.

No, no, nope.

This was not going to be fine. She was going to hate me. Just another bullet point of her future therapy list: the time my mom lopped my hair off because she thought she was a stylist after watching three YouTube videos. This was going to haunt us both for the rest of our lives.

Okay, I told myself, settle down there, Emily. It will blend. Quick check to be sure it’ll still make it into a ponytail, yup, all clear. I need to just stop. So I did. I stopped.

Then I did something really fantastically stupid.

I told her. (Cue me smacking myself in the face, at least three times.)

“Ummm...so I got it a little shorter than I meant to back here,” I said, with false confidence, trying to be extra chill.

“WHAT?!?” said Kiddo 2, big tears already starting to run down her cheeks.

I felt horrible, sick to my stomach. Why didn’t I just say “all done,” I really don’t think she would have ever known. She wouldn’t have been able to see it, she doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head, she’s not a mom yet.

I’m not going to walk you through the next several hours, partly because I’ve already ruined her hair and I’d like to leave the girl some dignity. Let’s just say it was not her finest moment, and I deserved all of it. She did forgive me, eventually.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I also had this nagging little thought hanging around. What was going to happen when she needed another haircut. Could we wait until this grew out, because I was going to be completely mortified to admit I’d messed up so bad. Well, because you know I’m at the salon right now, the answer was no, we could not wait. She needed another haircut quicker than that missing chunk could catch up.

Which is how we ended up here, in this salon, because you get what you pay for, and I was cheap, so I got a hunk of hair missing out of the back of my kid’s head and a bill to fix it. An eighty-dollar curly cut we now get to do every three to four months. Forever. She is not letting me near her with scissors ever again. So much for the cruise fund.

Honestly though, do I care about the money the didn’t save? Yes. Deeply. You know what I found out I didn’t care about, though? Admitting to the stylist what I’d done. I just said it, flat out, I tried to cut it myself, a few pieces in the back are too short, and now here we are.

Young me would never. Young me would have lied through her teeth, because she was embarrassed, and honestly, ashamed to mess up.

Case in point. When I was a kid I tried to give myself bangs, botched it, and did the only logical thing available to a child, I cut them off completely to hide my error. Then they started growing back and my mom’s like, “what’s this?”

And I was all like super chill, with a completely straight face, and said, “I don’t know, weird, must be new hair growth.” Smooth, right?

My aunt, who was an actual professional hairdresser, overheard and ratted me out. She told my mom that “new growth” wasn’t a thing, at least not like the little spikes I had blossoming out of my forehead.

Snitches get stitches, Auntie. Stay in your lane.

So one moral of this story is that I cannot be trusted with scissors. Fair. But the bigger takeaway is this. Young me lied because she was mortified she’d screwed up. Baby me genuinely believed her whole value as a human hung on being good at everything, on never making a poor decision, on having it all together, all figured out, all of the time.

Do you know how exhausting that is? I bet some of you do, because as much as I’d love to be unique here, this is a pretty common setup for women. Have it all together, keep everyone happy, never mess up, and if you do, for the love of God don’t let anyone find out. Keep up the image, then work overtime convincing yourself the image is really you.

Well, at forty-something, that’s finally changing for me. I told the stylist, “Look, I took a nugget out of my baby’s long locks and I need you to fix it, K?” and you know what she was like?

“Sure, sounds good.”

That’s it.

She wasn’t shocked.

She didn’t judge me, at least not while I was still in the salon.

The world did not end. I wasn’t embarrassed, and yeah, I’m out a few bucks, but Kiddo 2 is happy with her hair, so whatever.

And look, I’m learning. I did not attempt the short shag on Kiddo 3, even after watching the tutorial four separate times and feeling pretty confident I could crush it. She’s sitting right next to Kiddo 2 now getting a chic new look from a ligament professional. Cha-ching.

Turns out the lesson wasn’t really about hair. It’s that I can screw up out loud now, in front of a stranger with a spray bottle, and not want to disappear into the floor. That’s some solid growth.

Anyway. I’m going home to cut my own hair now, because I would rather spend that money elsewhere, and I’m just going to put it in a messy bun anyways.

P.S. After I wrote this I decided I needed bangs again.

I know, I know!

But at least I can admit it without shame to the whole freakin’ internet. Yes, they are too short, but my bestie assures me “French Bangs” are really in now and in two weeks I’ll look fine. Some things I can learn, others apparently not.

Share Best Laid Plans

Picture the montage. Me and math, we were never a good match, but I tried, I really did. I kept showing up with snacks and a fresh planner and a can-do attitude. Math kept showing up as complicated equations. I did the whole charade you do when you really like someone, and you want it to work so badly. The one where you tell yourself it’s fine, this is fine, we’re just in a rough patch, but the rough patch has been going since long division. Still, I laughed at all of math’s terrible jokes. I met its parents, Algebra and Geometry, and, frankly,I didn’t care for them.

Every night I swore tomorrow me and math, we’d finally figure it out, and every morning it was still just...a bunch of numbers.

That’s the whole relationship, honestly. Me, trying. Math, unmoved. Because here’s the deal with math, it’s actually always right or wrong. No in-between, no gray area, no meeting in the middle, that’s just it’s vibe. Math refuses to change, so this just wasn’t going to work for me. Because, not a surprise if you’ve read any of my work, you already know what’s coming. Math, I fucking hate it. There, I finally found a place for my f-bomb to drop where it’s actually warranted.

The advice I collected over the years

Giving advice, it’s what people feel they simply must offer once they can see your relationship is struggling. Well intentioned, unsolicited advice.

The first one, “Math is everywhere, just look around you.” Okay. I mean, that’s not wrong. But personally? I don’t know how to take that and turn it into an actual math lesson with my actual children. When a mom is in this deep over her head, I think kids need structured math lessons. I said what I said. Can they practice math in real world ways? Of course, and we do, I think. Does it take the place of a structured curriculum? Not for us. That might look different in your house and more power to you, but this is my story and I’m going to tell it like it is. Math doesn’t get that kind of luxury after the way it’s treated me.

The second one, “Stick it out with your math curriculum, don’t keep changing it up.” And I actually agree with that. In theory. If it’s working. If it’s not, well. I learned that one the hard way. Keep on reading, there is a point in here somewhere.

Breaking up is hard to do

Let me back up and introduce Steve, sorry, Mr. Demme. Math-U-See, by Demme Learning, is the mastery-based math curriculum we’ve been, up until now, using to homeschool since day one. It’s super cute, the levels named with Greek letters instead of grades, the little colored base ten blocks you build the problems with, and Steve Demme himself teaching every lesson on video, followed by worksheets and tests. You don’t move on until you have true and deep knowledge of the topic at hand. I loved it because I was finally understanding math better myself, as a forty-something year old woman, it made me feel smarter.

I really thought Steve was going to be like an amazing therapist, maybe math and I were going to make it after all. If anyone could have saved me and math, it would have been this guy.

So, while I love my newfound confidence in mathematical computations and I can prattle on about the commutative property, math and I just aren’t going to be a thing. That’s the truth.

Oh and the kids, you might be wondering about them

Well, they were doing mostly okay with Math-U-See too. Really for a long time, it was working. It worked great with Kiddo 1 and Kiddo 2. Kiddo 1 was in 5th grade when we started, and I put him all the way back at the “Gamma level.” We moved quickly, I just wanted the foundation solid under him. Now, I can’t tell you he’s a math lover. Truth be told he tolerates math, and he’s doing it good enough. I don’t know that there was ever a way to make that kid fond of math, he is his mother’s child, so I’m not going to feel bad about it. Kiddo 2 seems to be on a whole different page with it. I’m not going to say too much yet because I don’t want to jinx it, and she is still happy using Math-U-See, so I still see good old Steve from time to time, thank goodness.

And then there’s Kiddo 3

Math-U-See was not working for her. So there I was, faithful to Math-U-See for going on six years, math and I still wrestling it out, and Kiddo 3 “falling behind.” I use quotes because I really wasn’t worried about it. Just like with reading, I figured she’d pick it up when she was ready. But then I noticed something I couldn’t ignore.

She was starting to feel bad about herself. She was clocking how “behind” she was, doing the comparison in her own head, and that, that was not going to do. Math be damned, you can hurt me, but not my baby girl. Over my dead body!

So I switched it up. I felt guilty ditching Demme, I really did. Six years is six years. But honestly? I love what I found. It’s called Math with Confidence, by Kate Snow. It’s open and go, scripted right down to what to say, no giant bin of expensive manipulatives to buy, and it’s built for exactly the kind of mom who reads the word “math” and breaks into hives. Which, hello, that’s me. It’s spiral in nature, lots of review, and does not require mastery to move on. Oh, and the work pages are colorful and short. Hello, that’s Kiddo 3. It’s early days, so I’m not going to make any grand announcements just yet, and this isn’t an endorsement anyway, so go poke at it yourself if it sounds like your jam. I’ll be sure to report back with updates.

And honestly? For the first time in a long time, math isn’t the subject I’m dreading on the schedule. That’s the whole win. It may not be the romantic ending I was looking for. No riding off into the sunset here, reciting times tables in unison. Just peace. Turns out that’s what I was after all along.

Okay, it’s been fun, but it’s time to land the plane, I keep my promises. Here it is, my own unsolicited, but hopefully well learned, advice to you, Dear Reader, don’t box yourself in, and don’t box your kid in by getting too invested in one curriculum, or too attached to the first man to help you understand prime factorization. Stay open. Switching it up when something stops working isn’t a failure. Some seasons, the most faithful move you can make is admit it’s over and go find what works.

So I’d love to hear what’s working for you, what’s bombed, and any other helpful information, lets help each other!

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Sometimes I write something a little different and post it on Substack, so In case you missed it:

Here’s what got me down this rabbit trail in the first place. For a while my brain was running a 4 am meeting I had no choice but to attend. I’d wake up running checklists in my mind, trying to recall what the day ahead of me looked like, struggling to figure out what my plan of attack was. All super helpful at 4 am right?

It’s not like we don’t have a color-coded family calendar. We do, and sometimes people even remember to check it. It’s not like I don’t have a plan, or I need help getting organized. It’s more that I had a hard time remembering what the new schedule looked like now that summer was ending and we had to get back into the swing of schooling, and how I was going to implement the new routine if I couldn’t even remember what all was in it. I scheduled most of it way back in May, and now I just felt lost. Also I’ve added in this Substack now so I’m kinda pressed for time more than I’ve ever been. It was just A LOT.

So that’s what this is. A brain dump that turned A LOT into a schedule I can see, and a system to prioritize and use my time well. Now when the 4 am panic starts, I can tell the committee to settle down. We’ll look at the plan when we wake up in a few hours. It’ll be fine.

Here’s what I made (A note on the times, I fuzzed them on purpose. I'm not exactly famous enough to have a stalker, but posting your whole family's exact whereabouts for the week felt like a bad idea anyway. Yours will probably have real times on it, and that's the point, just keep that copy for your fridge, not your feed)

Step one happens off the screen

Before I opened any AI anything, I did the unglamorous part by hand. I pulled up every calendar and schedule we run on (the family one, the learning pod’s schedule, the outschool classes, each kid’s activities, chores, meal plans the whole shebang) and put it all in one place. Times, drop-offs, who cooks which night, the standing commitments. Everything I could think of and then some.

I didn’t organize it. I just got it out, one day at a time. That part alone is worth doing even if you stop there, because half of what wakes you up at night is stuff that’s never been written down anywhere.

Soon I’m going to rig up an AI agent to pull all of this for me automatically and help me handle changes, because no two weeks, or days, are exactly the same. But this process gave me some needed structure to handle the changes, and for now, doing it by hand was its own kind of useful. It actually helped me remember everything I’d thought about individually and see the whole big picture.

The AI isn’t doing the planning.

It’s worth being straight about this, the AI isn’t doing the planning for you here. It’s just catching what’s already spinning around in your head and laying it out where you can finally see it. This only works if you already have a decent sense of what your days need to hold.

The way I’m using it right now, it hasn’t helped me come up with the plan itself. That part is still on me. Honestly, I tried to use it to help me and it was a huge fail. I’m the human here. I just needed an assistant.

One note on tools. I did all this in Claude, using Opus 4.8, in a dedicated project. Your mileage may vary depending on which AI you use. I did one beta test incognito and got good results so I’m confident it works well enough to share.

Then hand it to the AI

Here’s the real back-and-forth that turned my messy dump into the documents. Copy these prompts, swap in your own life, and don’t worry about getting it perfect on the first pass. Fixing it is the good part.

1. Dump the week, one day at a time

Give AI the week the same messy way you’d tell a friend. Just times and what’s happening. Tell it up front to wait for your go-ahead before building anything, or it may jump straight into making the schedule after the first day. Copy and paste this:

2. Ask for a printable, color-coded page

Here’s the trick that makes it readable: have it color-code by the kind of time, not hour by hour. You stop reading words and start seeing the shape of the day in color. Copy and paste this into the chat:

Building in html make it easy to go back and forth and see the changes in real time.

3. Iterate until it’s actually right

This is where it gets good. Add anything you forgot. Cut anything that feels noisy. Fix the wording. It will never get offended, so be picky. Type whatever request into the chat:

4. Build a priority guide for your open blocks (optional)

The schedule tells you where the time is. This second document tells you what to actually do with the big open stretches, so you don’t sit down and lose two hours to nothing. I had it list each big block back to me, then I talked through how I wanted to spend each one. Tell the chat:

Here’s what that looks like for me:

Ask for it in whatever format you’ll use

You’re not stuck with one file. Tell the AI how you’ll actually use it, and ask for the format to match.

• Printing it for the fridge? Ask for a landscape PDF so it prints clean on one page.

• Texting it to your partner so they actually look at it? Ask for an image.

• Planning to keep tweaking it yourself? Keep it as a web page, which is the easiest to edit.

That’s the whole trick

Just your calendars and one honest hour in a chat window. Do the brain dump, hand it over, and get the week off your pillow and onto the fridge. Come back and update as needed, like when Kiddo 1 talks you into a later bedtime because they are practically an adult now.

Speaking of Kiddo 1, I also made one for each of my kids and my partner. Then I asked Claude to make a combo one for the parents for items like pick-ups and drop-offs, who’s feeding the animals each morning, and so on. This way we are both on the same page. I really hope this works for you too. Be sure to let me know, I’d really appreciate the feedback.

Then there were my past two articles for Best Laid Plans. I did that big researchy breakdown of homeschool styles, Part 1 and Part 2, which was a whole different direction. I didn’t love it as much, but maybe it was helpful? I’m still figuring out what it is I’m actually doing here. I appreciate each and every one of you who follows along, seriously, it’s nice to not just talk to myself. It worries my family.

Okay, so this week I’m going to walk you through what our year, as of now, in early August, looks like. I’m sharing for no other reason than I didn’t know what else to write this week, and sometimes a candid look at what someone else is doing can make what you’re doing more clear. Maybe some of this works for you, you’re welcome. Maybe you read it and go, “That is absolutely not what I want to do.” Cool, that’s fine too. This is not the method to my madness, not how I came up with the plan, because that’s a whole other post I’ll write later, possibly. I’m not into committing right now.

All that to say, very soon homeschool 26/27 is about to commence, and I’m certain that will result in lots of fresh material, and we will be back to our regularly scheduled blogging. I certainly hope you will stay tuned, and if you like any of my writing I really hope you will subscribe and pass this along to a friend. Shameless plug over, on with the essay.

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My Grand Plan

So here’s just the plan, as it stands today. Think of it as the “before” picture. Because if you’ve been here more than five minutes, you know how my plans tend to go. So I want it on the record, in writing, exactly how I thought this year should start out. This way, later when it all falls to pieces (and it will, it always does) we can look back and laugh, together. I hope I’m laughing, not crying.

The big shift, drumroll please, I’m not really the “teacher” anymore. This is a pretty massive change for us, and it’s kind of blowing my mind. For the first time in my whole homeschool life, I’m not teaching everything, academically speaking. I’m much more of an administrator now. Which I’m totally digging. Granted, I ran the pilot program of this system with Kiddo 1 last year, the results were solid. I signed up Kiddo 2 and 3.

I know that might sound cold, like I’ve checked out or handed my kids off to strangers, or tablets. It’s the opposite. It might be the clearest I’ve seen my kids in these past 6 or 7 years (cue the hands again). I finally stopped trying to be the one person teaching every subject to three different kids at three different levels, at the same time. No more mommy the hero to save the day, no more desperate pleading and begging to be done for the day. That’s 50/50 on if it’s me or kids begging, by the way. This is really big you guys, you see, once I put that down, everything got lighter. Truth be told, I think the kids have really grown tired of me. Only hearing my words, my voice, my logic. That’s one concept that has really solidified for me, the kids are sick of me. It’s really ok, I’m not offended in the least, after all, I live with me too. I know firsthand how batshit crazy things can get up inside this head.

So, let me show you what that actually looks like, kid by kid.

So, let me show you what that actually looks like, kid by kid.

Kiddo 1

My oldest is completely doing online classes this year. He was seventy-five percent there last year, and he loved it. At least as much as he is going to love anything to do with school. He feels comfortable online, he’s confident, he’s in charge of his own schedule, and he always gets himself to his classes on time. He does not skip, ever. Which is hilarious, because sometimes I want him to skip. I’ll go, “Hey, we’re playing hooky today, you’re going to miss a couple of classes,” and he’s not into it. For Pete’s sake, child, that is the entire reason we homeschool. Miss a class, live a little. But no. He’s built different, and I love that for him even when it foils my Disney plans.

Now, you should know I guided his choices of classes. Kinda old school, yeah I know, but I’m determined to give him a complete transcript that checks all the boxes. He got a couple choices from my pre-selected list of options and times that would benefit him, and work for the family as a whole. Is he excited about all of them. No. Will he live, I’m 96.7% confident that answer is yes (I had to throw in one more 6-7 just to annoy my kids).

His class load: health and nutrition science, US history, geometry, a literature/film course, a debate class. We’re still looking into some art and creative writing options, he’s not sure if he wants to take a course or just work on those in his spare time. He’s basically running his own little schedule and checking in with me at regular intervals. That’s it. That’s my whole job with him now. Plan and check in on the plan, and support the kid.

Kiddos 2 and 3

My two girls aren’t as outsourced as their brother, at least not yet. But, twice a week they go to a local learning pod, where they get to socialize (so everyone can stop worrying about it, yes they have friends), play outside, and do enrichment activities. They also bring their assignments from home to work on. The learning coaches there can help them, so I hand over the list of what each girl is supposed to be working on and they have a day out of the house. Also, because I’m not the one doing the helping, they actually listen. I cannot tell you what a relief that is. Two days of freedom, and happy kids, jackpot!

I’m still doing some instruction in ELA and history at home. There’s a US History and Writing curriculum we’re doing. We can kill two birds with one stone, history and writing stapled together, mostly done. Except some additional history. Here’s where I’m leaning into a growth edge I’ve been working on. I’m letting the children lead a little more. This is my first attempt at being interest-led instead of over-planning a brilliant lesson my kids care nothing about. I have no idea exactly where all this lands, and I’m weirdly excited about that.

Finally, Math. You know math is my arch nemesis, and I don’t back down from a fight, so I’m still hands-on with it, but even that looks different for each girl.

Kiddo 2 does Math-U-See, which we’ve loved, as much as one can love math. She wants to stick with it, I’m good with that. However, this year she’s watching the videos on her own. I built her a little flowchart for how to work through everything, and she self-grades. Here’s the part I’m proud of, if she doesn’t understand something, it’s going to be obvious, because the self-grading is going to show a lot of wrong answers. The flowchart then says, go to mom for help, and then we troubleshoot together. This way we aren’t starting with instruction from me, and her eye rolling, and us both getting frustrated and charging into all kinds of bad territory. Of all my plans, I really, really hope this one works.

Kiddo 3 and math, it’s-been-a-journey, to say the least. That’s not just on her, she has taught and challenged me in so many excellent, albeit painful, ways. Honestly, though, I’m excited about math this year, which feels like a weird thing to say out loud, that’s why I’m typing it. I always heard, don’t change up the math curriculum, stick with it, it will work. Well, I’m saying nope, this kid needs something else. We’re using Math with Confidence this year, we already started over the summer, and it’s been so great. We’re going to move through several workbooks fairly quickly, find the exact spots where she’s got gaps, fill those in, and get her moving along in math. Not to catch her up to some imaginary standard. Just to get her steady and feeling confident, because she’s a smart kid, and she should feel that way.

Everything else, outsourced

Here’s what I’ve happily handed off to Outschool in our case. Science, both girls. What’s really cool is that Kiddo 3’s class is a physical science course wrapped up in role play, I could never pull that off for a full year. And listen, I always wanted to be the mom doing science experiments at the kitchen counter. I plan them, I buy the stuff, but it doesn’t happen often. If it does it’s not as advertised. No one learns, or enjoys, it just makes a huge mess and I have to clean up. Don’t stress about us, they bake, it’s all good.

Literature is per kid, because these girls could not be more different as readers. Kiddo 2 is my avid reader, so she’s going into an actual lit class online. I want to push her reading just a little bit. She is euphoric over young adult romantic comedies, and she’d happily read them all day while listening to Taylor Swift. My gut says she’s going to love some Austen and Bronte, so let’s see what happens here. She’s also looking at French and ASL as online options, I’m still trying to figure out if those work with our overall schedule.

Kiddo 3 hasn’t found her love of reading yet, so with her I’m keeping it stupidly simple: 30 minutes of reading anything. Anything counts. Graphic novels, manga, audio books, whatever she’s into. I just want her to keep showing up to it until it clicks or until she graduates, whichever comes first.

And if anybody wants my Outschool referral links, I’ve got them and I’m happy to pass them along. I might even round up the specific courses my kids have actually loved and drop them in the comments, because it doesn’t hurt anybody and it might save you a rabbit hole and support an awesome educator. Let me know.

So that’s the plan

That’s it. That’s the whole enchilada as of today. Three kids, three completely different setups, and a mom who has quietly stopped trying to do every bit of it herself.

I already know some of this won’t survive contact with reality. Some classes will flop, some kid will melt down, I will cry in my martini (“after 5 pm” of course), and probably I’ll rearrange the whole thing by October. That’s fine. That’s kind of the point of writing it down here, so I’ll remember I started out so hopeful, so precious. For now, this is where we are, and I feel really good about it. Which, if you’ve been reading a while, you know is not a sentence I get to write all that often.

Best of all, none of this is stressing me out. That’s the part I keep coming back to. It’s not making me feel like I did something wrong all those years I did it a different way. I’m just doing this now, and seeing how it goes.

So, finally, to wrap this up, if you’re in the thick of planning your own year right now, I want to hear it. What are you outsourcing this year, and what are you still white-knuckling yourself? Tell me. Let’s figure it out together. I’m hoping to create a space for community and, when needed, commiseration.

PS My kids do not endorse my use of 6-7, apparently I’m cringe.

Sometimes I write something a little different and post it on Substack, so In case you missed it:

And then, just today I noticed another one. We travel a lot, perk of homeschool life, and when I go to a hotel I like to put the step-out towel down by the toilet. It just makes me feel better. I mean, not to be nasty, but there can be dribbles and I prefer not to step in them, ya know? I’ve been saying this to my husband for years, “Darling, I put this little towel here so there are no drippy surprises on bare feet at 2 am.” Cough,cough…hint,hint. This morning I sat down and noticed the towel was already there. I didn’t put it there. What the…!? Like, is this really happening?

These events got my mental inventory going. When was the last time I had to harp at anyone to do their laundry? (Pro tip: let your kids do their own laundry and suffer the consequences of having no clean clothes, they pick up the skill pretty quickly once they start caring about how they look.) And what about the magic counter fairy, you know, the one who mysteriously makes all the clutter disappear? I think she also went on vacation, but wonders of wonders, the counters are tidy. Even if they’re still sticky, at least they’re cleared off. This is progress. So how the hell is this even happening? Quick brain scan, nope, I’ve not been micromanaging. I’m telling you, something unnatural is going on here.

Alright, settle down, Emily. Maybe it’s not that strange. There must be a logical explanation.

It’s probably a few things stacking up at once. The kids are getting older, which mostly means they’ve decided my nagging is more annoying than just doing what they are asked. My husband is getting wiser. It only took twenty-one years of marriage and some therapy, but he can be taught. Still, this doesn’t add up. There must be more going on here. I don’t want to brag, but I am the glue that holds everything together in this house. Without me it would all descend into total and utter chaos, right?

I sat with that last line for a while, and realized the theory had a hole in it about the size of me. It’s been the last month or so, ever since I started writing and treating Best Laid Plans like it’s something real. Not a full-time job, but something I show up for on the regular, not an afterthought. Yes, I’m still a full-time homemaker, and in a few weeks we’ll be back to being a homeschool administrator, more about that in Thursday’s essay. So what’s going on? I think what it really comes down to is this. I’ve been less hyper-fixated on the little stuff because I’ve started taking myself seriously. Finally abandoning the “I’m just a mom” mentality and pursuing something new. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and now I am one. Maybe one day I’ll even be a paid writer. Hello universe, I’m putting that out there, I hope you’re listening.

So yes, my family seems to be picking up some slack. But more importantly, I think when I finally had somewhere else to pour myself, something that was actually mine, I stopped needing the empty sink or the cleaned counters to feel as if I was worth something, proof I was doing my job well. When the whole of me wasn’t riding on whether the house was in order, I could let it be. And in my stepping back, I made room for others to step up. Funny how that works.

Because for a long time, it was not like that. When my whole life was babies and toddlers and cooking and cleaning and meals and shopping, it was so hard not to get resentful when life happened in the house. The counters I just cleaned got spilled on. The dishes got put away in the wrong spot. Nobody told me we were out of orange juice after they took the last sip. When that was all I had, it was really easy to get upset about it. It felt like personal insults to my very existence.

And that’s the part I couldn’t see back then. Boy, I hope I can survive all these mind-blowing realizations I’m having today. I was so fixated on getting every little chore done, always, because having those boxes checked off my list felt like my purpose. Now, don’t let my family hear me say this means the cleaning and the dishes and the laundry don’t need to happen, because they do. They just don’t need to give my life meaning the way they used to.

Also, I’m not judging my old self, or your current self, if you’re in a different place than I am. Past me needed that clean house to be part of her purpose during that season. When I was knee-deep in diapers and chasing toddlers around the house I was physically exhausted and needed something to show for it. That empty sink, the clutter-free counters, that was all I had keeping me from losing my shit. I needed to feel like I accomplished something, anything! Yeah, yeah I know raising good little humans, blah, blah, blah... of course that’s something but it’s the long game. I need some short-term wins. Honestly, I don’t regret it or wish I’d started writing sooner. I didn’t have the capacity before, and now I do. I don’t think I was a monster who put chores over children or a clean house over a happy home. There’s a season for everything and all that jazz. I’ve just entered a new one.

So no, I don’t think my family suddenly started listening to me. I think I finally stepped back far enough to let them. There’s nothing in the water, and besides, we have a Brita filter. The house was never haunted, nobody swapped my kids out for better-behaved models, and I didn’t wake up in some parallel universe. I just got out of my own way. And somewhere in there, with no nagging from me, the dishes got done and a towel showed up on the bathroom floor exactly where I’ve always wanted it.

What started out as a quick overview escalated quickly, and because I know how busy you are I broke it into two pieces. If you missed Part 1 go back and read that up first or you’re going to be confused, and I’d hate to see that happen to you. Save this one for when you next have a spare minute, ha ha I know, like that ever happens!

Waldorf

What it is: Waldorf comes from Rudolf Steiner, and the whole idea is educating the “head, heart, and hands” together, so learning arrives through art, music, handwork, and storytelling instead of worksheets and tests. Steiner mapped childhood into rough stages, learning by imitation and play in the early years, learning through imagination and story in the elementary years, and more analytical work once they hit their teens. It runs on a strong daily and seasonal rhythm, favors natural materials and simple toys, keeps screens mostly off, and folds in seasonal festivals instead of a lot of testing. Famously, it pushes formal academics, especially reading, back on purpose, often to around age seven, on the belief that a kid should be developmentally ready before you start.

What it looks like: Your day opens with a little morning circle at home, a verse, a song, some movement or finger plays to settle everyone in. Then comes the main lesson, a long block, often an hour or more, on whatever subject you’ve parked the family on for the next two or three weeks before switching. Instead of textbooks, your kids make their own beautiful “main lesson books,” writing and illustrating what they’re learning. A lot of it arrives through story, you tell the tale out loud at the table and they draw it or narrate it back the next day. Afternoons drift into handwork and art, baking in your kitchen, plenty of time outside, and you mark the year with seasonal festivals where another approach would slot a test.

Where I land: Confession, if I were starting this whole thing over today, Waldorf might actually get my vote. My kids were “late” readers, and the Waldorf move of waiting until a kid is ready would have pulled so much pressure off all of us, me very much included. And those main lesson blocks? I’ve quietly wanted a version of that for years. Touching every subject a little every single day makes me twitchy, and I think we’d all rather sink into one or two things at a time and actually feel like we got somewhere. My problem is I don’t know how you flip to block-style teaching this deep in, with a houseful of teenagers and a transcript already half filled. If you’ve pulled that off midstream, tell me in the comments, I’m genuinely asking. But of everything I’ve looked at so far, this is the one I keep glancing back at, the one who got away.

Unit studies

What it is: A unit study picks one theme, Ancient Egypt, the rainforest, whatever a kid is obsessed with that month, and teaches a bunch of subjects through it. Reading, writing, history, science, art, sometimes even math all bend around the one topic instead of getting taught as separate, unrelated periods. The idea is that learning sticks better and feels less like a checklist when it’s all connected, and that a kid who picked the topic is a kid who’s actually paying attention. There’s no founder and no rule-book, it’s a method more than a movement, so you can build your own out of library books or buy a ready-made one. It also bends easily to different ages, which is why families with a range of kids reach for it.

What it looks like: You pick a theme and run your whole crew with it for a week or a few weeks. You pull a stack of books at different levels off the library haul, picture books for the littles, meatier stuff for the older kids, and build out from your kitchen table: a science experiment tied to the topic, a couple of writing prompts, an art project spread across the counter, maybe a documentary on the couch or a field trip to a museum or aquarium. A lot of homeschool families cap a unit with something to show for it, a lapbook, a poster, a little presentation for whoever will sit still for it. The best part is everybody’s circled around the same subject at once, each kid going as deep as their age allows, so you’re prepping one thing instead of three. Math is the one that sometimes rides along and sometimes stays its own separate thing, since it’s harder to bend into a theme.

Where I land: This is the one I actually ran with for a while. When the all-in-one box flamed out, unit studies are basically what I limped toward. I made mine up as I went. We did oceans. We did mythology, which was a hit. Holiday themes were always a good time. I love a theme so this fit me like a glove. Here’s the bittersweet part: we lost it as the kids got older. Somewhere between elementary and needing an actual biology credit, the themed magic quietly got elbowed out by “real subjects.” I do wonder what our days would look like if we’d never let it go.

Unschooling

What it is: Unschooling, a term coined by educator John Holt in the 1970s, throws out the set curriculum entirely. No scope and sequence, no lesson plans, no “today we do fractions.” The kid follows what they’re genuinely curious about, and the parent’s job shifts from assigning work to feeding it, keeping the house full of interesting things, saying yes to the rabbit holes, and paying close attention to what lights the kid up. Unschoolers lean on the idea that learning is already baked into real life: cooking is math and chemistry, a trip is geography and history, a kid’s obsession is a whole curriculum if you let it run. The bet is that a genuinely interested kid learns more, and keeps loving it, than one marched through a checklist. And to be clear, this is not “school at home minus the worksheets,” it’s a real philosophy with real trust behind it.

What it looks like: There’s no bell schedule and no subject blocks in your day. It gets shaped by whatever your kid is chasing, a question at breakfast, a project spread across the living room floor, a thing they saw yesterday and can’t stop thinking about. You do a lot of quiet “strewing,” leaving books, kits, and documentaries around the house where they might get picked up, and you say yes to the library, the museum, the creek out back. One kid might sink weeks into a single obsession and then swerve to something completely different, and under your roof that’s allowed. Real life around the house carries a lot of the load, cooking, budgeting, building something, maybe a little side hustle, and your job is to catch a spark and quietly hand over whatever feeds it next.

Where I land: I want to love this one, I really do. And let me be clear about something, because unschooling gets a bad rap it does not deserve. The unschooling parents I know are some of the most tuned-in, involved people in this whole community. This is not hand-the-kid-a-tablet-and-clock-out. It’s a different kind of work, and often a harder one. My hangup isn’t the educational value, it’s me. I could never make peace with unschooling, because I’m really type A, and because my mind doesn’t work this way. And i worried if one of mine ever wants to walk into a regular classroom, I need them able to make that jump without losing a year. So I admire unschooling from a respectful distance. It’s not that it’s wrong. It’s that it hands me more anxiety than I can carry.

Where this all landed me

Okay, step back with me for a second, because after all that I noticed something. Almost every one of these shines brightest when your kids are little. Waldorf, Montessori, unit studies, the pretty ones, they’re built for small kids and long endless afternoons. Teaching a six-year-old and teaching a sixteen-year-old who needs an actual diploma are two different sports, and most of these are quietly designed for the first one. Nobody warns you that the method that saved your kindergarten year might not survive high school.

Which is pretty much how you end up where I ended up.

Eclectic

What it is: Eclectic homeschooling is the refusal to pick just one. You borrow from everybody, a little classical structure here, a Charlotte Mason read-aloud there, a unit study when the mood strikes, an online class for the subject you don’t want to teach. The key is that it’s chosen, not thrown together at random but matched to what each child actually needs, so one kid might get a workbook-heavy math while another gets everything hands-on. It shifts year to year as the kids change and things stop working. There’s no founder and no label on the door, and it’s probably the most common way people actually homeschool, even if it’s the hardest one to explain to extended family.

What it looks like: It’s a patchwork, and it looks a little different in every house that does it, yours included. Maybe math comes from one solid program you trust, writing from another, history runs as a literature stack or a unit study on the couch, and science is an online class or a co-op because you’d rather not run the experiments on your own kitchen table. Some subjects your kids do all together, others each one does on their own level. Your bookshelf is a mix of five different publishers and nobody’s mad about it. And when something clearly isn’t working come November, you pull it and move on, no ceremony, no guilt. It can even look like a totally different lineup for each kid under the same roof.

Where I land: Right here. Obviously. But here’s the part that took me seven years to understand. I was eclectic before I ever heard the word. Remember way back at the start of this series, and if you’re still with me bless you, when I admitted I just rigged the thing myself, a curriculum here, a class there? That’s eclectic homeschool. I didn’t study the options and choose wisely. I backed into it by doing, flopping, adjusting, and doing again.

And the more I think about it, the less it feels like a confession and the more it feels like the actual point. My kids watched me try things that didn’t work and change course without the world ending. They watched me fake it till I made it, which, say what you want, is a genuinely useful skill to have. They watched me stick with the hard stuff while staying loose about how we got through it.

Here’s the most important part. What actually changes every one of these methods is the kid standing in front of it. The method is just a starting line. Your kid is the whole race. And nobody, not the curriculum catalog, not the loudest voice in the comments, not me, knows that kid like you do. You are the expert in your own child. So when your gut says the shiny method everybody swears by is not going to fly in your house, trust your gut.

And trust your gut about you, too. A method that works beautifully for your kid but runs you into the ground by October isn’t the one. It has to fit both of you, or it doesn’t fit.

So if you’re standing where I was, hunting for your label before you even start, here’s my actual advice. Go look into the approaches, all of them. Then hold every single one loosely. Be ready to pivot the second a method is serving the imaginary kid in the on the Pinterest board instead of the real one at your kitchen table. And try not to get so far into your own head that you miss the best part of this whole ridiculous, wonderful setup. It’s your school. And you (more or less) make the rules.

Thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear if you found you’re type (or you already knew it because you’re just that cool), leave a comment and let me know.

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Sometimes I write something a little different and post it on Substack, so In case you missed it:

Then I tried it

And I realized, I liked it, a lot. I wasn’t using AI to write for me. I was misinformed on what AI was and wasn’t. It wasn’t a replacement for human ingenuity, but it was really helping me focus. It helped me separate the words I wanted to draft for an essay from the grocery list I needed to make. Trust me when I tell you, I’m a very verbal processor. Like I make really huge word salads, and I have a hard time keeping up with myself. So talking to AI, not having to slow down to correct anything at first, and having it organize everything I just brain dumped, that was like crack, I was hooked.

It’s not as if I don’t have some compositional skills. I had a beloved high school teacher who drove the five paragraph essay into my head so deep I’ll be spouting introductions and conclusions for the rest of my life. She would also cringe at my love of run-on sentences and comma splices. I intentionally leave them in my writing often, despite Claude’s best efforts to reform me.

So yes, I use AI to write this Substack. I’m not sorry about it, I’m not defending it, I do want to explain myself.

Because Substack dropped the scan

So this draft has been sitting in my active writing folder for a while, me trying to figure out exactly how to say what I wanted to say about all this. And then Substack released the AI scan feature and all of a sudden I’m seeing everyone commenting on it. Late to the party again, story of my life. But nonetheless, I wanted to share my thoughts.

For anyone who missed it: Substack rolled the tool out July 21st. It runs on a detection company called Pangram, and what it does is let a reader pull up any post published after that date and get a percentage estimate of how much was human written versus AI assisted. Writers can turn it off. Readers only see it if they go looking for it. They also added a box called a “How I Make This” statement, where you can just say what your process is. Which, really, is what I’m rambling on about here. I wanted to tell you how I make this in a lot more words, because that’s what I do. This paragraph right here, this was mostly Claude, because I don’t love research and technical writing. I did a fact check and moved on.

So here’s my disclosure

Yes, I use AI in my writing process. Do I have concerns? Ethical ones, environmental ones, capitalism ones, privacy ones, irrational science fiction ones. Yes to all of it. Does that mean I’m going to toss it out with the bathwater, fear it, or rage against the machine? No, no, and no.

My honest confession is I want to treat my publication like something real. In my mind it’s very The Devil Wears Prada meets mommy blogger, and I’m Meryl, but in leggings and a messy bun. What’s missing is the full staff of writers, interns, and copy-editors for me to bully, so I use AI for that. It’s a tool, not an easy button.

I’ve found what’s working for me right now. Mostly that’s voice memos dumped into AI, cleaned up and organized. I’m telling you, it’s a freaking shit show up in my head. I need some help wrangling the random ramblings (see that alliteration, I told you I like English, that was all me, not AI, just saying). This way, I can get them out onto the internet, and to you, my lovely readers. If you can do all that without AI that’s fantastic, I could too, but my family would starve.

Some days I take that cleaned up transcription, copy it into a word doc and turn it into my post. More often I’ll use my AI assistant I’ve created, trained in my voice, values, etc. to draft me a rough copy from the transcription. Then it spits out organized slop which I load into my word processor and proceed to labor over it for hours, fixing it. I agonize through every word, edit and re-edit again. AI is just how I find time to do this while I’m also running a household, homeschooling three kids, and have laundry that’s been in the washer for two days.

Then, finally, before I ever hit publish, I read my final versions out loud to my husband. If he chuckles and says “good job Babe,” I know it’s time to publish. If he smiles and says “nice,” I know it’s not right yet. I can verify he is, in fact, human. So again, this process is AI assisted and 100% Emily, nothing gets published unless I know it’s really mine.

Here’s a little hot take, I think using AI is making me a better writer. I’m getting a lot of practice turning slop into my own voice. The process of pulling apart the AI draft, the one I look at and think “that’s terrible and I never want my name on this,” it’s teaching me so much. The process is tedious and longer than I’d like sometimes, but ultimately I can write at a higher quality and frequency than I could without AI. Using Claude is how I’m able to keep working on multiple drafts at once. It’s how I keep track of all my ideas. What I will never do is ask an AI to generate a post for Best Laid Plans, slap my name on it, and call it a day. Never, ever, ever is that going to happen. Bonus, I’m learning to prompt engineer in the process, for me this is all a big win.

I do get why people are upset

What artists and writers do is genuinely special. Not everyone can do it, and AI is changing that fast. A lot of people who couldn’t create before, can now. For example, my husband put out an album on Spotify this year. He’s not a musician. He’s not having a midlife crisis or under the delusion he’ll win a Grammy. But without AI he never would have been able to express himself musically at all. Now there’s something out in the world that means something to him. It was a very therapeutic process for him. By the way, if you like “angry music” aka post-grunge bands, and you are struggling with extended family relationships, I got an album for you.

Bottom line, I don’t think AI can replace what humans do, but I also don’t think it erases what humans make with it. Not everyone has the same abilities, and that’s okay. It’s also nice for everyone to have more opportunities. Why can’t both be true?

One more thought, and maybe I’m just rationalizing here, but it’s not like this is the first time some big change has happened that has rocked reality. You can thank the Phoenicians and say hello to Gutenberg. AI is unlikely to be the last order-disruptor we’ll ever see. Humans have been advancing and resisting advancement literally forever, like this is the way it works. That doesn’t make the fear wrong or invalid. The ends don’t always justify the means, and our world will continue to shift and change without our consent. Some of that sucks and some of it doesn’t. And frankly, I don’t think any of us are working from some pure, untouched well of original ideas anyway. We’re all just remixing what we’ve absorbed. Okay, rant over.

Turns out, I’m not alone

I wanted to help other moms for a long, long time. Being a mom who stays home, working from home or as a full time homemaker, is lonely in a way that’s hard to explain to people who haven’t lived it. Hard to find your people. Hard to feel like you’re contributing to anything bigger than the four walls you’re trapped, I mean, living in. I went to coaching school hoping to help those moms, but the problem was most of them didn’t have time or resources to hire a coach. I didn’t find my ideal clients because we’re all too underwater to come up for air, much less join a weekly coaching session. And to be honest, I didn’t have the time to build a practice and see clients anyways. It was too much with homeschooling. I don’t like it but that’s the system I’m working with.

Then I found Substack. Now I’m here watching other moms throw a little something out into the world during naptime, between meals, and in the stolen moments from bathroom when no one has found you yet. We feel seen and valued. I get to hear voices that echo what I have been experiencing every day, and not feel so alone in this. AI is a big part of how I finally got my turn to participate in that, and I’m not going feel bad about it.

I’m not the only one saying this, either. Karli Lynn over at Motherhood Between Meetings wrote about using AI to write while working full time from home with two kids under two, and she put it plainer than I’ve managed to. “I’m not trying to cheat. I’m trying to create.” She got about a thousand readers in 48 hours and then wrote a follow-up about a Substacker with four times her subscriber count re-stacking her post to mock her, and then blocking her so she couldn’t even see the conversation. Which is a very normal, very healthy way for grown adults to behave, right? I want to applaud Karli for doing the right thing, in my not-so-humble opinion. She told us all she uses AI because she does. That says something to me that means more than “AI should be banned, shame on those who use it.”

And it’s not just the writing

It shows up everywhere in life whether the purists like it or not. Homeschool is one example. My son’s biology class got pulled out from under us mid-year due to an issue with the teacher. So I used AI to research national science standards, figure out exactly what gaps he had so he could complete the course. Then there was the government game we created using AI to better understand US elections. The one I’m proudest of is the long division tool, which you can read about in Long Division. I’m using AI in homeschool frequently, more on that in another post coming soon.

Furthermore, I’m using AI to meal plan, pack for travel, keep my to-do list from eating me alive, and I have so many other plans to implement with its help soon, of course I do. I’m following several amazing substacker-AI-hacking moms who are teaching me how to decrease my mental load so I actually have the time to write and make all my plans. Be sure to check out and , you’ll thank me later.

So where I land, because this plane needs to come down

I don’t have some tidy verdict on AI and art and where the line is. I have real anxiety about what it means for my kids’ futures, same as anyone. I’m not trying to convince you of anything or sound defensive. I’m definitely not trying to villainize AI or turn it into some savior either.

I just think of it as a tool, and a tool is only as good as the person using it. That’s a skill worth building, in me and eventually in my kids if they are willing, even though right now they want nothing to do with the “clankers.” I’d rather be curious about AI than be afraid of it. That’s a personal choice I’m making.

Here’s something funny, I’ve been running the new AI scan on my new posts, and you know what, most of it comes up 100% human. I’m fine with that, I’m human and it’s 100% me. And I’m still going to publish this post and tell you it’s AI assisted, because it is. I used AI as a part of my process, as a tool, not as a replacement for my own thoughts. Disclosure matters, my integrity matters, my audience should know where I stand. I think AI written, AI assisted, and 100% human made are three different creations, and all three are okay. We just need to say which one it is. Also, AI inserted a “full stop,” right here on the slop draft. Um, no thank you, Claude. It’s so difficult to find good help these days!

Thanks for sticking with me on this one, friend, because I wouldn’t have a Substack if I didn’t have anyone to write for, so you’re pretty damn important to this process too. I’m not going to act like I’m just some brilliant author, but I’m happy with my work and the way I’m learning to use AI to help me write. So you can call it cheating. You can say I’m not a writer. Okay. I’m just telling you this is what I’m doing and I’m proud of it.

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Part 1:

As I’ve mentioned, I didn’t set out to homeschool, it was a one year COVID pivot. My plan was to will my way through it with a little grace and a lot of Chardonnay. Because I had never thought I would home educate, I didn’t have a Pinterest board at the ready, I hadn’t googled how to homeschool. I didn’t read the how-to books. Spoiler alert, I still haven’t. I’d never heard of Charlotte Mason, and I thought Waldorf was just a famous salad. I started homeschooling so quickly, I didn’t have the time to research and plan. I just winged it. How bad could it be, it was just one year.

So, I did what was easiest and quickest. All-in-one curriculum box, scope and sequence already mapped out, no prep required, basically traditional school shipped to my door. I wasn’t crafting an educational journey, fostering a love of learning in my offspring. I didn’t know homeschool philosophies were a thing you could choose. I just thought you did school at home, so I chose whatever looked most like school as I knew it. Just learn by doing. It’s only one year.

Well, it sucked. We burned out super quickly because it turns out running five subjects like five separate class periods, at home, for three separate kids who knew perfectly well it was still just mom playing “teacher,” was not sustainable. Now that one year was turning into permanent homeschool, we needed a plan. So I’d like to tell you I got my act together and researched the crap out of homeschool, Pinterest boards and all. Nope, not even a little. So I’m not an all-in-one box kinda gal, fine. I went the complete opposite direction instead. I started to piece it all together myself, a curriculum here, a unit study there, subject by subject, kid by kid. It was like some kind of misguided recipe, a little of this and a little of that, and tah-dah homeschool. It was exhausting.

So, here I am today typing this out like some kind of internet confessional. Forgive me, for I have educated by the seat of my pants. Honestly, it’s not that I’m morally opposed to the idea of subscribing to a particular philosophy. In fact it’s probably advisable. It can be helpful for self-accountability, keeping on course when life gives you detours, and making you feel less disorganized. I’ve just, truthfully, never gone back to do the research. I’m still learning by doing, making all my plans, seven years later. Why label anything now?

Well because, at 3 am, like most perimenopausal women do, I started thinking. I thought about the community of women I’m writing for, and it occurred to me that there might be a mom out there right now who is considering homeschooling someday. She might be approaching from a different situation, not as a quick pivot, but just a legit option when her kids reach school age. I think that’s fantastic. That’s why I like to show up here and write about what homeschool life really looks like. The good, the bad, the crazy.

So friends, let’s learn together. I want to preface all this with a warning. I am not a homeschool expert, nor do I play one on this blog. I did a very broad overview search on these philosophies. Every homeschooler I know takes these labels and does something a little different with them. You might read my take on a style, decide I missed the point entirely, and go do it your own way. Good. I’m not handing out membership cards. I’m not even sure we need to name any of this. But if you need a quick overview, I’ve got you. Hopefully I saved you a little time in researching. Let’s get to it.

Classical

What it is: Learning built on the three stages of the “Trivium,” timed to how a kid’s brain changes as they grow. Little kids are sponges, so the grammar stage is all soaking up facts, memorizing, chanting, building the raw material. Around middle school they get argumentative on cue, so the logic stage leans right into that and teaches them to question things, analyze, and take an argument apart. By high school comes the rhetoric stage, where they learn to gather all of it up and actually say something clear and convincing. Great books and often Latin run through the whole thing. The book everyone points to is Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Trained Mind.

What it looks like: In a homeschool, this usually kicks off your morning at the kitchen table with memory work, you and the kids chanting math facts, timelines, and grammar rules together, the same songs on repeat until they’re stuck for life. As your older ones come up, you swap the drilling for discussion, sitting together over a great book while you ask why a character did that, or whether the argument actually holds up. Latin gets worked in as vocabulary and translation, usually with a program carrying it since most of us are pretty rusty in Latin. Writing builds year over year, from copying good sentences when they’re small toward real essays later on. And a lot of classical homeschoolers lean on a weekly co-op for the discussion and the accountability, so some of it happens at your table and some with a group working the same material.

Where I land: I wanted to like this one more than I do, because the core idea is honestly great. Teaching a kid how to think instead of just what to think? Yes please. And matching how you teach to how their brain is actually working that year is the kind of intentional that makes my planner heart flutter. Here’s where it comes apart for me. I figured I was already doing a version of this, since I map out our years within an inch of their lives. Classical wants you to change how you teach at each phase, not just what’s on the shelf, and that is a much bigger lift than I’ve got in me this far in. Pile on the heavy Latin and the Western canon, which is a whole lot of very specific content my kids are not exactly begging for, and it lands as a pass. Also, seven years deep, I still cannot tell you what a declension is, and I have made my peace with that.

Charlotte Mason

What it is: A gentle but surprisingly rigorous method from British educator Charlotte Mason, built on the belief that kids are born persons, whole people with real minds, not empty jars you pour facts into. Instead of textbooks she used “living books,” books written by someone who clearly loved the subject, and she had a name for the dull, watered-down alternative: twaddle. Lessons stay short on purpose, capped by age, because the theory is a young brain can only truly pay attention for so long, sometimes grown up brains too. Kids show what they learned by narrating it back in their own words instead of taking a quiz. Around all of that she wove in regular nature study, poetry, and art and music appreciation, plus a big emphasis on building good habits early, what she called laying down the rails.

What it looks like: Your morning is a string of short, quick lessons, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes each for the littles. You gather the kids on the couch and read aloud from a living book, then have each of them narrate it back to you in their own words, no quiz required. There’s a little copywork or dictation pulled from a beautiful passage, a short math lesson, maybe a poem or a few minutes of a composer while everyone’s still sitting. Afternoons open up at home for a nature walk with a nature journal that, let’s be honest, gets used more some weeks than others, plus handicrafts at the kitchen table and time out in the yard. Your formal school day usually wraps sooner than people expect, because each lesson is so short even though you’re touching a lot of them.

Where I land: Turns out I’m more Charlotte than I knew. She talked about “living books” versus “twaddle,” and once you can spot twaddle you cannot unsee it. The short lessons changed our whole day, twenty focused minutes beats an hour of me talking while their mind quietly leaves the room. And I’d been having my kids narrate for years, because having them “teach” me back was easier than quizzing them. So maybe I’m not classical. Turns out I’m a little bit Charlotte fancy over here and didn’t even know it. The only thing for us, the nature walks, the cuddling on the couch with the book in hand, well I tried, but in the end we missed that boat. So I can’t say this is truly my method, but there are some commonalities.

Montessori

What it is: A child-directed method from Dr. Maria Montessori who built the whole thing on watching how kids actually learn when you let them. The room, the “prepared environment,” is set up so children can move around freely and choose their own work off low, open shelves. The materials are hands-on and often self-correcting, so a kid can feel when they’ve got it right without a grown-up hovering. Children get long, uninterrupted stretches to work on what they’ve chosen, inside clear limits, and ages mix a few ages together in three-year spans so the older ones model and the younger ones stretch. The adult is more guide and observer than lecturer, and the unofficial motto is “follow the child.”

What it looks like: At home the heart of the day is a long, open work period. You set up a corner or a low shelf with the materials, and a kid pulls one down, carries it to the table or a mat on the floor, and works through it at their own pace, sometimes alone, sometimes with a sibling doing their own thing right beside them. Instead of running a lesson from the front of a room, you pull one kid aside and show them a new material when they’re ready for it, then back off and let them practice while you start something with another kid or fold a load of laundry. With the littles a lot of it is practical-life work, pouring, buttoning, helping in the kitchen, that looks like play but is quietly building focus. Math and language come through objects they can hold long before they turn into symbols on paper. You won’t see many worksheets or tests, and your school corner stays weirdly tidy, because putting the work away is part of the work.

Where I land: Lots to love here, and I see how it could work for the right kind of family. The mixed-age idea makes sense for homeschooling, because if you don’t have twins, your kids are different ages. The self-direction, the tidy homeschool corner, it all sounds idyllic. That’s where I’m not sure it would work for my crew. I wouldn’t described us as quiet, diligent workers. I used to have myriads of educational games, sensory boxes, and art supplies at the ready. The kids enjoyed them for a while but grow board quickly. It just felt like too much work for too little structured learning for our home.

That will do it for Part 1, more to come next week. I’d truly love to hear your thoughts because I’m learning along with you!

Anyways, what got stuck in my head was remembering much I enjoyed a hot shower after my babies were born. I remember stepping into the warm water, letting it pour over my heavy breasts, a welcome letdown and immediate relief. I recall feeling more myself in those moments, when I didn’t have to listen for the baby. I wouldn’t shower unless someone else could watch him, at least at first. I needed to have a few minutes to rinse myself of all the various liquids that covered me, spit up, breast-milk, who knows what else, without listening for his cries. He seemed so needy, and I just wanted to disappear into the cascade steam for a few moments. It was probably five minutes but it felt like a full vacation.

When I got out I would put Carmex on my raw nipples, and then cover my body in thick lotion. I would brush my hair and leave it to air dry. Finally I would put on fresh clean pj’s, a welcome change from a crusty nursing bra. It was my sacred ritual, it felt like the only time I was my old self and everything was under control.

That memory got me thinking. You see, I’ve fallen down a Substack hole lately, in the best way possible. So many beautiful narratives of new moms and matrescence fill my screen when I open the app. I’ll be honest with you, I had to google matrescence. I couldn’t find the definition in the Merriam-Webster, but the AI summary, referencing the Cambridge Dictionary stated, “Matrescence is the profound developmental process of becoming a mother.” Wow, there’s a word for it! Who knew? I guess, many of you did. Here are all these amazing women writers, just using it casually. Well ladies, you make me feel my age and slightly ignorant, but I’m not holding it against you. I’m truly grateful. Grateful there is a word and you’re using it, thankful you are sharing your experiences.

I keep seeing notes asking what I’d wish I’d known, or what advice would I give new mothers. It’s been hard to come up with a good answer. I hate to be cliche, but I don’t remember that season very well. I remember asking the same question myself, and the seasoned moms saying to me, “I don’t really remember. It’s been so long.” I do recall thinking that was so dumb, how could you possibly forget such a life-altering experience. My whole sense of reality, sense of self, both completely unraveled. How does one just forget?

I don’t have a good answer for you. Of course I have lots of specific memories about my babies. Adorable antics like pulling off their socks and crawling around the house with them in their mouths. All three did this, I can only assume it was the influence of our two Boston Terriers. I remember when my son fell and hit his head, three separate times, each scaring me to death. I remember my daughter, the eternal night owl, in her bouncer facing me while I binge-watched Army Wives. I remember my youngest falling asleep anywhere and everywhere because, third baby.

I remember the midwives, after my home-births, surrounding me and singing For All the Beauty of the Earth. I remember the kind and wise words of a nurse telling me, “but you are doing it,” when I said I couldn’t during my first labor. I remember my mom making me a panko breaded chicken breast and homemade mac and cheese when I came home with my son. I swear to this day, it was the best meal I’ve ever had. The first meal without a baby inside me after 40-plus weeks of nausea, nothing could be more satisfying.

As I type, my body remembers a feeling in my belly. An ancient, deep, primal knowing, I only experienced after giving birth. Sometimes I still think I feel phantom baby kicks in my womb. Occasionally my breasts still tingle if a baby cries too long nearby.

It’s so strange, I can recall all of this, but I couldn’t give you a list of do this or that. I wish I’d known A, B, or C. Sure I have a few tips like nipple shields, encapsulating my placenta, and so on, but nothing that seems profound or wise enough for this transformational time in a woman’s life.

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What I’m really trying to say is this. I don’t know how I’ve forgotten so much. Don’t ask me when they rolled over, when they started solids, or when they slept through the night. How I managed all those milestones and the sleep regression. I don’t remember.

I don’t remember because motherhood isn’t new anymore. I don’t think about missing my old self, she is a distant memory, and I don’t mourn her like I used to. I know now, she’s not gone. She’s just completely integrated with the me today. I’m not new to life as a mom, the disruption happened many years ago, I don’t really compare life now to life then like I used to. Life with the kids is just natural, the norm. The diaper years have passed. We made it through, and so will you. I can’t tell you how, but you will. You miss the old you, I know. She’s not gone, she’s just merging with the mom your becoming, and you both will grow together.

One more thing I do remember, and it’s important to name, the feeling that I’d ruined my life during the next several months following the birth of my first child. I was unprepared for how much would change and how little control I would have over it. I’d read the books, studied hard. I was ready. I had a plan, of course I did. I didn’t know about postpartum anxiety. I didn’t know about matrescence. I didn’t know I was normal. I didn’t know I wasn’t alone.

Please don’t hear, in any of this, that you are crazy or overreacting. You’re not. Everything you feel is real, you’re just not going to feel it at this intensity forever.

I still take a long, hot shower once and while. Motherhood still keeps me busy, that doesn’t change! I’m just writing in there now instead of recovering. And while I might not remember much, I remember what’s most important, being told “but you are doing it.” I didn’t believe her. I thought she was just saying what I needed to hear to make it through, but actually, she was reporting the facts. So I’ll pass it along, since it’s the only thing I’ve got that isn’t a nipple shield recommendation.

You are doing it.

P.S. This brings me back to all of you, the women writing it down in real time. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for being that raw and that honest, even when you’re exhausted and depleted. Thank you for being there for each other and for future mothers. You’re doing the thing I didn’t know I was allowed to do in that season. I didn’t have the word for it. You do. Keep using it loudly.

I’ve met an absolutely amazing group of homeschool moms since moving to Orlando. We informally try to meet up at least twice a month. Often, it’s at Disney. We let the kids hang out with friends, and we all get to enjoy the park while the other locals are in school. Suckers!

Of course, the moms enjoy it just as much as the kids, maybe more. Even as a mom of teens, I find I’m still starved for true adult conversation. A good catch-up with my friends might be better than a Dole Whip on a 99 degree sizzling summer day. Lucky for me, I choose both! So in between spoonfuls of frozen pineapple perfection, a common question always seems to come up in our chatter, “How’s homeschool going?”

For me, the answer depends entirely on how the week’s been going thus far. Sometimes I’m all “dreams really do come true.” More often, I’m rolling my eyes and declaring, “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

The “how’s it going” question feels like riding Space Mountain, up and down and all around! What puts me on this roller-coaster ride is the types of days I’ve been having that week. What does an actual homeschool day look like? There is no one answer, but I do think there are a few types.

The Great Days

Rare. Elusive. Probably a fantasy. Great days are the delusion in my head of what home education looks like. Kids joyfully waking up on time, clearing the breakfast dishes, while whistling a happy little working song, ready to hit the books. A relaxed pace because we have all the time in the world, that’s why we homeschool, right? Cookies get baked, we do a science experiment, and I even have time to walk the dogs and put away some laundry. At the end of the day, everyone tells Dad, with the utmost excitement, all the amazing new knowledge they acquired.

Every box on the planner gets checked, and there’s still time to rest before dinner, which my husband will cook.

I wish I could tell you this has happened, even once, but I would be lying. Okay, well the hubs has taken care of dinner a couple times, but I genuinely don’t know if I’ve ever had a day that looks like this great day. Maybe there are pieces of one, stitched together from implicit memory, like a crime scene reconstruction. It’s possible. So actually, if you have ever experienced a great homeschool day, or have them on the regular, please, I am begging you, tell me how. Leave a comment. We all need the blueprint.

The Awful Days

Draining. Hope-sucking. Shitty. These days, though they are few and far between, are a crappy part of reality. Tears are shed. Yelling reverberates through the walls. Doors get slammed, and that's all just me. The kids are usually exhausted and/or overstimulated. Likely they are just being punk-ass teens, like they are supposed to be at this age. I try to stay regulated. I really do. But there's only so many times a button can get pushed before a reaction slips out. These are the days no one is cheerful or happy. Everyone's sleepy or grumpy, and no one is learning. It's temporary, but when you're in it, it feels eternal.

The White Flag Days

Necessary. Fairly common. Restorative. I was going to call these “mental health days,” but that’s not quite right. These are the days I throw in the towel, usually right after an awful day, because we need a reset. Or when we get back home from a cruise where we had way too much fun and way too little sleep.

But here’s the tricky part about this type of day. It has gotten me in trouble more than once. I justify them because, hey, isn’t that the whole point of homeschooling? Flexibility. Following the kids’ lead. Why fight an uphill battle today when there’s always tomorrow to die on that hill?

Sure, we hit our mandated requirements, get in the hours, cross the “t’s” and dot the “i’s.” But I know when I’m being loose with my own conscience versus when I’m actually being flexible. And…sometimes I let that line blur because I just don’t feel like doing school that day. The kids sure as hell aren’t going to fight me on that one!

The truth about white flag days is this: they don’t cause me enough anxiety, because I’m not really worried about them affecting the kids long-term. I figure, they’re smart people, they’re kind humans, they’ll figure it out. Let’s be honest, half of what we “cover” isn’t going to stick anyway, and it doesn’t need to. But too many white flag days in a row, and they stop being a type of homeschool day at all. They become the norm instead of the exception, and that’s a slippery slope I need to be aware of, because that’s how I end up doing math lessons over the summer.

The Rhythmic Days

Simple. Nondescript. Just…life. Nobody talks about these days because there is not a lot to say. Sitting down to write this, looking at the other types of days, I thought, “well, it’s never great, or awful all that often. I already ratted myself out with the white flag days, what am I missing? Ahhh, it’s a rhythmic day. A normal homeschool rhythm where the day never goes completely off the rails, but at the same time doesn’t check every box. It leaves you feeling content and worn out in the best way.

Sometimes our rhythm looks like morning school. We get the lessons done and move on with whatever else is happening that day. Lately, because the kids don’t wake up till the crack of noon, the rhythm is afternoon school. This includes me racing to get the dishes loaded and a load of laundry folded. This way I have a few minutes to hop on Substack to read the posts I’ve been stockpiling, before we dive into lessons.

It looks like checking in with Kiddo 1 because he mostly takes online classes now, while working through a writing assignment with Kiddo 2, who would rather be singing Taylor Swift songs, but is starting to find her groove in composition. It nearly always looks like me slowing down and shutting up for Kiddo 3 who really needs quiet to find her own thoughts and do her math.

It’s following a rabbit trail just long enough to actually learn something, without losing the thread of the lesson entirely. It’s the sweet eye rolls, the kind that feel like an inside joke instead of teenage contempt. It’s glancing at the planner at the end of the day and realizing we didn’t hit 100 percent, but we moved the needle. That’s a rhythmic day, and that’s most homeschool.

So, where does that leave us? (Besides in line for a Dole Whip)

My conclusion is that there is no typical homeschool schedule. There are patterns, there’s curriculum, and, sure, there are plans we can make. And there are days we throw the whole damn plan out and go to Magic Kingdom instead.

Some days, when the world feels a little too loud and a little too scary, homeschooling feels like the safest, coziest bubble we could’ve built. Other days it feels like the bubble is closing in and I need five minutes away from every single one of these people living in my house. We prioritize friends over flashcards whenever we can, which is how we ended up with our Disney homeschool friends community. And it’s why we’re doing math over the summer with a little regret on my part and considerable regret, loudly expressed, on the part of the kids.

So the next time my friends ask, “How’s homeschool going?” I can answer, “pick a day, any day, and that’s how it’s going.”

I’d really love to hear your answer to that question, and I’m curious what type of day you relate to most. Do you have more types to add to the list? I really want to hear from you. Go ahead drop me a line, you know you want too. Nobody wants to do this alone, let’s make a plan and pivot together.

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Sometimes I write something a little different and post it on Substack, so In case you missed it:

Sometimes You Just Have to Say Something

I’m new here on Substack, and so far I’ve only written as a homeschooling parent every Thursday. So this isn’t really my usual vibe, but something happened, and I want, no I need to, tell you about it. So happy Saturday and here goes!

Quick backstory: I came across a post, not from anyone I follow, it just showed up in a search. I’m still torn on whether to repost it or not, but the article itself isn’t really the point. The point is there’s still too many people writing this dumb narrative.

What you need to know is this: a male writer, work-from-home dad, arguing that stay-at-home parenting isn’t actually that hard, and SAHMs should stop claiming it is. Yeah, it pissed me off, and my first instinct was to ignore it. Don’t give it any energy, I thought.

Whelp, couldn’t help myself, so I commented. I asked how he could make his claim without even mentioning mental load or invisible labor, because he didn’t. He mostly talked about domestic chores being all there was to the job. If you’re a mom reading this, I’m sure you’re eye-rolling just as hard as I was. To his credit, he responded to my comment. He put “mental load” in air quotes, and proceeded to argue that because it’s something all parents deal with, working or not, I couldn’t claim it as part of my specific job as a SAHM, thus the job is easier than that of working parents. I wanted to fire back again. Instead, I took a minute, and wrote this.

Just Stop Already

First of all, I am so sick of seeing rage bait, content created for the algorithm, engagement, and all to get more likes, or dislikes, as it may be. I thought Substack was going to be different. A safe place from the trolls and mansplainers. That might have been a little too optimistic of me. Don’t mishear me, I love the little corner of the platform I’m finding, I think we might be calling it “Momstack?” It’s a space I dreamed of but didn’t know how to find when I was a young mom, or even now as a mom of teens. So it really irks me to see shit like this popping up.

Even more than that, what really rubs me the wrong way was the whole setup. What purpose does telling stay-at-home moms our existence isn’t really that “hard” serve, except to polarize us (and drive engagement, but I already said that)? I’m exhausted by the which-is-harder, staying-at-home-or-working-mom pony show, and I don’t think it’s women who are driving that narrative. When I talk to working moms, they exclaim, “How can you do that, and homeschool? I could never do that!” And I feel the same way in reverse. I did try to work after kids, and it wasn’t a good combination for me. I felt so torn between two worlds, and like an utter failure in both. I couldn’t handle the pressure. So I had to choose. My husband’s career had more earning potential, so we decided I should stay home. This is the setup we chose together, and we’re fortunate it works for us financially and as a family.

The point is, I’m done with the working-mom versus stay-at-home-mom angle: it’s an old, tired narrative, and women are done with it. Using it for engagement is lazy. I said what I said.

Even beyond the rage bait tactics and women-versus-women angle, there’s something underneath this that bothers me even more, on a deeper level: this was a man writing about the experience of a SHAM as if it’s his own. A working dad talking about stay-at-home moms? Look, we’re all entitled to opinions, that’s human. But not everyone is entitled to share every opinion everywhere, especially in a space that isn’t theirs, and especially when the intention is unclear, or worse, only for your own benefit.

This is part of why women, stay-at-home moms specifically, get so frustrated with tirades like his. We are tired of being told our lived experience isn’t reality. I’m tired of men telling me the mental load isn’t a thing, and putting it in air quotes like it’s imaginary. It’s not a thing for you, sir, because you don’t experience it. You only know what you are observing. Your wife probably makes the job look easy, because she’s kicking ass. Oh did I mention his wife is a SHAM and homeschooling their kids?

Bottom line, stay in your lane. I’m tired of people writing about other people’s lived experience as if they have authority on it, when all they really have is their own opinion. That’s what bothers me most here is it comes off as arrogant, as mansplaining, and probably as an attempt to get people riled up. It sets women against each other, working moms versus stay-at-home moms. Both are very real and very hard work society depends on. There’s actually lots of data that backs this up.

So I’m curious what his actual motivation was. Did he think this would have a positive impact? Did he think it was some hard truth that needed saying? Or was he just chasing engagement?

And Furthermore

I notice defensiveness coming up in myself here, and it’s making me cringe. I’ve been told my whole life “don’t get defensive, Emily.” No! This isn’t about my shortcomings. People get defensive when they feel attacked, that’s a normal response, not proof they’re wrong.

I think some people have leveraged this specific move, against women in particular, for a long time. “Don’t be so defensive,” translates to “your lived experience isn’t valid or rational evidence, so let me dismiss it.” “Don’t be defensive” is not always a neutral request for composure, it’s a way to discredit the response before engaging with what’s actually being said.

The same thing happens with the “calm down” angle as well. It’s supposed to sound like, “everyone’s entitled to their opinion, geez, settle down,” but what it actually does is turn women into “the hysterical ones” for having a visceral reaction. And you know what, I am reactive. What he wrote reduced my life’s work into “it’s not hard, stop your bitching.” He took a population that already questions whether their work is valuable every single day, and used that as a button to push for reactions. I’m going to have a reaction to that, and it’s not going to be meek or mild. Emily Rayburn is saying “no!”

It’s Not Okay

I do want to be honest about something else, what he wrote hurt my feelings.

I’m not going to let it ruin my day, and I’m not going to hold onto it forever. But it was hurtful, and I want to say plainly: stop doing this to me, and stop doing it to women. That’s not okay.

It’s not okay because the actual hardest part of intentionally choosing a life as a homemaker and home educator is constantly convincing myself I’m doing something real and valuable with my existence. That is the exhausting part. I do a great job of gaslighting myself, I don’t need help from anyone else, thank you very much!

In the end, nothing I write will likely change this type of person’s mind or behavior. I genuinely didn’t and won’t lose sleep over this. It got me thinking and writing, gave me a chance to say what I wanted to say, so I’ll take the win. I know exactly what’s difficult and what’s not about my own life. Calling it “not hard” doesn’t change reality.

Where I land is this: there’s a real difference between acknowledging certain truths for the betterment of everyone, and “othering” a group of people for personal gain. I’m tired of people doing the latter, and acting like it was something that needed to be said. Talk about it with your friends if you want, that’s fine, just don’t use it to put others down. I thought Substack was going to be different, let’s make it that way together.

However, just because I make the plans doesn’t mean they will work out. I can spend all of Sunday afternoon planning away to my little heart’s content. Then Monday rolls around and my precious plans become nothing but delusions of grandeur. The day goes sideways, one kid’s in a mood, and another one’s decided their grammar practice is a personal attack on their dignity. But, that’s fine, everything is okay, because it’s my plan, I can roll with it, adjust as needed, because I’m the one who made it. But if I didn’t have the plan to begin with? I would fall apart. Not have a rough day. Fall apart, as in becoming a crumbling, weeping mess of mom who feels like nothing she does matters. A woman puddle on the floor, fall apart.

You see, I think homeschooling isn’t just about giving my kids what they need. It’s about giving me what I need so I don’t completely lose it. Schooling at home, in your home, is about the whole family. A plan isn’t just a roadmap for them, it’s the glue keeping me from unraveling on a random Thursday. My planning is not only for their education, it’s so I can still be a functioning human by 5pm. That’s important for everyone, trust me!

Why bring this up? Because I feel a real pressure in the homeschool world to be all “child-led, follow their interests, don’t force the worksheet” type of mom. I get a lot of well-intentioned advice telling me this is what homeschool is supposed to look like. Let the kids do what interests them and learning will be joy. And sometimes I just want to say, cool, but not today, do the damn worksheet and let’s move on. I get it, and plenty of moms make the child-led thing work beautifully for their families. I admire them. It’s just not how I’m built. I’m the mom over here going, “read for 30 minutes, I don’t care what it is, just read something, anything!” I tell them they have to learn certain topics because that’s what’s required by law (which is kinda true and kinda a stretch, but it works for us). I assign worksheets because a worksheet never killed anyone, and I make them watch videos they aren’t interested in because sometimes I don’t know how else to communicate the information. More importantly, doing something you don’t feel like doing, because life is full of stuff that isn’t fun, that’s a lesson my kids happen to need. Sometimes we just get the work done because it’s ours to do, and then move on.

It’s not like I’m a tyrant. I do take all the time needed for my kids to learn at their pace, trying desperately to make sure they never feel self-conscious or shamed. I adjust lessons to meet the kids where they are at, or challenge them if they need it. I really do try and make it as fun and engaging as I can manage. We do science experiments and mock debates, and even launched our own political parties once. I treat homeschool as my full-time job, and I work hard. But for crying out loud, we moved next door to Disney World for a reason, and sometimes I’d rather get our lessons out of the way and go to Epcot for the afternoon. So just do the damn worksheet and we can all move on!

Sorry, got a little carried away there. Back to my main point, it’s this: one of my three kids actually thrives when I loosen the reins, I know that, I see it. She does better following her own path, and I’m genuinely trying to flex for her. But there’s a limit to how far I bend, because past a certain point I’m not flexing anymore, I’m operating too far out of my own system of regulation. I risk breaking, and that’s not going to be good for any of us.

I’m also not saying my way is the right way here. It’s just my way, and I want to stop feeling guilty about it. Honestly, I’m a little over taking quizzes to figure out what kind of homeschool mom I am. Maybe I’m unschooling and don’t even know it. Maybe they do worksheets too, who knows. What I do know is I’m my kids’ mom. I trust myself to know what they need, I’m thinking about it all the time, and I’m done feeling guilty about the rest.

So here’s what I actually believe: there’s no one right way to homeschool. There are some harmful ways, and we need to avoid those. But if you’re the mom with a color-coded planner or the mom letting her kid follow a bug around the backyard for science, that’s great, do it. We’re all just trying to raise decent, educated humans without losing our minds in the process. My way happens to look like planners, worksheets, and a lot of amazing little boxes to check off. That’s not because I’ve got it more figured out than anyone else, it’s because that’s what keeps me sane. In my book a sane mom is a mom better able to do everything the role demands. Trust me when I say my kids agree.

If you’re thinking about homeschooling and trying to figure out which kind of mom you’ll be, here’s my advice you didn’t ask for: you don’t have to know yet. You get to try this, and try that, and figure out what works in your home. And what works today, the plan you made, might not work tomorrow, and there’s actually a freedom to that which is really wonderful. I’m really starting to trust myself, at 43 years old, it’s actually happening! And if you’re already into this journey as deep as I am and you’ve been quietly wondering if you’re too Type A for this life, too structured, too bossy, too much of a planner to be a “real” homeschool mom? You’re not. You’re just the one who needs a plan to start with, then you can change it up as you go.

Here’s the deal, I’m not sure what “type” of homeschoolers we are. We do a few hours of structured work most days throughout the typical school year. We work through various curriculum, take online classes, go on lots of outings, and chase random rabbit trails down YouTube. I have a structured plan which allows me flexibility without losing my way. My kids are smart. They are creative and funny and interesting humans. They just do not love academics, for academic’s sake, and I have made peace with that.

So when I say we’d taken more time off during the school year than I’d like to admit, I’m not lying. Summer math was not optional for us this year. I knew it, they knew it, but nobody was happy about it. I get it, and I wasn’t asking them jump for joy. I was asking for cooperation. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty. Let’s just get it done and go enjoy our summer. Simple. Reasonable. Achievable. That was the plan.

Share Best Laid Plans

I started with Kiddo 1, wrapping up Algebra 1, and honestly? It went great. We were learning together, him and me, co-students figuring it out side by side. I felt good. I felt capable. I thought, see? This is going to be fine. What’s that they say about famous last words?

Moving onto Kiddo 2. The child was in a mood, and her face was doing all the talking for her. The words her face were saying are not words allowed in our home. Through gritted teeth we managed to get through the lesson. A bit tense, but done.

And then there was Kiddo 3. Math is the hardest subject for her, and I can relate, it’s not exactly my greatest strength either. I knew going in that this one would need some extra effort. So, I came prepared. We had talked it through that morning. Mapped out the plan, and agreed on a reward. We talked about would happen if we didn’t follow through. I gave her some agency, we had a deal. I really thought she was on board. I thought I did everything right, also famous last words.

And despite both our very best effort, we still ended up in the same old familiar place. Her little body curled up on her chair, head buried between her knees, completely shutting down. I was so determine that summer was not going to go this way. I was hanging onto hope with irrational desperation. I was just a mom who wanted a nice summer, pleading with my kids to cooperate. I just needed them to meet me halfway is that too much to ask? Was I being a little dramatic? Maybe, ok, but that’s not the point! I had no choice but to put the lesson on hold, oh how the mighty have fallen.

I vented to my partner, because that’s always step one to figuring out the next homeschool challenge in my world. While he was happy to listen, and he suggested I go talk to the kids. Actually find out what was going on for them. Hmm, that’s a novel idea. So I put on my coaching hat, started up my curiosity, and asked my girls what they thought we could do better.

While it took a while to get it out them, it was this: I was overwhelming them. I was talking too much. I’d jump in with assistance before they’d had a chance to think. I was filling up the exact space where their own thoughts were trying to form. I was moving too quickly or reviewing when it wasn’t needed. I was the problem, not the math. Ouch!

I sat with that for a while, I’m not going to lie, it was hard to swallow. I thought about the lesson with Kiddo 1, the one that had gone so well. Why did that work? Then like a little lighting bolt from the sky, it hit me. It was because I wasn’t teaching. I was learning right alongside him. I had no choice but to be quiet because I didn’t know the answers. Freakin’ factoring binomials, I guess I did have a reason I needed to learn about you today. There it was. My much needed re-frame going off like a little light bulb inside my head. I am not a teacher. I have never been a teacher. So why do I keep trying to be one?

When I started homeschooling I did what a lot of people do. I tried to recreate public school at home. Someone told me pretty quickly that’s not what homeschooling is. I heard it, I believed it, and I adjusted. What I failed to connect before this point was that if it’s not traditional school, maybe I also shouldn’t be trying to be a traditional teacher. Here’s what I wish someone had told me more plainly years ago: your job isn’t to replace the teacher. It’s to be your kid’s person when it comes to learning.

Some days that’s a co-student, figuring it out alongside them. Some days it’s an accountability partner, just a warm body in the room so they’re not alone in it. Some days it’s handing them a road map, here’s the video, here’s the worksheet, check in with me when you need me, and then getting out of the way. And some days it’s finding a curriculum that hands you a script so you can stop flooding the room with words and just let them think. It’s learning that when they get stuck, you can ask if they want help versus rescuing them. And, if your child shushes you, you don’t take it personally. They are just trying to think and need you to shut up. The shift wasn’t in changing up curriculum or a new reward incentive (I am not above bribery). It wasn’t asking my kids to try harder. It was me learning how to do less while being enough.

So seems like six years in I’m still learning. I talk so much about how homeschooling isn’t school-at-home. It’s about flexibility, about child-led learning, about meeting kids where they are. And I believe all of that. But, somewhere in the back of my head I was still holding onto this idea that I had to show up like a teacher, that it was my job to teach, or I was failing.

I’ve been telling my kids since they were little: you are enough. You don’t have to be more than you are. You don’t have to be someone you’re not. It took me until this summer, crying over a math lesson on day one of summer break, to remember to say that to myself.

And if you’re reading this, white-knuckling your way through your own version of summer math or whatever subject has you questioning every life choice you’ve ever made, I want you to hear it too. If you care enough to keep trying, you’re doing it right. We are not teachers, and we don’t need to be.

Let me take you back, friends, to a time when I knew nothing about anything I was about to get myself into. It’s March of 2020. I won’t belabor this part because we all lived it, and we are still recovering from the communal trauma. What matters for this story is one specific morning, the last ordinary one before everything stopped being ordinary.

I was dropping the kids off at their charter school. Little brick building. Courtyard out front, toys scattered around. One of those early Colorado spring mornings where the sun is fully committed but the air hasn’t gotten the memo yet. Crisp. The kind of morning I miss since moving to Florida, where the air feels more, well, soggy. It’s like the difference between a perfectly cooked thick slice of bacon, and the microwave kind you get at a drive through, damp and limp.

Apologies friends, I digress.

Back to the story, here I was heading to Cincinnati to continue with some professional training for my new venture, Enneagram Coaching. All the kids were weaned, potty trained, and in school. Mission complete, and it was time for me to finally venture far from home where I’d been a captive, I mean stay at home mom, for the past several years. The next chapter was calling, and I was answering.

I loved these glorious trips as much I enjoyed the learning. No children, a hotel room I didn’t have to share with anyone. No cooking or cleaning.

This trip, however, was a little different from its predecessors. I was more nerves than excitement. Schools in other parts of the country were already shutting down due to the mysterious new virus. So, after kissing my youngest kiddo goodbye, I stopped and asked her pre-K teacher sincerely, “Do you think it’s okay if I leave?”

She smiled kindly, looked me in the eye, and said, “Girl, go. It will be fine.”

I believe she meant it…I went forth…She was wrong.

I won’t give you the whole Ohio story because it’s not really the point. The point is that I was in my hotel room when my husband called to tell me the school was closed, indefinitely as of pick up that day. It felt like someone had tied a sandbag to my stomach and kicked it in the ocean. There were so many thoughts and feelings reeling around in me. I recall feeling totally and helplessly out of control. Everything I thought was solid, the schedule, the carefully arranged next chapter, the plan, was disappearing right in front of me.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

The hubs and I talked it through, my training was paid in full and they were not canceling it. I would stay, and return home afterwards to shelter in place. We would wait out whatever this was. It should only be a couple of weeks, right? I had a good supply of tequila on hand.

It’s fine, everything will be fine.

The morning before I flew home, a few of us from the training crammed into a restaurant booth for brunch. Loud, buzzy, the smell of bacon drifting from somewhere. Geez, I must really be craving some bacon.

Well, besides how the glorious bacon smelled, I also remember how absurd the whole experience was. It was like everyone in the restaurant had some unspoken agreement to soak up one last bit of normalcy. Nobody said what we were all thinking, which was that we had no idea what was coming or if life would ever look the same again. We just sat there, heads fully in the sand, and nibbled our bacon.

The airport on the way home was a ghost town. Things did not turn around in two weeks. I ran out of tequila and the schools never reopened that year. It was a strange season.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up.

Confession time, I thought homeschoolers were a little “out there.” Not mean-out-there. Just not my people. It had never crossed my mind as an option for me, and I was pretty confident I was not the kind of mom who could do it.

I had a different plan. Get the kids to school, get a few chores done, and spend the rest of the afternoon building a business where I help people who I didn’t breastfeed. Changing the world instead of diapers. I was a woman with a vision, nothing could stop me.

And then the world I was supposed to change, shut down.

I found myself in a scramble like everyone else. Virtual school, kitchen table, glazed-over eyes, cold coffee.

The teachers that year were genuinely heroic. I still get a little emotional thinking about how they zoomed story times, put on a virtual field day, and tried so freaking hard to teach in those last few months of the school year, without any little bodies in the classroom. Once some of the restrictions had lifted the preschool teachers actually drove to everyone’s houses and dropped off the graduation certificates the kids would have received at the end of the year. They gave socially distanced air hugs to the kids. Omg you guys, I still can’t speak, type, or think about it without tearing up. These teachers, they are the real deal.

Anyhow, fast forward to August of 2020.

You see, in the “before times,” when we’d never heard of Covid, I thought I’d be all cute and fancy and pre-order my kids’ school supplies to be shipped right to the school later that fall. Now I had to go pick them up, bring them home, and figure out what the hell I was going to do the rest of the school year.

The principal brought the supplies to the curb where I had parked my car. I expressed to her how much we’d appreciated her, the teachers, and the school. I explained that I didn’t want to bounce in and out of in-person and virtual all year, so I was going to give homeschooling a try. Just this one year and then we’d go from there.

She smiled a tight smile. The look on her face said, “okay, good luck with that” without saying a single word. Now, I completely give this woman the benefit of the doubt that it was all the stress and worry making me feel judged, not her. But for about ten seconds I felt two inches tall.

And then I cocked my head like a thought bubble was coming out in the air. Screw you.

Not at her specifically, I didn’t say it out loud. But I staring thinking, while we had a decent experience at this school, two of my three kids were already in reading intervention. My oldest had a rough third grade before finally getting some of the support he needed. The kids fought going to school most mornings, and were exhausted when they got home. It wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows, some fantastical magical kingdom of learning.

SO, I thought to myself, I know my kids. I’m capable. And I get to make this call for my family, not her, or anyone else.

And besides, it was one year. A side quest. How badly could I mess them up in one year when literally no kid anywhere was going to have a normal year anyway?

Challenge accepted!

Now let me land this plane.

That first unsteady homeschool year was coming to an end. It was the summer of 2021 and the world was opening back up, and it was time to go back to “real school.”

Then it happened. I noticed something I hadn’t expected.

I thought I would feel relief. Excited to get back on track, the woman with the plan, bringing home the bacon (sorry, last bacon reference, I swear).

Here’s the deal, I didn’t feel any of those emotions, I felt dread.

The 6am alarm, packing lunches, and battling to get out the door on time.

The frantic attempt to get something productive done before pickup time.

Our schedule set by someone else. All dread.

During the past year I’d accidentally figured out we had a rhythm now, and it was completely and luxuriously ours.

We could sleep in if we needed to.

No two days had to look the same.

We’d just bought a camper, and I had this image in my head of driving to the mountains on a Wednesday. Not Saturday with every other family in Colorado. A Wednesday, because we could. I couldn’t let go of it.

And also, I hadn’t seen this coming, I really enjoyed my kids. They’re really fun little humans. They ask questions that send us down rabbit holes and we chase them. We can be curious about anything and everything, not just what’s in our textbooks. We are not beholden to the hours of 8-3 for learning.

What I thought was losing control was actually gaining freedom. And I decided then and there I didn’t want to give any of that up. I’d stumbled on what I was looking for outside my existence as stay at home mom. I found purpose, meaning, and I was, in fact, changing the world. Just not in the way I planned.

Looking back, I wish I had thought to document the school year starting in 2020. You know with the obligatory first day photos where the kids all hold a sign saying what grade they are in, ready for the first day. But I didn’t, because it wasn’t really the plan — just a side quest, a blurb, a one-year detour I was definitely going to recover from, not something I was going to cherish.

But in 2021 I picked the camera back up. Sweet smiling faces, our freshly named homeschool, Lightshine Acres Academy, on our sign. We were in it now, for better or for worse. We were a homeschool family, and so I took my photo along with the kids. Me holding a sign that said homeschool teacher, like I meant it. Because by then, I did.

It wasn’t the original plan. Turns out it didn’t need to be.

If your kids are anything like mine, they didn’t waste much time asking why they’d ever need long division, you know, “in real life.” And if you’re anything like me, you want to be honest with them, so you answer, “I don’t know, but you still have to learn it. It may come in handy one day.” They counter with, “Can’t I just use a calculator?” Now, back in the day, as you early millennial parents will recall, the answer was simple. “What if you need to divide something and you don’t have a calculator with you?” Ha! Gotcha. Well, sadly, that no longer works. Those tiny computers we all carry around, at all times, no matter what, they have built-in calculators. So now we resort to this: “What if your phone dies and you need to divide something? You’ll be thankful you learned.” You will say this very confidently, with much authority, while in your head thinking, “B.S. Not even a little bit true. I wish we could just use the calculator too.”

When it came time for teaching long division to Kiddo 1 and Kiddo 2, we survived. I did end up letting them use the calculator, but only after they could prove to me they understood the process. I like to re-frame this as, “it’s also important to teach them how to negotiate and compromise.” So, win-win. This was all well and good before I began long division with Kiddo 3.

Now, something you need to keep in mind with Kiddo 3 is that she is the only child I’ve homeschooled from PreK on. She didn’t get any professional educational foundations before she got stuck with me. Sorry, kid! And of course she’s the one with the learning differences, along every last drop of sass, which she comes by honestly. This was gonna be… “a whole thing.” Which was okay, because this was not my first rodeo. I’d taught long division before to her brother and sister, so this would be fine. That’s what I told myself. Here’s how it went hold onto your horses, this one’s a wild ride.

After several weeks of zero progress on the division front, or perhaps it was even negative progress, is that a thing? I don’t know, math is my least favorite subject for a reason, I am on the verge of a full-fledged come-apart. We’ve been at this for most of this semester. We are still tripping over the simplest problems. Turns out, I do not have this. This is a whole different rodeo and I’ve lost my horse.

So I do what any devoted, making-this-up-as-I-go homeschool mom does. I scour the internet at 11 pm. I tear apart the entire house trying to find the dyscalculia books I bought last year when we were struggling with multiplication. Then I remember I gave them away when we moved. So I quickly re-order them on Amazon. Finally, I click through no less than 100 Outschool classes, looking for math tutors like they are gold nuggets in a mining town. I throw the base tens sets at the wall and, like spaghetti, hope something will stick. I am a desperate woman.

Then the breaking point. The Florida heat has returned, and since I’m a cool homeschool mom, we are doing our lessons poolside. Pool School, I like to call it. We put on our bathing suits, we work for a while, take a break, then a dip, and repeat. It’s pretty darn idyllic, except for the fact that we are still working on long division, and May 31 is just looming in the background like a creepy stalker. We pull out the dreaded worksheet and begin. The going is slow, but this isn’t about speed, I remind myself. We are playing the long game here. Deep breath, relax my jaw, let’s do another one. “The water in that pool is looking really good, if we can wrap this up we can hop in,” I gently remind my less-than-focused child. The minutes drag on and on. The sweat starts to puddle up everywhere; it’s not pretty. We work on eight, yes that’s right, eight division problems for, I kid you not, an hour and a half! I start to feel like I’m drowning even though I have not yet put a toe in the water. Kiddo 3, also not currently at her best, is only becoming more confused, more frustrated, and more withdrawn. I am ready to wave the white flag. We are not having a good homeschool week, or month. I start to spiral. And frankly, if this is only long division, what in the name of the math gods will happen to us when it’s time for Algebra?!

I stare into the blue water, trying not to hyperventilate, and put on my best cheerleader voice. Through gritted teeth and with tiny droplets of sweat dripping into my eyeballs, I tell Kiddo 3, “You are so smart, you got this!” I’m certain my facial expressions are not betraying me. She looks me dead in the eye. Her face, however, is not. I can tell exactly how she feels about me right now. “Stop treating me like a baby, MOM.” The word Mom hangs in the thick, humid air and, like an overinflated balloon, pops. I can’t help myself. I tell her, “Well then stop acting like a BABY.” She rolls her eyes and curls into a little ball. I’m no longer a cool homeschool mom. A deep sigh resonates from my core. We both stare at each other, both upset and annoyed, no one knows what to do next. Call the coastguard, woman overboard.

My husband hears the splash and comes to check on the situation. He steps in just as the tears start to emerge, mostly from me. Good news is he won’t need to top off the water in the pool tonight. He throws me a life preserver at just the right moment. We call it a “step-away” and it goes like this: when one parent is no longer capable of being a rational human anymore, the other steps in to save us from future therapy bills. It’s a good system.

Next, it is suggested to me that I should take a moment to gather myself while Dad does damage control with Kiddo 3. I ignore that suggestion and instead pick a fight with Kiddo 1. Not my finest moment, yet again. Karma immediately steps in for the kill when I dare to ask Kiddo 2 about whether her schoolwork is actually done, for which I am forced to endure excessive eye rolling and implications that I am very dumb. Today, she’s not wrong. My “super duper pool school day fun” hopes and dreams are over. I storm off to lick my wounds.

After a few minutes of co-regulation (aka word vomiting on my husband) I am calm and collected once again. I apologize and make up with Kiddo 3, and 2, and 1. Hugs all around. I’m thankful the rough day is behind us, but I’m still feeling stressed about the lack of progress. I’m questioning why I’m even trying. As I sit with those feelings, something else starts to bubble up. I remember that this is exactly why I homeschool. The day was less than perfect, but we spent it together. No one else would struggle for an hour and a half with my sweet girl. No one else can love her, even when it comes out sideways, the way I do. I get to support my intelligent, sometimes struggling child all day, every day. No, I am not a math person. No, I am not a trained educator. I most definitely am no saint! But I am her mom, and I’ve got this.

I’m no longer drowning. I’m back on my horse.

The After Math

Over the next few days I really began to think about the words Kiddo 3 had been saying while I’d been trying to drill long division into her. When I finally slowed down enough to actually listen ,not just troubleshoot, I started noticing things I’d been missing in my exhaustion and my need to check this skill off the list.

She had been telling me she didn’t want to use a calculator, even though that’s what the internet suggested. She didn’t want to use the math blocks, even though that’s what the curriculum called for. I just knew it was her working memory holding her back, because she is so smart, but in all my problem-solving I’d missed something really important. She wasn’t behind. She was doing math her own way.

“Stop treating me like a baby”? I used to hear that as attitude. Looking back, I think what she was actually saying was: stop talking. I’m trying to think. My relentless cheer-leading, and the gritted-teeth “you got this!” energy wasn’t helping her feel supported. It was adding noise. Sometimes the most useful thing I can do is get out of the way and let her work.

Inspired by her persistence, I wanted to do some inventing of my own, but I was a little stuck. So I used AI as a thinking partner to help me put together the patterns I was noticing. I typed in the words and phrases she’d been using, described where she kept getting tripped up. It told me she was onto something: she was doubling as a way of calculating in her head, skip counting to divide. We made a number line of sorts that helped her see it visually so she could stop miscalculating by those few stubborn units because she was so close, just a little bit off. Once she had something concrete to hold onto, the working memory cleared and the steps started to click.

I’ll be honest, I almost didn’t include the AI part. It felt like cheating, somehow. But here’s my hot take: using every tool available to figure out your kid isn’t cheating. It’s the job. The AI didn’t sit by the pool and watch her face. I did. It just helped me organize what I already knew.

Looking back, I can appreciate the many privileges I enjoy. Not everyone gets to do pool school, not everyone has a partner who can step away with them. We don’t all have the same resources. But no matter what your homeschool looks like, I do believe the true blessing we all share is the freedom to make it up as we go. We don’t have the confines of regulated testing or rigid schedules. We get the freedom to see our kids as whole humans, assess their capabilities and our own, and adapt. The only tool I really needed for long division was the ability to see my child with a heart only a parent can, and trust myself to help her in whatever way I could.

And yes. She can now do long division.