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Homeschool Burnout by Jan L. Burt

 How many things do you have to accomplish during the course of a day?

Now think about all you do during an entire week. 

Start thinking about everything you have to get done in a month, or a year, and you might break out in hives. 

For most homeschool moms, burnout happens one day at a time.


If I had to take a guess as to the number one cause of burnout among homeschoolers, I'd probably sum it up on one word: LIFE.



Life just keeps coming at us, fast and furious. 

So, preventing or "curing" a case of burnout might involve figuring out how to handle the daily-weekly-monthly-yearly grind. 

(Spoiler alert: homeschooling is wonderful & amazing & filled with moments that make great memories...but it is also a G-R-I-N-D and there's no shame in admitting that.)


Ask yourself if there is any part of your homeschooling that can be better organized, if the overwhelm is getting to you. Is your family involved in too many extracurricular activities, and is that causing burnout for you or your kiddos? Are the children doing their fair share to help out around the house? (Chores aren't punishment; they are part of family life, after all.) Are you trying to fit more schoolwork into a day than can be done? 

If you can identify the specific source of the burnout, can I encourage you to start implementing changes in that area right away?

If I am drowning in piles of papers, or stacks of mail (how much mail can one family get in a week??? It's a stupid amount!), I take half an hour and just get rid of the pile, quickly sorting through all that paper, tossing what is stressing me out, and if I need to keep something, I put it where it belongs and get it out of my hair. 

My inbox can be super stressful, and when I get overwhelmed, I spend half an hour unsubscribing. In fact, email clutter bothers me so much that I rarely send emails to the 5000 subscribers on my own email list! (Not sure that's a good thing, but I digress.)

Are the kid's bedrooms a wreck? As soon as the schoolwork is done for the day, send them into that messy room, set a timer, and have them tidy things up. 

Curriculum strung all over the house? Carve out a couple of hours, gather it all in one place, sort it by subject (with the answer keys!) and get it all on a bookshelf or in large baskets.

And I have found that moving all the clutter into the garage doesn't fix anything. 

I have run the gamut on homeschool burnout during my 25 years of home education. Here are a few things that helped me tremendously when I found myself up against the wall, desperate for something to change. 


I would grade their work daily, if possible. Getting behind on grading my kid's assignments became a heavy burden for me and almost always ended up colliding with other stressors to create the perfect storm of burnout. 

I took time to meal plan - breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. A workable meal plan for a large family that is home all-day-long eliminated a lot of stress for me. And stressing about meals three times a day pushed me to the edge of burnout quickly. The "headache" of meal planning was easier than flying by the seat of my pants when it came to feeding five hungry children over and over again!

Our family had a chore chart and everyone helped out. At first I wondered if the kids would fight me on doing chores, but they rose to meet my expectations and hardly complained at all.


If you have any tips to share about dealing with, or avoiding, homeschool burnout, would you leave a comment so other readers can be encouraged? 

By banding together and encouraging each other, we fight burnout side-by-side.


Happy Homeschooling!

~ Jan L. Burt

creator of Homeschool Planning Made Simple (available at JanLBurt.com)

&

author of The Homeschooling Mother's Bible Study (available on Amazon)



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