RAR #214: Am I Doing Enough?

Sarah Mackenzie (00:00): Am I doing enough? Have you ever asked that question? I think we've all asked that question. If you're homeschooling your kids, you might ask it every single day or at least wonder about it, worry about it. We take up this work of homeschooling our kids because we want to raise them well. Parenting comes with no guarantees of course, but we'd like to increase the odds of setting our kids up for success and then we worry endlessly that we're not doing enough, that we aren't giving our kids what they need to succeed. If you're asking this question, am I doing enough in my homeschool, you are not alone and we're going to talk all about it today. (00:47) I'm Sarah Mackenzie and this is The Read-Aloud Revival, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. Let's get started. Andrea (01:02): I ask this question constantly. It's like a constant, almost subconscious hum in the back of my head throughout the day. Sarah Mackenzie (01:10): That's Andrea, an RAR Premium Member. RAR Premium is our online community for homeschooling mamas to help them fall more in love with their homeschools, and I asked members there what comes to mind when you think about this question, am I doing enough. Because whatever path we're taking down this homeschooling road, most of us are plagued by the question am I doing enough. And the thing is, we're sent this message of not enoughness sort of everywhere. Andrea mentions this too. Andrea (01:44): So it comes out in lots of forms. Am I providing enough stimulation for my children, particularly during COVID, that was a question when they weren't getting as much from the outside world. Am I providing too much stimulation, I'll read a book like Simplicity Parenting and think, "Oh no, I have too many things out, I need to pare back. Sometimes it's even just trying to find the difference between what's neuroticism and worry in my mind about not doing enough and what is an actual voice telling me you need to pay attention and do something different. Sarah Mackenzie (02:17): The question of whether we are doing enough is exacerbated by what we see online. This is true for me at least. I personally am taking a social media break at the moment. Our team at Red-Aloud Revival is updating Instagram and Facebook with our new podcasts and book lists to make it easy for others to find them, but I'm personally not on those platforms this season. Why? Well I just noticed in myself that I cannot see all the things other homeschoolers are doing without coming away second-guessing myself, feeling like I can't possibly be doing enough. Even when I don't have the bandwidth to do anything more. This is true even though I am not new to this homeschooling rodeo. I've graduated two fully homeschooled kids and I'm about to graduate a third. I'm not the only one who struggles with the feeling of not enoughness after being on social media. I know that. Jolene Hepy (03:16): My name is [Jolene Hepy 00:03:17] and I've been homeschooling for nine years. I have a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old. Things that make me second-guess myself are usually social media and podcasts. A lot of times I see or hear what they're doing and I question should I be doing that too? Should I add that in? It's made me think a lot about that I need to be careful about what I listen to. I want it to lighten the load and encourage and not add a burden. Sarah Mackenzie (03:52): I wrote an email a while back about how I was being really careful to guard my inputs. You know, guarding what I'm allowing in whatever I'm reading, watching, listening to. Because I see the significant impact those inputs have on the way I move through the world and on the way I interact with my family. I think that's what Jolene is talking about here, how we're inundated with messages that either consciously or maybe subconsciously send us this message that we're not doing enough, and that's because we're finite. There's always more that could be done. In his book Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman says that we are hunted by the guilty feeling that we ought to be getting more done or different things done or both. Have you ever felt like that? Feeling guilty that you ought to be getting more done or getting different things done or that you should be getting more different things done? "The problem with trying to make time for everything that feels important," he goes on to say, " Or just for enough of what feels important is that you definitely never will." We know this. There is always more we could do and we live in a culture of more is better. More money is better, more books are better, more time is better. (05:19) And social media I think exacerbates this because we see everyone else's more. I'll see one woman who grows her own food and another who takes her kids on an epic field trip, or maybe takes her kids on inspiring nature hikes. Someone else reads stacks and stacks of books with her kids and another one makes these beautifully perfect birthday cakes based on their child's chosen theme. Someone's doing hands-on experiments for science and another is teaching her kids to recite Longfellow or Shakespeare or something. So I will see all of this in the course of maybe 60 seconds as I'm scrolling through my feed, and I don't know about you, but what my brain does is combine all of those different women into one fictional person, and I compare myself against her. I might have read aloud to my kids today, but I cannot remember the last time I did a science experiment of any kind. I did take my kids on a nature hike a week or so back, but I scolded two of my kids through half of it, I came home with a bad sunburn kind of grumpy, I never make cakes pretty much ever, and even though everyone has chickens, I mean everyone has chickens, I don't have chickens. I can't even get my picky eating twins to touch an egg with a fork. (06:38) Does this song sound familiar to you on some level? Yes, this is the comparison trap. Let's hear about it from Grace, another mom who's in the thick of it. Grace (06:49): My children are ages six, four and two, so I know they're little, and yet I still worry that the providing of a beautiful learning environment in my home and having a home filled with beautiful books and fun educational toys and opportunities and yet not being worried about the schedule or competing with other kids can be hard, even though I know it's what's right. I don't know why that is. I don't know why I'm so tempted to worry about how my kids stack up against the kids in the public school system or that the fine motor skills for example for my six-year-old who hates, hates, hates to write or draw or color are just not moving along very fast and I worry that I should be pushing him harder and yet I'm afraid to squash the love of learning. I worry that he's not learning to be disciplined and focused well enough. Natalia Schumann (07:43): Hi Sarah, [Natalia Schumann 00:07:55] from Louisiana here. Yes, I second-guess homeschooling my children and wondering if I'm doing enough so many times. Particularly I second-guess when my kids don't seem to understand the subject. I think maybe there's something wrong with the curriculum or the way that I'm teaching it or that we aren't spending enough time in our homeschool day on a particular subject. I worry when my kids' friends come over and they know a piece of information or have read a certain book that my kids have not. Then I totally second-guess my curriculum choices for my children. I also tend to compare my childhood, which I was a public school kid, to my kids, and I worry that they're not getting the same blessings or the same experiences because we've chosen to educate them in a different route or means and then I also second-guess my homeschooling when I hear of other moms doing poetry memorization or crafts, art projects. They're studying artists or composers, which I know that you're a great fan of. It's just not me. So I start wondering if we should introduce other topics into our homeschool or we should use a different curriculum or again, are we not doing enough because - (09:03) Use a different curriculum, or again, are we not doing enough because those are things that are not a part of our homeschool day? Sarah Mackenzie (09:07): This reminds me of something that just happened here on the Read Aloud Revival Team not that long ago. So our community director, Kortney, joined me on Episode 206 to talk all about simple, low pressure ways to teach Shakespeare in our homeschools. So Kortney, she was using this very simple, pretty fabulous method in her homeschool co- op with a wide age group to introduce them to Shakespeare. And so she describes it to me in that episode, and I was so inspired. I loved everything about it. In fact, as she was talking, I started thinking about how maybe I should incorporate this fabulous method into my own homeschool or my own homeschool co-op, because when I do Shakespeare with my kids, we just really listen to audio dramas of Shakespeare or read adaptations and then memorize a few lines from the play. The funny thing is Kortney does something else, right? (10:01) She'll read the play, they'll listen to an audio version of the play, and then they have a drawn reflection moment where the kids draw something that they heard. And that's really what piqued my interest because I saw some of those drawn reflections and thought, oh, yes, this is amazing. Anyway, we're having this conversation on the podcast. You might remember this if you heard it yourself. She told me toward the end of the show that actually she was second guessing herself because in my house we memorize lines from Shakespeare and she was not having her students memorize lines from Shakespeare. So was she doing enough since they're not doing that? Meanwhile, I was sitting over there wondering if I was doing enough because we just read and memorize. We don't draw or do any kind of written reflection. This is the comparison trap in action. Kortney and I are very good friends and colleagues and we talk about homeschooling all the time, but the comparison trap is powerful. It just creeps in constantly. When my oldest daughter was 5, 6, 7 and she couldn't read, actually none of my six children have been early readers. None of my six children were able to read at age seven. Most of them fall somewhere along the lines of dyslexic. But anyway, I didn't know this then. She was my oldest and I wanted to homeschool her, and yet, no matter how hard I tried, and no matter what I did, she did not learn to read. So at the time, the next door neighbor had a boy who was about, I don't know, a year and a half, two years younger than Audrey, and he was reading these giant novels, really long novels. And my child, older child who was homeschooled, could not sound out frog and toad. This played into every worry I had as a new homeschooling mom, right? Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. (12:07) And I'll just fast forward for you now because we now have the gift of perspective. That child is almost 21. She's a junior at university studying English literature of all things, reading Austin, Lewis, Aquinas for fun. I could have used a glimpse of that back in the day, honestly. Maybe I would've worried less. I don't know. I kind of doubt it because that tendency to compare creeps up on us at every turn. I have a hunch that even if I had gotten that sneak peek, like if I got to peek at what she was like at 21, I might have still been asking myself that question when she was seven. Am I doing enough? (12:48) So let's talk about that question specifically. It's not really a fair question. Well, at least it's not a complete question. Really, what does it mean? Am I doing enough to what? Am I doing enough to get my kid into college? Am I doing enough to ensure she has the life skills she needs to be a successful adult? Am I doing enough to meet my state's requirements for sixth grade social studies? Or is what I'm asking am I doing enough to make sure my kid is prepared for the SATs or can write a college essay or can get a job to support himself? Am I doing enough to help my child learn to write well? Or am I doing enough to help my kids have fond memories of their childhood, make sure they remember it well, right? Or am I doing enough to help my kid pass a basic math test for whatever his grade level is? (13:43) I mean, these are all different questions. Asking if you're doing enough to get your kids into college is going to have a different answer than asking if you're doing enough to make sure your kids have fond memories of their childhood, or if they're meeting the state's requirements for, say, sixth grade social studies. That's the problem with this question. We constantly ask it, but it's incomplete. So when it's this big, nebulous am I doing enough, there's no answer because it's not really a question. So we just feel this vague sense that we're never actually doing enough because we don't know what enough is. We can't say enough to what. We're not really sure what enough means or what it would look like or what we're really trying to accomplish in the first place. James Clear, the author of the excellent, excellent book, Atomic Habits, says this, "When you're facing a complex problem or trying to do something bold, start with a smaller version of the larger problem. Focus exclusively on that small problem. Use the answers to the small issue to expand your knowledge of the larger one." So then he gives an example. He says, "Here's a big problem. How do I become more creative?" That's a pretty big, nebulous question, right? James says, "The small solution here might be learn how to take a really good picture of a chair. Once you take a fantastic picture of a chair," he writes, "use those principles, light, composition, lines, curves to take better pictures of everything." (15:29) The question of am I doing enough is not a complete question. It's big and nebulous like a giant cloud, amorphous, constantly shifting. We can't get our arms or our brains around it. It can't be contained, and so it can't be answered. So we keep asking it and then we continue to fail in answering it, and then we worry that since we can't answer it, we surely aren't doing enough. So let's make it smaller. You can't answer all of the questions of raising and homeschooling children with one question, right? So you're going to have to get a little more specific. So I think we should do that right now, right now together. So complete this sentence just with whatever comes to mind for you first, whatever's bugging you. Am I doing enough to blank? Finish that sentence any way you'd like. I'll wait. (16:28) Can you take a moment and write down whatever came to mind for you? If you're driving, don't worry about it, come back later. But if you're folding a pile of laundry or sweeping the floor or on a walk, can you pause just for a moment and tap that question into your phone, maybe into the notes app of your phone or maybe onto a scrap of paper or your journal. Am I doing enough to blank? What's bugging you? What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about your child's homeschool and you're worried about whether you're doing enough? Finish the sentence. Fill it in. Am I doing enough to help my child write a college entrance essay? Am I doing enough to teach my child to read independently? Am I doing enough to ensure my child knows and understands our family's faith? How are you finishing that sentence today? Lindsay (17:17): Hey, Sarah, I'm Lindsay and I'm from Greenville, South Carolina, and we're about to start our ninth year of homeschooling. And for me, I don't find myself worrying over specific subjects or college prep or checking off all of the boxes anymore. But the question that I find myself thinking about most is, am I creating an atmosphere in my home where my children delight in learning. When they leave my home, are they going to leave wanting to keep learning and to be that lifelong learner and actually enjoy learning? Speaker 1 (17:58): I'm wondering and worry if I'm doing enough to foster independence- Speaker 2 (18:03): [inaudible 00:18:00] If I'm doing enough to foster independent learning. And my daughter typically asks for help, and likes me to sit right next to hear. And I've heard it once before that you can't help too much, but I didn't know if I would be fostering enough independence for when she is a little bit older, and able to read directions, and respond, and think through things on her own. I want to be able to do that. Sarah Mackenzie (18:31): Your answers here will change. You know, they'll change next week. They'll change next month. Definitely, they'll change next year. But I think forcing ourselves to make that question more specific, not "Am I doing enough?" But "Am I doing enough to blank?" Is really practical. Because for example, if your question is, "Am I doing enough to help my child write and communicate well?" You can do something about that. Actually, you can do something we do in RAR Premium Coaching. We ask these three questions. (19:04) So if you were going to ask the question, "Am I doing enough to help my child write well?" You can ask yourself, "By the end of this writing class, or by the end of this school year, what do I want my child to know? What do I want my child to do? And what do I want my child to love? What do I want them to know, do, and love?" This is the heart of education, helping our children grow in knowledge, and in skill, and in wisdom, to order their affections. (19:34) So then, with the question of, "Am I doing enough to help my child learn to write well?" I might say I want my child to know the structure and form of an essay. I want him to be able to be able to write an essay with a clear point and good supporting evidence. And I want my child to love the act of reading about, and thinking about, and connecting big ideas. So know the structure and form of an essay, write an essay with a clear point and good supporting evidence, and love the act of reading, and thinking, and connecting big ideas. (20:09) So now that I know what I want my child to know, do, and love, I can figure out what enough is. Am I doing enough to help my child learn to write well? Well, how much do I need to do to help my child know, do, or love those specific things I named? Because whatever my answer is, that's how I can decided if I'm doing enough. I've made the problem smaller. I've made it tangible. I've made it clear. It's not a big, nebulous, scary question. Now it has a solution. (20:36) We walk through those steps, by the way, in our monthly group coaching sessions, in RAR Premium, so if this no love, do thing just turned on some light bulbs for you, join us in RAR Premium. We do this together regularly. This fall, we're going through this pattern with the principles of my book, Teaching From Rest, and we're considering how it looks to teach from rest at different grade levels, in the early grades, one through four, in the middle grades, five through eight, and then in high school, and we're spending some time on each of those different age levels. So if you are interested in that, definitely check that out at rarpremium.com. (21:12) And you know, the reason we're doing it at different age levels is because you'll have different expectations, and run into different obstacles at each of those stages, right? So considering teaching from rest principles, and then applying them to the early years is different than it is in the middle years, is different than it is in high school. But no matter what, it can help us be less overrun by that nebulous, "Am I doing enough feeling?" That constant overwhelmed feeling that we aren't doing enough. We're supposed to be doing more, or different things, or more different things, right? (21:42) And you know, it's worth mentioning. I just want to say it's worth mentioning that this unease, this not-enough-ness, it can go either way. We often think of "Am I doing enough?" In a frenzied way. We're not sure if we're doing enough, and we're probably doing too much. But the pendulum actually swings in both directions. Sometimes, we're not doing too much. Sometimes, when we're asking that question, it's because we're not doing enough. Listen to what Kelly has to say about this. Kelly (22:10): So much content goes towards the moms who are the overachievers, who want to do all the things, need to hear just messages of grace. But what if you're on the other end of the spectrum, and you do a bit of math with a difficult eight-year-old, and you just want to call it a day for the day? How do you know if you're doing enough? In addition to that, I live in a state, I live in Oregon, where there isn't a set of list of standards that you must do, or you have to do this. You're kind of free and open to do what you like. And while that is... I'm grateful for that, and there's a blessing in that, it also encourages... You know, if I don't have to do it, then I don't always get things done. So what is the measure? How do you know if you're doing enough if you're on just this other end of the spectrum of the homeschooling mom, and you have difficult kids, who don't want to work, and everything's a chore, and just getting your math and your reading done for the day feels like a milestone. Sarah Mackenzie (23:07): So, we can talk about teaching from rest as a virtue between two vices. Imagine a balancing scale, the kind where there are two sides on a crossbar, right? With a basket on either side, and teaching from rest is in the middle. It's the virtue in the middle. On one side of the scale is the vice of anxiety, teaching from anxiety, and on the other side is negligence. It's a negligent kind of teaching. We're human, so we're always tip-toeing toward vices. When we're leaning toward anxiety in teaching, maybe we're comparing our kids to other kids. You know, we're worrying that we are not doing enough, so we become taskmasters, or drill sergeants, or maybe we start to value performance over our children for who they are, right? What can our kids do over who they are. (23:52) When we lean toward negligence on the other hand, we might feel defeated. You know, we're sure we don't have enough to offer our kids, so we sort of throw our hands up. In my house, I know I'm veering toward negligence when I'm letting my kids have too many screens, or get lazy on their chores, or talk back to me or talk back to their dad without being corrected. So rest is that place in-between. We're showing up to do our work each day. We're doing it without frenzy. We're doing it with a sense of peace and calm about the work that we're called to do, and the one who's called us to it. (24:24) So in response to Kelly, your question about what's the measure, if you're a mom who tends to lean toward the negligent side more often than the frenzied, anxious side, I think the answer is actually the same. Just make that question specific. Not, "Am I doing enough?" But "Am I doing enough to..." And then fill in that blank. Finish the sentence. (24:42) And then you can ask yourself that triad. What do you want your kids to know, what do you want them to do, and what do you want them to love? In relation to whatever you're worried about. And that will help you know how much you do need to do in order to show up for your work each day and do it fully and well. It'll help you keep from overdoing, but it'll also help you keep from underdoing, because now you know the work that's set before you. (25:05) You know, all of this leads me to something else I need to tell you about in regards to this, "Am I doing enough?" Question. And that is that the answer is, to be honest, it's probably no. Because the question itself is sort of absurd. Doing enough was never our job. I know a lot of you have heard me say this on the podcast or in a speaking session before, but let's revisit Jesus feeding the 5,000 on the hillside. You know the story. The Lord is speaking to a throng of people, and the disciples are getting anxious. There's too many people. The disciples tell Jesus everyone's getting hungry. They don't have enough to feed the crowd. They've got to just send everybody away. (25:51) This is actually how we feel on an ordinary homeschooling day. There are too many needs. There's only one of us. "I don't have time for this." That's a normal way to feel when you're homeschooling your kids. "I don't have enough for this." Whether it's enough time, or enough money, or enough patience, "I don't have enough." But what really strikes me is on that hillside, Jesus could have instantly fed them all. He could have laid a feast in front of them instantly, but he didn't. He looked at his disciples, who he knew did not have remotely enough, and said, " Bring me what you have. Bring me what you got." All they were able to scrounge up was a small basket of loaves of bread and fish, for a few people maybe. (26:43) And yet that's what the Lord asked, "Bring me what you have, and I will make it enough." And this is what he's asking of us too. This is what we do every day in our homeschool. We bring this measly little basket, and we're sure it's not enough, and we're right. It isn't. He makes it- (27:03) ... and we are right. It isn't. He makes it enough. So when we're asking that question, "Am I doing enough?," we can almost kindly laugh at ourselves. Of course we're not. We never could be. He never asked us to be enough or to do enough. He asked us to bring Him what we have. Speaker 3 (27:34): If a new homeschool mom asked me this question, I would ask them, "What's your homeschooling goal? What's your overall goal for when your kids are done with homeschooling?," or if it's related to a specific subject, I would ask, "What is your goal for this subject?" When we realize that different families have different goals, it's freeing, and it allows us to work in our strengths and in our kids' strengths. It takes away that comparison. For example, in history, my goal is that I want my kids to have great history discussions. I want them to understand how history has shaped where we're at today, where another family might have the goal where they want their kids to know the dates and times and important people's names. That shapes what we would choose to do within our homeschool, and when we realize that we have different goals, that's freeing. It allows us to use our strengths and use our kids' strengths. Grace (28:27): If someone asks me this question now, I think what I might say, I might say that we're not supposed to worry about competing with the public school kids, and we are not supposed to be worried about how our children stack up against others, that the beauty of homeschooling is that we can focus on what is important to us and that we can major on learning our catechisms and learning our Bible and learning to just love books and being together and creating a relaxed environment without having to worry about competing. Yet somehow I still fail to receive that message fully myself. Sarah Mackenzie (29:06): Me, too, Grace, and same as every person listening to this podcast. Am I doing enough? Make yourself finish that question. Enough to what? Also, probably not, and that's okay. If you'd like to think more about this idea, what you want your kids to know and to do and to love can help you find peace and joy in your homeschool, join us for RAR Premium Homeschool Coaching. That's my coaching program for homeschool moms in RAR Premium. Like I said, this fall, we're talking all about what teaching from rest looks like at all the different ages and stages, with younger kids, with middle-aged kids, and with high schoolers. So don't miss that. You can join us by going to rarpremium.com. Now let's hear from some kids about books they've been loving lately. Hillary (30:13): Hi. My name is Hillary, and I am eight years old. I live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and my favorite book is The American Girl Felicity books. Why I like it is because she likes horses and I like horses, and she goes on little adventures. Davis (30:34): Hello. My name is Davis. I am nine years old. I live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and my favorite book right now is Geronimo Stilton and The Kingdom of Fantasy. I like that book because it is a series and that the snail goes on big adventures for the queen of the fairies, Green Blossom. Speaker 5 (30:56): Hi. My name is [inaudible 00:30:57]. I am six years old. I live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My favorite book to read right now is Bad Guys. I like Bad Guys because of the characters. The characters are funny. There is a piranha, a snake, a shark, and a wolf. They're very funny. Speaker 4 (31:13): What's your name? Speaker 6 (31:16): [inaudible 00:31:16]. Speaker 4 (31:16): How old are you? Speaker 6 (31:16): Five. Speaker 4 (31:17): Where do you live? Speaker 6 (31:18): South Carolina. Speaker 4 (31:21): What's your favorite book? Speaker 6 (31:23): [inaudible 00:31:23]. Speaker 4 (31:24): What's your favorite part in that book? Speaker 6 (31:25): It's where they [inaudible 00:31:26] Unstoppable and [inaudible 00:31:30]. Heron (31:30): Hello. My name is Heron, and I'm five years old. Speaker 4 (31:35): Where are you from? Heron (31:38): Castle Rock, Colorado, and my favorite book is Magic Treehouse. I like when the knight saves them. Speaker 4 (31:49): What's your name? Jesse (31:50): Jesse. Speaker 4 (31:51): How old are you? Jesse (31:53): Three. Speaker 4 (31:54): Where are you from? Jesse (31:56): Castle Rock. Speaker 4 (31:57): What's your favorite book right now? Jesse (31:59): Dragons Love Tacos. Speaker 4 (32:03): What do you like about that book? Jesse (32:05): When they give them tacos. Speaker 4 (32:08): When they give the dragons tacos? Jesse (32:09): Yeah. Speaker 4 (32:10): Good job, buddy. Mary (32:12): Hi. My name's Mary. I'm seven years old. I live in Virginia, and my favorite book is [inaudible 00:32:21] Pony. The reason why I like it is because I love horses. Aubrey (32:28): Hi. I'm Aubrey, and I'm five years old. I'm from Canada, Ontario. I like Every Little Letter, because there is walls at first, and then there is no wall at end. Bye. Nora (32:56): Hi. I'm Nora, and I'm eight years old. I recommend I Want My Hat Back. Because it's just ridiculous. Then my favorite part about I Want My Hat Back is it's a bear, and he wants his hat bag. He's asking around, and this little mole armadillo guy says, "What's a hat?" So that's my favorite part. Sarah Mackenzie (33:20): The show notes for this episode are at readaloudrevival.com/214. This episode was produced by the team at Yellow House Media. Many thanks to RAR Premium members Jolene, Natalia, Grace, Kelly, Andrea, Lindsey, and an unnamed guest for their contributions to this episode. If you'd like to contribute to a future episode, join RAR Premium, and then head to the forum, because I've begun posting requests for your insight. We're all better at this homeschooling thing when we lean on and learn from each other, and I'm so glad you're here. So I'm delighted to hear from you. I'll be back in two weeks with another episode. In the meantime, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.