SS #01: Preventing Burnout Through Levity
February is often called “Homeschool Burnout Month” for a reason — because a lot of us are tempted to lose heart during this short but tricky month in which winter has surely overstayed its welcome. To combat the inevitable build-up of frustration and exhaustion, homeschool moms must have a sense of humor.
Levity — not taking ourselves too seriously — is a key to preventing that dreaded homeschool mom burnout. GK Chesterton, Charlotte Mason, Catherine Levison, and Carole Joy Seid will remind us that mom’s mood is a key component of any homeschool.
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Moms need a sense of humor
Brandy Vencel
homeschools her four children, ages 14-6, laughing at her own inside jokes happening in her head.
Pam Barnhill
homeschools her three children and turns to jokes and tickling as a survival strategy.
Mystie Winckler
homeschools her five children, ages 13-4, and laughs lots and loudly.
Scholé RDA: What We’re Reading
Your recommended daily allowance of big ideas –
The Great Tradition, edited by Richard Gamble
Mystie just started tackling this tome, beginning with the section by Plato about how people who will be statesmen should be educated – and why natural talent isn’t enough.
Rediscover Jesus, by Matthew Kelly
Pam’s church made this small devotional available to their parishioners, all about Jesus’ love for us that allows us to love others as we ought.
Island of the World, by Michael O’Brien
At Christmastime Brandy began this large literary novel about communist Yugoslavia when Christmas is outlawed; it didn’t help her holiday spirit, but it did help her understanding of how culture can’t be created via government control.
Lighten up, homeschool mom – and laugh.
We must take our mission, but not ourselves, seriously.
Experienced moms who have launched adult children out into the world will tell you: Lighten up, mom of littles. Moms need to be able to laugh – at themselves and with their kids.
When we laugh with our kids, we build relationship and memories with them. Laughter brings us out of our self-centeredness and gives us perspective.
It’s easy to get down, to be negative, to think critically, to become wrapped up in getting things done. But when we laugh, we remember that being human is about more than getting things done.
Firstborn, Type A moms are often just no fun. In our homeschool we don’t need to make every lesson fun, but we do need to lighten up and be fun in our own attitude as we relate to our kids during their school day.
One settles down into a sort of selfish seriousness, but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. Seriousness is not a virtue, seriousness is a vice, it is really a natural trend or lapse into taking oneself gravely because it’s the easiest thing to do. Solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light and Satan fell by the force of gravity.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Is your life a comedy or a tragedy?
You know, we’re either going to have to laugh here or we’re going to have to cry.
Brandy’s mom
When we get so frustrated and irritated and single-minded that we can’t smile at our children and be amused by their foibles, we’re being self-important and we are on the road to burnout. The solution is to laugh.
If you can’t laugh when your children act like children, then it’s a sign you need to dig down and get help from your husband or friends to come up out of your critical mental rut. Simple looking for and laughing at the funny side of life is a way out of homeschool burnout as well.
How to avoid burnout
A precursor to burnout is not having any fun while doing what you’ve been called to do. What has happened to all your joy? If it’s not there, you either are in burnout mode or you’re about to land there.
Answering burnout with humor can be as simple as putting “smile at the kids” on your checklist. Stop in the middle of morning time and do a dance party. Be unpredictable and make your children laugh – then you laugh, too, and feel the good medicine laughter is.
Maybe all you need to lighten up is to get outside.
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. If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense and just take a day or half a day out in the fields or with a favorite book or in a picture gallery, looking long and well at just two or three pictures or in bed without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents.
Charlotte Mason, School Education
Even simply changing up your environment, doing school in the park or a coffee shop, can be enough to brighten everyone’s mood.
Use Humor to Solve Burnout
It’s so easy to slip into correction mode and stay there all the time, being negative and critical as a habit. We need to find ways to break the habit of negativity, whether that’s with checklists, tech telling jokes, or spontaneous dance parties with a fun playlist.
Even when you do need to correct your children, when you do it with humor instead of sermonizing, they are more likely to listen and remember.
Well, I can’t use levity because even when I try to joke around I rarely managed to actually be funny, but apparently, that doesn’t matter. Showing levity is less about being funny and more about being able to have fun and see the humorous side of everyday situations, especially difficult situations.
Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project
Step back and observe the situation when you feel tense and uptight. If I were watching this, this could be on TV and everyone would be laughing at it, right? So I could take a step back and pretend I’m the audience and not in the middle of it and say, “Okay, this is actually kind of funny.”
The Proverbs 31 Woman Laughs without Burnout
Remember the verse “She laughs at the days to come.” Her laughter comes from more than a sense of humor. Her ability to take the days in stride without frustration and anxiety comes from her trust in God and confidence in His care.
The weight of the world, the burden of our children’s education, does not need to lie heavy on our shoulders. Christ carries us, them, and it.
Also mentioned:
- Catherine Levison
- CM West Conference
- Pam’s interview with Carole Joy Seid for The Homeschool Snapshots Podcast
Brain Breaks on Pinterest
- Amazon Echo
- “This reminds me of Cindy” — Cindy who? Cindy Rollins.
Nitty Gritty Homeschool Question
How do you assign reading and differentiate between free reading and school reading?
Brandy uses Ambleside’s assignments and categories to distinguish between free reads and school reading. Her free reads category is still made of books read during school hours. During reading time, they can freely choose which books of those on a set shelf to read.
Pam does not differentiate between school reading and free reading because her readers are late, struggling readers. However, her kids listen to audio books all the time. It’s free reading, because it’s done voluntarily and on their own time, and Pam doesn’t worry about “counting.” However, none of her kids have yet been in situations where independent reading has been assigned. It will happen, but it hasn’t yet.
Mystie watches if her kids are picking up books – and which ones – on their own time by choice, and as long as they are reading in their spare time, she doesn’t worry about having “free reads” as a school category.
- AmblesideOnline
- Bob Books
- All About Reading
- Helping Our Kids Become Readers: The 5×5 Reading Challenge for Kids
- Assigned reading, free reading, and raising readers at Simply Convivial
Be a part of the conversation!
Discuss this podcast with other moms inside Sistership.
Related episodes –
SS #148: De-Institutionalizing School (with Heather Olsson!!)
SS#142: Attention is a homeschool essential
SS #125 – Numbering the Days of Your Homeschool
SS #116 – Feasting in a time of fasting
SS #104 – Political Rehab (with lawyer Brett Stroud)
#94 – Cooking like it’s 1999 (with Betsy Farquhar!)
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I was so excited to have time to listen to this episode today when it was hot off the presses. The Chesterton quote? Oh, MY! And Mystie? I listened to what you said about restoring fellowship with our children and increasing the credibility of our authority when we apologize to them for losing tempers, etc (at the 14:00 remaining mark:) three times already. I needed to hear that and am eager for the Spirit to prompt me to remember it the next time I need it – which will probably be later today, but no later than tomorrow, I’m quite sure. Thank you.
And Brandy? Stop recommending books. Just – PLEASE. 🙂 At least for this year, okay?
Signed Dawn – whose copy of Island of the World will be delivered to her this weekend.
Now I’m off to leave a review on iTunes.
Hahaha! You made me laugh. And I am not sure I can stop myself from recommending more books, Dawn. You might have to fast forward through those parts! 🙂 Thanks in advance for the iTunes review and…ENJOY APOLOGIZING! 😉
Hi Dawn! I got the phrase “restoring fellowship” from Rachel Jankovic, so here’s another book recommendation for you: http://amzn.to/1Kvk0Vv You’re welcome. 🙂
If anyone epitomizes taking true joy in the little things, it’s her: http://www.feminagirls.com/2014/05/21/normal-problems/
Another book recommendation!!! ♥
I am at a Catholic Homeschool Mom’s weekend away and we just listened to this podcast together. Thank you!
It cut off suddenly at 47:27, though, and we are wondering what we missed at the end!
I think you made it to the end — I guess that last outtake does cut off quickly! 🙂
I forgot to say: thank you for taking us along on your weekend away. We feel honored! 🙂
Um, levity, yeah. I could use a little of that! 😉 Thanks for the inspiration, ladies. I feel like I have to run a very tight ship here to keep things smoothly humming along, and sometimes I forget to relax and smile a bit more. Thanks to Mystie’s tip, I’m adding “Look at kids and smile” to my morning to-do list. 😉
Pam, I remember that bit from your podcast with Carole Joy Seid and felt pretty convicted at the time. Type A, first-born, bossy, and not all that fun–yep, that’s me! It’s a great reminder for me to lighten up.
Brandy, regarding your comments on O’Brien’s book about creating culture as a way to bring down an oppressive regime: you might find it interesting (if you don’t already know already!) that Pope John Paul II, before he was Pope, was part of an underground theater group in occupied Poland that wrote and performed plays as a form of resistance. O’Brien is a Catholic author, so I wonder if the connection was deliberate.
Mystie, the bit from Chesterton was delightfully convicting. Thank you so much for sharing it, seriously. I Googled it to find the source and added it to my commonplace!
And continuing the levity topic, I have this prayer by St. Thomas More that you ladies might appreciate written in my religious commonplace book. I hope to live it out if I can!
Prayer for Good Humor
by St. Thomas More
Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest.
Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it.
Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good
and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil,
but rather finds the means to put things back in their place.
Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments,
nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.”
Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor.
Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy,
and to be able to share it with others.
I LOVED this episode! 🙂 To be honest, I probably fall under the “too much levity” group. ;o) I’m pretty sure my kids (and a lot of other people) think I’m crazy sometimes! Ha! The thing is, like you all said, in some situations you either have to laugh or cry. And a lot of the time, I choose to laugh. Or at least make a joke about it. 😉
I don’t take myself too seriously or at least I try not to. Oftentimes, and unfortunately, I think it makes me seem immature. :/ But I *am* responsible and have had to be since a young age (long story). Like you mentioned in the podcast, Brandy, you don’t necessarily have to be serious once you become an Adult. One can be mature and responsible and still be goofy. At least, I *think* you can. 😉
Also, unfortunately, I think a lot of Christians associate holiness with seriousness. Which makes it difficult sometimes! I loved that Chesterton quote and am going to share it!
I’m re-reading Loving the Little Years and just finished her second book, Fit to Burst. I really love Jankovic’s wisdom and perspective! 🙂
I’m looking forward to more from you ladies! 🙂
Great podcast ladies! I’m also working on levity. It used to come more natural, but I think as I get older, I’m a bit more jaded. I can totally relate to Celeste above, “Type A, first-born, bossy”, and might I add controlling. I also think Catie made a good point about the ill perceived notion of seriousness in Christianity. Hopefully, I can reclaim that fun loving person I used to be 🙂
I’m just kidding. I love all the book recommendations. Mystie, I think I’ve learned about Jankovic’s writing through Desiring God. Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the blog. More book recs, more blogs to read. Hmmm….can you also help a girl with more hours in her day? 🙂
This is great. Love hearing you all laugh and share. Thanks.
Thank you, thank you! I probably should listen to this every week! I am blessed with a husband who is Mr. Happy and apparently I think I have to balance him out when what I really need is to join him! Thank you for reminding me that we serve a big God and I don’t have to bear the burden of every little thing my children need.
Oh Celeste I love that prayer. That is just awesome. I need to find a bio of St. JPII. That would be such a fascinating period to read about.
Are your podcasts on Stitcher? I can’t find a match, but I just downloaded the app today, so I might be doing something wrong.
Hmmm…I will check. While we tried to apply to all the major apps that require it, I didn’t actually test to make sure it went through. I’ll work on that! It could totally be my fault!
Hi Kelly!
Here is the link to the show on Stitcher. I don’t know how to use the app (I use iTunes myself), but maybe the link will help? 🙂
This should be required listening for homeschool moms! 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing the truth. New on my to-do list: smile at children regularly, dance as needed.
Ooh! I think that should be a sign I could put up in my house!
So glad you listened, Andrea!