Homeschool Hints
Homeschool Hints Podcast
'M is for Mama' Abbie Halberstadt: Q&A
0:00
-1:02:30

'M is for Mama' Abbie Halberstadt: Q&A

Abbie Halberstadt, author of the book “M is for Mama," answers questions directly from homeschool moms in the Kansas City area!

TRANSCRIPT

Shanxi: Hello, this is Shanxi Omoniyi, host of MPE’s “Homeschool Hints” podcast to encourage you wherever you may be on your homeschool journey.

Our 2023 Women’s Encouragement Day featured Abbie Halberstadt, author of the book “M is for Mama.” Abbie is also a fitness instructor, homeschool teacher, and mama of ten children, including two sets of identical twins! Here are some highlights from a Q&A with Abbie, using questions submitted by the homeschool moms in the audience.

Shanxi: First question that I have here is, how do you deal with comments from people about always being with your child? Which I'm sure as homeschool moms we get a lot of.

Abbie: Oh, yeah don't you get tired of being with your kids. I don't know interestingly enough that I've gotten that exact question before. But I definitely have gotten kind of more like the accusation of, your kids should get out more or maybe the assumption from homeschooling that they don’t. 

Now we've talked about the fact that, well if you were with me at lunch,  we were talking about the fact that we do try to protect our family time and be very intentional while we say yes and no to, but as a general rule, I think homeschoolers in this day and age have the danger of being over socialized, not under socialized. 

And so a lot of times a question like that is coming from a place of not really understanding what homeschooling is. 

Yes, I'm with my children a lot each and every single day, but there is a lot of joy in that and if you aren't in that world and you're not in that mindset, there's a tendency to think that that must be a burden. So if someone were to say that to me, I typically answer any question like that that comes from a place of curiosity rather than accusation - or even if it does come from from a place of accusation - with as much positivity as I can. That throws people off every single time.

When people are like, you know, in all the typical big family or just homeschooling family comments of like, you know, “Why did you do this to yourself? You do know what causes that, right?” “Do you have a TV?” like, where to get anything better to do all the stuff. 

Just declaring very joyfully that like, “Actually yeah, we have lots of kids and it's a blessing,” or “I have two kids and it's a blessing. They are such a joy to me! We really enjoy them.” People typically shut up, like, they they know it would be bad form to respond unkindly to that. So it usually keeps them quiet. Does that answer your question? OK.

Shanxi: This question comes from a first-time homeschool mom: My husband also likes the idea of homeschool, but he isn't aware of all that goes into high school and just raising multiple kids or homeschool. 

How have you talked to your husband so that they are not only supportive but also encourage mom’s self-care and help with aspects of homeschooling as a family? Or should I lower my expectation as he is also working full-time?

Abbie: So I think that if you got a husband that's working full-time it is going to and he's not necessarily completely sold on homeschooling, it is going to be a big mental burden on him to feel like you were expecting him to homeschool with you.

Now to be supportive of you in your homeschooling, absolutely. Let's hope that you're equally yoked in that in that decision that you have made. But I think that the important thing is to emphasize to him that you're committed to this as a couple and that his financial support and his being there in any way that he can is encouraging to you, is kind of bolstering to you and that you are willing to learn as you go. 

That's really kind of where I want to go with that, is that you don't have to have every one of those roles laid out when you're first starting homeschooling. There are going to be things that evolve. 

Sean's and my relationship through homeschooling has changed quite a bit. He went to a public school, I was homeschooled myself.

He wasn't against homeschooling by any stretch when we started, but he is Whole Hog now because he has just seen the benefits in our children.

So if you've got someone that's hesitant or if you've got someone that doesn't necessarily know if they want to commit to all the work, but you feel called to it, especially with young kids, if you're a first homeschool mom with a young child, just take it one day at a time and communicate and keep the lines of communication open. 

Very likely the Lord will show you how it should evolve and how the roles should develop so that when there's more involvement on his part needed, that you can communicate that in a grace-filled way.

Shanxi: the next three questions are kind of similar, so I bunched them together. There's one says: Tips and tricks for a very creative child who can hardly stay focused on one subject because every question sparks another story to tell. Also tips for just plain dawdling? And then: How do you expect children to 1) show up for school on time to finish school every day? 2) Ideas for obedience, consequences? And then the last one is: Tips on how to start young kids to do quiet time?

Abbie: OK. So creative children or children that have trouble focusing a lot of times need to be able to move, need frequent breaks, need things to stimulate their bodies as well as their brains.

I have one that's like this particularly that comes to mind that when we're doing math, one of the things that we do is I say, “OK, get to the end of your page and then we'll do a quick contest. You can race me in doing 10 squats or 10 push-ups or 10 burpees. You get to choose what we're going to do.” 

And it doesn't have to be a physical contest. He just really enjoys that because he's an 8-year-old boy and that's fun for him. And so he will rush to get to the - oh not rush - but he will stay focused and go faster than his normal dawdling pace because he has something to look forward to.

And I see absolutely nothing wrong with dangling those little carrots of motivation in front of the kids that still need that. Because a lot of times they grow out of their need for that as they mature and develop better habits. 

As far as getting kids started on time or finishing on time, a whole lot of that is up to us. On time is up to you. So if you said that you're starting at this time of day and it's not happening, you need to sit down and re-evaluate why it's not happening.

If it is that your child is dragging their feet constantly, then yes, there need to be consequences. 

One thing we do in our house - and again I keep referencing the book and I sound like a used car salesman but there's just a lot more in there than I can flesh out here - so if you have questions, we do something called the penny reward system, which is really helpful for just giving a small token of appreciation or encouragement or attaboy or attagirl when they're doing especially well in an area. 

Or if we notice that they were snarky or especially dragging their feet, we can take a penny away. It’s just a very simple “penny in, penny out” and anybody with any kind of organizational level of skills, like low, high, whatever, can do it. It's very simple and straightforward. 

I do feel like, for example, I got a message from someone the other day that said, “The penny rewards system is helpful, but I don't know what other privileges to take away. My child doesn't really care about anything. He's happy to go read a book.” <laughter> You know something that you could take away, right?

I know we want our children reading, but if they're reading instead of obeying, then we’ve got to flip the switch on that. She had literally told me the consequence that she couldn't think of herself.

So I think sometimes we have to sit down and actually be honest and evaluate where we could develop natural consequences that we're not being, maybe, our tired mom brains aren't wanting to be creative. But we just make ourselves a list: what does this child prioritize? OK. Then we're going to say, “With great privilege comes great responsibility! You have the privilege of getting to do this when you accomplish your responsibility on time,” and be consistent to follow through on that.

Shanxi: That's great. The next question is: I have siblings who aren't believers and verbally oppose Christ. What are ways to combat the statements they make in front of my children yet love those siblings?

Abbie: So because I'm a word person, that prepositional phrase “in front of my children.” I'm like, do you mean to combat it when you're in front of your children, or just the statements they make in front of your children?

So I'll answer both. If they are making statements in front of your children that are untrue, but your desire is to make peace in your home, in that moment - not because you're afraid of conflict but because you know that that's not the right time to handle it necessarily - just make sure you put a mental pin in there to to come back around and say, “Hey, remember when Uncle David was saying this about this? Please know that that comes from a place of his heart is not with Jesus.”

So what do we say if someone is whatever the issue might be? If they are arguing that you are close-minded because you don't want to affirm someone's pronouns that they've chosen and they're saying, you know, “You Christians are all just bigots.” 

You can come back around and have a really great conversation with your kid once Uncle David's gone and say, “But what do we know to be true about how God made us? He made us on purpose as a boy or a girl, and he made us on that way for design and for the good of our future and for the benefit of this world and how it should function.” You can develop all kinds of opportunities for heart-to-hearts without necessarily having to oppose that sibling to their face in that moment.

But if it's a specific, constant thing, you may have to get bold and talk to the sibling when they're not with your kids and say, “Listen, these are our beliefs - like what I said at the last session - this is consistent with who we say we are. We are asking that you respect that, or we may have to limit some contact.”

Shanxi: The next questions are again about children: 1) How do you get your children to share and be nice to each other? 2) How do you keep from getting angry or upset and yelling at your kids when you get overwhelmed?

Abbie: We did kind of talk about the angry and the upset and the overwhelmed. I think making yelling not an option and making fighting not an option.

So people are like, “Well how do you even do that?” How do you even do anything, y'all? How do you start a new habit for anything?

You say like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, “You shall not pass.” You know, you're not going past this one. I don't have the option of screaming at you. I will do a cartwheel before I'll scream at you and I can't do a cartwheel!

So give yourself something, some plan of action. If you are not prepared for those moments where you give yourself a, “When we get to this point and he's doing that thing that he inevitably does that always drives me crazy, I am going to … “

Instead of scream, you probably will fail because  if you can't think of any other thing to put in the blank, is “I’m going to ask Jesus for help,” right? That's the default, and he will give it. It says when we cry to him, that he answers us. And he may tell you to run outside and scream in the air. I don't know. But there was another part to that - yeah - how do you get your children to share.

OK, so we talked about this at dinner last night with the leadership group. I'm not a socialist. I don't require my children to give their specific toys to their siblings.

Hear me? If it's a communal toy, of course we are going to be generous with it. If it's a specific to them toy, imagine someone coming into your closet and saying, “You must let your daughter wear your shoes.”

We would be like, “No we mustn’t!” <laughter> That's not how this works. I spent my money on those shoes they belong to me. 

I can choose to be generous with my daughter, but forcing socialism and Marxism on our children is a different thing. 

So what I encourage always in my kids is generosity. “Hey, you have an opportunity to be really kind to this to this brother of yours who absolutely loves that helicopter drone that you got for your birthday. Could he please have five minutes?”

If the answer is no, we might revisit it with another talk about like the heart of why you said no, but I'm not going to actively force them to give their specific toy.

If it is a communal toy, we'll set timers, you know. There will be consequences if somebody's hogging it. But I think we need to be careful to set some boundaries and honor things that someone has actually worked for and paid for because we wouldn't want that done to us.

Shanxi: And that's great. The next question has to do with high school and teens so one is: What are practical ways to make homeschooling more home and less school in the high school years? 

Then the second one says, “How do we rein in an out-of-control routine that has been created out of years of bad habits with teenagers who now resist our attempts to instill good habits in order to get back on track and be productive at homeschooling life?”

Abbie: Yeah, when you've gotten to those points of where things feel like they are out of control, it's really hard.

So again with the book, but I have a chapter called boot camp parenting. And it's where you're addressing bad habits in bite-sized format. So let's say you have, and if you go global on your kids and you try to address all their bad habits at once you will fail miserably and they will hate you, OK? 

So what you need to do is instead pick the most important thing that is stealing the piece of your home and focus on that first in an intensive way by laying out for them what you're accomplishing and why.

I talked to you about my daughters in their room, we had been working on the room situation, and I was starting to feel like a nag because I kept coming back and they still weren't consistently doing what I had asked them to do.

And at one point my 12 year old daughter, who is precious and not organized at all. I love her. She is creative, she writes beautiful poetry, she is the kindest soul, she never gets angry. 

But she's never going to willingly clean anything. She will do it if you ask her to, but as if you want to stand beside her and have you do this, then this, then this. So I had taught them to clean their rooms - they knew when they were supposed to - and she still was struggling with it. One day she said like with tears in her eyes, “But Mama, it doesn't bother me so why do I have to do it?” 

She wasn't playing me. She was serious. And I thought, “Have I actually ever sat her down and told her the reason why I'm requiring her to do this instead of just, Mama says you have to clean your room?”

I talked to her about air quality in her room if she doesn't dust and vacuum, like you're breathing nasty dust and she looked at me like, “I am? Eww!”

I talked about the fact that she wants a family one day and she's going to have to be able to manage her household. If she hasn't developed these habits at a young age, she's going to have a much harder time developing them when she's 25 years old. 

And so we went through kind of this list of reasons and I told her this: “You will never hear from me again about your room if you clean your room. Think that through. I’m not nagging you because I enjoy nagging. I'm not talking to you about this because I enjoy I'm not going to bring this up if it's clean. It's such a basic concept, but like, this issue goes away if you just do this.”

And it was such a clear point for her that she got it. And it's not perfect all the time, but it was a turning point.

So I think we need to be willing to give our kids real reasons instead of just, “I said so.” Explain to them how it will affect the peace of the whole family and also help them or hurt them if they don't do it. And then lay out a clear plan of action. 

So in boot camp parenting, we say one week. So if it is literally like they won't take their shoes off when they come inside, or they will not get out of bed when you call them. 

You need to be clear with what the consequences, what your requirements are, “You need to be in that you need the living room for Bible reading at 7:30. if you're not there, this will happen.” And once you've explained it clearly that this will happen happens, until there's enough of a pinch that they feel like they're going to show up in the living room at 7 30 in the morning.

Now there are some situations where it's going to take more than a week for sure and there are some situations you work on for years. I fully acknowledge that. And there are some situations where you may not feel like you ever win anything more than rote obedience and the Lord works on their hearts much later in life, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” 

You may not have happy, cheerful obedience in your home while they're there, but to simply say, “I don't know. I can't figure it out.” Plans of action, clear communication, consistent follow-through with an intensive focus for a short period of time can clear up a lot of bad habits.

Shanxi: That's really encouraging. The next question is, have you ever done a gap year for a child in homeschooling? Gap year to work on skills more, develop, kind of hold back. Why did you do a gap year and in what circumstances?

Abbie: So we have not done that yet. I have a child that is um, you know, there's no such thing as behind. So he's a year different than his he's a year different behind - I don't like that word, you know what I mean? - than his age suggests for language arts because he needed more. I haven't diagnosed him but I think he had very mild dyslexia, and so he needed more practice. It wasn't a gap year, but we went back and revisited concepts and I think that was great.

And then my oldest son is officially graduating but he's only 16 when he graduates. So he will take this next year that would have been his senior year to take a - my husband is a computer programmer - he'll take a software programming intensive that year and then see whether he wants to do college or not. So that's kind of going to be a gap year for him.

Shanxi: Real-world experience!

Abbie: Yes, exactly.

Shanxi: This question is, could you talk more about voting with your dollars and your reasoning and decision-making around that?

Abbie: Sure. Yeah, so this is going to be one of those things where I will freely admit to you that I don't know how to be completely consistent because I have not done my research to only ever ever give my money to someone who is doing everything perfectly all the time.

If you have, come talk to me, I want to know who those people are, right? I think that there is something about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and giving to God what is God’s, that Jesus is somewhat acknowledging we live in a fallen world where our money must be used for things that we might - and Jesus doesn't actually say give to Caesar what is Caesar's unless some of that money goes to abortion. Because you know Caesar was doing awful things, right? And he still said to pay the taxes.

And so while everything in me bucks against that, there is also a pragmatic side that says, I will do the best I can with the knowledge that I have going forward. If there is a company - I mentioned Target - if you go to Target, that's between you and the Lord and I am fine with it.

That is a specific shop that I have chosen not to shop at anymore, a specific store because they are so aggressive with the gender confusion agenda. More aggressive than just about any other and started so early. They did this a long time ago with transgender bathrooms and I thought, I know specifically that I could go somewhere else that's not doing this.

So I think the answer could be different for every person but when you feel a conviction like, “But I like Target. They have the coffee and the pretty pillows and…” If that's why you're still there but the Lord is saying, “Give it up,” then you've got a problem. It's not Target, it's your heart. 

So I think there has to be some honest examination of why we are being loyal to what we're being loyal to. And when it comes down to it, if the Lord has asked us to walk away from that even if it takes away some of our comfort, we have to.

And then giving our money somewhere else might be that we have to spend more money on someone that's more ethical, and that hurts, you know? But that shows where our heart is. Is it about saving what's not even ours to begin with or is it about honoring God? And again, I really do think that the stores are going to be different for every person.

So please don't hear me just because I'm picking on Target, saying I'm mandating this for you, but I think it's something to consider.

Shanxi: There are two questions about boys. 1) How do you motivate boys to give their best towards schoolwork? My girls do an amazing job, but the boys could care less. Sometimes it seems like I'm wasting my time trying to teach them science, math, etc. 2) How to channel that crazy boy energy and encourage when handwriting really needs to be done?

Abbie: I think I touched on that, and anytime you can give a boy a chance to move is really such a good opportunity to give them something that motivates them. 

Also food, they really like food. If you can motivate a child with food, or with an experience with food.

So I've got several that love to help me cook and that just make a science experiment a cooking experiment instead. If the textbook's not working super well - I know I know I'm not good at throwing out textbooks because it's so much easier to just hand them to them - but give yourself the permission to say, “We are going to make bread today and that was science.” And your kid will at least have had a break from the constant handwriting that must be done, right?

Also with handwriting, Prescripts is a really good cursive curriculum if anybody knows about that one. That was a Classical Conversations one. They use it and they do lots of really fun things with art, with history, with the Constitution where you're copying something interesting. Well, you're not just writing “Jane jumped over the stick.” You're writing something meaningful and you're teaching them something at the same time. And anytime that you can combine subjects, I'm a big fan of that.

Shanxi: This question is, how do you do family devotions with multiple ages what engages the children and keeps them interested in joining family devotions, practical ideas?

Abbie: Yeah, OK. So we talked about this at lunch when I was talking about the rhythms of our daily lives that we do at home and we do Family Bible Reading that my husband, Sean, leads.

I was telling the group that he didn't always lead it. The Lord really worked in his heart for a long time and I led it for the longest time in the mornings because he was wanting to get to work. And I think it was just something that he was having to grow in in leadership and he has since stepped into that role.

And at 7:30 in the mornings we do breakfast and Bible reading. I made breakfast for anybody that wants what I'm making and then they make their own if they … I don't care if they don't want what I'm making, but I'm not making seven different things. That's right! I heard that!

And so we’ve read, for many years. We've done the One Year Bible in the format where it has Old Testament, New Testament Psalms and Proverbs reading. The straight reading takes about 15 minutes right now.

Sean is doing his own kind of Bible reading in a year plan. it's honestly probably not in a year, but like, there's nothing sacred about reading the Bible in a year. It's a great goal and I have done it multiple times with the one-year Bible. But that's not any kind of gold standard of anything, so I don't want anybody to hear that it has to be in a year, but the consistency of it. We usually end up with about four to five days of Family Bible Reading at 7:30 in the morning.

Other mornings we’ll have something that we have to run off and do, or Sunday mornings we do not do it because we're getting out the door for church. 

It will look like reading, discussion questions. Sean actually writes trivia as he goes and then on Sunday nights we do a buzzer trivia game from the specific things that we wrote down from our family Bible reading.

This is all him, so once he stepped up, he really stepped up. And he'll do Scripture Memory with them kind of peppered throughout the Bible reading and he asks a ton of questions.

So are our very small children super engaged? No. The two-year-old twins are with me in the kitchen, but we have an open floor plan so we're not very far away.

While I make the meals Shiloh is usually doing some form of somersaults or something across the room. However, if he is being very disruptive, we have him sit on the floor in a blanket or something that's a little more contained and just give him some toys to play with.

And I was telling the lunch group that while it seems like they're not like ingesting anything when they're that age, one day Sean was calling out the um the reference for something and the kids were all like, “Oh, is that like, Poverty leads to … couldn't remember,” and they got halfway through one and got stuck.

And Shiloh just walked by and calmly was like, “…But good character leads to wealth!” 

And he's he's not my most verbally advanced ones but now he just like popped it out.

So they are getting some good stuff from that, and you can definitely do like a children's Bible with them four or five or 10 minutes later on, you know, after nap time or before nap time.

So the consistency, I think, not necessarily the exact like prescription that we do for our family, is what's important.

Shanxi: There's like a two-pronged question here: 1) Suggestions on how to entertain Littles while Bigs are schooling. 2) Quick easy company meals for homeschool hospitality nights?

Abbie: Different people have different levels of OCD when it comes to messes. Obviously, I'm pretty low-key. I don't love really high-mess situations, but who does?

So suggestions for Littles. I would say water if they're old enough to either play in the sink or possibly if they're old enough to play in the bath near you where you can go in and check on them and you have something that you really need them kind of off of your lap and doing something.

Playing with toys in the bathtub is an awesome option. Kinetic sand is really good. It can be messy, but you can also put it in like a tray or a bin or something and keep it pretty contained. And fortunately it clumps so you can pick it up in clumps rather than having the sand actually literally spread everywhere. Brain flakes also tend to go everywhere, but if you keep them in bins and kind of keep them in one spot as much as possible, they can play with those for forever.

Magna tiles are another one that keep their little hands engaged. I'm always giving out snacks whenever we're, you know, cutting up grapes, just anything that will take them a while to eat small things. 

And anytime the weather's nice, if we can do anything on the front porch where the littles can run in the yard, I'm always kind of giving them free rein where I can still keep an eye on them. Or just at this point in my life - and if you're not there yet, it's a fantastic point in life to be - you can definitely have a child that plays with a little or a couple of Littles in my case for 30 minutes while you finish up this lesson and then switch.

And you've given them a meaningful opportunity to contribute to their family and to learn skills and to play with their sibling. You can do a puzzle with them. They can be the one that's teaching that child their letters without even realizing they are. You're like, “You're in charge of him learning to read?” No, that's not what you're doing, but you're giving them another touch point for learning, right? 

And you're giving the child the chance - especially if it's not I'm not talking about my teenagers necessarily - but if my 6-year-old is going over there and working on letters with the 4-year-old, that means that the 6-year-old is practicing his letters, right? So that's a great opportunity for learning too.

Oh, company meals. I am a huge fan of like dump-and-go taco soup like, we usually do ground turkey meat, so I'll cook like three pounds of ground turkey meat and then do all the the diced tomatoes and the tomato sauce and the beans and seasonings. And it's just a huge pot and ready to go.

Another one that I like to do is - this is funny - the other day someone asked me a question similar to this on Instagram and I was answering it. I said I love salsa chicken, which is literally dumping cans of salsa on top of chicken breasts in my Instant pot and turning it on and walking away. 

And then you shred it and you can turn it into nachos or Roll-Ups or chicken tortilla soup or King Ranch chicken, like there's so many options. Make a taco salad with it. And someone messaged me and was like, can I get the recipe for that? <laughter> I think I gave it to you, but yeah, you literally just just dump turn it on and walk away. So that would be because there's so many options for that one.

Shanxi: How do you deal with kids with special needs, specifically ADHD with high impulsivity?

Abbie: So I don't answer a whole lot of special needs questions because I don't have any that are diagnosed with special needs. And the ADHD thing for me - I’m just going to tell you like if you have a lot of experience with ADHD, I'm not even close to an expert, I'm like the opposite of an expert with this.

But typically with mine that have more ADHD tendencies - no diagnosis, but having trouble focusing, having trouble sitting still, having trouble with impulse control - I'm going to try to give them as many different kind of breaks and options as possible.

So requiring a child like that to sit still for a long period of time is going to be a recipe for failure and I know that you just want to get it done but you're actually going to get it done faster if you give them around the house, or if you give them some really cold water to drink, or something that kind of stimulates them and gets them back on task. 

And also, if you break tasks down into small things. If you say, “Do four pages of math,” they're gonna die. But if you say, “Finish this section and we will do something you love, that's very reasonable and takes 30 seconds,” then their minds can process that “I can stay focused for this section,” right? So again, that's not like professional ADHD advice but for mine that have tendencies like that, that helps a lot.

Shanxi: These are all related to Middle School. 1) What are some resources for middle school and core subjects and electives needing wisdom and biblical tools for these years? Practical guidelines for monitoring social media, texting and cultural influence? How do you keep the culture from overtaking them? 2) Now that you have a few children in the middle years, what would you tell moms just on the verge of the season with their first-borns? 3) Would love to know more about Grace Girls program, also your take on youth group?

Abbie: OK, so I'll address social media first. I'm sorry if I step on your toes. I don't think a middle schooler should be on social media ever. <applause> Like, our high schoolers are not on social media and we have some stellar high schoolers and I get people that push back and say, “Hypocrite! You're on social media.” And I say, “I am a 40-year-old mother of 10 who uses this as a ministry and doesn't even use a personal social media. No I'm not the way you're talking about.”

So can I use my time unwisely there? Yes, but I am an adult. why would I send my 10-year-old into a situation where they could be preyed upon? I mean y'all have already clapped. I don't think you need me to go on about this, but my answer to that would be they don't need it.

So what we have done with phones. Our middle schoolers don't have phones. There's some slight untruth in that, but not intentional.

Our two oldest boys got Apple watches because I have an iPhone. I'm the only one with an iPhone, or was. And they got Apple watches because they could text me from their Apple watches, which was a great way of communicating, but they couldn't get access. 

We turned off all the access to Internet, and y they couldn't use them unless they were on Wi-Fi. So they didn't have a plan that went with them. So they couldn't just go somewhere and use their Apple watches, but they could text me from home or they could text me if they were on their friend's Wi-Fi or things like that, so that was a useful way of communicating.

You don't anymore, but you used to have it to have a phone that was paired with your Apple watch. So they had super old iPhones, they stay in a public place, and we read all of their texts and looked at all of their - if they ask to search for anything, then we look at all of their search histories.

Now my older boys have demonstrated great responsibility ability in this area. And so my older my oldest son who will be 17 in May - he's 17 going on 45 - just got his own phone and he is paying for his own plan. 

We still require him to keep the phone in a public place. He is not allowed to take it into his room, he's not allowed to, and he's fine with that, like he understands.

And he has this little girl that he likes - we don't officially date or anything like that - but he has this girl that he likes that he can communicate with, and he knows that at any point we can just pull up his text history and look at every one of his texts and he's fine with that. And we do. 

And same with my 15 year old, who has his old iPhone. So I think one of the biggest things is just transparency and clearly communicating that, “I love you and I am aware that no temptation has seized anyone except what is common to man and I know what's on here. I've been on this, you know, been around this merry-go-round a couple times and I know what you're going to be seized with the temptation. So I'm going to work with you to help you not succumb to those.”

Middle schoolers are so much fun. Please do not let - oh, and also high schoolers - please do not let the world tell you otherwise. All of that investment you're doing now when they're little bitty really does pay off. 

It doesn't mean that there aren't hard seasons that they won't have seasons where they're surly and grouchy and you know, you're like, “What's wrong with you? You were so happy!” But you hang in there with them in those seasons. So Middle School is a really really fun age to me. That pre-teen age is, they're just still really sweet and still very attached to you in a lot of ways and just want to talk to you about all the things.

So keep the lines of communication open. Don't shut them down in any way. If they want to jump in the car with you to go to the grocery store - even though you want 10 minutes of peace - have them get in the car with you.

They are going to tell you all, everything that's on their hearts - in a lot of cases, different personalities will do different things - but that's still a really open and sweet age if they have been raised in an open and sweet household in a lot of ways, like the homeschooling community.

I don't mean like if you're doing it right, I just mean if they haven't been kind of taught by their culture to shut down and parents are the enemy and not cool and stuff, you've got a line to their hearts that's really precious during those years. And I really encourage you to utilize it because they're a lot of fun.

I think Grace Girls was in there? So Grace Girls is this homeschool girls group that I started a year and a half ago in the fall of 2021 I guess that would have been.

My girls were asking for some resources to get to see their friends on a regular basis that wasn't just co-op. So I had this idea to talk to some seasoned homeschool moms. 

And the Lord has really put me in a season of having a lot of Titus 2 women in my life, which I’m so grateful for because I didn't have that for a really long time. I mean my mom and she's fantastic and that was definitely a huge help to me, but other than my mom and I had several women that I knew that I could ask for help with this and I literally said, “If I make a schedule, will you sign up to host and can we make it where whoever's hosting is in charge of whatever the thing is?”

And they're like, “Yeah, we can do that.” And they were just very proficient, like one has eight kids and is 50. One has 12 kids and is 57, somewhere around there. And so they, their youngest kids are the age of my older kids if that makes sense.

And so I made a schedule and then we invited - it wasn't like a clique-ish thing, it was just like, “Hey, who would enjoy doing this that has daughters?” 

There's a very wide range of ages,  so typically it's in the 9 to 14 range but if like older sisters want to come, great. If the babies want to come, great. It's homeschooling. We let anybody come, right? And then if little brothers need to come, great. I just started the girls group because I'm a girl so it, you know, made sense to do that and my daughters were the ones asking for it.

But I think it would be awesome to do a boys group as well. And so whoever is in charge and has signed up for that day provides the snacks and the activity.

So we've done a shuffle dancing tutorial. We have done Christmas caroling at a retirement home. We have done all kinds of different crafts. Most recently I think we made, like, cute little bookmarks. … And usually the mom does a really short little devotional or gives some scripture, and we pray together, and then we do a craft together, and then the girls just talk.

Oh, the most recent thing. Nobody had signed up for a particular week because they were all busy and I said, “What if we just go to this local French bakery that just opened?” And we all showed up and watched them make pastries through the window and you know - field trip with pastries.

People ask me so many specific questions and the funny thing is, it's a little bit like the salsa chicken I'm like, “I just told you. Like, I put dates down people signed up and then they took care of it. Ta-da! It's been the easiest thing I've ever organized.”

So if people come to your mind that you're like, “Oh, she would be good and she would be, and I wonder if she would want to do it,” ask them because it might fall into place. And it would be one of those things that doesn't feel like another big thing on your plate because I've got enough going on that starting homeschool groups wasn't really on my radar, and this worked out great.

Someone asked me about homeschool resources. Like, you want you want like, names of curriculum?

Apologia Science is great, but Apologia has an apologetics program for the middle school age that is really great for interacting with those questions about, “Who Am I?” “Who does God say, who does the world say, how do I react with cultural issues?” Things like that.

So if it was related to that type of question rather than just, “You want me to tell you an entire curriculum for middle schoolers,” Apologia has a really good program for that.

Shanxi: “These two questions have to do at the end of the school year. 1) Tips and ideas for planning and preppings for the school year? 2) How do you know if your kids are getting what they are learning? Do you test at the end of the year?

Abbie: No, we do not test at the end of the year. I am basing my knowledge of what my kids are getting on their ability to narrate back to me what they just read. 

I mean, if they can't tell me what they just read, clearly there's either an attention problem or a comprehension problem right, or an actual reading problem. And so that's a point where you're needing to step down or sit down with them and say, “OK, so did you just lose your train of thought or …?” You know.

“Obviously with math, we actually do grade math and we use Saxon Math for Middle School, we use Horizons for younger ages, and then we have a homeschool co-op that determines their high school math classes and they use a variety of curricula. But we do grade so I'm knowing what they're, because math is objective - you either did or didn't get it right - and we can assess based on that but I don't do big end-of-year tests.

But the knowledge is cumulative, and typically any curriculum is going to repeat a pretty good portion of what you ended with last year at the beginning for a refresher. 

And if they're completely lost, just jot down those areas, like, “Oh spelling we are struggling in spelling …” and we do do spelling quizzes on - I would call it in a irregular basis. it's more like, “Oh, we need to focus on this so we're going to have a quiz. You need to actually study this instead of just kind of talk it through with me or do your reading.” 

I'm pretty informal because the state of Texas or on as far as testing goes because the state of Texas is very informal. If they were requiring me to keep more documentation I would, but I'm more keeping an eye on my children's ability to do the core things that they need to do. And if they're doing them, I have the trust from my own personal experience that they will continue to build on that knowledge.

Shanxi: This is a question from someone who's loved and was very encouraged by your book. She says, “One of the things I noticed in reading was how you honored your husband and seemed to make a great team what are practical ways you and your husband build that unity?

Abbie: We have done a date night our entire marriage even before we had kids which we had we had kids like a week before our first anniversary, so we just went for it.

Not quite as impressive as my brother who had a child nine months to the day of his wedding date. It’s like honeymoon baby! 

So our date night has looked different over the years as the ages of our children have changed and our circumstances have evolved. 

But typically it's been on Thursday nights and before - nope, well, we dated before we were there - but once we were married and we decided to keep dating, we typically did at home even then we weren't necessarily going out for dates we were saving up money to build a house. 

And we've built a couple of houses from scratch. My husband has actually been the one that's done all the work on them. And so we were saving up money for that so we would typically do an in-home date on Thursday evenings and then once we started having kids, we kept doing that very consistently.

And so what I would do is I would plan for that day so I would like bump naptime back 30 minutes earlier so they'd be ready to go to bed 30 minutes earlier.

I would have their easy little meal prepped because I would usually bring home takeout after I taught a fitness class, or we would have like a charcuterie board together or something like that.

But the goal was to get kids in bed earlier than usual so it wasn't 9:00 before we were able to sit down and you know, face each other and talk and it was such a fun thing to look forward to every week.

Now we get to go out now we get to do like the typical date where you know I wear heels and I get dressed up and we go to a restaurant. 

And it's really fun, but honestly I like the at-home days just as much and I would probably keep doing them but our teenagers would be like, “Hey, can we play a game?” “Hey, can I tell you about this?”

Which is awesome, and our teenagers are the ones that babysit the younger kids now - we don't usually leave until about six o'clock and our little Bitties go to bed around 7:30 so they're not watching them for a huge amount of time - and I was telling the lunch group that we typically try to give them something fun to look forward to on Thursday nights.

So they get to watch a show and we have ingredients, they make the dinner that night, but they have ingredients in the fridge for something that they love like homemade pizza or spaghetti or something that they really enjoy. And we make sure they have dessert and so there have been times where we're like, “Oh, it's a really busy week. I don't know if we're going,” They're like, “Get going! Like, we want to have date night too!” <laughter>

So I think if you're committed to it and just having - I don't think that it's absolutely necessary. I have definitely gotten pushback from people that are like, “I just don't want to do that. That doesn't sound fun to me. That sounds like more more work than benefit.”

I would just really encourage you if you're not doing it specifically one night a week, going out, staying in, that you're at least carving out very intentional time to have just you and your husband 

This shocks some people, but Sean and I shower together almost every night and we just shower, y’all. We talk and shower. It's not a big deal, but people are like, “Do your kids know you do that?”

I’m like, “Yes, they are aware they are not a product of asexual reproduction!” <laughter> Now are we sharing lurid details? No, but they're not shocked by this, so I think the more matter of fact we are about like, “We love each other! Therefore we are going to kiss each other and like, slap each other's butts as we walk by and we're gonna go shower together and no we're not showering in our clothes!” You know <laughter>.

But that's like, we put in 2 shower heads specifically so we could stand there and talk to each other and nobody's allowed to come in, you know. It's like, “Sorry, guys.” So yeah, that may not work for everybody, but we love it. <laughter>

Shanxi: This question says, what does it look like to have a real mentor? I've never had one that lasted more than one meeting. I’ve asked women to be my mentor and no one seems interested or has time.

Abbie: Right. OK, so I have not found - this is going to be different for everybody - I have not found that the “asking someone to be your mentor” thing works super well. Because if that person has not already somehow invested in your life, it's going to be a little bit of an artificial situation.

It can work, but I can think of people that would probably sort of kind of consider me their mentor but it's just because we do life together.

If someone actively walks up to me and is like, “Hey, can you carve out an hour every week to be my mentor?” I’m a little bit like, “I don't know, I don't think so, like, let me think about it.”

So the mentor other than my mom that I've had is named Jennifer Flanders. She's the 57-year-old that has 12 kids. She's my de facto editor for my books. I have another one coming out in September, and she edited that one too.

They actually tried to give me a paid editor at my publisher, and I just about had a panic attack because I'm weird and I don't want someone editing my book that I don’t, I have my system, and Jennifer gets my system, and so she's one of my very best friends. 

But the way that our mentorship - which is truly a friendship - because she often tells me, she's so kind and encouraging, and she often tells me that she gets as much from me as I get from her.

And I have a hard time believing that because she's so full of wisdom, but she just says, “You encourage me, I admire this about you,” and she just is a true example of not holding any kind of like, grudge or anything back, and feeling threatened by anyone that's different because she is - and I feel the same way about her - but she's one of the most accomplished people that I've ever seen.

She beaded her own wedding dress - made it and beaded the whole thing. Her entire house is full with her own, filled with her own art. All of her children are like anesthesiologists and dentists and all this fancy stuff, and she is the most down-to-earth precious person.

She's on the internet - Flanders family, go check her out - she's amazing. So I would call her my mentor now, but I didn't ever approach her and say, “Will you be my mentor?”

And I think it's partially this - and I don't think I even knew I was doing it at the time - you need to provide value to someone if you want them to mentor you.

If you are simply a drain on them, very likely if you see someone that you really want to mentor you, it's because they are a productive, busy, like involved person, and they have a lot going on. And if you're simply saying, “Please pour into me” without offering anything back, that's going to feel really overwhelming to somebody.

So maybe think about someone that you would love to get to know, and just get to know them and provide value in their life, and glean from them every moment that you get.

And you may look up one day and go, “This person is my mentor, but I didn't necessarily officially try to like, propose to them, right, and make it this real permanent thing,” because that can be intimidating.

Shanxi: Yeah, that's a great, great answer and I would just say that MPE does have a mentoring moms program. Wo whoever wrote that question, if you want to reach out to us afterwards, we can see if we can get you plugged in and connected.

Abbie: Which is fantastic because that's people that have signed up to do that, right? So they know they want to. That's great.

Shanxi: Here's another question. It says, I recently read a book where the author called out homeschoolers. He said we tend to be un-offendable to the point that we are only concerned with raising “free-range children in nature” and don't worry about academics. How can we resist the urge to be lazy about academics and maintain a balance of play, nature and freedom of learning with realizing the importance of academia and the necessity of structure?

Abbie: Does this ring true with y’all? That doesn't sound like our homeschooling - it doesn't sound like most of the homeschooling of mamas that I encounter. It's an interesting perspective. 

I feel like the unschooling movement is becoming more popular, but honestly, if you're unschooling the way you're supposed to be doing, it's almost more work than structured schooling.

Because you have to like, be thinking of ways to constantly be getting value from what I could be being very strategic.

Like, if we climb the street we better count how many you know feet we climbed and things like that. Or you might simply literally letting your child be free range and they aren't learning much.

So I think that there is a balance of saying - he is saying there is a balance, he's saying we haven't struck it - most of the homeschoolers I encounter are very much so doing their academics they are not just letting their children run wild and free.

Shanxi: This is a two-pronged question. 1) Do you have any recommendations for resources on setting boundaries? 2) Do you adhere to any specific style of homeschooling, e.g. classical, Charlotte Mason, etc.?

Abbie: Yeah, OK, so resources on setting boundaries. Ginger Hubbard is a good one. Rachel Jankovic is a good one. They both have a lot online, and Ginger Hubbard has a podcast.

Rachel Jankovic has books called, Loving the Little Years. There's one called, Don't Make Me Count to Three. So some of those, I wouldn't necessarily recommend them wholesale, every single word that they say, but they do a good job of fleshing out what that looks like.

I think for me, and what I talk about in M Is for Mama when I specifically talk about training children, I mean consistently conveying what we need from them and then following through.

My four steps are basically, that you communicate what it is that you need, and then you give the follow-through of the action that you said that you were going to say, and then so the discipline would be next if they don't do what you ask them to do, and that you follow through and that you're really consistent.

Boundaries hold when you are consistent to enforce them, and they fall apart when you kind of scatter shot them.

So that would be the super simple version of it. But things that you are committed to will typically make a dent in a behavior for sure. 

Shanxi: Do you adhere to any specific style?

Abbie: Pretty traditional, like I grew up with a Beka and Bob Jones and Saxon and we have used a little bit of all of those. But we incorporate poetry, we incorporate memorization, we incorporate narration. And we love to be outside and we do a lot of life skills, which doesn't every homeschool mom?

I mean like, yeah you're bringing your children into your daily life and you're teaching them things as you do life with them. So pretty structured but not not rigorously so, I would say.

Shanxi: This person asks, are extracurricular activity something you do in your home? Are they necessary?

Abbie: We typically eat dinner together four to five times a week, and to do that we have to say no to a lot. 

Now there are seasons we can't all be there, and I know that those will ramp up some as my kids get older, and they're able to be more independent to go drive themselves to do things, and they have jobs and all those things and I'm just sad about it, so don't talk to me <laughter>

Because I actually absolutely love having 16-year-olds down to a 2-year-old. It's like I get all the ages and all the best stages because they're all good together at once. And it's very cool. But we protect our time pretty fiercely by saying no to a whole lot.

So my boys did football with our homeschool League this past summer and thankfully because it was a homeschool League they had practices at kind of unusual time.

So they did like a Wednesday morning practice and a Monday afternoon practice so they weren't evening practices. Some of the games were in the evening and some of the games were very far away like two hours away. 

Thankfully we had a neighbor who was also on the team and before my boys could drive - and actually even after they could drive, because I'm not okay with my 16-year-old driving two hours away - they were riding with them.

And I have like a friend, for example, whose daughter - she has nine children and this was her number six, I believe - ended up being very competitive in the dance arena. And she said the only reason that worked for our family - because we were not going to become a dance family for one child - was that we had a neighbor who was able to take her.

So I think keeping your eyes open for those opportunities where you can say yes even if they don't seem completely fair, where a child has an affinity for something and you can literally tell the other children, “This is working because we have this particular resource. We don't have that resource for you, but we will find something for you. It may not look like this and that is not because we don't love you, but because we're going to have to protect our family's peace as a whole.” So we guard dinner time or evening time pretty fiercely.

We're about to go into soccer and it'll be six weeks of crazy,  but it's six weeks out of the year and the rest of the time we try to structure things.

So like, I have three kids in piano, but we found a teacher that would keep all of their piano times in one block and it's in the afternoon after our homeschool Co-op. So they still get home at like 4:30. 

So I think just being willing to kind of hold out for those situations where someone will work with you and be kind of a “homeschool-friendly” extracurricular is a good thing to keep in mind to commit to those things that are short-term disruptions of your commitment to family time. Instead of all year round.

And to take turns with kids so we will literally say, “These four are doing soccer so y'all are not doing something right now because it's not your turn, and then you're doing football so we're going to take a break from this.”

I grew up playing every sport under the sun because there were only two of us and sports were just the way that we communicated with our dad and something that we did together as a family.

And it was still family time, but that meant that we didn't eat dinner together a whole lot. We were still together a lot, you know, we homeschooled.

So we were together a whole lot, so I think that sitting down and seeing what your family's core values are, talking to your husband about what he cares the most about, like, “Where are our priorities for how we spend time together as a family?”

And then guarding those fiercely once you know what they are for the priority of your family is important.

Shanxi: This question is how do you remind yourself of grace? Favorite practical tips and tricks when you just have to be in doing mode most of the time? 

I often get so hyper focused on what needs to be done and then feel pride if it's accomplished and despair if it's not. I want to be grounded in, “It is God in me who works for his good pleasure.”

Abbie: Absolutely. So I'm a productive person, I get that completely. But you remember I said I'm a barrel of fun drill sergeant?

I think that the times when I find myself just really pushing hard to the next thing on my to-do list and my children are asking me, “Hey Mama, remember could we do this?” Those moments where I really would rather finish my job, but it's not a necessary job and I could say yes to the fun thing that they want to do - I have started training myself to say yes.

Like, I think that's your biggest thing. If you can reasonably say yes to a reasonable request, do it.

Because your children will remember that a whole lot more than the clean laundry.

I'm a fan of clean laundry. I am not one of those “good moms have dirty stoves and sticky floors.” You can, it's true, but that's not the definition of a good mom. The filth in your house - my house - is not necessarily a good indication that you're spending time on your children. It could just be laziness, you know?

So then I have to find that balance of, am I being committed to the tasks that I know that the Lord has set before me? and I'm also being open to the grace that he provides me of these distractions which really aren't distractions at all. They're great opportunities to connect with our children.

Shanxi: These two are kind of related. 1) How do you find joy in everyday life? 2) What helped you to land on gratitude in the midst of childhood trauma and dysfunction instead of anger and bitterness?

Abbie: I've worked through a lot of anger and bitterness. I talk about it a lot in the upcoming book. And there were times when I was more angry and bitter than grateful and joyful.

I think Krystal answered this really well at dinner last night. She said, “When I had five kids, I was drowning. I was depressed. I literally didn't know what was wrong with me. I had no one else that could relate to my situation because none of my friends had kids or very many of them and I felt very alone in the world.”

And you know - there are going to be people that say this is the Susie Pollyanna version of this and Jesus didn't ask you to - she said, “I turned to the Lord and I asked him to give me joy that wasn't mine because I didn't have it.” 

And she said he gave it to her and not just that day, but he gave it to her going forward as she continued to throw herself on his mercies.

She said her husband noticed a difference ,her kids noticed the difference, and she has actually enjoyed her children more ever since.

And I think that is a huge testimony to something that we often overlook, which is that point that we reach that pit that we get into where we say, “Lord I believe. Help my unbelief, because I don't have it.”

Now there are practical things going forward that spark joy. We talked a lot about rhythms at lunch today, and I think if you are in a season where your rhythms are really disrupted or you've never established any, that it can be easy to feel like life has you by the tail and your children are not a blessing because you don't know how to put out all the fires.

So establishing some really practical rhythms in your home, of breakfast and bedtime and clean up times and nap times, can free your brain up so much.

That moment when everybody's down for quiet time and nap time in the afternoon and either you can get that thing done finally that's been gnawing at your brain or you can just sit and go “ahhh” and not do anything is so key because I do think that we as Christian mamas can push past this concept: that we actually do need a break. We do.

Jesus rested. Jesus went off - again with the book, I have a whole chapter on self-care versus soul care and the difference between the two.

And the world is going to tell you, “You need constant dopamine hits to keep you going, the next thing to look forward to, or you're not going to be happy.” And we know that doesn't keep us happy, but time with the Lord does, and investing in the hard stuff now for the rest that he has for us later is important.

Shanxi: A lot of time management questions - I'm just going to read a few of them. “I have two little girls. Between trying to get fellowship, church service, groceries, etc., I feel like I'm always going. I want a slower simpler life. how do I balance what's needed while knowing when to say no and keep life quiet and simple? I don't want to cave to the culture that's always busy and never still.”

“Do you have many tips for time management? How do you be a present mom and wife in homeschool while also doing things outside like business and other things your heart enjoys? Feels impossible. Advice? From a mother who struggles with a lot of shame, especially when I mess up with my kids.”

Abbie: I'm going to come back to, you need to sit down with your husband and see what your priorities are. And then you say no to those things that are stealing your peace.

Like, if you don't know what to say no to, look at the thing that makes you go like that your the your shoulders do this, and ask the Lord if that is a requirement of your life or if you're doing it out of obligation or whatever.

And if it's the latter say no to it. And when your husband tells you to say no to it, you're like, “I can do it, I can do it.”

Listen to him! The Lord has given him the ability to lead and he has given him that that role. And it's important not to just say, “But I could do it! I'm capable!” We may be capable, but it also may be killing our peace in our home. 

As far as time management, setting timers, putting your phone in a different room where it's charging and you can't get to it so it doesn't distract you, doing the same thing at the same time every single day until your mind gets in a rhythm and you're automatically going in and flipping the laundry at 8 a.m. every single morning because you've done it for six weeks and made yourself develop a habit of self-discipline helps so much, y'all.

I know that it is easy to get distracted and there's so many things pulling at our attention. And in addressing the things as far as outside, I told the lunch crew this, but I didn't get to be an author or a speaker or any of those things until I was 38 years old.

My oldest child was 14 at the time. The Lord said wait for a very long time before he said, “OK, go.” And when he said, “OK, go,” it was very clear that it was his will because I wasn't seeking any publishing opportunities. I was not chasing it down. He brought it to me.

And my husband was very for it and very encouraging. Whereas in the past he’d been like, “I don't know how we're gonna make this work.” So again, when it becomes evident that he is saying go, understand that he will probably give you a whole other level of responsibility.

I've never been so “every spot in my life is taken,” but listen to me. I count the times with my family as those spots taken, OK?

So we're not just go go going, because I don't discount being at home with my children as the thing that I'm supposed to do.

So that is on my to-do list. Being with my children, reading to them, making dinner for them, those are all - and I think that's part of the productivity thing. We tend to say, like my list doesn't include homeschooling or any of my homemaking things, it only includes these things there, and I can't get to them. Therefore I'm not productive. And that is not a good way of looking at our home.

We are keepers of the home, and as we keep the home, that is our first priority. When and if the Lord brings you a season where you can fit some of these other things, it’s because of homeschool drop off, which is what I do for my co-op now.

I used to be there during the day, and I have one day where I do a homeschool drop off for co-op. And that's the afternoon that I record podcasts and record content. You just go as fast as you can while you've got it, because you know they're coming home and then you need to be with them.

But I just really encourage you to consider the season that you're in. It may seem impossible to you now and it did for me then, but it won't necessarily be always.

Shanxi: Thanks so much for listening. We hope you are encouraged in your homeschool journey.

Please continue the conversation with us on our website, midwesthomeschoolers.org, or email us at podcast@midwestparenteducators.org. We're also active on social media if you'd like to connect with us there. Thanks to Kevin McLeod of incompetech.com for providing this royalty-free song Wholesome, which is licensed under creativecommons.org.

0 Comments
Homeschool Hints
Homeschool Hints Podcast
Want support with your homeschool? Our Midwest Parent Educators (MPE) nonprofit has served homeschooling families in Kansas City and the regional Midwest since 1986. Let's help one another find resources, opportunities, and community as we raise the next generation!