I don’t talk about homeschooling often, but I think about it a lot and have a lot of blog followers who homeschool, so I’ve definitely got ideas for you. I recently received a great question from a homeschool mom:
“I just want to request that you more fully address a topic that I have not found on your site. Could you please address homeschooling? In homeschooling, it seems, executive functioning skills such as organization of papers, deadlines, turning in homework, etc are far less of a daily necessity. Yet, they are so important to the rest of life. I’m just wondering if you could suggest/do a blog/video on how to incorporate more executive functioning skill building into our homeschool. My children are only accountable to me so often there’s a lot of resistance and so little natural consequence to not following through. I know you’ve mentioned not using motivation or consequences, therefore, I am often left feeling like I’m powerless to help develop these skills. Homeschooling is a unique situation, not needing the backpack overhaul and such. Will you please address it? Thank you for what you do and for your time. Your work is extraordinary! I hope what I am requesting is clear.”
Here I go into the topic in one of my longest videos yet – I address some homeschool ideas in-depth for 35 minutes.
My intention was to give you a good idea of what you want to keep in the back of your head about executive function if you homeschool. I discuss:
- How we want ALL kids happy successful launch, we’re all trying to do the same thing regardless of educational approach.
- Why EF skills are so important for ANY career, and for all children.
- The importance of planting seeds asap.
- How to find the balance between freedom and structure.
- About firm boundaries.
- How to adapt the principles to your child.
- The need for ownership and buy-in.
- How students need “project management.”
- Thoughts on homeschooling and planning, priorities, organization, color coding, inboxes, google docs, files for life, files for each project with checklists, routines (visual), set due dates, metacognition, routine times for responsibilities, catchalls, self-evaluation, homes for things, etc..
- How to work with homeschool resistance, ask what consequence should be, what reward should be.
I hope this helps you!
Seth
ps- If you notice I’m somewhere new, I’m filming from my parent’s home in Indianapolis over Thanksgiving break. Hope you had a great holiday!
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Thank you! Homeschooling for five years. My son and myself have EF struggles. He’s starting 9th grade and with the shift to high school, I want to figure out this balance of structure and freedom. It’s tough having my own struggles and being his guide. He’s had lots of freedom, especially during covid-19, with xbox and computer games. I know I need to scale it back, yet still want to allow him to balance it with his assigned work.
Thank you for this video! I am just diving into your materials. I heard you on a podcast at Stowell learning center which my son is a student of. We are struggling in our classroom with attitude, ownership, and like you said, resistance. He is 13 years old and part of a Classical Conversations community. So he not only is accountable to me but to his class. This is a double edged sword for us. The stress of being ready for community Day is a lot. Even though we have the “freedom “ to scale as needed, There’s a minimum necessary to be able to participate in class. Looking forward to learning more on how we can have a happy healthy homeschool!
This is great information thank you so much. I’m the Instagram homeschool world there has recently been talk about the lack of EF skills in homeschooling and it got me thinking/ researching and I came across this video. I’m exploring more options of how to do this but one thing I can share is that we should be looking at executive functioning at a young age. A lot of people wait until their children are 12 and older but like you said plant the seeds now as early as possible. My son is in 2nd grade and I’m struggling with owner ship and buy in but hopefully I have some good ideas to switch it up