Episode 293: Voices from the Conference: Homeschooling Around and Through Major Transitions with LaShawne Thomas
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Does your zeal for teaching weaken about halfway through the year? Then you are invited to join us for the ADE at Home Virtual Conference for Recharging and Rejuvenation. This year's conference, A Fresh and Living Way, begins February 7th to 8th, but is not limited to those two days. Because it is online, you will be able to participate anytime until May 1st, whenever and however you choose.

Gain new insight and inspiration from 29 presenters, including your friends at A Delectable Education. Best of all, see inside real homes with real Charlotte Mason moms teaching their own children in real time, representing the whole scope of the curriculum feast.

Early bird registration begins November 29. Prices increase January 15. Registration ends Thursday, February 6. The online platform we use allows you to come and go as you can, meet other moms with similar challenges, receive instruction from experts, get encouragement to keep

On when the going is tough, gain clarity where you lack understanding, and find hope to carry on. Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I'm Emily Kaiser, and I'm very excited to bring you our episode today.

It is part of our occasional series, Voices from the Conference. As you probably know by now, we at A Delectable Education host a virtual conference each February to hopefully bring some inspiration and encouragement to what is notoriously a dark stretch in the homeschooling year, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.

Not only are Charlotte Mason educators from all over the world able to join us due to the virtual platform of this event, so many have personally written to share how they wouldn't ever be able to get away for a conference or retreat except for one online. We are so grateful to have the opportunity to pour into the broader Charlotte Mason community this way.

However, we know that many are still not able to participate, and even those who do always long for something more, and that brings us to the Voices of the Conference series. We use these episodes to highlight one of the speakers or ideas that came out in a past year's conference. We hope you enjoy this little taste of the conference and getting to know one of the speakers better. We would love to have you join us at the next ADE at Home conference happening in just a few weeks, February 7th and 8th, 2025.

It seems like just about everyone we've talked with in the last year has been experiencing major upheaval, health crises and the like, or going through major transitions. At the ADE at Home 2024 virtual conference, we asked our friend LaShawn Thomas to share her experiences going through times of change, job and career related, pregnancies and international moves, sometimes all of those at once.

Today, we are bringing our podcast listeners LaShawn's encouraging and practical advice for coping with these unsettling events and maintaining consistency in homeschooling through it all. Hello, I am LaShawn Thomas. I am wife to my recently retired Navy husband and mom to three children. I have two daughters and one son, and I've been homeschooling using the Charlotte Mason philosophy for a little over seven years now.

After several moves over the past several years and many other life events during those that time I will be speaking with you today about the idea of continuing homeschooling through life's major transitions But first, please join me in our conference prayer Father Son and Holy Spirit Thank you for this day. Please bless us as we work learn and play

Thank you for your presence with us in all that we do. May we bring glory and honor to you. So what will I be talking about today? Because this could be a pretty big topic.

Well, last year I had the opportunity to share in a breakout session during the ADE at home conference. And I came away from the session realizing that we could have had several more sessions and barely scratched the surface of all the many varieties of transitions that people were experiencing.

I was hearing people sharing multiple simultaneous transitions and events that they were experiencing, and some did not have any endpoint in sight. So when the ADE ladies asked me to present on this topic, I did take time to pray, but I knew that it needed to be done.

So I have a major caveat and I want to let everybody know that what I'm sharing today is just from our personal experiences. This is what happened to work for our family based on our decision led by the Holy Spirit for the persons in our home. What I'm going to share may not work for everyone's situation or for your family personality or for your own personality or sanity.

I don't want to lay out a prescription, but rather a possibility for what could be. We did choose to continue homeschooling, even with major tweaks, cutbacks, and breaks along the way.

This not wanting to lay out a prescription is part of the reason why I chose not to include a handout. I did not want any poor somebody to come away with this list of things that could be very intimidating and thinking, "Oh, if I don't do all these things, I won't be able to homeschool through transitions." So just laying out that disclaimer. I also will be sharing the why behind our entire homeschooling journey.

because that translated directly into our decision to continue homeschooling during these transitions. I'll be sharing some of the how and the what, and at the very end I'll share some tips for coping with stress that we can all put into practice right now. So let me start off by sharing a little bit about all those transitions. Oh my! So I hope it's okay to get pretty real with you in doing so.

When Emily and Liz asked me to present this talk, we were actually prepping to enter into yet another transitional season. Emily and I kind of laughed about it. We were in that uncomfortable waiting on the Lord phase that I always call our pre-transition prep phase. So just to throw that out there.

So we've had both international and cross-country moves. We've moved six times since my oldest was born in 2010 in Virginia. We moved from Virginia to Washington, Washington to Okinawa, Japan. 18 months after that, we moved from Japan to Texas, to southern Texas. We lived on base in southern Texas after

After having moved from off base, we lived off base for a year. That was not working at all. So we moved on to base. And then from Texas, after two years, we came up here to Maryland. In Maryland, we entered the transition phase of retirement. And that's been so sweet.

We've had two international moves. So we moved from Washington State to Okinawa, Japan, and we were there for 18 months. And then we moved from Japan to South Texas. We've had two cross-country moves, as I briefly mentioned before. We moved from Virginia to Washington State. We flew that time. And then we drove from South Texas to Maryland,

We did move to Maryland during the heart of the pandemic, and so I think we hit every COVID hotspot as we drove up through the southeast to get here to Maryland.

Along the way, during all these moves, when we were in Washington, I had my second daughter and unfortunately that delivery was complicated by postpartum hemorrhage. It was severe enough that I almost needed a transition, but not, excuse me, a transfusion, but not severe enough that I definitely needed it. So I just walked around very anemic for several months after having her.

And then prior to leaving Washington to head to Japan, I experienced a miscarriage. That was pretty devastating.

When we were in Japan, my youngest, my little son was born via urgent C-section after I'd been induced. I was induced because I had a geriatric pregnancy. I was 45. So being pregnant at 45 was an experience in and of itself. Okay, so that's just a brief overview of the many transitions. I'll come back to those in a little bit.

But I do want to talk a little bit about our why. Why did we choose to homeschool in the first place? And how did it become an unexpected benefit during all of our transitions? We decided to homeschool our children because we wanted to equip them with a biblical worldview. We wanted to be able to disciple them directly with our words, with scripture, with examples, with the ministry of our presence.

Later on in our homeschool journey, not too much later, but later on in our homeschool journey, Charlotte Mason's words confirmed and expanded this idea. With her 18th point in the synopsis of her method, she says, "We should allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and the spiritual life of children, but should teach them that the divine spirit has constant access to their spirits.

and is their continual helper in all the interests, duties, and joys of life." So that really cinched it for me because that is the heart of what we were aiming for when we decided to homeschool in the first place. Charlotte Mason's philosophy provides the other reason. It is a continual philosophy that encompasses the whole atmosphere of our family.

Now, so that was the main thing that fed into our decision to homeschool and I'll come back to that a little later. Another thing was a paradigm shift that I had drawing from my former profession. I was a Navy pediatrician for some years and I got out of the Navy in 2007 and continued to work part-time until 2012 when we moved to Washington.

And I realized, so I'd done four years in college in Nebraska, four years of med school in Ohio, three years of residency in Virginia. And then we moved to Maryland, I got married, we moved to Italy and I practiced overseas. Every day, starting in college, starting in obviously in med school, had to show up unless I was truly ill or on vacation or we had a day off. It was just a matter of course. And the thought never crossed my mind to think,

Don't feel like showing up today. I just don't feel like it so I'm not going to or I don't feel like getting fully dressed today It sounds absurd doesn't it? Yeah, so in the Navy unless we had civilian clothes Friday I got dressed for work every day in uniform and it never entered my mind to

not show up. So I feel like getting dressed and putting shoes on every day enters my mind into it's time to work mode.

Now I have a new profession. It's the same profession I share with all of you. And some of you still have your profession in addition to homeschooling. But I consider this to be my new profession. After I began my season as a full-time mother and stopped working, I held loosely the idea of getting dressed every day for work.

And I had many days where my oldest and I would spend a good part of the morning in PJs if we didn't have anywhere to go. We would do our activities on a looser rhythm, which was a little closer to willy-nilly than an actual rhythm. I had allowed some of this to drift in when we began homeschooling as well. Because we were using the Montessori method, I did make more of an effort to make sure we both got dressed to begin our day because the day was worth getting dressed for.

but it wasn't because of any specific conviction or any specific decision that I had made for the atmosphere of our home. Mason's words in her first volume struck me to the core when I first read them way back when I was just trying to figure out how to transition from Montessori to Charlotte Mason.

She says, "We are waking up to our duties and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession, that is with the diligence

regularity and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labors. So this is the part that struck me. And they will take it up as their profession, that is with the diligence, regularity and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labors. Wow! I had not thought of it as my profession before really coming across that and that changed me.

In addition to that, the wise words of some homeschooling veterans guided me in my way. They warned to be careful not to get into the habit of putting off lessons. Part of the way the Charlotte Mason philosophy works is through consistency. Consistency with those daily math lessons, throughout the morning narrations, writing, and so many other subjects.

If we put a little off here and a little off there and suddenly high school is here, then I will be recognizing that I have not maybe done my due diligence. I needed a habit of diligence, regularity, and punctuality that matched the diligence, regularity, and punctuality that I had dedicated to medicine for all of those years.

The other thing I realized, which was kind of daunting, is that except for a few subjects, I am the guide. My husband can step in on a couple of things, but for the most part, I'm the guide. The Holy Spirit is the teacher, I'm the guide.

There's no substitute teacher coming in if I'm sick or if I just don't feel like doing school today or if I need time off. So I decided when I realized that that I would not allow myself to use days when I just didn't feel like schooling to hold my children back from the knowledge due to them as persons. I would save time off for when it was truly needed. So it sounds like I'm supposed to be Wonder Woman, right?

Well, Mason offers in her first volume, and we've all heard this, "I venture to suggest not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to be absolutely best for the children, and that, in the faith that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them."

She did not limit her philosophy for what was best for the children to any specific limitations that any household may possess because every household possesses limitations, its own unique set of limitations. What is best for the children does not change based on all of our many limitations, but I believe God's unlimited grace does cover where each of us is lacking.

God was not mistaken when he assigned us, when he assigned you, when he assigned me as the stewards of these treasured children. Now I add this last bit not to intimidate but to encourage. We are all humans capable of being nourished, strengthened, and empowered to be used by the Lord mightily in the very same way that Paul, that Harriet Tubman, Gladys Aylward, or Mother Teresa were used.

When Peter and Paul reminded the lame man that they were just people, I took that to heart. I'm a people too. I'm just a people too. I am a person. So I can be used mightily by God in the same way if I simply show up. I have to add this.

Caveat as well, if you have other circumstances going on in your home, if there are learning differences, if there again are specific incidences going on in your home that may need you to tweak or cut back

by all means do that. If your personality tends to lead you toward pressing through even when you're exhausted from overwhelm, please very carefully and very prayerfully consider what your school needs to look like and be sure to stay healthy with your choices for yourself and your family and for how to proceed with homeschooling during seasons of transition. So I'm going to get to the how and the what and this how and the what was based on the why. So

Given the background of me viewing this as my profession and wanting to disciple my children and present them with the knowledge due to them as persons, when we began a season of more frequent moves, I carried this into my decision making. Given our philosophy of education for our home and the why behind our home education, and knowing that there were still indeterminate numbers of moves in our future, and that those moves would be more, not less frequent,

with the realization that transitions can come when we do and when we do not expect them. I knew that the best thing for us during our moving and newborn transitions was to continue some sort of schooling. It would maintain the sense of normal when everything, everything felt so very new. I'm going to go through a little bit of step by step. It's kind of mushy step by step. So I pray this is orderly and makes sense.

So, speaking of praying, I prayed before every single step, every single decision. And I got this from a very wise friend of mine, and she literally does pray over every single thing. So I started to do that too, because I knew I would mess it all up, all up, if I did try to do this just on my own.

So the first decision after praying and hearing from the Lord would be whether to or not to keep schooling at all and when to take breaks. So a couple of the major things we had to consider is whether to or not to continue schooling during our moves, whether to or not to continue schooling during our hotel stays, whether to or not to continue homeschooling in and around childbirth.

The next thing I really got into high gear about to kind of make this all possible, at least for my personality, was planning, planning, planning, planning, and more planning.

I have schedules for some examples. I have schedules made for each of my kids, the timetable. Printed, I forecast my terms for all of our subjects for the whole year at the beginning of the year. I provide the handouts and I go ahead and get those printed. I have my own mama's handbook that has changed greatly over the years. I print that out. I get our playlists for composer study.

on Amazon or wherever else I'm gonna house it for the year and I go ahead and order the books so that they're all in before we're starting to move. The other thing is organization. Years ago, just before our move to Washington, I realized that I would need to learn how to keep records for our homeschooling.

very specific records because I never knew where we might be moving and how heavily regulated the state that we would move to might be. So I got organized. That organization has changed drastically over the years and it actually looks different this year than it even looked last year.

Again, at the advice of a wiser homeschooling mom in around 2017, I began to plan our following school year in January. So this January, I will start planning our 2024-2025 school year.

It allows me enough lead time to look at my curriculum, look at my consult and decide what to choose, what to tweak, what to mix in with other curriculum resources for each of the persons that I am guiding in our home. I have time to familiarize myself with those upcoming form changes that always feel so elusive in my mind. And I have time to look at the subjects to decide how much my children might be able to accomplish independently

and what might require me to sit side by side. You know, I won't even say require, what I might get to sit side by side with my children to cover. I can make the schedule and allow enough lead time to test it out in my mind, enough time to get handouts all printed and even sit and do a preview time with my children. It also allows me to stay motivated to finish the current year strong.

Now I would like to walk through a specific transition to demonstrate more of our particular how and what as we walk through flew through drove through all of these transitions in 2017

The same year I saw the very wise advice given by one of the moms in a Facebook group, the same year I started to plan in January, I found out we would be moving from Japan to South Texas in May. We were supposed to have been in Japan for three years, we stayed 18 months. And we would be having an intervening three-week stay in Newport, Rhode Island, which is very beautiful, so it was like a three-week vacation.

Oh, by the way, I was due with our third child in March and we were supposed to move in May. So I laugh as I look back on all this right now. So I prayed really hard and I decided, you know, following the answers to all of those prayers that homeschooling would continue a certain rhythm of normal during approximately three total months of transitioning.

During that three months of transitioning, we would need to have a promotion ceremony. My husband had been promoted and we really wanted to celebrate that because it had been a long-awaited milestone. We would have a newborn and labor and recovery from labor.

We knew we would be in a hotel for three weeks in Japan after packing out our home We knew we would be in a hotel in Rhode Island for three weeks while my husband attended training and we knew we would be in a hotel in Texas for approximately three weeks while awaiting our Household goods to arrive and for our home that we would be living in to be ready. So right away I told myself

Self, you've got six months approximately to have everything ready for this following school year so that that is off the table. I wanted to get everything done by the end of May so that when we got to Texas, we could start school and the whole planning was not going to be hanging over my head. I had a very loosely held plan to start school in August at that time.

I didn't want any loose ends because life itself was going to be loose at that time. I didn't want to add anything else onto the loose ends. So I got my ADE consult in December and I hit the planning ground literally running. Now,

I know some of you are military moms and I salute you because I know the struggle is real. And military moves can be very tricky when it comes to household goods deliveries.

and I knew that it might be a very long, long time before we saw our books again. We wouldn't be finished with our current school year, so I planned to bring the bare amount of books to complete the term and pack the same bare amount of books to begin our first term for the following school year, just in case our things hadn't arrived yet or even if they had, we hadn't unpacked all of them yet.

Now, this is kind of funny because I've seen this on some posts since that time. What subjects? What subjects do you bring on the road? Our decision was totally determined by what could be carried well in our suitcases for hotel living and what could be done electronically on my iPad, my phone, or my laptop. That made the decision. I was going to take one suitcase for all of our school things.

Now with military moves, they do give you a greater suitcase and baggage allowance. So that is a factor for military moves that may be different for some other people.

I took picture study portfolios. I brought our geography book. At that time was Our Country and Its People. I brought two special study books for my oldest daughter. My youngest daughter was due to start school when we began the following school year. And I brought our Sabbath Mood Homeschool Term Guide. I brought our history books and our biographies, or I'm sorry, history

We had two books at that time, two history books and our biographies. The handbooks that I mentioned earlier that had all of their recitation passages, all their song lyrics for folk songs, hymns, Spanish songs, all the songs. And I brought that for all three terms because they were all in one handbook.

My youngest daughter was still doing her pre-reading work, so I brought her sandpaper letter tiles. I brought our math books. At the time we were using Simply Charlotte Mason's Elementary Arithmetic Series, books one and two, and the Handy Strayer Upton book. All of our manipulatives I had in one of those plastic Plano tackle boxes.

I had our nature notebooks and I brought my Bible because I knew I was going to be needing that a lot. So for March, ahead of time, I had planned to take two weeks completely off to allow time for establishment of breastfeeding, time for us all to adjust to my son being home. At the time we didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl, but to just adjust to baby coming home and being outside mama.

I knew we would be moving as soon as his passport was ready, so we still had to pack and organize in that time leading up to our move. So outside of that two weeks of just total time off, I wasn't even packing and doing things that week, those weeks, excuse me.

For that particular transition, I accepted an offer for a meal train to be set up through our church. I informed my husband and my girls that for two weeks, I would only, only be nursing, eating, sleeping when baby slept, and showering. So my husband's mom did come during that time. So she was there leading up, she was there for his promotion ceremony and for the time when I was induced and when he was born.

I mentioned before I had been induced because I had a geriatric pregnancy. I still laugh when I think about it. Anyway, I ended up having an almost emergency section. And then two weeks after that, I ended up with postpartum preeclampsia and had another additional brief hospital stay while they got that under control.

This was after my husband's mom had left and our church just was amazing in rallying around us at this time and being there for my husband, being there for all of us. So add into the plans, right? New blood pressure medication, different follow-up appointments for...

We had the normal neonatal follow-up appointments. We have our moving appointments. And oh, by the way, now I've got blood pressure follow-up appointments. So the best laid plans had major wrinkles and valleys and roller coasters, right? But that was okay because there was a plan to start with. It was okay that they were altered because they were already there and it was the Lord who was guiding me.

wise woman of a large family either in a Facebook group somewhere along the way or on a blog and

rightly said that the newborn gets to join into the rhythm of the life that already exists in the home. The home makes room for the little blessing with all their gear and their beds and their changing places and the blankets and all the things, but the rhythm of the home should remain. I realized that this is exactly what I had observed in the many large families we've had the blessing to become acquainted with over the years.

So little Samuel was held or he sat in his little rocker or he had some tummy time or he was nursing or he was being changed during our morning lessons. The same happened during lunch and during dinner and during our chores. I would wear him around and he was joining right in the rhythm of our family. And I really do believe that my medical recovery and emotional recovery was aided by the rhythms of our family and our

our family in the local community that we found in Japan. Now, I want to jump to the topic of hotel schooling because I've seen this in a couple places on the groups as well.

breakfast was included wherever we stayed which provided a great life lesson for that we've continued actually you make it to breakfast on time or there's no breakfast because they're not going to wait for you to finally saunter down when you feel like waking up so we actually still do that in our home if there's a breakfast time that people need to make it to we started most days either in the room

for schooling, excuse me, we started most of our schooling days either in the room, in the lobby of the hotel. Military hotels are sometimes set up a little differently, so there was a lobby area or kind of a kitchen area. We could come in and set up our books during a time when most people were no longer in the building. We would use the library on base, depending on whatever was available or what we felt like during the day.

As far as my forecasted lessons that I had, I held those very loosely and that was a major shift for me because at one time in my life I felt beholden to those. But I love the advice to not let that schedule become my master but to be a tool. We used our afternoons to go out touring around Okinawa for the last bit of time that we were there or to get together with friends to say our goodbyes and spend some time with them to go to follow-up and moving related appointments.

When we did get to Rhode Island, I took several days completely off for us to just get over jet lag, to get used to being in America again, or excuse me, getting used to being in the United States again, and just to hang out and rest.

We took a lot of time sightseeing in the Newport area. We went up to Boston and toured around up there as much as possible. And of course we were in just the right time frame to go over the American Revolution. And so it was all very amazing. And when we got to Texas, it was the same. Took some time completely off and then several days to go sightseeing and exploring our new area.

So upon arriving in Texas in mid-June, we finished our previous year in the hotel and then upon moving into our home out in town, we started our two-month break or two months off from school completely, which we spent moving in to our new home out in town.

So that wraps up that transition. We've had several other transitions since then. So once we got to Texas, we realized our place out in town was not going to work. So we moved on to base housing in 2019, just prior to the pandemic that we all got to experience transitioning through.

In August of 2020, we knew we would be moving to Maryland, but we would have a one month stay in Virginia for more training for David and for myself along the way. We had more hotel schooling because our school year was starting as we were moving.

Then another transition, my husband retired from the Navy and we moved into our current home in February of 2023. Now that sounds real simple to say, but those of you who have experienced retirement know that it's not that simple. So we spent about a year

figuring out are we even going to be able to retire? Is it time to retire? If so, what would the job be and to where would we be moving, at least in the United States? If we were not able to retire, where would we be moving with, where in the world, literally, would we be moving with the Navy? After it all came out, we were very blessed to be able to just move about 10 miles north of where we had been living.

So I use the same process as I had with our other moves and transitions with this one. Take a preset time completely off and then be flexible with our start time after that. So I'm going to quickly summarize the how and the what and then quickly move through another topic.

So, and again, not a prescription, just sharing my own experiences that if there's a foreseen transition coming up, surgery, childbirth, moving, a family member moving into the home, a home renovation, there are things that we can decide to get done ahead of time. Number one, I recommend getting your prayer habits shored up first. If that's been, you know, we all tend to wax and wane, I think, with

prayer life and move through seasons of very you know close closeness and then we kind of drift away a bit and I think that's part of the human experience but shore that up first. Next get some sort of plan either just very loosely scheduled out if that's your personality or very finely detailed if that's your personality that tends to be more my personality.

Do what fits your personality best. Once that plan is set or if you decide not to homeschool, do not spend time in the "what if" land. Don't "what if" yourself to death. Should I not do it? Should I change my mind? Don't do it. Pray, set your plan, and move forward with that thing. Even if you do school during the transition, set some time completely off during the active phase of the transition to allow for rest.

Revisit outside commitments and activities. Do they need to be put on hold or do they need to be completely brought to an end prior to entering the active transition phase? I brought our extra activities to a close about one month before we were due to move if they weren't already naturally ending. Ask for and accept help.

Try to foresee where help can be had ahead of time. I have chronically been very horrible at this, but I've learned along the way. Ask for and accept help. And also set a healthy boundary ahead of time if a helper may end up being more of a stressor than a true helper. It is okay to be honest with yourself and your family about that, and it's not being mean, it's staying healthy.

Give yourself-- the biggest thing, give yourself and others grace upon grace upon grace upon grace.

We are empowered to work wonders in this calling, but we are still humans that have real limitations. We have real emotions. We are persons too. Grace upon grace. So is that it? You're ready for homeschooling through a transition? No, no. I have a little bit more, just a little bit more. Stress management.

Anything we have to adapt to is a stressor. The moving, the surgeries, the illness, divorce, all these things are listed on the top five life stressors that can change your health and change your lifespan. So we need to know how to manage and cope with stress to reduce its effects.

And I always recommend getting back to basics. I always have to get back to basics. I've found that personally, many of these basics are the very first thing to go right out the window when I'm feeling stressed. I want to reach for the sweet treat, any sweet treat that happens to be near me or in our home. I want to sleep more. I don't want to exercise. I don't want to talk to anybody. I want to practice revenge sleep procrastination. Don't do any of this. Don't follow my example. I need to stop following my example.

The first thing, which we are all very familiar with the term, mother culture, self-care. That's what I think of it as. Our lifestyles as homeschooling parents are stressful. Transition times such as moods, deaths, and injuries, again, are the top stressors of our lives. We cannot eliminate stress and transition from our lives, but we can go a long way in managing its effects. And we can develop coping skills through our habits.

We cannot pour from an empty cup and personally I feel it is my duty to take care of myself for us to take care of ourselves so that we can walk properly in the ministry to which we have been called. It is no small task that the Lord has called us to and the wonders that he works through us are not small wonders. We are persons too.

Karen Andriola's book mother culture shared that you can take just 10 minutes for self-care for mother culture If that's all you have take it in volume 3 I love this quote if mothers could learn to do for themselves What they do for their children when these are overdone We should have happier households let the mother go out to play well that is in Mason's volume 3 and

There are many types of self-care: physical, spiritual, emotional. Find your lane for what fills your cup. Exercise. Some type of moving every day. You don't have to go out and sign up for a powerlifting class. You don't have to sign up to run a marathon in 16 weeks. You can just start where you are physically and do not be afraid to seek help so that you don't overdo things or injure yourself.

Something as simple as a daily walk has major physical, emotional, and mental benefits. Swimming and cycling have the same benefit because of the repetitive motion that's involved.

During your school time, take stretch breaks. When your kids get up to sing, sing with them. When your kids get up to go to PE, take a stretch too. Do PE with them. Run around, get loud, have fun. All of you, where you're sitting and doing your lessons, if you've had a lot of sitting lessons, you can take a stretch break even while you're sitting. Sleep.

Sleep. I took an entire year to overhaul my sleep when I realized I was heading to a very unhealthy place because I was chronically sleep deprived. And how many of us can know what that feels like? According to sleep data, Benjamin Franklin had it right. Early to bed, early to rise is the way to go. Set an evening routine to help you just get in the bed.

Turn off those screens 30 minutes prior to sleep time. Try to keep a set bedtime and wake time every day, no matter what, even weekends. That's hard to do.

Now, I've separated out rest from sleep because our rest should not just be naps and sleeping only. We need days off. We need an end of our workday. Another wise mama who has started a very large group to help and support other mamas, Mrs. Min Huang, talked about setting mother's timetable. We have a timetable for our school time. We need a timetable.

And during that time you can set your business hours, after which I'm not planning school, I'm not talking school, I'm gonna try not to even think about school. Eating habits, water. Many of us are sleep deprived, dehydrated, and we don't get enough protein each day. Not that you have to swap out carbs for protein, no.

You just need to get enough protein so you're not feeling tired. More veggies and fresh fruits, obviously. Less sugar. I always think about the big, huge, nightmarish dessert, Starbucks coffee. When I cut that out of my life, my whole life, and our budget, greatly improved. So not that you have to cut it out, just maybe keep it as an every now and again treat. Not an everyday kind of thing.

Fun. Fun will differ for each person, but we need to have fun. Let the mother go out to play. Whatever is fun to you, fit that into every day if you can. Handicrafts, playing an instrument, singing, reading, sitting alone with a cup of tea or coffee if it's the afternoon, make a decaf so you can sleep properly. Another category is breathing. Even just during this talk, I just realized I need to take a deep breath.

Now I feel better. Box breathing is a great way to fit in, just taking a moment to take deep breaths, slow down your heart rate, lower your blood pressure during the day. And prayer.

Getting real with the Lord in your times of prayer. If you've read through the Psalms, you've seen that it is okay to get real with the Lord in your times of prayer. It is okay to share with the Lord that you're afraid because you're in the hospital with this crazy new high blood pressure, hoping you don't have seizures. It's okay to share that with the Lord because he knows. He's given us all our emotions so that we can share them with him.

Do not be afraid to get counseling. Do not be afraid to get counseling. You can get counseling before you even enter into your transition phase if you see it coming. You can get counseling during your transition phase. You can get counseling after your transition phase to process everything that's just happened to you.

It has been shown in neuroscience that sharing your circumstances and experiences in a safe environment actually helps to heal us mentally.

So, in conclusion, I believe that with any other homeschooling philosophy, I would not have chosen to homeschool through any of these transitions. It would have been out the window. But with Charlotte Mason, the lessons themselves lend to connecting with one another over all the many riches found in the ideas of geometry and history and arithmetic and science and poetry.

Our connection with the Lord and with one another in my family was key to staying sane and staying whole during all of our many life's transitions. So I pray that something has been helpful to you in this discussion today. I can't wait to see your comments in the comment section. Send questions that you have. And yes, thank you so much for allowing me to share this with you today.

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