Episode 161: The Challenge Every Homeschool Mom Knows with Renee Amato
What You’ll Learn
More detailed notes to come…
It's the end of September and the 'new' of your homeschool year has likely started to wear off...maybe push back has started to creep in...or get worse...
Maybe that one kid takes FOREVER Or maybe you're fighting downright refusal from your kids when it's time to do their work…
We're back with our favorite board-certified behavioral analyst and dear friend, Renee Amato today and we're speaking right to the heart of our exhausted homeschool mommas.
Resistance & The Four Motivations (01:00)
Okay, let's dig in and talk about the resistance, and then maybe how to find the ‘why’ behind the resistance…because I have no professional training whatsoever, but being a mom of seven and just trial and erroring the stew out of what we do around here, it feels like there's always a ‘why’ behind the resistance that we're meeting.
Yes, I think as parents and homeschool moms, we have this expectation of what needs to be done and what should be done, and then we have reality of what's actually possible and what we can accomplish in a day. When there’s a big gap, there are a lot of behaviors that arise.
You mentioned to us before we got on here that basically, there are four reasons why humans do things, right?
There are. As a general rule, anytime a kid is doing a behavior, there is one of four motivations behind it.
The Four Motivations
The motivations are…
Avoidance and escape, which is probably the biggest one because when you think about it, you hand your kid the work, and they typically don't want to do it. It's not exciting for them.
That's when you see running away from the table or just sitting there and staring and not doing it. And we do the same thing! And this is what's so fun about behavior, you can start to like be an investigator in your own life because when you know these things, you can label them.
For example, there are times that instead of doing the dishes, I'll sit down and scroll on Instagram. That's just avoidance. I'm trying to get out of the behavior. So that's a big one.
Access to items is another motivation. If you do your work, you can have your video games, a treat, or something like that. So we do it for getting access to things.
And the third motivation is attention, praise, good job, getting to spend time with you or friends. That's access to attention.
Finally, the fourth motivation is sensory, which you don't see it as often, but it's still there.
So if you have a kid that has a sensory condition where they like to rub their hands, or they're erasing stuff and playing with the eraser, that behavior is going on because they really like the feel of it. It's like a sensory thing.
Keep in mind too, the four motivations can be intertwined.
You can have access to items and also attention. They can go together, but really when you strip away all the emotion and all the, just back it up, it really comes down to one of those four things. And if you can identify that, then you know how to tackle the behavior.
Identifying Motivation (03:45)
Okay, so how do you know how to identify which motivation you’re dealing with? Can you take us through each one of those and just give us some ways to identify them?
The interesting thing that that it really depends on the child and what's motivating to them. It's all about the ABCs of behaviors…
The antecedent, the behavior and the consequence.
I'm sure we've heard this phrase thrown around over the years of our parenting, but it's so important because you have to see what's happening before the behavior, what the behavior looks like, and then what happens after the behavior because that big triangle is what maintains all behavior.
For example, let's say math. Math is always a difficult area in my family, right? (I’m sure everyone else has it on lockdown).
Some of my kids are not a fan. So, if I go to present them with doing their math, and if I'm like, here's your math, and then they just melt down and cry, I need to consider what they were already doing…
What happened right before I introduced math. Math is something they don't like. It's a non-preferred activity, right?
So if right before I was like, “Let's do math”, they were playing a video game, or they were talking to their friend, or they were doing something that they loved, and then I'm gonna pull them away and ask them to do something they hate.
That right there…you're taking something that they love, a preferred thing, pulling them away, and then telling them to do something that's non-preferred, that's really aversive to them. Then they might try to perform a behavior to get back to doing that thing, because they don't want to do the math.
So you know, they might run away, they might avoid things, they might cry, things like that, so that's one example.
Okay, so I'm hearing a lot of amazing things here that people might miss if they don't have coaching experience, or haven't worked with you as long as we have.
Number one, we're taking the emotion out of the situation, right? So this isn't something we want to do in the heat of the moment when there's steam coming out of our ears, and like we're red in the face because our kid has done this awful thing once again. Maybe this is something that either happens after the face, maybe right now as you're taking notes when you listen to this podcast.
Number two, you’re looking at the situation like a scientist. You're putting your lab coat on and evaluating the situation. No emotion. No, you're just looking at what happened here.
Finally, you're saying they can't do anything fun because they're just standing there asking. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Your Environment
So here's the big thing, like this is the big overwhelming thing when it comes to behaviors is that your environment sets up your success…
Your environment predicts your behavior. You have to create an environment in your homeschool community, in your homeschool time that cultivates learning. That's the ultimate goal, right?
You want your kid to do their work. Well, how do you get them to do that in a way that's enjoyable for you and your kid, because nobody wants to suffer through school (leaving everyone exhausted and miserable).
Nobody wants that.
We want to prevent behavior, not respond to behavior, like inappropriate behavior because it's significantly easier to prevent it.
Otherwise, you're in the middle of it and you're mad, and your kid's flustered, and everyone's crying and we're going to lose our stuff. That's when it's really hard to respond. When our adrenaline's going and our cortisol's up and we're like, oh, we're so mad.
If we can set up the environment to prevent some of these things, life goes significantly better. But it's really about taking back your emotions and just looking at it from a neutral standpoint of like, “Hey, this is what it is and what can we do to make adjustments?”
Sneaky Behavior
If you're looking at a situation with a child who isn't avoiding their work, but is skipping around and being sneaky about what they're doing or how they're doing it, or they figured out where to find the answer key, and now they're using the answer key to finish their work because they could just get it done. What are you doing in that situation? What’s the problem there, and then how do you fix it?
Okay. This is great. There are so many questions here.
You have to determine why are they skipping it? Is it too hard? Is it overwhelming to them?
So is it a skill deficit? Maybe they don't have the ability to do it.
Cause if that's the case, then that's where you gotta like back it up a little bit and make it a little easier to reach success. Because if you just present them with this thing and they're missing these gaps and things, and then it's like, here, do your geometry and you're still struggling with multiplication. That's a huge reason that you're gonna see that, because they want to cheat to get the answer, because that's easier.
Another thing is, what happens when they do that? Do you catch it all the time, or do you only sometimes catch it? Cause that's another thing, like how often when they're doing an inappropriate behavior, do you discover it?
Because if sometimes they get away with it, and sometimes they don't, that makes a behavior happen more often, cause they never know what's gonna happen. So they're like, oh, maybe I'll try it this time.
It's interesting.
So it's like a slot machine. When you think about gambling, when you're gambling, you never know if you're gonna hit, right? So that's what produces an increase in pulling the lever, cause you're like, maybe this time I'll get a hit.
When a kid's shooting, most of the time, are they getting away with it? Cause if that's the case, they're gonna be more likely to do it because it's easy and it accesses. And that finishing their work and getting away and getting out of doing it and finishing it is really rewarding cause they're getting away from doing what they don't want to do.
So then the motivation to cheat is there because it's easy.
In regards to finding kind of the why behind the resistance, can we look at this in a few different areas? As in, let's look at our role in this situation, our children's role in the situation, maybe the curriculum in the situation, and also the extenuating factors in the situation, our environment, our season. If you have five kids under five, that's going to play a huge part.
Can we look at each of these areas and see, is it us who's the problem? Is it the kid and the behavior who's the problem? Is it the curriculum we're using and the difficulty or the amount that we're pushing on our kid is the problem?
Let's just break those down if you can, and let's look in each of those areas. Let's start with us. Are we the problem?
I'm the problem.
We're always the problem.
I know I'm the problem. When you say, are we the problem, what do you mean by that? Are we causing the behavior?
Yes. What is our role in our children not doing their work? How do we start to figure that out?
Am I the problem? What are the areas I need to try and get myself straight in? Is it my thoughts?
Is it my actions? Am I hounding my kids every day, micromanaging them to do their work and giving them way too much, which I think is a huge problem for a lot of homeschool moms. We've got so much good, so much good, and it feels that on top of the pressure to provide our kids with everything they could possibly need by the time they hit college, or by the time they even hit the next grade, or the fear of them maybe having to go into school next year and not being prepared and not being such a bad reflection on us.
We're pushing them to do more, and we're like, we're going to do this unit study, and then we're going to deep dive into these things. I saw this person on Instagram who's taking her kids outside and getting outside time every day, so we're going to do that as well. There's just so much capacity to go around.
Are we the problem in this situation where our kids are pushing back and not doing the work? And if we can look at it and say, okay, I'm going to get myself right in these areas, maybe these three areas, I'm going to check my thoughts, I'm going to check my actions, and I'm going to check my expectations. And then once you've done that and you've taken a look at yourself there, then looking at your kid, like are there areas that we need to look at them?
Are they overwhelmed? How are they motivated?
First of all, yeah, so expectations versus reality, like we have this expectation of what our kids should be doing and what is attainable versus what actually is obtainable. So when there's that gap, then we're going to have huge problems. So yes, social media is like the downfall.
You know, like we're comparing ourselves. We see, you know, these homeschool moms that are like, all their kids know the violin and they're all doing calculus at the age of 10. I mean, so absolutely comparison is the thief of joy.
So we all know this and yeah, getting ourselves straight when it comes to like centering and focusing on what's obtainable and what's doable and setting measurable goals for our kids is huge because we can't expect them to do all these things perfectly and set all these, you know, this is what the outcome needs to be when it's just not an obtainable realistic thing. So while I don't believe in lowering the bar, I don't think that that's the answer. I do think that breaking down these big, complex behaviors into much smaller, obtainable behaviors is really what I've seen personally in my own homeschool that works.
So, you know, whatever the big outcome is that we want to accomplish for the year, just break it down. That's huge. The environment, like you were saying, as far as what needs to be set up, you have to have a good environment set up for your homeschool.
If you can't, I personally feel like you can't homeschool, like you can't sit down to homeschool. There's just like basic foundations when it comes to homeschooling for me to set yourself up for success. And they're so small, like listen this, if I sit down and I don't have a bunch of sharpened pencils, and I don't have all my materials, do you know how much that ruins my day?
Like the whole, it's like a snowball, it just goes. So setting yourself up for success is huge. Making sure you have your textbooks and the things printed, and your clipboards, and you have them set, and you have small things like that are really overlooked, I feel, when creating behavior because it is those small things that really play into bigger behaviors.
So setting yourself up for success, like the morning of, I would never call my kids in to do schoolwork if I wasn't prepared and set up. It's a recipe for disaster, in my opinion. So are we the problem?
I mean, kind of, a little bit.
It's okay.
That's okay. Because that means we have the ability to make a difference and do something about it.
Yes. I'm always looking for solutions. I'm always looking for how to improve.
So I love that it's not just looking at it like, my kid is really difficult and they just don't do their work. It's like there are lots of different factors we can look at and start to pinpoint or work within to make things work better, or to start to improve the situation and find the solution. I also love that you talked about measurable goals for our people.
I love that you talked about measurable goals for our kids, because that's something that Sarah McKenzie brought up on the podcast, and she was like not comparing where our kids should be, but looking at where our kids are and then making a goal based on that. If they're not reading at all, then maybe we just want them to know their letters by the end of the year, or maybe we just want to say, okay, this child is super struggling with multiplications, so we just want to learn twos in the next two months, and making those measurable goals instead of being like, okay, we need to be at the end of third grade by the end of this year, and just pushing for that.
Oh my goodness, yes, 100%. And I feel like we overestimate what we need to do and underestimate how much can get done with doing small things. These little incremental things add up to huge things, and we sometimes as parents think, no, we need to get it all done.
We need to like, they need to be doing our geometry because they're in eighth grade, they need to do right now, when really just shape it up slowly. That produces a lot better results and it's funner, and it's, that's not a word, it's more fun and it's more gentler, and everyone is happier. And I really am a big believer in relationships over academics.
Well, and that is, number one, you're so right, because there is such a wide variety of age ranges when these things like geometry, algebra, calculus are actually getting done, even in a traditional school system. Okay, so, and I think that can be easy for homeschool moms to forget. Number one, maybe they don't know about that at all anyways.
And number two, every kid is very, very different, and you're working with your child, not everyone's child. And what little Jimmy down the street is doing is going to be different than what your kid is doing. And by the way, if little Jimmy is in geometry in eighth grade, it could be that he's literally cheating on every single thing in school.
Because let me tell you, I've had children in public school, I've had children in private school, and I've had children in homeschool. And I brought home a third grader who could not spell to save his life, okay? He was in the gifted program, he was reading and doing all of these things.
But to this day, this child is 19 years old, he still cannot spell. And he reads widely and deeply about naval history only, but he reads. So I'm just saying, like, it's your particular kid, but like, they all are gonna have different gifts.
Yes, he can't spell, but he can tell you all about physics and teach you about that. He can teach you about history. He can do very complicated math.
So don't even compare. Like you said, thief, total thief of joy.
And I also think, go ahead. I think that when we're sitting here thinking about this, hearing what you're saying, like, do this for your children, look at them as unique, that can feel very far away from where we're at. And it can feel like, how do you even do that?
Like, how do we begin in our homeschools to start to create and articulate all of these things individually when we are a family? And it's already challenging to do what we're doing. And I think that it's important to remind moms out there, maybe remind ourselves that this happens in small ways.
This happens at the end of your homeschool year, or maybe halfway through your homeschool year. When you sit down and you go, what were the pain points that we were experiencing? Or maybe you're amazing and you're a Julie Bogart enthusiast, and you're doing a student narrative every single month, you know, or gosh, you just get to the end of the day and you are sitting in your bed crying or you're sitting in your bed going, today was awful and I threatened to put my kids back into school 10 times, very loudly.
Those are your pain points. You know your children best, and that means that you actually know where they need to go next. You might not feel like it, but it's in you.
You have the answers. You just have to give yourself a little bit of space and reflection to find those answers for them. Begin with your pain points.
Begin with the areas that are the most painful for you and for them and especially where they are painful for both of you together because that is what is going to make the biggest change in your homeschools as far as this resistance that you're coming up against again and again and again.
Yes, I totally agree. And focusing on your why, like coming back to why are like, you know, like if you look, if you zoom out and look at something holistically, like why are you homeschooling? What is the goal?
The goal is not so that they know how to sit down and take a math test perfectly. It is that they have the skills character wise, spiritually to go out in the world and do great things to honor God. And that can come in many shapes and forms.
And I think sometimes in our homeschool, we get so honed in on it needs to be this, this, this, this, this. When if you just zoom out and you look at why, like, like you said, God gave us the ability to do this, like we're well equipped. And the fact that we even question if we're doing it well, is a wonderful indicator that we're doing it well.
I completely agree with you there. You talked earlier about setting ourselves up for success. And I think that that is so valuable.
Setting ourselves up for success as the teacher and as the mom, so that we are not so overwhelmed or get to a point where we are just reactive to all of our children, which is challenging, is challenging, because kids push buttons and kids push back. And it just is sometimes it just gets to a boiling point and you're like, that's it. I think there are a lot of different areas we can set ourselves up for success, in that we can set ourselves up for success in our curriculum, we can set our children up for success, we can set our environment up for success.
Like you said, you love newly sharpened pencils and all of the things already ready to go, because the minute that you're distracted and you go upstairs to print those things that you were going to print and then you get distracted doing something else and then the day is gone and your children never got what they were supposed to do done, but they did destroy the downstairs while you were upstairs. But setting yourself up for success like that and then also maybe even simplifying, I think that's a huge aspect to setting our homeschools up for success is learning how to simplify for our family.
Yes. So I'm a huge believer that the simpler, the better, the more complex something gets, the more overwhelmed we get and the less likely we are to do it. So I have the saying and it's reduce the friction.
So the less friction you can have, the easier that you can make something to do, like the easier something is to do, the more likely you are to do it. And that is like simple and easy. Yes.
So when it comes, like I love your clipboard idea, Brittany, because that's clear, it's concise, you have expectations, you know, and that's the other thing too. What I see is if you don't have clear expectations and you don't have these realistic expectations that are clear for the kids, they don't know what's going on. So then they're overwhelmed.
So breaking it down, making sure that it's... And the other thing too that I notice is like making it simple and making it shorter. Like we don't have to sit there for two hours.
I know like sometimes math could take two hours, but it shouldn't. Like, you know, like make it simple and make it short. And the less friction and the easier you make it to achieve the result that you want, the more likely people are to do it.
That's in every facet of in homeschool and outside of homeschool.
And I think it's important to point out when we first start homeschooling, we look at our curriculum almost as the Bible. Like it's you have to do all of this or you're not going to get the information you need. We need to go through the whole page.
And I think what experienced homeschool moms know that would be so helpful if I had done this in the very beginning was to know the value in eliminating things and to know that it really doesn't matter. If your child does all 37 problems in Saxon, or if they only do the odds or the evens, or if they skip the practice set every day, or if they only do the practice set every day, your child is still going to learn, and they're actually still going to learn well enough to continue progressing. They're just not going to be so stinking overwhelmed, and they're not going to hate math with every fiber of their being.
When you're looking at language arts, and your child has three pages of stuff to do, it's okay to be like, hey, actually, we're just going to do this one page today. There's only the pressure you're putting on yourself to do that full lesson today. And I think that that is, it's so hard to make that leap, because you feel like I'm deciding to skip something that could be important down the road, and it'll be on me if they need this and they don't have it.
And that's a lot of pressure to put on ourselves. But I think you, I know you will agree, Tiffany, and I assume you would agree to Renee, that learning how or teaching yourself or giving yourself the freedom to eliminate things from their curriculum, to simplify it down to a manageable state based on their ability, their capacity, their attention span. Look, there are some kids who are not going to sit there and do 37 problems in math.
My oldest daughter, she would sit there, but it would be super painful. My son, 10 problems. We can get through 10 problems and do 10 problems really well.
After that, everything else is going downhill, downhill, downhill. There's no more learning, it's just suffering through. There's no more enjoyment, it's just suffering through.
And then we get into like attitudes and battles and fights. And if you can circumvent that by just simplifying in the beginning, first of all, your life is going to be so much easier, but they're going to come to these problems and come to this homeschool a lot easier.
Oh my goodness, 100%. And I have a personal belief of stop before it starts, meaning like stop doing school before the bad, like the inappropriate behavior starts. Because what I see, and this is like, this is a huge, like if there's one thing that we take away from this, this is really important to me, is that when you find a kid doing well at something, like they're doing awesome in their math, what is the first go-to?
We can get more done, let's do more. When really, it should be, oh my gosh, they're doing good, stop, good, go take a break, go have fun, go do something.
And that's the thing, little tiny steps really do add up. So if I know, like you said, like ten problems, that's the limit. Okay, ten problems.
Then maybe as we go down, we can work in a couple more. But if 10 is the limit, that's awesome, 10 is great. Yeah, so stop before it starts.
Okay, I also want to say one thing because Renee, I know you have advanced degrees. I need to ask you though, are there things that you've come into contact with while homeschooling your young children that you were never taught in school?
Yes, absolutely.
Okay, yes. So everyone has learning gaps. That's what I'm saying.
So if you're skipping a page in language arts, literally, every human that exists is going to have a gap in learning. It is simply a fact of life. So if you're concerned that your child won't, they're going to go to jail if you skip that one page in language arts.
They're not going to get into college. That's it. Yeah.
But what I'm saying is people with their masters, with their bachelors, with their high school degrees, they all skip some things. And that's okay.
You learn how to rise to the occasion to what you want to go after also. It's okay if there are gaps in your child's learning. Sarah McKenzie also talked about this.
You know, what our children choose to do. My son is looking at being a pilot, something he's very interested in. Whether he goes for it or not, who knows?
We're going down that road and we're going to see how it pans out. But if there are any gaps that he's missing, he's motivated enough now to fill those gaps, to fix those gaps, to find those gaps. We haven't found any.
I am sure they are their mamas because I did not homeschool perfectly. He was my guinea pig kid from the get go. And I tell him that all the time.
I'm like, sorry, man, you were the guinea pig kid, okay? I learned how to be a mom, you learned how to be a kid. We're still learning it all together.
But you're going to see that anywhere and everywhere. And killing yourself now is not going to make your kids smarter. It's not going to make them get into college better, but teaching them how to love learning, giving them an opportunity to dig into stuff that they're interested in, and realize that knowledge is power, that is going to make your kid successful in their life.
And that's our job here. Our job is not to make school here in our home. School does a good job of being school.
We don't need to be school. And honestly, I would say that's 90 percent of the whys, or worked into the foundation of 100 percent of the whys, of why we're homeschooling, because we want something different for our kids.
Absolutely. Yes, the love of learning, that's the goal. Like, that is the goal.
Like, you said it. And so it doesn't have to... It looks differently for each family in each home.
But I do know this, it doesn't look like a school. It doesn't look like that. If I wanted it to be a school, it's not in a school.
And so home is going to be different. And you can set it up so that it supports the love of learning. And like you said, you have a child that wants to be a pilot.
That's incredible. You can cultivate that. In school, they would just be like, that's good, focus on this.
Yes. Okay, so we've talked about different ways to set yourself up for success. We talked about setting yourself up for success personally, like setting up your day where you're ready to start and you have what you need.
We talked about simplifying, the curriculum, the load, the overwhelm, the expectations. What about just the practicality of setting up our bodies for success? Because I think there's a lot of merit there as well.
Oh my gosh, yes. So there is something that is called a setting event, which means it's something that happens outside of the behavior that plays into it. So for example, if you wake up in the morning and you had a horrible night's sleep and you didn't drink any water yesterday and you ate nothing but yucky processed food, that's going to set up your body so it feels terrible.
So then the next day when you're going to go do this stuff that's supposed to be amazing, you're going to feel like FLC, feel like crap.
Like that, FLC.
FLC. Same with your kids, especially like with daughters, hormonally, if they are struggling, we have to be aware of that because that's a body event that plays into how their behavior is when it comes to academics, and nutrition, sleep, water, exercise, like those are all foundations that are more, I feel, are more important than doing the academics because if you don't have this good foundation where you're coming in strong, you're going to be, it's an uphill battle for everybody and then we all feel miserable and at the end of the day, nobody likes each other. So yeah, that's huge.
Just those basic foundations to really make sure you're in a strong mental and I'll even do that in my homeschooling. If we wake up and I know that we are feeling yucky and miserable and we had a bad night's sleep and we didn't eat as well as we should have in the morning, I'll make sure everyone has a really good breakfast with lots of protein. I'll do like some stretching with them and like some prayer and like really get them centered because the worst and you all know this, like when everyone's running late and everyone's mad and you're calling them and they're not coming down and they're not dressed or they're missing the song and like we're just yelling and then we try to sit down and we're like, okay, now we're going to have fun and learn.
Like nobody wants that. We're all mean. So yes, making sure that those things ahead of time coming into it, you're strong and as ready to go as you can is huge.
I would add to that, a day lost is not a day added on to the end of your homeschool. You're waking up and everyone is at everyone. Speaking of hormonal people, boys are hormonal also.
I just want to throw that out there. But teaching our kids how to work with their bodies. When my kids are having a really hard time, I'm usually like, okay, did you sleep?
If you didn't, go back and lay down. We are homeschool here. You don't have to go to school and sit in classes for the next seven hours.
If you're exhausted, go take a nap. You get to do that right now. Also, my daughters, I'm like, do you need a shower?
Just go shower. If you need food, have you eaten breakfast? That's my number one question, because my kids are freestyle for breakfast.
Have you eaten breakfast? Because we are a family who is mean when we have not eaten. And I don't know what is in our DNA that makes us mean when we have not eaten, but it is definitely stitched into our DNA, from me, from my side probably, because my husband could fast all day long.
If I fast like an hour, I'm like, that's it. Somebody's going down today. But knowing those things and teaching our children how to understand their body, especially our girls too, when you think the world is ending and you're thinking bad thoughts about yourself and you are hating what you're doing for your schoolwork and everything, it's like, oh, what if you just paused and you were like, ah, that makes sense.
You know what? My thoughts are working against me today and that's okay. I'm going to recover from that and I'm going to take it easy.
We have the ability in our homeschools, we have the freedom to do that. And then what if our girls take that into the rest of their lives, into their marriages, into their motherhood, into the workforce even to know, I need to take extra care of myself right now. I know that maybe I can't just take off work because I don't feel good, but I know I need to eat more protein.
I know I need to get more rest. I know I need to bulk up on carbs right now, or I know I need to bulk up on fats right now, whatever the case may be to take care of my body well, and to also take care of my mindset well to know, oh, the world isn't actually ending. I just feel like that right now.
Like in three days, everything will be brighter. Not to push yourself super hard at those times, not to be like, oh, I'm definitely going to take my math test today. No.
If you wake up and everything is falling apart, guess what? We'll push that math test off for a few days, and instead, you can do more reading. Dig into the stories you want to dig into.
Or you know what? Maybe you like baking and you're starving anyway. Maybe today we're baking instead of doing those other things.
I am the type of personality who feels like, oh, we didn't do the work today, so we have to make up for that. There's this pressure to make up for what we didn't get done, which is another reason I love the clipboards and I love the spiral notebooks because when I was keeping a planner, I had everything organized out even when I was only planning by the week. I was like, here's where we want to be by the end of the week.
So every lesson that we skipped, every one that we didn't finish or complete, everything that didn't get done felt like, oh, this is a failure and I have to make up for that. Then I would put more pressure on myself, more pressure on my kids and it felt awful. The spiral notebooks, we literally go day to day.
So if we didn't do it the day before, I just move it to the next day and it eliminated so much of that personal pressure that yes, I'm working on, but it's still there and if I can eliminate how I've created that pressure for myself by doing a simple little task like this, it makes the world of difference.
Yes, 100 percent. We always, I love this phrase that you can't lift a thousand pounds but you can lift one pound a thousand times. I think we need to take that into our homeschooling because we want this big huge outcome.
But like you said, just bring it back and do small things and they really add up and we really underestimate the power in that.
Yes. Truly, you can't see it, I think a lot of times. Maybe there are moms out there who can see it.
I couldn't see it. I could not see it when I was homeschooling a second grader that when he was 16, he would be able to write, he would be able to read, he would be able to sit down and do something for more than five minutes without both of us wanting to just murder each other. We just clashed constantly because I had unreasonable expectations and so many fears that drove how I was homeschooling.
Now, there's so many things that didn't matter. There's so many pages we skipped. There's so many lessons we got behind in.
There are math books that we stayed in for two straight years. Here he is exactly where the world says he needs to be, but also he's just thriving because he had space and I learned over time to, well, no, God was like, all right, I'm just gonna have to give you enough kids that you can't keep up with at all and then you'll just learn the hard way, but it's okay, learn the hard way, Britain. And I did, I have learned the hard way, but it's so freeing to set yourself up for success in these ways to make sure we're taking care of our body, to simplify the load so that we don't have to do so much all the time, and to kind of bring back to this why of why we're homeschooling and then work from that place, because that's a beautiful place to work from our fear, our doubt, our high expectations.
Those are achy places to work from. They don't feel good. They don't feel good in our thoughts.
They don't feel good in our actions. They don't feel good in our homeschools.
Amen.
Holy cow. We have a couple questions for you now that we would just like to share with our listeners. What is the book that you have shared with the most people?
That's a great question. I was trying to think about this because there's a lot, but you know which one I love and I've been sharing a lot is the soundtracks by Johnny Cuff. That's a huge one.
Such a good one. I love it. It's so important for Homeschool Moms because we have this soundtrack in our head that we need to do this, this, this, this, this, and we need to change that to be more positive.
Yes, we do. What book are you currently reading?
The book that I'm reading right now is called The Power of One More. It's by Ed Milett. Oh my gosh.
Yes. Incredible. Very motivating.
I mean, I feel like, and that's a good one.
Nice. Okay. I do like that book and he's a blast to listen to.
Yeah. Okay. So this is actually really very important to me to know because you've now moved back to the States from Italy.
What is your go-to backup meal or dinner in a pinch now?
Cereal. There is no cereal in Italy. Yes.
No. Honestly, my favorite thing when it's like we need to eat and we don't have time, it's just breakfast for dinner. Eggs, toast, it's so easy.
Or you could do a French toast, a breakfast for dinner, you get your protein, you get your good fats, it's my go-to.
Awesome. If you could share one major piece of advice with a mom who is coming to you and saying, I think I might want to homeschool, but I just don't even know if that's going to work for me. What would you tell her?
Okay. You asked for one, but I have three and they're all tied together. Number one.
God has given you the ability to do it, so don't doubt yourself. Surround yourself with good moms and a community because you're not alone and you're not an island and you don't have to do it yourself. Number three, relationships over academics.
Amen. Oh, mic drop.
So good. Okay. Then what is one thing that you do each evening or each morning that sets you up for success?
In regards to homeschool?
Or life, homeschool and life because I bet it's pretty similar.
It is. So, you know, actually, Tiffany, you taught me this and it is incredible. I tell my kids this all the time.
You put your kitchen to bed, you got to clean it up, you got to get it set. Nothing is worse than when you wake up and you have all this stuff to do and you're not prepared for the next day. So little things that you're set yourself up for success by doing things that your future self will thank you for.
So the kitchen is a huge one. It's simple, but it makes a huge difference.
Absolutely awesome. Okay. And you work with women for nutrition.
So can you tell our mamas before you go where they can keep up with you? Because I love seeing your recipes and I know that there are some mamas out there who will just love getting the little tidbits of advice that you put out.
Sure. Instagram is my biggest one. It's Renee Amato.
It's @ReneeAmato and that's Instagram. I also have a website, www.reneeamato.com and you can check it out there. There's some free opt-ins on emails and those are the two places I'm in.
Awesome. Sweet mamas, you can definitely always find the links for our guests in the show notes. And of course, don't ever, ever forget, you are doing beautiful work.
