December 1st, 2009Burnout in Home Schooling
It doesn’t matter if you are learning in a traditional school or in a home schooling program, there will come a time when you will go through burnout. This is something that you must prevent so that your learning progress is not adversely affected.
Here are a couple of helpful tips that you can make use of to prevent possible home schooling burnout:
Be aware of your limitations. From the very start, you should already know your limitations and your child’s limitations. You must be capable of taking things slowly sometimes, especially if your child is still young since you have to bear in mind your child’s learning capacity. Most students are average learners, obviously, so you have to give the lessons based on your child’s learning pace. Never expect your small child to read complicated reading selections nor your teen to ace SAT exams.
Don’t adopt rigid schedules, as this can put undue pressure on your child. You should just set an interesting routine for your child to follow. Children spend most of their time doing routine activities like getting up, eating hearty breakfasts, reading books, practising writing, doing light jobs about the place, etc. You must ensure that they finish their routine activities before they can play outside or with the computer. Even these routine activities change from day to day, but you have to make sure that your child follows these routine activities. You can add in occasional incentives or fun activities if they finish their routine tasks earlier.
You should enjoy home schooling with your child. This is one way you can develop a good relationship with your child and if you and your child can relate to each other, you will find it very easy to handle curriculum struggles and motivation problems later. Aside from motivating and guiding your child, you can also pursue some of your own interests like gardening and cooking. If your child sees you enjoying your own interests, then he or she will also be motivated to do likewise.
Since your child is in a home schooling program, you should not try to imitate a traditional schools environment. Try to use unusual ways when teaching your child. Home schooling is also about flexibility and creativity, and if you can create an easy-going but firm atmosphere, you can more than likely prevent burnout.
Always try to remember that with home schooling, you don’t have to structure your teaching methods in the traditional way. You can just do things in a fun way especially with very young children so that they learn easily. Just ensure you keep the day in the right perspective to prevent burnout. Although your children may forget some of the day’s lessons, that’s all right too because somehow they grow in intelligence as well as in physique.
For sure, your children will always think back on your moments together and remember fondly how well you treated them. The old song goes: “… there’s no place like home” and for little students, home is the best place to learn the first lessons of life. If your teenagers are already in high school or in college, they can still do home schooling if they so desire. That would also a good decision because you’d get to keep an eye on your children’s performance.
Parents always try to look after their children’s best interests, so, if after careful consideration, you still reckon that home schooling is the best option for your family, then run with it. Just follow the tips mentioned previously to avoid burnout. Make time for enjoyable activities from time to time in order to prevent monotony.
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