There are few things more frustrating for a homeschool mom than plowing through the day, feeling like your homeschool routine just isn’t working, and not knowing what to do about it.
Typically, homeschool routines struggle from a lack of consistency, excessive rigidity (or looseness), or being overcrammed. I have done all of these. I’ve learned a few things through the valleys of excessively difficult days over the last decade plus, and in this post, I want to provide some real, experience-tested, non-AI generated tips that can help you when your homeschool routine isn’t working.
Signs your homeschool routine isn’t working
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Just to be clear, homeschooling can be challenging, regardless of how awesome your schedule is. It’s not like having a great schedule is going to make all your problems go away. But we definitely don’t want to add to the challenge with an overbearing or underperforming homeschool routine.
First, let’s look at the clear indications that your homeschool routine needs to be adjusted.
Stress
A homeschool routine that is either overwhelming or lacks consistency can be stressful. Typically, you feel like you’re not doing enough, or you’re overwhelmed because you know instinctively that you need more structure. This is a sure sign that an adjustment is due.
Lack of Progress
If your child is struggling to make progress, despite effort on your part, it could mean that the homeschool routine you have isn’t working. While many kids struggle due to learning disabilities, their level of maturity, or mismatched curriculum, it may not hurt to make some adjustments to your homeschool routine.
Burnout
Do you want to quit homeschooling altogether because it feels like an impossible task you don’t look forward to?
In wanting to do an excellent job at what we do, we can often over-plan and try to include too much into our day. It’s an honest mistake and a very common one.
We don’t want our kids to fall through the gaps in their education, and we honestly want to be seen as legitimate in our efforts to educate them. As a result, we can end up making heavy homeschool routines that we can only uphold for a short period of time before they burn us out.
Inflexibility
Do you feel like your schedule is rigid and doesn’t allow you to deviate?
Likewise, do you feel like you spend all day pushing your kids to stay on the schedule, and get frustrated at any inconveniences? This could be a sign that your homeschool schedule is too tight for your lifestyle and/or your kids’ ages.
Pushback
Now don’t get me wrong, kids can give plenty of pushback without there even being an issue with your homeschool schedule.
However, if you see them feeling overwhelmed, throwing tantrums or being resistant daily, it’s possible that either your routine is too burdensome or the implementation and oversight of it isn’t consistent.
Again, while each of the above challenges could be rooted in something else, they also could definitely be tied to a homeschool routine that just isn’t working for you and your kiddos.
Now that we’ve looked at the signs that your homeschooling routine may need to be tweaked, let’s take a peek behind the curtains at the mindsets that cause these challenges.
Causes of homeschool schedule struggles
When we sit down to craft routines that we hope will turn our homeschoolers into super-skilled, intelligent prodigies, there are often things we overlook. Each of the following is a common motive for why we make the schedules we make.
Your schedule doesn’t take learning styles into account
My oldest daughter does well with visual learning. She can typically just watch videos, read, and complete her work, which makes it easy for her to take responsibility for much of her own learning.
My son, on the other hand, prefers (and does better with) more hands-on activities. He needs lots of rhymes, hands-on activities, and analogies to help him learn.
For each of them, however, I need to create a routine that allows enough time and structure for them to learn well. If I try to stuff their learning into a certain time slot, without realizing it, I’m putting an expectation on how quickly they should be finished learning and processing a certain amount of information.
This can lead to me creating a routine that just doesn’t work for them and turns into a struggle for all of us.
The curriculum isn’t a good fit
If the academic part of your homeschool day feels like a drag and your kids are struggling to complete their work, it may be worth it to try a different curriculum.
Not all curricula are created equal, and a curriculum that one family raves about may not work for your family. I know families who swear by certain curricula, but when we tried them, they just didn’t work for us.
Some questions to consider when considering if you need a new curriculum:
- Is the curriculum an excessive amount of prep work for you?
- Is the curriculum dry and lifeless? Does it feel dull?
- Do your kids complain about the curriculum constantly?
- Does the curriculum require an excessive amount of work from your child?
The presence of any of these could indicate that you might want to consider changing your curriculum or even slowing down a bit with lessons.
If you feel like you’re up for trying a new curriculum, some of our favorites are The Good and the Beautiful, ACE, and some of the books that Ambleside Online recommends.
Real-life training isn’t taken into consideration
Homeschooling involves so much more than just academics. It involves teaching your kids how to get along, training them to have good habits, and helping them understand how to be part of a family, among other things.
When I first started making daily homeschool schedules over a decade ago, I just copied whatever I saw other moms doing on the internet. I filled my whole day with nothing but academics into the late afternoon.
Inevitably, I could never sustain those schedules and I would end up feeling like a failure. It never occurred to me that a homeschool couldn’t operate quite like a traditional school and that I would need to take into account all the time it took to teach manners, habits, conflict resolution skills, etc.
Keeping real-life training in mind keeps you from making a schedule that will just end up being a source of guilt for you and will help you plan accordingly.
Priorities are not identified
If I could stand on just one soap box as a homeschool mom, it would be the soap box of priorities.
It’s easy to get lost in the vortex of what you think you should be doing, especially when you look on social media, read on a blog, or hear through conversation what another mom is doing. You end up thinking, should I have an art time? Should I have sensory tables? Should I be taking nature walks?
If you try to focus on everything, you’re going to get overwhelmed (plus, no one has time or capacity for that). This is why I tell new homeschool families to establish their priorities and “dig in.” Priorities keep you grounded on doing the things you both need and want to be doing.
For example, in our home, it is important that our kids become grounded in biblical truth and are trained how to pray. Academically, along with following the homeschooling curriculum laws for our state, I want them to learn multiple languages so they can be helpful to others and have better employment opportunities in the future.
When you identify your priorities, you can use them to form your daily routines and your curriculum choices. When you don’t know your priorities, you will end up following what everyone else is doing and constantly feel like you’re going back to the drawing board.
Practical tips for adjusting your homeschool routine
1. Create priority-based habits
I told you it was a soap box and I meant it 🙂
We all want to do the best job we can for our kiddos and we’ve already established that we can’t do everything. We must get really clear about what our priorities are, both as a family and for our kids, and use these priorities to build our homeschool routines. And then stick with them.
So how does this work?
I’ll give you an example: in our home, prayer is a priority. We believe in the power of prayer and we also believe God commanded that it would be a regular part of our lives.
So when we build our schedule, personal and family prayer time have a prominent place and are a part of our daily homeschooling routine. We show up to pray every day and it becomes a normal part of our lives.
We continue to identify our priorities and build them into our day. In this way, we live out our priorities and never feel like we’re wasting time.
2. Don’t pressure yourself
You’ll find that it takes your kids less time to get schoolwork done at home than they spend at school. Because of this, you have the freedom to not have to put all the subjects on the same day.
In our home, my older girls (currently 6th and 8th grade) have some subjects they do every day (like Spanish) and some they do every other day (like math and ELAR). Previously, I had them doing every subject on every day, I could tell they were getting overwhelmed with the amount of work I had assigned.
Once I split up their work, they stopped struggling and even voluntarily ended up doing more work than what I assigned. Who knew?
3. Change up your environment
If your homeschool schedule just isn’t working, it may benefit you to periodically change your environment.
While we have a very predictable daily homeschool routine, we will sometimes go a library, park, coffee shop, or even do lunch at a restaurant. An environment change, for whatever reason, often does wonders for the mental and emotional aspect of homeschooling.
4. Consider homeschooling four days a week
I know what you’re thinking: if we don’t homeschool five days a week, my kids won’t learn everything they need to know and this will create learning gaps.
There’s much I could say about the prevailing mentalities on “learning gaps,” but I will simply say that it takes a far shorter time for your kids to complete lessons than it would at a traditional school.
5. Consider taking an extended break to build relationships
If struggling with your homeschool schedule has become just a small part of your overall challenge, then it may benefit you to take a break from any formal homeschooling and spend time connecting as a family. Keep a basic routine (wake up and bedtimes, mealtimes, basic chores) and take some time to invest in your relationships.
I’ve found that when I neglect to spend time connecting with my kids, it makes our days harder. I know that my tendency is to be task-oriented and focus on the tasks that need to be done sometimes rather than the people those tasks are done for. But when I take time to get into their world and play with them, even if it’s just for ten or twenty minutes a day, it drastically improves how our days go.
6. Take a look at your communication style
Now, there’s a possibility that your struggle with your homeschool schedule isn’t because of your homeschool schedule-it could be a communication issue. What do I mean by this?
I’ll just use an illustration: there was a point when I realized that how I was communicating with my kids was encouraging pushback. It wasn’t necessarily that my homeschool routine wasn’t working, it was that I was too militant and unbending in my approach with my kiddos.
I’ve since learned that how I communicate with my kids will either spur them happily into action or will activate every defiant cell in their being. If you feel like this describes you, check out How to Talk So Your Little Kids Will Listen for some excellent communication tips.
7. Encourage Independence
As your children grow, they can take more responsibility for their own learning. Encourage independence and self-directed learning, especially as they learn to read. This is eventually the end goal of homeschooling: that our kids would not only learn knowledge and skills, but that would learn how to learn.
When your homeschool routine isn’t working, take it as an opportunity to reevaluate, make adjustments, and grow together with your child. With a little grit, lots of flexibility, and clarity about your priorities, I’m confident that you can make a homeschool routine that becomes a source of joy for you and your kids.
Related Homeschool Schedule & Routine Posts
Home Management + Homeschooling: 10 Stress-Free Tips for Getting It All Done
A Typical Day in My Life as a Homeschool Mom of Four
How to Homeschool and Work from Home
