The kids and I set our hoard of library books on the counter when all of a sudden I hear “Esther! How are you doing? It’s so good to see you!” There she was, that sweet familiar face and smile I’ve seen for years. I first met her from our old Farmer’s Market days in town. She always bought my big fluffy rolls, a jar of jelly and a pie.
We begin our 11th year of homeschooling in about a week and a half. It’s a hard thing to swallow. Yet again, another summer is already fading into the uttermost parts of what will be a memory.
In Defeating Homeschool Burnout Part 1, we looked at 12 ways to help better DEFEAT the ugly burn that is caused by what I call “Homeschool Burnout”. We’re going to jump right in, and look at 11 more ways to help any of us finding ourselves trying to overcome the sting.
Homeschool Burnout: [ hōm′sko͞ol bern´out ] emotional and physical exhaustion resulting from a combination of exposure to environmental and internal stressors that involve teaching (one’s children) at home, while simultaneously keeping house, washing mountain loads of laundry, cooking dinner, wiping noses, carrying a baby on a hip, keeping a toddler entertained and being a good helper to a husband. In addition to signs of exhaustion, this type of burn exhibits an increasingly negative attitude toward the choice to homeschool in the first place, low self-esteem, and personal devaluation, second guessing, and threats of putting kids on a bus, is often associated with homeschool burnout.
Homeschool Burnout always finds us at the most inconvenient of times.
