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Episode 26: Fear of Missing Out
The time of year leading up to the conventional school year can include mixed emotions. We’re surrounded by back to school focus, fellow home educators talking about their plans and maybe even wondering how we might get to our family’s own aspirations and ideas. Please pull up a chair and listen in as we talk about moving through the fear of missing out.
We Discuss:
How people are talking about planning and curriculum and being ready for the beginning of the school year. It sometimes feels like we must be missing something.
That so much has to do with how we perceive homeschooling and education and the way we go about that so some people‘s actual homeschool styles are going to require more planning than others. It doesn’t necessarily make them better but it’s just kind of the reality of logistics.
Taking personality into consideration rather than making assumptions about homeschool styles
That there isn’t one way of doing things and so just because we see people doing those things doesn’t mean that we are necessarily missing out if we don’t. It also doesn’t mean that our kids are necessarily missing out if we don’t.
Adventure lists, project lists, joy lists and compiling of ideas and plans with flexibility built in
Marketing in Back to School sales that promote the idea of a new and fresh start
Centering of school and Back to School in kids’ books, shows and movies and how that doesn’t always resonate for homeschool families – finding our own norms
Acknowledging that our kids will be missing out on things no matter what decisions we make – school or not, particular homeschool style, our particular location
That it’s okay not to do “all the things” whether that’s following the Olympics or taking advantage of traditional fall activities or anything else
Practical ways to work through feeling grief or uncertainty about the first day of school or various milestones like school pictures, riding in the bus, track and field.
The idea of “what enough is” and looking very intentionally at how rich everyday life can be
The school year as simply an extension of what you’re already doing and both the ordinary and extraordinary things you’re enjoying.
Marking down the ordinary things on the calendar as a way of noting the regular abundance of our lives
Taking “stock” of the content and process of our week from three perspectives: What do our children bring and initiate? What do we? What do the natural happenings of life? Is there an area we’d like to pay more attention to?
Challenging common assumptions about linear or standardized learning and developmental stages
Potential fear of missing out on what we had intended to bring to parenting, so actually missing out on the implementation of our own ideas
Abundant family living on a budget – ways for home education to be as accessible as possible
Resources:
Taking a Kinder Path – Home Ed Resources – Read-aloud round-up 2021 (gorgeous gift ideas with)
Taking a Kinder Path – 13 Best-Year-Yet Resources for Home-Ed Planning
Taking a Kinder Path – New to home education – Your first week
Life is Already Full – Moving Away from the Fear of Missing Out
Are we Looking from the Perspective of a Child?
Abundant Family Living on a Budget
Episode 16: Lists or Not – How Do We and Those We Love Keep Organized?
Episode 25: Self-Directed Learning Beyond Acadmics
A Lifetime for Learning – Parents Don’t Need to Offer Everything
Homeschooling Terms that Crept Up on Me…Confessions of an Early 2000s Homeschooling Mum