Tips For Being Present During The Homeschool Day

How do you stay present during school time? 

When I started my October writing challenge, I asked for topics you all would like me to cover, and a long-time blog friend asked me to address how to handle distractions during the homeschool day.  I write this feeling somewhat hypocritical, since I was majorly distracted during our school day yesterday!  So anything I say in this post is still somewhat a work in progress for myself too.

When I think about this question, I think of a couple things that could be distracting - other things on the the to-do list, and our phones.  I think you have to tackle both of those things a little differently, but both can equally be a problem.  I've noticed over the years that any time I try to multi-task during homeschool hours, it takes us twice as long to get through the work, and both and and the kids are more frustrated with the whole day.  When I remind myself to stay focused on one thing at a time, everything goes so much better!

Here are a few ways I try to keep myself from the temptation to be distracted.

1. Do as much house clean-up as you can the night before.  Each evening I try to make sure there are no major messes on the floors, and that the kitchen sink is clean.  If those two things are done it's so much easier to get started right after breakfast in the morning!

2. Try to develop a "blind-eye" to messes until after school work.  Most times, if you stay really focused on the school work with your child, it does not take that long to complete.  I've learned to put the messes out of mind for that short period of time, just an hour or two when they were little, knowing that if we finish homeschool work, I can tackle my other projects guilt-free.

3.  Keep your phone in the other room.  When your first grader is painfully sounding out syllables from her reading book, it's so tempting to just whip out the little distraction box from my pocket.  "I'll just check this one thing real quick." "I'll just scroll social media WHILE I listen to her read - I can do both!" But the thing is, I can't do both.  Physically multi-tasking may be possible, but your brain can only focus on one thing at a time, and during school hours, that thing needs to be my kids.  I've had to resort to putting my phone in the other room many times when it was becoming too much of a distraction.  After detoxing from social media a while back, I find it much easier to resist the temptation to check my phone randomly, so that has been really helpful.  But for the days when my phone is becoming a problem, putting it far out of sight is better.

4. Try to focus on your child's face when things get boring.  As mentioned above, those learning-to-read years can be brutally boring for the homeschool teacher.  At this point, I've read the same stories with the same first graders four times now - there are no surprises left.  Sometimes you just have to suffer through the tedious bits, but I also find that they are easier to bear when I look at my child's cute expressions while we muddle through it.  They are learning to read! This is exciting! Noticing how their faces twist up when they get to a difficult word, or how their eyes twinkle at me during a funny part of the story helps me to be in those boring moments with them.  They notice when I'm not paying attention, and I don't always realize how many cute little bonding moments I'm missing when I'm distracted.

5. Treat homeschooling like your job (because it is).  This is my biggest tip, because to be successful at anything worthwhile, you usually have to shift your paradigm a bit.  Our homeschool routine started improving alot when I truly recognized that some people pay teachers a full time salary to do what I'm doing - this is a real job.  Would I be checking my phone every five minutes at a real job?  Would I be running around doing personal house chores during real job hours? I would hope not. The best part is, when I have a system down, this job does not take all day - I have plenty of time left for other things when I just give this job the effort I would give any other job for a few hours of the day.  When I started thinking of "homeschool mom" as a serious job title, it was easier to put distractions aside and give it my best effort.

And what a job it is too!  In what other job would I get to spend so much one-on-one tie with my kids?  What other job lets me snuggle on the couch with the cutest kids in the world and read books to them while we eat snacks?  I think part of being present with our kids in homeschooling is enjoying the process ourselves as much as we can, adding some fun into it, making it a memory for all of us.  And those fun touches are so easy to do when I put away the phone, let the chores slide for a minute, and focus my attention on the little students in front of me right now.  Being undistracted with them is worth the effort!