Your Homeschool Should Work for Your Family

Your Homeschool Should Work for Your Family

I recently had what can only be described as a homeschool midlife crisis. 😂 We homeschool year-round, so technically our “school year” started over the summer, but somewhere along the way I got SO distracted by all the noise around homeschooling. The curriculum options, morning baskets, nature study, science experiments, beautiful schedules, and the moms who somehow have everyone dressed, fed, and happily starting school at 7:30 in the morning.

I started adding things because they sounded good. Then I added more because they looked good. Then I started trying to make sure each of my four kids had the perfect combination of subjects, curricula, activities, books, independent work, and extras. Eventually, I realized I was drowning. I had four kids doing different subjects, different curricula, different schedules, and different routines. On paper, it looked AMAZING. In reality, I was trying to manage so many moving pieces that the plan itself was becoming the problem.

So I finally had to stop and ask myself a much simpler question: What are my actual goals for each child?

That question has completely changed how I’m looking at our homeschool this year.

Start With the Goal, Not the Curriculum

It is SO easy to start homeschool planning with curriculum. What math are we using? What science unit? Which literature guide? What should we do for writing? Should we add nature study? Should we do a morning basket? Should everyone have their own history?

But when I stepped back and thought about each of my kids individually, I realized that some of the things that matter most to me this year aren’t actually subjects at all.

For my 13-year-old speller, my biggest goal is open communication through spelling. If THAT is the goal, then his school day needs to support it. We need to keep building his spelling stamina, intentional motor skills, reflex integration, sensory regulation, visual skills, and his ability to stay engaged with a task. He’ll also be spelling four Spell Lesson paragraphs each day. That is a stretch for him with me because he usually likes to cap out around two or three paragraphs, although he spells much more at his monthly intensives, so I know the stamina is there! Eventually I’d love to see us stretch that goal to six paragraphs in a sitting.

For my 11-year-old, I’m focused heavily on executive functioning and writing. I want to see growth in processing speed, working memory, handwriting, visual integration, and her ability to organize her thoughts and get them onto paper. She’s also working through Spelling You See for spelling and handwriting, cursive, and a writing program taught in small, digestible chunks.

My 9-year-old’s biggest goals are increasing flexibility in his routines, building his reading skills, and making sure we’re giving his musical abilities the attention they deserve. He is quite talented at both piano and guitar, and I don’t want those skills to constantly get pushed aside because we feel like we need to squeeze in one more traditional school subject.

For my 7-year-old speller, I’m focused heavily on sensory regulation, her ability to attend to a task, reading, intentional motor skills, and really hunkering down with spelling. Right now she usually caps out at around 10 spelled words, so our goal is to slowly stretch that toward two short paragraphs.

Once I looked at each child through THAT lens, it became much easier to decide what actually deserved our time and what I could let go.

This Is Where “Success Training” Came From

One of the biggest changes I’m making is starting our day with what I’ve started calling Success Training.

Success Training looks different for each child because each child has different needs. For my spellers, it might include Dare to Move, reflex integration, intentional motor workouts, visual exercises, sensory activities, or listening therapy. For my other kids, it might include processing-speed games, working-memory activities, handwriting work, visual integration, reflex exercises, listening therapy, or activities designed to stretch their ability to stick with something that is hard.

Now wait a second, Laurie... all of that sounds great, but that’s not SCHOOL, right?

Well, it is!

These are the literal building blocks that help my kids access everything else I’m asking them to do. If a child is struggling to regulate, attend, visually track, plan a movement, hold information in working memory, or tolerate sitting with a task, adding another worksheet probably isn’t going to fix the problem. In our house, these things aren’t extras that we squeeze in if we happen to have time after school. They ARE part of school because they directly affect our kids’ ability to learn.

That doesn’t mean we spend three hours doing therapy exercises every morning either. It means we choose the things that matter most for each child and make them part of the rhythm of the day. We work on the underlying skills first, and then we move into academics.

Family School Is Saving My Sanity

After Success Training, we move into Family School. This is something I have tried and failed at multiple times, complicated WAY too much, abandoned, brought back, tweaked again... and overall I’ve finally accepted that it is one of the biggest sanity savers in our homeschool. 😂

We do things like Bible, literature, history, science, and unit learning together. I also want to add a kitchen lesson each week because one of my goals for my older two kids is building their confidence and independence in the kitchen.

And please do not picture some beautiful Instagram morning-basket situation when I say Family School.

Usually one kid is under the table, one is in the lycra swing, one is in another room listening while he draws, and somebody is probably on the trampoline. It is controlled chaos. Sometimes it devolves into total chaos. 😂 But they are listening, they are learning, and within about an hour we can cover several subjects together instead of me teaching those same subjects four separate times.

THAT is what makes it sustainable for me.

We Simplified the Individual Subjects Too

After Family School, we move into individual work, and I’ve had to pare this part down a LOT from my original plans.

One of the biggest changes I made recently was moving all four kids to a simpler math program. I needed something straightforward enough that I could sit down, teach the lesson, and move on instead of managing four wildly different approaches to math. That change alone has already made a huge difference in how our days feel.

My 13-year-old requires the most direct support from me during math because we use the boards for him to answer, but he LOVES math, so honestly it’s never much of a fight. My 11-, 9-, and 7-year-olds each have language arts work at their own levels, while my oldest can listen to an audiobook and complete a Dare to Homeschool unit lesson.

And then... we’re done!

That is another place where I’ve had to really shift my expectations. I used to feel like our homeschool day needed to contain ALL THE THINGS in order for it to count. Now I’m much more interested in whether what we’re doing is actually moving each child toward the goals that matter.

Our Goal Is Not to School All Day

Right now, our goal is to homeschool about 3–4 days a week as our schedule allows. My oldest and youngest are medically complex in addition to being autistic, so we have appointments, therapies, and weeks where the traditional Monday-through-Friday homeschool schedule just is not happening.

Sometimes we homeschool during the week. Sometimes we homeschool on the weekend. Sometimes Tuesday becomes an outing day and Sunday becomes a school day. I’m done feeling like we somehow did school “wrong” because it didn’t happen on the days a traditional school would have been open.

Ideally, I want us finished by lunch. Then after lunch we can go to the park, pool, library, trampoline park, or just get OUT of the house. And the funny thing is, those outings support so many of the exact same goals I have for our school day. They provide movement and sensory input, give my kids opportunities to regulate, require flexibility, build independence, and create natural opportunities for communication and real-life skills.

Learning doesn’t stop because I closed the math book.

Your Homeschool Needs to Work for Your Family

After eight years of homeschooling, I think this is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned: Your homeschool needs to work for your family. Your family should not have to work for your homeschool.

It is SO easy to build a plan around the homeschool we picture in our heads instead of the actual children standing in front of us. We see the beautiful curriculum, the morning basket, the nature journals, the elaborate projects, the color-coded schedules, and suddenly we’re trying to squeeze our kids into this imaginary perfect version of homeschooling that may have absolutely nothing to do with what they actually need.

So this year, I’m trying to keep coming back to the same questions: What does THIS child need most right now? What skills are going to make the biggest difference in their ability to learn, communicate, regulate, become more independent, and participate in the world? What is sustainable for our family? And what am I doing simply because somewhere along the way I decided that a “good homeschool” was supposed to include it?

Our plan is far from perfect, and I guarantee I will make adjustments throughout the year. There will be weeks where this rhythm works beautifully and weeks where everything completely falls apart. But I would much rather have a flexible plan built around my actual children than a perfect homeschool plan we can’t realistically live.

If Your Homeschool Needs a Reset, Start Here

If you’re reading this because your own homeschool feels heavy right now, I wouldn’t start by buying another curriculum. I’d grab a piece of paper.

Write down each child’s name and underneath it, write the three things you most want to see grow in that child this year.

And I don’t necessarily mean three school subjects.

Maybe you want to see your child communicate more openly. Maybe reading needs to finally click. Maybe they need to become more independent. Maybe handwriting is holding them back. Maybe you’re seeing challenges with regulation, working memory, motor planning, flexibility, attention, or executive functioning. Maybe you have a kid with an incredible interest or talent that keeps getting shoved to the end of the day because there are so many boxes you feel like you’re supposed to check first.

Write THAT down.

Then look at what you’re currently doing and ask yourself whether your homeschool day actually reflects those goals. Where are you spending most of your time? Is it helping? What could you simplify? What could you combine? What could you stop doing altogether? And what underlying skill does your child need help building before you can realistically expect more academic progress?

You absolutely still need academics. I’m not throwing math and language arts out the window over here. 😂 But I think we sometimes get so focused on finishing the curriculum that we forget to ask whether the curriculum is serving the CHILD.

So if you take nothing else from this ridiculously long explanation of my homeschool crisis, take this:

Start with the child. Figure out the goals. Then build the school day around them.

Not the other way around.

What’s Coming Next at Dare to Homeschool

This shift in our own homeschool is also shaping a lot of what is coming next at Dare to Homeschool. Over the next few weeks, you’ll start seeing more resources in our new Success Training category, with tools that support intentional motor skills, sensory regulation, executive functioning, visual-motor development, processing, and some of those other foundational skills that can make SUCH a difference in a child’s ability to access academics.

As Dare to Homeschool grows, I also want to create more resources that can be used by the whole family, including students who are speaking but may struggle with ADHD, dyslexia, executive functioning, motor planning, regulation, or other learning differences. This is incredibly close to my heart because all four of my own kids fit into these buckets in different ways.

And don’t worry — our resources for spellers aren’t going anywhere. ❤️ Supporting students who spell to communicate will always be a HUGE part of why Dare to Homeschool exists.

I’m just realizing more and more that successfully homeschooling these kids is about SO MUCH MORE than choosing the right curriculum. It’s about figuring out what success actually looks like for the child standing in front of you and then building a homeschool that helps them get there.